Arthur Corey

       Page II

    Christian Science Class Instruction

             Arthur Corey's monumental exposition on the rudiments of Christian Science.

1.  
2. Treatment
3. Demonstration
4. The Christ
5. Practitioner and Patient
6. Footsteps and Concessions
7. Presence
8. Questions and Answers
9. More Questions Answered
10. Church
11. World Salvation

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Treatment

To be practical, your metaphysical work must be directly to the point. If your treatment is to include argument, then this argument must be explicit in order to reach the particular case. The direction and extent of such argument is, naturally, determined by the circumstances of the moment as well as by the degree of your understanding, and so cannot be outlined in advance. Rules? We are not concerned with rules, but with principles. The rules vary with progress and situations. So if we lay down any restrictions at all, let it be clearly seen that they are strictly temporary concessions to unconquered opinion. As human beings, though, we do have to lay out our course constantly, and so there is no objection to setting up useful means, methods and expedients of thought and action - so long as we do not think of them as absolute or final.

Students often contend with each other, for example, over the proper order or procedure in treatment, and they will cite successful metaphysicians as their authority. This contention would not come up if we agreed that always "wisdom in human action begins with what is nearest right under the circumstances, and thence achieves the absolute." (Mis 288:13-15.) Then we would not be tempted to interfere with our brother's freedom of thought and right to proceed as his own experience guides him. (No 9:8-13.) This will not keep him or you from considering and studying the methods of others, at various stages of individual advancement. In fact, you may save yourself many unnecessary detours by examining the work of others and appreciating the values therein set forth. You will not have to spend years of experimenting if you are big enough to profit by the experience of others. There are many good features of practice as worked out in the field which you can appropriate without having to fumble through repeated trial-and-error experiences.

The order of procedure. Is there anything fundamental which experience always teaches on this question? Yes. You handle exactly what arises and in the order in which it arises. Again: what about the adequacy of denial? Your denial is adequate when it leaves nothing to be denied. The essential thing, though, is not the journey but the goal. Your goal? Divine realization. That can only follow the clearing of consciousness by way of analysis resulting in conviction. Realization is not possible where thought is encumbered with misconception. You arrive, through sound reasoning with Principle, at your conclusion, where nothing is left but divine Mind declaring its own divinity. You progress through the six days (or stages) of labor to the Sabbath, where you rest. Keep this Sabbath holy, by entertaining nothing that worketh or maketh a lie.

Obviously, the realization is not contained in the finite expressions you have recourse to on the way. Your words simply represent or indicate the vastness of infinite knowing. They are, for the nonce, indispensable to your attainment of that attitude of thought which is the altitude of God. This attained, you must not forsake it for an instant in considering that which obtrudes itself as an erroneous claim. Your work is designed solely to bring you to this point. How you arrive, is of no consequence whatsoever. Accordingly, you may bring anything into your treatment which serves to clarify consciousness. But the more simple, direct and coherent your reasoning processes, the more efficient your work. The aim is simplification, rather than elaboration. Argument alone, of course, does not heal; it is merely a human expedient for sweeping away the mental smokescreens that Mind may unfold. So learn to say, Amen. Watch your punctuation: more periods and fewer commas!

In this matter of analysis or argument, we must be alert enough to reject the widespread fallacy of correlating errors. Regrettably, the superstition is rife in the field that disease is the penalty for or consequence of sinful thinking, and this notion has ultimated in the natural conclusion that specific diseases are coupled with specific sins or vices. This would be mortal mind in the form of Old Theology. The only sin is indulgence in the belief that existence is material, the claim of sensation in matter embodying every possibility of both pain and pleasure. The so-called penalty does not follow nor result from the sin, but is an aspect of the sin, disappearing with the extinction of the sinful or material sense. (Ret 63:7-9.)

Some will tell you of sicknesses which have been healed with the uncovering of particular sins or vices, and this is not to be gainsaid. Nevertheless, it does not prove that the one springs directly from the other. It only goes to show that both sin and suffering have a common root in the belief of sensation in matter. When thought is exalted beyond "the fundamental fear that is the faith in things material," both the suffering and the pleasure material disappear. It may prove more difficult on occasion to heal the sinner than the sinless, because the sinner is bound by his fear of losing pleasure through relinquishing the material sense of it. He should be reassured through the promise of contentment beyond his dearest hopes.

Anyone who is honestly turning to spirituality has a right to say: I am not under penalty for anything I ever did or did not do, for anything I ever believed or disbelieved, or for anything evil would have me believe for the moment, since belief does not touch my real being, and the knowledge of this annuls any claim to the contrary. (S & H 390:20-26.) Otherwise, insidious evil, in the guise of good, would have you constantly condemning yourself and others instead of redeeming all. As for the danger of moral idiocy in this, the sinner in never deceived. In his heart he knows when he is resorting to subterfuge. He cannot call sin unreal in order to justify it, for he must make a reality of sin in order to justify it, for he must make a reality of sin in order to indulge it. He knows this. The only way a sinner ever ceases finally to be a sinner is by knowing he never was a sinner, and knowing it so well that he demonstrates it.

Any disease, then, is sinful thinking itself, never the result of sinful thinking. (S & H 411:24 only.) Don't grant validity to any error on the assumption that it springs from some other error. Yes, our book does say sin may be the procuring cause of disease, but in the very next paragraph it says the exact opposite. (S & H 419:1-12.) The first is obviously a relative statement, to be denied on the basis of the absolute one which follows. Don't get stuck on the relative statements. Go on through to the absolute, or you'll never get into the Promised Land of realization. There is one statement in the book which covers this subject beyond all equivocation: "It is latent belief in disease, as well as the fear of disease, which associates sickness with certain circumstances and causes the two to appear conjoined, even as poetry and music are reproduced in union by human memory." (S & H 377:26-3.) This disposes of the spurious claims of psychosomatic medicine.

Edward Kimball and Bicknell Young, in keeping with Mrs. Eddy's instructions, emphasized at every turn that we have no authority or sound reason for linking up various errors -like cancer-vindictiveness, eczema-vanity, glasses-criticism, to mention but a few of the most popular fallacies. This practice has hovered about Christian Science ever since its inception and workers have been known to assemble long tables of supposedly correlative errors. Mrs. Eddy at one time told Mr. Kimball that she would have to put a prohibition in the Manual to cover this if it was not stopped in New York, and he laughingly said he would be lost without his list!

