There’s a statement in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, which, if understood, can aid anyone in effective healing prayer. Leading up to this statement, Mrs. Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, first makes an important distinction between the corporeal man Jesus and his spiritual self, or Christ, which is the true idea of sonship with God that is forever with us. The action verbs on this page convey what Christ, Truth, is doing for you and me moment by moment. Christ is “voicing good,” “speaking to the human consciousness,” “dispelling the illusions of the senses,” “healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death.” These explanations build up to a pivotal point in the practice of Christian Science: “Thus it is that Christ illustrates the coincidence, or spiritual agreement, between God and man in His image” (pp. 332–333).
Why is this statement so valuable to our healing practice? Let’s break it down into three essential points.
Jesus illustrated his theology
To illustrate means to clarify, demonstrate, make clear by examples, or provide a visual feature. The illustrator Norman Rockwell, for example, brought to light aspects of everyday life in the United States through his drawings and paintings. Christ Jesus illustrated the reality of God’s, Spirit’s, goodness through his healings, when those around him were holding a different view, a material view. For example, right where everyone else was seeing a man’s withered hand, Jesus, through the power of Christ, Truth, illustrated a fully formed, functioning hand (see Matthew 12:10–13). In every one of his healings Jesus illustrated the theology he had been teaching—that Spirit reigns supreme right where images of matter and its limiting, destructive operations seem to be.
When we pray for ourselves or others, we can be assured that the Christ is active in consciousness and is illustrating, bringing clarity to, the spiritual facts of being. Christ displaces negative, material impressions made on our thinking, which don’t truly belong there, with spiritually scientific truths. Not only is Christ appealing to what we hear (understand) by voicing good in consciousness; it is also appealing to what we see (perceive) by illustrating the true child of God’s creating as spiritual, perfect, healthy, and present. Right where matter claims presence, right there Christ is illustrating to us that God’s child, His idea, is flawless and embodies all of Mind’s, God’s, faculties and functions. This Christ-activity of illustrating enables us to perceive God’s voice, see His goodness, and feel His tender presence and power.
Spiritual facts coincide with our experience
If two things coincide, they occupy the same place at the same time. When two or more bodies meet or events happen at the same point, they are concurrent or in agreement, and this is called a coincidence.
When spiritual truths of God’s kingdom, the reign of harmony, so fill our thought that there is no room for any fear of or belief in what the physical senses report—in other words, when there is a coincidence of human experience and spiritual facts—then we discern more clearly the coincidence of God and man. And this results in healing.
This is how the wonderful truths that inspire us in our study of the Bible and Science and Health have relevance in our everyday lives. When the Christ illumines our thought with divinely scientific understanding, matter and its accompanying sin and sickness and other evils lose their reality in our consciousness and disappear. This is the effect spoken of in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, emphasis added).
It is Christ, divine Truth, that helps us understand that we are not living in two parallel universes—in the realm of matter and also in Spirit’s kingdom. God’s reign of harmony does not exist in another time or place. We learn to transcend the human condition and circumstances by gathering the absolute spiritual truths and yielding to them as having application and power right at this exact moment, here and now.
Spiritual agreement between God and man is a fact
In the lexicon of this Science, the word man is frequently used as a term for God’s child, His offspring (male and female), as opposed to the counterfeit material sense of man. Each of us can learn to know ourselves as the perfect emanation of divine Love, like a ray emanating from the sun. The sun and its ray are one. The agreement between God and His idea, the true identity of each of us, is not optional. It might seem as though we have a separate consciousness from God, the all-knowing Mind, and can decide if we are going to be in agreement with Him or not. But that’s never the case. As the reflection of the one consciousness, divine Mind, you and I exist in perpetual, perfect agreement with God, the one Ego, and with His perfect will, His goodness.
Simply put, what divine Mind is knowing, seeing, and doing is what you and I, as His expression, are knowing, seeing, and doing. It is scientifically impossible for an idea to argue with the Mind that conceives of and governs it. How Mind is seeing you is how you, by reflection, are seeing yourself. This is your true, spiritual consciousness and identity. What divine Life is expressing is happening at the same moment as what you, as His expression, are experiencing. There is not a moment of delay or disconnect, or the slightest hint of opposition, rebellion, defiance, or denial.
It is heartening to understand that this agreement is what the Christ is actively bringing to our consciousness, the consciousness of our loved ones, and that of our patients. Not only is the Christ imparting the true idea of God and man to individual consciousness, but it is illustrating our conscious agreement with what intelligent, healthy, sinless divine Mind is forever knowing.
How it works
This is not just theory; it has practical effects. One evening, the mother of a young boy called me for my help as a Christian Science practitioner. Her son had an unsightly cyst on his wrist. The mother had taken him to a doctor at the request of the boy’s dad, who was not a student of Christian Science. (The parents were divorced and the mother had custody of the child.) The doctor had said that a specialist was going to be needed on the case because the problem was related to a hereditary disease; the dad had struggled with the same condition for years. An appointment had been made with the specialist, but in the interim the mother (with the dad’s consent) called me for Christian Science treatment.
In my prayers, I first established some spiritual facts, including that God, Spirit, was the substance of this child’s being and that this substance was unblemished and entirely spiritual. As I studied pages 332–333 of Science and Health, my thought was arrested by the explanation that Christ is illustrating to human consciousness the “coincidence, or spiritual agreement, between God and man.” Eternal Truth was revealing to this young child and his parents the spiritual facts and revealing the agreement each member of this family had with Him as His offspring.
Man, the conscious outcome of the all-knowing Mind, could only know himself as God knows him, because he is one with God and so in full agreement with God. The parents, reflecting the one true parent Mind, could only know this child as God knows him. This meant that there could not be any fear, stress, imagination, or drama sitting anywhere in consciousness, including the parents’ thought. The ever-active Christ was bringing absolute Truth to human sense.
The mother reported that she woke up early in the morning with a very clear sense that, of course, this child only belonged to his Father-Mother God! Divine Principle was the only influence on this child’s life and well-being. He was flawless. Later that morning when the child awoke, there was no evidence of the cyst. It was gone. The whole family was so grateful and all appointments with the physicians were canceled.
Science and Health defines Christ as “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” (p. 583). It is a relief to know that it is not a person—a practitioner or a patient—that is bringing forth healing. It is Christ. Christ makes evident in human experience the eternal oneness of God and His idea, His child.
Understanding this coincidence or spiritual agreement has powerful application to the whole range of life experiences. This includes anything that would take away our peace, whether we seem to be sick, anxious, lonely, lost, unemployed, homeless, in disagreement with someone, etc. We can trust Christ to enlighten thought with divine facts or reality. As it does, any fear, human will, or personal attachment to wrong notions about God or man will dissolve through an awakened sense of our agreement with God, who loves us and provides infinite good and perpetual well-being for us and everyone.
