WHEN John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness of human uncertainty and confusion, prophesied the great mission of the Messiah, he strongly stressed the clear-cut distinction between righteousness and sin, good and evil, which was to be revealed. In the third chapter of Luke he is recorded as having spoken of one who should follow him as one "mightier than I ... whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable." Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has thrown helpful light on this passage in her spiritual definition of "fan" in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Here she has written (p. 586): "Fan. Separator of fable from fact; that which gives action to thought."
The lesson of intelligently distinguishing between good and evil was one of the first lessons which Christ Jesus taught, and one of the most valuable. By simple parables, drawn from the homely surroundings of daily life, he taught mighty truths. He spoke of separating the tares from the wheat; the sheep from the goats. Figs, he reminded his hearers, could not come from thistles, nor grapes from thorns; a good tree could produce only good fruit; the "pearl of great price" was more precious than all other possessions; the parable of the net "that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind," showed the wisdom of discernment and separation. Clear, indeed, was his plain statement to the questioning Nicodemus, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit;" and the later statement, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."
That the importance of these precepts was appreciated by his followers is evidenced by their reëmphasis in the writings of the disciples and of the Apostle Paul. In his first epistle John said that the things of the world were not of the Father; James used a parable of the fig tree, and the excellent lesson of the fountain, which cannot send forth both sweet water and bitter. One of Paul's sayings, greatly valued by Christian Scientists, is, "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
The essential, practical value of this lesson of separation was lost for many hundreds of years, until Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, discerned its spiritual worth and also its practical application to human troubles. She has written in Science and Health (p. 14): "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth. This understanding casts out error and heals the sick, and with it you can speak 'as one having authority.'"
Starting from the premise that there is but one creator, Spirit, the Christian Scientist maintains that all creation is spiritual, even though the material senses testify otherwise. Matter, with its seeming accompaniment of disease, death, and numberless limitations, is plainly not the expression of Spirit, infinite good.
Most religionists admit that God is incorporeal; that He may be known only through intelligent recognition of His goodness. The Christian Scientist accepts the logical conclusion that the real man also exists without physicality, and can be known only through spiritually mental perception; for he is in reality Godlike, God's likeness, and therefore wholly mental and spiritual. The physical senses cannot know the real man.
While perhaps the first requisite of intelligent practice in Christian Science is pure-minded, spiritual devoutness, its important aid is the further ability to distinguish between Truth and error. And the task which to the human mind seems most difficult is that of understanding the unreality of everything unlike God, good.
The Christian Scientist finds himself at the crossroads of two paths, the straight and narrow way of Truth and the broad path of supposititious mortal mind. On the one hand is Spirit and spiritual reflection; on the other, so-called mortal mind and matter. He must choose between them. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon," said the Master. Denying existence or reality to matter, the Christian Scientist affirms the truth relative to the situation and maintains his affirmation until the human mind accepts it, and so relinquishes its false belief. Mental support must be completely withdrawn from error if error's destruction is to be complete. Matter is conquered only as one conquers his belief in it, his pleasure in it, his fear of it.
When the Christ, or Truth, has come to human consciousness, spiritual substance is discerned. The illumination of spiritual sense in one's first awakening may come largely through the demonstration of another, the consecrated help of a practitioner or friend; but the Christ is not enthroned in the individual consciousness until one has made this precious presence his own through consistent demonstration. Then does the Christ truly become our judge. By a sustained sense of spiritual reflection all thoughts may be correctly judged; and the separation of the "sheep from the goats" thus becomes a practical metaphysical process.
The episode related in the first chapter of John, concerning Christ Jesus' choosing of Nathanael as one of his disciples, records one of our Saviour's earliest lessons of discrimination. Here the student may see the distinction between human mental discernment and spiritual discernment. When Nathanael, in astonishment that the Master should have known him when he was yet "under the fig tree," exclaimed that this surely proved that Christ Jesus was the Son of God, he was told that he would see "greater things than these." "Hereafter," Christ Jesus said to him, "ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man."
Christ Jesus' mind-reading was based upon his understanding of the omnipresence of divine Mind, and had no affiliation with mortal mind-reading, which is based merely on human belief. To declare and realize that Mind is ever present and constantly revealing to one whatever one needs to know, is wisdom and is necessary to the practice of Christian metaphysics. Hidden errors, claiming to impede healing or progress, may thus be uncovered. Real discernment, as Christ Jesus indicated to Nathanael, is the spiritual recognition of "the angels of God," or thoughts of God, which appear to those who are receptive of divine revelation.
A distinction which Mrs. Eddy makes is worthy of careful consideration, and may be found on page 505 of Science and Health. Here she has written: "Spiritual sense is the discernment of spiritual good. Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and unreal." It may be said that anyone who recognizes spiritual good in any degree has some measure of spiritual discernment. To love and employ the simple qualities of honesty, unselfishness, order, harmony, is to exercise that God-given faculty. On the other hand, "understanding" not only recognizes good, but also detects the unseen mental elements of materiality, and destroys them by a vivid realization of their nothingness. An understanding of God and His spiritual ideas plainly establishes in human thought a proportionate knowledge of evil's unreality. The function of spiritual understanding is always to separate, to distinguish between the real and the unreal. It is the "firmament in the midst of the waters," destined forever to "divide the waters from the waters."
To follow this metaphysical practice of clear discrimination is to face perpetual spiritual growth. Such practice separates "fable from fact," and gives such "action to thought" that useful and healing power is progressively unfolded.
