What is demonstration in Christian Science? It is not getting things. It's not getting everything from parking places to good jobs and healed bodies, although these are sometimes referred to as "demonstrations." Mrs. Eddy saw demonstration as something else entirely. A reminiscence of a student of hers tells us: "Mrs. Eddy had a keen, delightful sense of humor. One day while I was busy in her room, she was reading a letter; looking up, she called me and said in substance, 'How do they demonstrate money and furniture?' I replied, 'I do not know, I was not taught that.' Then, as I recall, she said, 'Thank God you were not. We demonstrate Life, Truth, and Love, and they give us our supplies; we do not demonstrate material things.'" We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), p. 193.
The word demonstrate doesn't really mean anything different in Christian Science than it does in Webster's dictionary. Basically, it means to show or prove what something is or does. Christian Science accepts the Bible teaching that man is made in God's image and likeness. Christ Jesus demonstrated what this truth really means—that man is wholly good and spiritual. Jesus is our Teacher and example as well as our Saviour and the Messiah. He showed mankind what God is and does by demonstrating— proving—what man is.
Jesus proved that man is spiritual, the child of God, by letting the spiritual qualities that expressed the nature of God have exclusive reign in his thought. Who could deny how tenderly he showed what divine Love is and does? And divine Life. He demonstrated that Life is God and that man is the expression of Life. He refused to entertain the universal belief that death is inevitable and overpowering. There was nothing in his consciousness that bowed down to death as a power or necessity. He knew that God is Life and proved it.