Such absurdities arise from the superficial observation or, as must be evident, from puerile punning. Unreason runs something like this: cancer is a malignancy, hence must represent such malignant thought as vindictiveness! Then some unscientific worker encounters bitterness in the attitude of a cancer sufferer - should that be surprising? - and jumps to the unwarranted conclusion that the cancer is the outgrowth of bitterness, Again, someone with an aural affliction overhears something he was not wanted to hear, after having failed to understand something said directly to him, and the shallow comment is that "he just doesn't want to hear, but hears what he wants to!" Or perhaps an eczema sufferer is shy because of the blemishes on his face, or takes measures to improve his appearance somewhat, and into this is read vanity. Such a view is unscientific and unkind.

Many good people die of cancer and many cantankerous and spiteful tyrants remain physically sound to a ripe old age. This should be enough to discredit the theory of correlated errors. One student told another that he had been able to heal one of his patients of chronic rheumatism only by uncovering this rheumatic's hatred for his mother-in-law. Impressed, the second student applied this to a case he had been handling, but the rheumatism did not yield. At last he discovered that his patient didn't have a mother-in-law! We have heard public testimonies ascribing gallstones to galling thoughts, liver trouble to being "a bad liver" and corpulence to personality! Coughs have been attributed to rebellion, colds to anger and insomnia to ambition. A patient of mine told me that she had been given to understand that her corns were due to hard thoughts, but complained that they were soft corns!

When you sing a song, you regard it as a simple, elemental activity; yet it is dual. You may recite the lyrics without ever having heard the melody, or you may hum the melody while unfamiliar with the words. These things are so intimately associated in the song, however, as to seem one. It makes no difference how closely errors seem to be correlated, their only connection is the claim that they are all mortal mind in manifestation. They do not represent the interplay of separate elements, but are simply the language of mortal mind by which it would establish itself as a real entity. Our analyses will not become bogged down in the ramifications of belief if we will just see that these various complexities are but aspects of one indivisible picture, from which we may profitably ascertain the trend of thought and so get our bearings. These "errors" do not depend upon each other, but upon the fundamental claim that mind, your mind, is mortal, malicious, finite, afflictive. If a man has cancer and also smokes, handle both beliefs - but don't let him die of cancer while you are quibbling over the cigarette habit!

Another persistent phase of misapprehension is the assigning of symbolic values to the organs and functions. Such biblical figures of speech as "the bowels of mercies" and "the arm of the Lord" are taken to have some literal connection with the features of physicality. This breathing is presumed to represent inspiration and the feet understanding! Thoroughly loving souls who are the victims of heart disease are then told that they must "love more" and paragons of virtue are warned to live better if their livers are kicking up a fuss! A patient with congenital curvature of the spine was urged to see that "the backbone of life is Truth, uprightness." A student told her teacher she had received a telegram for help from an unknown applicant signed "Holeman," and that she had healed him by just knowing that he was a whole man! Her teacher's laconic observation was that he supposed the man would have been doomed if his name had been Dunn.

Come, now, let us have done with such fruitless and distressing sophistry and get back to the pure Science -which is always rational. Christian Science is metaphysical, not metaphorical. Nor do we analyze specific claims in order to reveal one error as having foundation in another error. Wouldn't that be endlessly self-defeating? Our analysis exposes the afflictive evidence as sheer deception and then disposes of the basic claim that there is evil, through the realization of God's allness. Detecting deception through scientific, irrefutable, compelling reason, there is nothing left but God appearing. As you progress, there may be less and less that is argumentative about your metaphysical work, but the end is always the same - Mind realized.

The most important thing to learn is that this is God appearing. But such a statement cannot be made casually. You must never, never make such a statement in an off-hand manner, either silently or audibly. Growing in Christian Science is not the cultivating of automatisms of thought and action, but the ever-increasing apprehension of living spirituality. If you are actually ascending the glorious, white throne of Spirit, you can look upon a ghastly accident or a charming symphony and say, "This is God appearing!" Good no longer appears negatively, then, but stands revealed in shining splendor. It is not merely re-titled, but redeemed by Truth. Knowing it as Spirit dispels its materiality and clothes it in the shimmering garments of light.

Whatever is appearing must, in the ultimate, be Mind disclosing itself - not to you, but to itself and as itself. And where is all this taking place? In the only place there is: the realm of thought. Yes, the demonstration of Christian Science is always subjective, even though it must appear to be external to pure consciousness. This that is Mind's communion meets your every need, for it necessarily unfolds in the language of your comprehension. You do not try to alter your way of seeing reality, but gratefully accept what you recognize to be the unfoldment of Mind. You understand that the forms of goodness and beauty for you will be purified and perfected as you grasp their underlying divinity of cause. Mind, to be Mind, must be understandable. Mind understandable expresses itself as law, order, harmony. The language in which you apprehend this is decided by the degree of your understanding or spiritual growth. Harmony to us is the music of human relationships; perfection accords with mankind's standards; completeness is literal in every field of experience. And if this isn't so for us, there's something wrong with our version of Science. We are entitled to the loaves and the fishes. Indeed, they are the only concrete evidence possible to us that we are divinely provided for. We do not seek the effects, of course, primarily, for that would tend to separate cause and effect and so deprive us of them. But we do expect results. We know enough to seek first the kingdom of God, but we also know enough to expect the finding to be manifest as all that is right in present experience.

It is sometimes said that the practitioner treats himself only. This is quite true. But it must not be inferred that the practitioner has a private mind apart from his patients, which private mind is to be corrected individually. Mentation is one and indivisible, and this mentation is the universe. In no sense do you ever treat "another mind." You correct belief through divine realization - a wholly impersonal operation. Where else could you correct it but where it is appearing - which is where you are and what you are thinking? You do not point thoughts at people; you establish the truth of being, making way for Soul's immaculate expression. Where? The infinite here of consciousness is the only place there is. Then the demonstration appears as that which is entirely natural, since nothing can appear to you contrary to your own interpretation of reality at the moment. To be miraculous to you, it would have to be contrary to your sense of reality and therefore impossible.

When the disciple attempted to walk upon the water to go to Jesus, and as the result of his own fear he began to sink, it was Jesus' hand which appeared to hold him up. If it hadn't been so, he would have appeared to drown. Surely there could be no question that it was spiritual power which sustained him? Yet divine sustenance was visible to those who witnessed the event only as the hand of Jesus lifting him up. Actually, Jesus never existed in matter, so the entire experience was not what it seemed to be. (S & H 76:10-12, 75:16-20.) Significantly, our Leader writes: "Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it seemed to mortal view) . . . Jesus was the mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error." (S & H 315:29-32.)

