TO those whose consciousness has become spiritually illumined through the perception of God as Mind, Spirit, the nature of God and of His universe is seen as wholly spiritual and perfect. Christian Science reveals that man is the reflection, or idea, of God and that, because of this, man's understanding is pure and perfect.
In order to demonstrate this purity of understanding in our thoughts and lives, it is essential that we cleanse our consciousness from all fleshly beliefs. We must consciously refrain from entertaining mesmeric or aggressive suggestions that flesh and not Spirit constitutes man and governs him. Thus we begin to understand the teaching of Christian Science that in reality we are spiritual beings, the children of God, not mortals or human personalities composed of both good and evil. This great truth of ourselves we learn to cherish as we would a pearl of great price.
In Christian Science we perceive that Christ, Truth, is the light that illumines our thoughts and lives with the purity of spiritual understanding. Our thoughts should not be contaminated with the elements of a supposititious mortal mind, but we must hold steadfastly to the absolute fact that all that is real is of God and is spiritual. It is the Christ, the divine idea of God, coming to our receptive thought that speaks to us of what life actually is and reveals the law of our being.
With a clear grasp of the truth of God and man, we are able to understand Mrs. Eddy's writings and to know the distinction between the relative and the absolute. The relative sense of man admits something that is not true; for instance, the belief that man is human, composed of both mind and matter, good and evil. The absolute truth of man is wholly spiritual and is in no sense material. To be able to see this difference is to be willing to accept that clarity of understanding which Christian Science explains is the firmament—the ability to separate the false belief about man and the universe from the truth of man and the universe.
Mrs. Eddy states in "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 25, 26): "No human hypotheses, whether in philosophy, medicine, or religion, can survive the wreck of time; but whatever is of God, hath life abiding in it, and ultimately will be known as selfevident truth, as demonstrable as mathematics. Each successive period of progress is a period more humane and spiritual. The only logical conclusion is that all is Mind and its manifestation, from the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a potato-patch."
When we spiritually discern that divine Mind is God and that all creation is the manifestation of that Mind, we see that whatever seems imperfect, baneful, or impure is only false belief and no part of God's actual creation. Mrs. Eddy teaches that there is no reality in matter and that the Biblical teaching that God, Spirit, is All and that man, His image or idea, is spiritual, is the eternal truth.
The world at large has accepted the belief that what we see with our eyes and feel and touch with our hands is substantial and that all material objects are real. The student of Christian Science learns that this is not true, nor is it true that man is material and imperfect.
Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 174), "Matter is a misstatement of Mind"; and on page 269 of Science and Health she states: "The categories of metaphysics rest on one basis, the divine Mind. Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul."
We read in the Bible that when a man with a withered hand came to Jesus, the Master did not annihilate the so-called withered hand. He saw man as a perfect idea. This vision of spiritual reality enabled him to destroy the false concept, or discord, and the hand "was restored whole, like as the other" (Matt. 12: 13).
What we need to do is to change our thought of man. We are not engaged in destroying or escaping from our material environment by declaring it to be unreal; but we are basically exchanging our material viewpoint, which we call matter, for spiritual understanding. Thus we see the reality of all that is—God's spiritual and only creation. This was the vision of John. He saw the universe as wholly spiritual; whereas to the spiritually unillumined human mind the universe appeared to be material.
It is essential that we recognize and claim as our own that pure consciousness of the absolute which John so unhesitatingly claimed and used in changing his viewpoint, clearly viewing the only universe of God's creating as unmixed with material sense or false belief.
This purified consciousness is the consciousness we need if we are to keep our mental homes cleansed from material beliefs and filled with the absolute truth— the truth of man's wholly spiritual likeness to God. To heal as the Master did, we must perceive man and the universe in their true light as he saw them.
Man's identity is spiritual, and every faculty and every function of his being is spiritual. While we deny the belief that man's body is a fleshly matter-concept, we must also affirm and realize the truth of our real self and body and not forget what manner of man we are. Spiritual sense enables us to understand that what appears as matter is not matter at all, but is a misconception of that which is actually an idea of God. The bodies which were made whole by the Master were so-called fleshly bodies. His patients believed themselves to be diseased human beings; but he changed their viewpoint from the relative to the absolute, and their bodies became normal.
Seeing the truth of man's spirituality, we can find within ourselves a conscious repudiation of any aggressive suggestion that we are mortal or that we live in the atmosphere of materiality, or mortal mind. Thus Christian Science reveals to us our God-given ability to resist these claims at every point. We can know as did St. Paul that we are not "in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in [us]" (Rom. 8:9). We know that there are not two opposite creations: on one hand, a spiritual idea, or likeness, of God and, on the other, a mortal so-called man. A dual concept is not Christian Science, nor is it Christ's Christianity. Man is Mind's perfect manifestation.
We must have the pure understanding of metaphysics in regard to the spiritual nature of man and the universe, which was revealed to John and which has been set forth in the teachings of Mrs. Eddy.
It is the purity of spiritualized thought, the full acceptance into our very being of God's omnipresence and manifestation, that understands the healing Christ. Admonishing his listeners, Paul said (Phil. 2:5), "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour . . . . He brought me forth also into a large place: he delivered me, because he delighted in me.—II Samuel 22:2, 3, 20.
