If today's thinker is striving to think as did the spiritually-minded metaphysicians of Bible times, then he or she is challenging the fearful evidence presented by the physical senses. This means he or she is spiritually correcting—that is, healing—fear.
For thousands of years the Scriptures have said it: "I will fear no evil." The Psalmist saw beyond limited worldly hypotheses to a deeper spiritual reality that comforted him. The Psalmist's remedy for fear, "Thou [God] art with me," Ps. 23:4. has lost none of its practical force today.
Christ Jesus, the Son of God, came centuries later and demonstrated the beneficial force of "Thou art with me"—the truth of God's kingdom come on earth. He healed diseases, sins, and other fears inherent in the materialistic hypothesis of life.
In our times Mrs. Eddy brings the issue of overcoming fear of evil into focus this way in Science and Health: "The five physical senses are the avenues and instruments of human error, and they correspond with error." Science and Health, pp. 293-294.
Christian Science healers consider the discords recorded by these physical senses in the same light as did the ancient healers of the Bible. The aim is to be cognizant of what divine Truth, God, is saying, and shut the door of thought on the disturbing assertions of the material senses. There are abundant biblical guidelines on how to do this.
For example, in the Adam and Eve allegory, the serpent, or the testimony of the material senses, epitomizes the "avenues" of evil. Throughout the Bible's inspired writings we're admonished to reject this supposititious originator of evil. Furthermore, the master Metaphysician, Christ Jesus, when using such expressions as "thief" (see John 10:1-10), "devil," "murderer," "liar" (see John 8:44), and the bold dismissal "Get thee hence, Satan" (Matt. 4:10), was teaching us how to handle the serpentine testimony that claims to bombard human beings. Today terrifying suggestions can be overcome when one opposes them with the Christ-spirit.
As soon as some perception of evil touches our experience, like an alert fireman called to extinguish a blaze, we can handle the intrusion or "serpent" by denying its reality or presence. We can affirm what God, good, has forever expressed. This mental method defuses in our thought the supposed power of evil's assaults, thereby disarming fear. This enables us to think clearly and to cope with the situation.
Unlike worldly prescriptions of drugs, the Christian metaphysician's method for treating stresses of fear and anxiety is wholly spiritual. The spiritual method, Christ's method, does not require material substances to soothe, relieve, or allay the testimony of the physical senses. On the contrary, the Science of Christ awakens the patient's consciousness from fear by changing one's base of thought from that of material origins to divine Truth. It's a shift from darkness to light, from what St. Paul calls "the carnal mind" (Rom. 8:7) to the Mind of Christ.
This change of mental base destroys fear, addresses correctly the whole problem of being, reveals man's harmonious relation to God, and moves us toward our resurrection and ascension. Science and Health states, "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind." Ibid., p. 162.
By changing our mental base to Mind, we invoke divine power that solves, through healing, the problems of evil. Difficulties, which perhaps used to intensify because we wrestled with the physical senses as unchallengeable, now become subordinate to divine Truth. Every time we turn our gaze from materialistic hypotheses to spiritual evidence we are honoring God, divine Truth, and His works. This refreshes us and enables us to do what's most nearly right in human situations—as Jesus did when feeding the multitudes.
Our task, then, is to change our basis of thought to Mind, to refocus our gaze, not on physical sense perceptions, but on spiritual reality, on what God is now doing, seeing, knowing.
"Thou art with me" means, to the Christianly scientific thinker, that divine Truth is here setting me free; divine Love is now restoring my peace, joy, power; in fact, divine Principle is forever governing creation, as it has since "the beginning."
"In the beginning" (see Gen. 1:1 and John 1:1) means, in Science, that God is the one, supremely good power creating all life, intelligence, substance, and truth. No reality "begins." It coexists with God, the only Principle or primal cause. The Scientist accepts the reality of Spirit as authentic, mentally insists on it, and simultaneously denies the contrary arguments of the serpent. We call this spiritually mental activity of specific prayer "treating the case." And, of course, what makes this method of prayer effective is our understanding that the Holy Spirit ("Thou art with me"), not our human effort, is the power that heals.
In short, we conquer fear in proportion as we thoughtfully supplant the disturbing cacophony of the physical senses with spiritual sense, and with the angel thoughts that God imparts to us.
The Psalmist felt God's healing presence ("Thou art with me") through the spiritual activity of "thousands of angels" (Ps. 68:17). Angels, to the Scientist, are powerful, God-sent messages, evidencing divine Truth's active presence in our midst, and they deliver us from evil. Science and Health puts it this way: "Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their individualism may be." Ibid., p. 298.
For instance, suppose physical sense testimony cries out to a patient that evil is repeating itself, that evil is worse today than yesterday, that evil is more powerful than good, that both good and evil are real, that evil has more authority than God. Systematically and faithfully the healer begins at the "beginning," affirming what is real, denying what isn't. How quickly we are comforted, relieved of the fear of evil, by the angel thought that says to us that God, good, is the only cause and creator now.
The metaphysical healer's aim, with help from God's holy angel thoughts, is to become conscious, even for a moment, that only spiritual causation is real. Nothing has reality unless its origin is God, good.
Gently, but firmly, the patient is reassured that divine Love, God—man's only real cause or source—creates all things well, whole, and good. Fear, the material senses' anticipation of evil, is the opposite of Love. It has no starting point in Love and therefore cannot be repetitive, persuasive—or present. Divine Love's perfect likeness, man, coming from his creator, his Principle or Maker, is therefore free of fear.
Furthermore, Truth, God, could never impart to man those opposites of Truth called error, mistake, accident, injustice, lack, deterioration, pain, disease, sin, or any other deviation from Truth. Truth does not create its opposite or contradiction! So there is nothing to fear, says the angel thought that tells us of Truth's allness Allness means onliness, and this eliminates any state of otherness; so there cannot be reality in addition to Truth. Truth is infinite, All-in-all. Science and Health states it this way: "Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness." Ibid., p. 339.
It is through such spiritual reasoning, or prayer, that today's scientific Christian healer eliminates fear and its supposititious causes or effects.
When Jesus said, "I came forth from the Father ... and go to the Father," John 16:28. wasn't the Master telling us how to entertain the angel vision that frees us from fear? The Master proved that his life and consciousness did not originate in fearful worldly senses, because his starting point was always his Father, divine Mind, God. Jesus claimed no source of life or intelligence but God. He came from and went to his Father, divine Mind, who, as Truth, is not the creator of fearful contradictions of good. From this spiritual base, or oneness with his Father, Jesus saw the physical sensation of fear to be a "liar" that tries vainly to suggest Truth's opposite. Since Truth can have no opposite, Jesus treated the lie of fear as baseless. So can we. And the whole world will be a better place for it.