To demonstrate means, of course, to establish the truth or produce the evidence of fact, so you cannot demonstrate that which is not already so. Christian Science demonstration is simply seeing that which is. What you call progressive demonstration is your growing apprehension of the divine facts of being. Such evidence is wholly incidental to what you are really establishing - namely, God as the divine and only cause. When you seek cause as God, the evidence is sure to accord. What you are confronted with is not the result of your thinking, but it is your thinking, and its nature is according to what you are accepting as Mind. Such evidence does not follow realization; it is itself realization. That which is evidence must be determined by Mind and as Mind. (Mis 257:6-7.)

Demonstration appears to hinge upon the understanding of the treater, but that is all on the belief side of the question. From the standpoint of the human being, the responsibility for healing is as much that of the patient as the practitioner, and vice versa. Whether you believe yourself to be the patient or the practitioner - or an onlooker - it is up to you to handle and meet, so far as your understanding permits, any erroneous appearance in your world of experience. But, in order to do this, you must take the whole thing out of that relative realm and admit that you are forever within the sphere of your own consciousness, accountable for everything arising therein.

It may appear that one person is healing another person. Actually, it is divine power humanly attested. Treatment must take on ever more of the character that is the constant consciousness of God -God's consciousness. This that is thinking Mind is the divine presence. All that is true about your treatment emanates from God and is God. "The Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1.) That is why it is infallible. And you must insist (in your own thinking) that it is unfailing and instant. Passive thought is not treatment. The divine oneness must be vital and alive as active realization. Then it is never inadequate, incompetent, indifferent, incomplete, imperfect.

Silently declare that Christian Science is true. It is Truth itself. Therefore it is the only truth or power or law to this or any case, now and forever. You need not speculate on the results of such knowing. You may rest assured that completeness, perfection and harmony, in order to appear in belief, must conform in their appearance to the requirements of belief. Again: the perfection of being can only be apprehended as what is nearest right under the circumstances. But Mind is its own interpreter and you only handicap your search for divinity when you try to outline in finite terms the outcome of turning to Mind. (S & H 62:22-26.) Confusion, disappointment and defeat attend human speculation. (S & H 422:31-32.) If you just leave the results to God, they will be satisfactory and satisfying, because they then must be good unfolding.

Right here is a good place to make the point that the Christian Scientist is not in the business of reconstructing a belief world. Perfecting the universe is not a matter of idealizing it, but of ascertaining the reality of perfection and the perfection of reality.(S & H 518:27-2, 504:14-15.) Demonstration is revelation, not manipulation. What is the healing of any condition or situation but the apprehension of the fact that all is complete, harmonious, perfect? That this should appear as a material improvement is in no way surprising, since it can be cognized only in the language of your present thinking. When things are unsatisfactory, you do not seek a better sense of things, but you seek the spiritual reality, and this results inevitably in a better sense of things though a sense of things far removed from anything you may have preconceived.

What you call reality is your current sense of reality. If there is anything wrong about it, you do not try to juggle the sense or interpretation directly. You alter it indirectly by seeking and finding the truth of being. Otherwise, it would be as futile as trying to change the echo without reference to the sound echoed. To become absorbed in the appearances is to be lost in deceptive superficialities. You rectify the misinterpretation by finding what the appearance is a misinterpretation of. Rather than stopping with the picture confronting you, you go on through to the basic reality. (S & H 264:7-10.)

It is not uncommon to hear Christian Science demonstrations referred to as "improved beliefs," and divine healing explained as the getting of a better belief through adherence to some underlying pattern of spiritual perfection. But if we thus left results in the realm of belief, we could lay no claim to any permanent healings. That's for certain. Human thinking is intrinsically unstable, vacillating, mutable. "It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into the understanding of what constitutes health," our Leader warns. (S & H 297:7-9.) So we do not try to perfect the fable, but to perceive the fact.

What is called an improved belief is simply a more nearly correct interpretation of the flawless actuality. You would not undertake to make over reality - which is what your interpretation is to you at the moment - for you could hardly hope to deceive yourself knowingly! Your interpretation is not something voluntarily undertaken, but the inadvertent outcome of your perception of the thing interpreted. Your viewpoint, unconsciously assumed, is what determines the form of being for you currently. (S & H 210:1-4.) You will have a more harmonious and satisfactory interpretation never by seeking a preferred interpretation, an improved belief, but by seeking the basic truth.

In Oscar Wilde's stately allegory, the Accused, admitting his transgressions, stands naked on the Day of Reckoning, and the Voice of Judgment consigns him to the nether world in these words: "Surely I will send thee unto Hell. Even unto Hell will I send thee." But the Accused cries out, "Thou canst not!" Thundering wrathfully, the Voice demands, "Wherefore can I not send thee unto Hell, and for what reason?" "Because," answers the Accused, "never and in no place, have I been able to imagine it." How true! That which cannot be conceived by the mind does not exist for it.

Mathematics comes to you as numbers, and music as notes - in the language of mathematical and musical thought. The universal language of mankind is that of people-places-things, without which there is no expression. Wipe out these familiar forms, and you would have only a vacuum left. Jesus brought back Lazarus, or re-established his presence, in the only form or manner in which he was recognizable - but there was nothing material about that. He recalled Lazarus' presence in the only language in which that presence could be apprehensible. He did not say that Lazarus had never lived in matter and we must not expect to see him as we did before. On the contrary, he cried, "Lazarus, come forth!" - clearly referring to the only Lazarus he or the others had ever known in the only form in which Lazarus was recognizable. If we are aware of Lazarus' presence, he implied, it must be in the only manner conceivable to us here and now.

Whether there are ten fingers, two eyes and one heart in Mind, is quite beside the point. The fact is that ten fingers, two eyes and one heart mean completeness to you, and completeness does not prevail for you except it be so seen. Mrs. Eddy points out that the divine idea appears in different forms at different times according to humanity's need. (Mis 370:12-13.) How else could it be? Mankind is bound to interpret its need as being filled according to its present sense of need. Flawlessness, wholeness, concord could not possibly appear except in keeping with human standards. Whatever you see, feel, smell, taste or hear comes to you as a mode of consciousness, a manner of thinking, a form of thought, and can have no other reality for you than the sense you entertain of it. (Un 8:5-8.)

