I sometimes think of an experience I had when I was six or seven years old. My sister was thirteen or fourteen, and we were alone in the house one day. I heard her calling me from upstairs. When I got to the second floor I saw that the attic door was open. I looked up the stairs and saw a ghostlike figure draped in a white sheet. I knew (or thought I did!) that it was my sister, so I laughed and told her I knew her. But she didn't answer and started moving very slowly toward me. With each step she took, my conviction wavered. By the time she got within a few steps of me, I panicked, screamed, and went down the stairs so fast it seemed that my feet never touched the steps. Realizing what she had done, my sister quickly came down and calmed me.
But that experience has reminded me many times that no matter what we are confronted by—sickness or trouble of any kind—we need to look beyond appearances. We need to understand spiritual reality with all its goodness and power. In that way we see why evil is not and cannot be real. Then we can stand fast with unwavering spiritual conviction.
Christian Science teaches the reality of God and His spiritual creation and the unreality, or nothingness, of His opposite, matter and mortal mind. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "If sickness is real, it belongs to immortality; if true, it is a part of Truth. Would you attempt with drugs or without, to destroy a quality or condition of Truth? But if sickness and sin are illusions, the awakening from this mortal dream, or illusion, will bring us into health, holiness, and immortality."Science and Health, p. 230.