Divine Love meets every human need humanly, not because it leaves its divine sphere, but because the form of its manifestation is decided entirely by the form of our acceptance. It may look like material provision, but you are not deceived by the spontaneous interpretation. The flatness of the earth, apparent as it is, does not disconcert you. Because you see the horizon in the distance, that suggestion of an edge would result in the sense of the earth as flat. If the matter were left there - as it was in the olden days - you would be confined to a small area of the earth's surface. Knowing that the appearance is deceptive frees you from confinement. The flatness is not a thing to be eliminated, but a misapprehension to be automatically corrected through your understanding of the earth's roundness. Enlightenment unmasks the trick of perspective and neutralizes it.

So it is that our primary concern is not with the appearance, but with the fundamental truth of perfection as the natural and only condition of being, here or anywhere. The least perception of this results in an altered sense of being and therefore an improved bodily estate. To think of heaven as a future state or a remote location is to postpone it. To find heaven at hand, you must perceive the spiritual reality as the only reality, so that it becomes your present experience.

In one of her later letters, Mrs. Eddy indicated that the vitality and growth of the Movement must rest upon our having "better healers." The word of God, she concluded, is this: "Demonstration is the whole of Christian Science, nothing else proves it, nothing else will save it and continue it with us." (Journal, Vol 54, p. 156.)

  
Demonstration

Even as we talk, there stalks the spectre of disease beyond the open door. It announces itself as Measles. What am I going to do with that? A child is the victim of an ugly rash and fever and nausea, among other things. Now is the child someone or something out there in space apart from consciousness? How could I be aware of him if that were so? Whatever appears to me as the child must be consciously thought, and so is within. God's child is not sick, so it is not a sick child but the belief that the child is sick which requires handling. Whose belief? The child's? His mother's? Mine? What difference whose belief it appears to be? If it comes to me as a form of consciousness - as now - here is where it is to be taken care of. That impersonalizes it without abolishing the child, doesn't it?

You say there has been an epidemic in the neighborhood, and that perhaps he shouldn't have been sent to school with the other children. There is only one Mind, so there is no transmission of thought form one mind to another. But he has been infected, you protest. There is no matter to infect matter, and the one substance, Spirit, is incorruptible, incontaminable, immune. But the condition has been allowed to develop seriously before the family called for help. The claim of a pathological history is appearing now, implying a continuity into the future, with dire possibilities threatened. The nowness of that belief puts it within the reach of my handling.

Is the child in bondage to his mother's fear? The pernicious anxiety that would be the conviction material is, if I am aware of it, operating right now as my fear, even though called the mother's fear. It is therefore my duty to see that the only offspring is of Principle, therefore protected, guided and sustained by the divine parenthood of Father-Mother God, who knows no doubt or uncertainty but rests in the serene confidence of His onlyness. Throughout the entire range of this divine consciousness, there is no inhibiting anxiety to impair any of the bodily functions - including the unrestricted right action of Mind called "elimination."

Fever? The only state of being is natural, normal, stable, harmless, useful. If there is any truth to fever, it would have to be beneficial, and would be achieving its good purpose right where it might be construed as a menace. Does materia medica say that there might be impairment of the eyes or the ears as after-effects of this ailment? What difference does it make that false-belief ventures such rules, whether in the name of materia medica or of community prejudice, so long as I can establish the law of perfection as the very nature of all isness? The child, it is stated, is predisposed to illnesses because of congenital weakness. A belief of heredity is not the heredity of a belief. "You can't go back and handle their grandfathers!" The only heritage is the divinity of Principle imparted to its expression of itself.

Am I baffled by any of the symptoms or changes? Mind, my Mind, the only Mind there could be to child or anything else, includes consciously every last fact about the situation, and this omniscience must appear as my knowing all I have to know to treat the case intelligently, efficiently, effectually. (Of course, the useful data may come to me as something I've read or heard or seen or reasoned out on my own.) There is no disruptive, corruptive, destructive influence from the belief that existence is material, organic, human, for there is no mortal mind entity to institute, exhibit or experience any such belief, to deceive or misperceive, in any guise, known or unknown, and this declaration disposes of that claim of false isness.

Actually, there is no material man or men to suffer any such condition as measles, and no minds to accept it. This that is infinite, indivisible Mind knowing, must exclude, annul, extinguish the possibility and suggestion of any such affliction, in belief or at all. The claim is not, after all, measles; the claim is that Mind, this Mind, is mortal, finite, perverse, and that it is therefore distorting, perverting, inverting every aspect of being. But my analysis herewith leads inexorably to the recognition, acceptance, conviction and finally, the living realization - the irreducible essence that is being - which establishes God alone as intelligent reality and of His law of perfection as the only and absolute law to this or any case, here this very instant.

This that I call my treatment, being the luminous affirmation of unchallengeable Truth, is the very word of God. This thinking the divine fact entrenches it as the only fact, the true state and stage of being, thereby enforcing perfection in this present sense of things, this universe. In substance, this treatment is not a personally devised operation, intended to displace a mere instance of finite mentation; it is the divine event that is Mind's communion, appearing in the only form possible at this point. This that is God appearing embodies this very moment all the power there is, and is its own irrefutable, impregnable, compelling and satisfying evidence.

This treatment is what it purports to be. It has its being in Mind, the Mind that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. It is therefore the eternal Christ, that nothing can gainsay or resist. It operates because its power is that of omnipotence. Anything in this treatment, any intention associated with it, any evidence of its divine achievement cannot be reversed or in any way changed or arrested. Any tendency to impair, resist or pervert the action herewith initiated is abortive, unreal, untrue, impotent, and the recognition that evil suggestion cannot possibly do anything and has no power or law with which to do anything, forestalls and cancels any possibility of defeat.

Relapse is forever impossible, for there is no lapse from divinity in the first place. There is no mesmeric mind to make such a claim and no credulous dupe to accept it. I am not tricked into saying this sickness is bound to cease, for that would be an admission that there is really a sickness to cease. There need be no sense of prolonged convalescence, for there is nothing to intervene between Mind and its direct perception of its present perfection, chronologically, spatially or psychologically. This case cannot be aggravated by "chemicalization," since there can be no conflict between a lingering sense of evil before the unfolding apprehension of good in this positive knowledge that good is All.

The suggestion that my understanding is not equal to the requirements of the case is nothing more than an empty suggestion and is without power or presence because without credence. Truth, in any degree, is always superior to error, whatever its claim to magnitude. My supreme confidence lies in knowing that, and in knowing that I know it! In turning to God even as a human being, I am availing myself of omnipotence. This treatment is with final authority, power and prestige. It is God uttering Himself, or setting forth His own nature and, conversely, disposing of anything unlike the divine nature.

I have only to consider what God would say to disease and then say it. If my thinking is true, it operates with the power of Truth. If it is good, it is directly of God and maintains the dominion of omnipresent good. Instantaneous healing is a present possibility, because there is no interval between cause and effect. Whether regarded as a human or a divine activity, the affirmation of Truth is plainly increasing my realization of Truth, until I am thinking Truth instead of thinking about Truth. In affirming that there is nothing to be healed, I am not speaking from the human standpoint, but my declaration emanates from the clear, invigorating and vitalizing perception that all is truly perfect, now and forever. Such spiritual perception leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed. The report that the patient is "no better" is dismissed (silently) with the knowledge that he cannot be better than perfect as he is.

Not the passive assertion, but the active realization of what God is gives me the basis for my redemptive knowing. From this foundation of divine consciousness, the thing that presents itself afflictively is seen to have none of the aspects of entity, none of the character or substance of true being, and so is swallowed up in Love's allness. As Isaiah describes it: "He who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes. For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind. (Isaiah 65:16-17.)

The efficiency of treatment is in proportion to its absoluteness. But that does not permit of a wholesale disregard of unconquered suggestions. It is conceivable that metaphysical argument may be eventually dispensed with, but meanwhile a single affirmation of Truth in the face of an error constitutes argument, however rudimentary. (It should be needless to add that metaphysical argument is not a struggle. It is scientific clarification through calm and unlabored analysis. Contentious thought is not healing thought.) The method of affirmation and denial, provided by Mrs. Eddy, is still a very popular expedient among practitioners, for it does give direction to their work and a handle to grasp. However, Mrs. Eddy indicates that such round-about approaches must be eventually outgrown.

Science work would be quite without value if its results were not manifest humanly in a practical and tangibly beneficial way. As a human being, you must recognize this and insist upon it. You do not have to picture the results finitely, but you have a perfect right to demand and expect healing. The tree shall be known by its fruits. "The act of healing the sick through divine Mind alone, of casting out error with Truth, shows your position as a Christian Scientist." (S & H 182:1-4.) The results are the thing. Anything that is needful or necessary can be secured through metaphysical work of the right kind. But, of course, this is not so where there is no appreciation of it.

By the same token, you will never witness a "miracle." For you, "the impossible" cannot happen. What is inconceivable cannot appear. Thus Christian Science demonstration always looks to be a natural occurrence. The perfection of being can only come to us as sick people getting well, as circumstances ironing out, as lost objects being found, as knowledge through recollection, reason or by way of the normal channels of information -never as a full-blown event without traceable antecedents. Mrs. Eddy has written that all demonstration is gradual. (Knapp Biography, by Bliss Knapp (1925).) She does not say slow, but gradual, and you will find there is a principle involved in that. We have many instantaneous healings in Science, but they never appear as something spectacular or startling or incredible. In retrospect, you may recognize an occurrence as marvelous, but at the time it cannot be surprising, for you can only realize what is natural and normal for you.

While treatment must be impelled by right motivation - fired, in other words, by divine Love - we must admit that a mere desire to heal is not sufficient. Indeed, the desire to heal often thwarts healing. And the thing that obstructs the healing is the belief of a personal healer. To be practical and operative, the good animus must be implemented by scientific understanding. Our book says Love is expressed as affection, but that only through scientific understanding can you apprehend Love as Principle and demonstrate its rules. (S & H 147:29-31.) While Mind's realization cannot be embodied in words, there should be nothing passive or uncertain in your approach to divine realization. It is right here that you have recourse to such temporary mental measures and expedients as may prove of concrete and definite help at your present stage of understanding.

But we cannot dwell in these passing aids, nor return to them habitually, however valuable they proved where and when utilized. "Truth cannot be stereotyped; it unfoldeth forever." (No 45:27-28.) You see, Truth in living expression cannot be congealed into a formulated statement that invalidates all other statements. It cannot be imprisoned in static words. Truth is incisive and specific in any given instance, but it doesn't stop anywhere. The efficiency of any treatment is not to be found in what the practitioner says, but in the embodied power of divine realization attained. (My 160:5-8.) And certainly divine realization cannot be confined to words, or even adequately described by the finite terms of human language. Our statements, when correct, represent and indicate Truth, but Truth does not reside within them.

Observe that "Science and Health" constantly discusses treatment, but never describes a treatment. While examples of treatment are helpful in explaining the nature of treatment, no exemplary treatment can serve as a model, even temporarily. Any example must be regarded strictly as a stepping-stone and abandoned just as quickly as it has fulfilled its purpose as such. To dwell in a set statement is to cease thinking. Beware of the persistent tendency to pause at any particular level on a circumscribed concept.

The words found useful in any given situation are determined by the degree of the practitioner's dynamic understanding at the moment, and any attempt to settle therein would prove stultifying. You may properly find inspiration and valued indications in what you believe Edward Kimball or some other Scientist said or did in a certain case, but your practice must be governed by living realization, never by precedent or routine. What you are led to say or think should spring spontaneously from divine communion. Treatment becomes arbitrary routine - hence sterile - when based upon the sanctified pronouncements of people, instead of on ever-fresh thinking.

There is nothing mechanical about right treatment. It has no certified procedures or approved techniques. If it is of Mind, it is spontaneous, original, individual. "Losing the comprehensive in the technical, the Principle in its accessories, cause in effect, and faith in sight, we lose the Science of Christianity - a predicament quite like that of the man who could not see London for its houses." (My 149:22-26.) It would be the ruination of Christian Science to set up a standardized procedure. The practice cannot be regulated by generalizations, classifications or restrictions. Not rule by decree, but guidance by Principle, is the necessity. (No 8:19-13.)

The metaphysician must approach each problem that comes to him as a fresh proposition. There can be no revival of a problem once solved. But granting the inconceivable possibility of an exactly duplicated problem arising in the individual's experience, his own outlook altering constantly must put a different light on the problem. Genuine Christian Science treatment is not reducible to stereotyped mentation. The law of treatment is the law of infinity. Such treatment is not a self-conscious or personally calculated mental endeavor designed to fix up a finite belief. Psychological manipulation is crass mesmerism. We never work to specifically control a human situation or condition, or even to establish a new point of view, however desirable that may seem. Our effort is, instead, to apprehend the truth of being in any given instance. Such work is impersonal and cannot be a human jockeying for mental advantage, either in behalf of ourselves or of other.

Infinite progression is the nature of Mind's unfoldment and the only thing that could possibly be genuine about any treatment would have to be the unfoldment of Mind. How could you ever accomplish anything scientifically while entertaining the assumption that there is something besides the infinite? The "laws of God" are not human requirements or restrictions, and the form of one's striving for spiritualization is not of any consequence in the end, surely. (S & H 329:22-23.) Ideals of treatment are simply guideposts to be passed on the way onward and upward and outward. Always be ready to relinquish the ideal for the idea, the symbol for the reality, the stepping-stone for the goal. Understanding is not the acquisition of comforting platitudes not of trick declarations; it is ever-growing apprehension, manifest in methods and means constantly less human or finite in both type and purpose.

The spiritual rationality of approaching Science is characterized by literal freedom of thought. (S & H 223:21-24.) This implies and requires a constant setting aside of cut-and-dried habits and devices of human mentation. Lifeless routine and unthinking orthodoxy must be abandoned in their course, or we lose the substance while glorifying the empty form. Orthodoxy is thinking by approved patterns, and it is a phase of spiritual wickedness in high places which would rob you of your crown at the very gates of heaven. (S & H 354:14-17.)

If right along you are guided in your adoption of means and methods by the results, you will soon discover that this means a continuous revision of your thought processes. (S & H 296:4 only.) Of course it is legitimate to utilize any mental device or expedient which you find effective in clarifying thought for Soul's unhampered expression. You must reach in the only way you know how that point where truly divine realization is a natural and self-conscious experience. The law of God is not a restrictive rule to be followed blindly, but it is for you and me the nature of Being, enforced through practical, active knowing.

It is not what you do or say, but what you are actually being, that counts. Your treatment is successful in the ratio that the pure realization of Truth is achieved through purposeful, intelligent, confident thinking. Such thinking is not didactic, scholastic or formal, but it is spontaneous, original, alive, vital. That is why any sample treatment must be of only the most temporary value in your study and can never be used as a pattern. The words themselves have no inherent healing quality - although particular ones may prove for the time being indispensable to your realization of the healing Truth.

The tendency toward classification and standardization is becoming ever more aggressive universally, and it will unquestionably throttle the Christ spirit if it is not detected, understood and disposed of scientifically. What we designate as metaphysical work or treatment must never be allowed to degenerate into a psychological method of tricking thought into a desirable mental state. Nor must it be permitted to become a substitution of words for action. (S & H 202:3-5.) Phrases and passages which at first are found stimulating become soporific through repetition.

Our conclusion from these observations is that any means or method may be useful, or even necessary, temporarily, in the clarification of thought, but that such means or method must not become an end in itself. Practically speaking, we can benefit by the experience of others. But the value of any particular mental device cannot be found through comparison with what you believe you or anyone else ever did. It must be determined by its utility to you at the moment. Who could possibly decide this but yourself - from your own advancing point of view? ('01, 20:8-9.)

Before leaving this very important phase of our study, let us reiterate again that you cannot remind yourself too often of the fundamental facts of being and also of the basic premises of your practice. One thing you must not hesitate to see: whatever is divinely true is humanly demonstrable, but it is not humanly true until humanly demonstrated. Christian Science most positively demands demonstration of the Scientist.(S & H 323:14-16, 329:12-13, My 158:17-19.) And by "demonstration," we mean just that! It is necessary to say this because there is a persistent caviling among some students over the meaning of the word and the propriety of its use. Mrs. Eddy leaves no doubt that the word demonstration refers to the healing of disease and the conquering of afflictive situations in such a way that mankind can see, appreciate and benefit by it. People in and out of the Church use the word universally to describe the tangible evidence which we all see of Christian Science salvation.

Demonstration is the physical healing of Christian Science. (S & H xi.9-21.) It is the loaves and the fishes, the resurrection from the tomb, the tax money from the fish's mouth. It is the strong hand of Jesus catching up the drowning man from the greedy waves. It is the stilling of the raging storm and the pacifying of the maniac, the cleansing of a contrite Magdalene from leprous sin, the finding of hospitable shelter, through the grace of God. It is not something that takes place in a vacuum, while mankind falters without and cries for the bread that means nutriment and satisfaction to the hungry. (S & H 494:10-11, Mis 370:12-13.)

O Tower of Babel! Dilettantism would keep us embroiled with each other over purely theoretical questions and personal habits of expression, so as to miss the Son of God when he cometh in power and great glory. We can surely see and help others to see, though, that we are concerned with something more profound than quibbling over such matters as the meaning of meaning. Free use of the dictionary is good, but obsession with the dictionary is a bad sign. Be sensible! Mechanical accuracy does not mean a monopoly on Truth. Rhetorical meticulousness is not a measure of your Science. Should we disagree on the propriety of certain words and expressions, we can readily find common ground in general usage. The Way may be straight and narrow, but we can be straight without being narrow! (S & H 223:21-22, Mis 302:15-18, 303:6-16.)

Your understanding is not a hoarded jewel to be hidden upon a shelf and never brought out into the light of day. Spirituality must be wrought out in life practice and manifest in the essentials of everyday experience. Else Christianity would be a snare and Science a delusion. An inner sense of well-being is not center and circumference. The Word must be made flesh. Our greatest claim to distinction is that we can prove the truth of our doctrine within the framework of human experience. "Unless the harmony and immortality of man are becoming more apparent, we are not gaining the true idea of God." (S & H 324:7-9.)

  
The Christ

Recognizing the essential perfection of being, we are yet confronted with the overwhelming evidence of grossest imperfection. What can deliver us from this dilemma? Who or what is the Deliverer promised aforetime? Where is this Redeemer to be found? How is the Savior to be invoked? This Christ must be at hand, even within. Truth in its healing aspect is the Christ. The Christ is the corrective appearing of Truth in human experience. (S & H 230:6-8.) Otherwise, how could it prove to be the Redemptive Presence of Bible prophecy? Practical, operative Christian Science is the Truth applied through understanding. The divine understanding, then, is the Christ consciousness, and it must be revered and exalted, whether considered as your own or another's.

"Christ Jesus" is the human appearing of the divine idea, the Immaculate Conception, and to belittle it or to mistrust it would be to crucify again the living Christ. This spiritual comprehension is never apologetic, for it is the I-and-my-Father-are-One. (S & H 314:5-7.) This is the foreseen Comforter, of ineffable gentleness but irresistible strength. Such understanding is not the doer, but the conscious doing. In this precept is found the only genuine humility. To grant that you are the doing, not the do-er, is to dispose of all false sense of I or Ego in the confident realization of Mind as All. (S & H 305:13-19.)

Our Standard defines "Christ" as "The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." (S & H 583:10-11.) This is no idle figure of speech, but must be taken literally. It means just what it says. And just how does the Christ heal? The mere human assertion that "good governs" is powerless to alter the hard circumstances of the workaday world. To say that right must win is begging the question. Science makes it possible for right to prevail, but this requires Christian Scientists to demonstrate it. (Mis 365:10-12.) Right is not something that triumphs simply because it is right. It gains the ascendency only as it is established as the Truth in present living. And it obviously doesn't do that except as we demonstrate it. (My 158:17-19.) Man's perfection remains no more than a theory until we manifest it.

Without such demonstrators, the Christian Science movement must disappear from off the face of the globe. (My 197:15-19; Sentinel, Vol 20, p.10.) The "movement" is not a self-propelling entity; it is the demonstrable understanding of Christian Scientists in action. Our "work," of course, is to get ourselves out of the way metaphysically, so to speak, through the recognition that God is the only Mind, the only Ego, the only Doer. And until we have gotten ourselves out of the way through this divine realization, we yet have work to do. But that is a foregone conclusion. It is generally acknowledged that Jesus was the Mediator in that he got himself out of the way in the realization and demonstration of God as All.

Jesus demanded a change of consciousness, and that means nothing less than a change of evidence, since the only evidence we ever have of anything is our mental cognition of it. (Un 11:10-11.) The divine facts must be established as the only facts before they can be spoken of as the facts of present experience. To demonstrate, of course, is to prove that which already is. While good already is and is all that is, absolutely or spiritually speaking, it remains for us to apprehend it so clearly that it is obscured by nothing at all. The coming of this divine sense is the sacred Christ consciousness, that pure realization which Christian Science enables us to seek, find, cherish and protect. And until this divine sense becomes the only sense, there is yet something left for us to do along the lines of study and application.

To simply say that disease is only a belief is to admit disease, because that is exactly what disease is, we are reminded. (Un 54:3-5.) The belief itself must be extinguished, the erroneous sense corrected or displaced, the negation rectified. The statement that good governs, made from the standpoint of the human being, is palpably false and misleading. Good does not govern because it is good; good governs because, if, when and where it is practically demonstrated to be the controlling power. While perfection may be the fundamental nature of being, the present and eternal fact of existence, it is not the fact in human experience and circumstances, except as it is humanly understood and made manifest in terms of present awareness. Hence the necessity for a process of analysis and reversal, through which the law is enforced. (S & H 494:19-20.)

True, what you are seeing as wrong is really right, but that does not imply that it is right in the way in which you are seeing it. And to juggle words - making a fine distinction between "seeing" and "perceiving" - is not going to extricate you. Something considerably more is needed. While a knowledge of evil is unnecessary to the understanding of good, to understand good if we are still cognizant of evil, it is first necessary to understand evil. (Mis 299:2-5.) Reducing everything to the mental, is the preliminary step only; finding it to be divinely mental, or spiritual, is the ultimate requirement. Only by understanding how error is Truth seen wrongly, can you come to see that it is Truth appearing and that there is no error per se.

If you really knew the truth and only the truth, the lie would be but another way of expressing the truth. (Un 53:2-3.) To one who knows that twice two is four, the assertion that it is five brings to thought the fact of its being four as clearly and emphatically as if the correct statement had been made; but as long as it comes up five for us, the mistake must be considered before the final solution or realization of mathematical truth is possible. We must not miss the point that such spiritual facts as the immortality of man and the perfection of the universe are not humanly true except insofar as they are humanly apprehended and experienced. The mere declaration of an absolute truth does not make it so in present circumstances; it must be practically understood and sufficiently to exclude any contradictory belief or sense, called evidence. (Rud 11:13-24.)

Treatment is a human process in which you reason things out so as to dispose of the many misapprehensions which would obscure the divine realities. (S & H 454:31-2.) The actual realization, or direct perception, is the demonstration and this is the object of your treatment or work. How you arrive at this is a matter of Science, not of hopeful speculation. We do not assume things in Christian Science. The unsupported statement of a fact does not constitute the realization of that fact, surely. Recitation is not realization. We are not engaged in exchanging words for solid realities, nor are we occupied with parroted formulas. True Christian Science does not permit of psittacism - the canting of words and phrases until they cease to have any significance or potentialities. (Man 43:5-8.) "When ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking," our Master warns. (Matthew 6:7.)

The admission that a particular conclusion is the only logical one possible in a specific instance does not constitute healing realization. Realization, as the word is being used here, describes something far, far beyond intellectual recognition. It is even beyond deepest conviction. You may be convinced of God's presence and still entertain a sense of evil in your universe. Whatever your convictions, if you are aware of anything as being wrong, the Christ consciousness has not wholly displaced the claim of mortal mentation. Without vitiating your conviction, a lingering sense of error must be acknowledged an indication of incomplete realization. (Mis 259:7-10 to semicolon.)

That is not to say that true conviction must not precede realization, for it seems to be an indispensable footstep leading thereto. Nevertheless, the footsteps are not the goal and must not be allowed to usurp the attention. They will fall into the best order if the goal itself is kept in view rather than the intervening processes. Science cannot disentangle the interlaced ambiguities of being for him who persists in losing his gaze in them instead of turning to Truth alone. (No 30:18-20.)

The Christ is the deific awareness that is transforming. "Jesus" is the point of human enlightenment at which all error is disappearing in celestial Truth. This scientific understanding which analyzes the afflictive appearance as a wrong sense of a right something must reverse that wrong sense, thus maintaining the very presence of God as the only presence. The way may be that of affirmation and denial, but it is never a contest. The calm rejection of error, on the basis of dawning perception, is the Christ light in which illusion is seen as illusion and effortlessly dispelled, so annulling the curse on man. The unlabored translation of man back into his native spirituality leaves nothing that has to be either saved or destroyed. All this quite transcends the intellectual attitude -which is that of the spectator -so that you are the happy participant. (S & H 536:1-9.)

Leaving the intermediate steps and stages behind in the realization of Mind's perfect allness, there is no place for a sense of imperfection, so that this grand awakening to reality is the demonstration, or proof, excluding (rectifying) whatever worketh or maketh a lie. Again, let us emphasize the vital need for thinking Truth instead of thinking about Truth. Most of what we read or hear of Christian Science outside of our Leader's works is about Science instead of being Science, and it is time we grew up. God can heal the sick through man only as man is the knowing of God. This is not a person knowing the Truth, but the knowing, for the knowing includes whatever is true about the person. (S & H 495:1-2.)

You have to know something in order to demonstrate anything. Your understanding of God is what operates in treatment. But not as if you were operating it. When you get yourself out of the way, then it operates. It is in this that your work lies, and until you do get that sense of private selfhood out of the way, your work is not done. Insofar as you yourself seem to figure in treatment, you are not the possessor of understanding, but you are possessed of understanding. All that could be true about your treatment would have to proceed from Principle and act as Principle, and to the extent that it is just this, it is divine Mind uttering itself through Science, declaring its own law and enforcing its own power. Thus you are in no sense a channel for good, but the presence (and therefore the evidence) of good, God.

Understanding that omniscient Mind is healing the case, not withstanding that a Christian Scientist seems to be included in the situation, precludes any fear or lack of confidence, for it eliminates the personal element at once. No patient comes to you because you are a human being; as little as he may know about it, he comes to you because you are a Christian Scientist -which means to him that you can invoke the power of God. And you know that you can invoke the power of God. When you know this much, you know that God heals through Christian Science in spite of fear or anything else. If this were not so, it is unlikely that we would have healings in Science, for there is always fear on board when there is pain or when there are threatening symptoms.

To say aloud that there is no sick man is not enough. (Mis 108:11-14, S & H 447:27-29, No 25:1-3.) In fact, it is far more likely to be detrimental than helpful, for ordinarily a patient would be disturbed and irritated by such a heartless assertion. The requirement is that you know there is no sickness -and that is assuredly a silent procedure. The rebuke of evil is never the rebuke of the patient. Being the mental rejection of error, it is something that can take place nowhere but in the quietude of consciousness, where one is thinking. No human practitioner has the right or authority to reprimand people who come to him for help. He is a metaphysician, not a disciplinarian. Righteous indignation springs from bigotry, for true righteousness cannot be indignant. Luke says that Jesus rebuked the fever, not the victim of the fever. (Luke:4:39.)

If you are actually knowing that there is nothing to be healed, this knowing operates as a law of healing to whatever appears to be unhealed. This explains why you build up a practice not by looking to sick people, but by conscientious declaration within that there are no sick people. Paradoxically, this results in sick people coming to you and being healed, since the evidence of health can only appear as people being healed so long as there appear to be sick people in the world.

If Christian Science brings redemption of consciousness, then it provides for getting back to the true consciousness, or attaining the right Mind. In the identification with, or realization of, infinite Mind, the claim of mortal mind, or that Mind is mortal, is nullified. To recognize that man (you) must be God manifest, is to actualize divinity and so to find Mind operating as the Mind of its own idea, in the spiritualization of consciousness. Just to say that God is Mind, brings out no relationship between man and God; but to say that there is one Mind and that this Mind is infinite, breaks the sense of a limited mind; and to say that this Mind is your Mind, is bringing this Mind down to your very own experience as idea, and so breaking the mesmerism of materiality.

You must see that the only thing that can say "I" properly is the divine Ego, God, Principle. When you understand that you are the conscious speaking, not the speaker, you can never let material sense say "I" in any event or under any circumstances. (S & H 485:4-5.) When you are saying "I Am" from the right standpoint, it is Mind speaking, declaring infinity, expressing perfection. In turning to prolific Principle as your own and only intelligence, you find yourself to be the active acknowledgment of all that Mind is, thus dispelling any suggestion of limitation, imperfection, affliction. Being conscious of infinite knowing, this Mind precludes the possibility of anything else, with you the inevitably living recognition of all that God includes and means. (No 27:4-5.)

Admit that man is realization, and you will never be frustrated by the belief that man has yet to achieve realization. Revert to this declaration whenever mortal-mind suggestion would slyly insinuate that you cannot rise spiritually to the occasion. It is never the inability to realize Truth with which you are bound; it is the belief of the inability to realize which would thwart you - just as the occasional inability to run in your night dream is not paralysis but simply the belief of immobility in which you are absorbed. Scotch this claim of spiritual apathy whenever it arises, with the confident assertion that you are at this very moment the divine realization itself.

You would no more say, "I am grateful for what little understanding I have," than you would say, "I am grateful for what little health I have." Scientifically speaking, you have both health and understanding (they are one, really) and it is only on this basis that you can experience them. The practitioner who says to himself, "I'll do the best I can," doesn't know what it is that heals. If you are thinking of yourself as a private healer, you are going to have doubts about the results of your work. Humility is not degradation or depreciation, but receptivity. Reverence understanding - whether it seems to belong to you or another. The healing Christ is the coming of Truth to human experience through spiritualization of consciousness, but the Christ cannot come where there is no acceptance, respect, appreciation and reverence for the Christ. You will not distrust understanding when you recognize it as creative Mind unfolding. Even humanly considered, it must be self-evident that the least possible understanding of Truth must be greater than all the error on earth at any given point. (S & H 378:7 only, 449:3-5, 319:17-20.)

Are "spiritual man" and "the Christ" synonymous? Our textbook says that Christ presents the indestructible man. (S & H 316:20-21.) You would not use two different expressions if you meant the same thing. The Christ Truth is more to be thought of as the spiritualization of thought, hence the perfecting of the universe. What we call healing is Science revealing. The Christ is transforming, for the truth about a thing perceived displaces any false concept. This does not imply that a specific idea supplants a finite error as a substitution, but that the specific verity is the only verity. The revelation of the specific aspect of Truth involved demonstrates the total unreality of any finite error about it. You nullify what appears to be going on by accepting that which is really going on. (S & H 495:20-24.) Such redemptive understanding is never indifferent, inadequate or imperfect.

Your comprehension of the truth of being must dispose of any false sense of being, for all that consciousness includes is thereby corrected. Genuine understanding is infinite Principle manifesting itself infinitely. The spiritual cause must be manifest as the spiritual effect, and this one infinity is constantly displacing the false human sense of things with the truth. You see, only by redeeming yourself, to all intents and purposes, can you help someone else. By maintaining the rightness of what you see, you demonstrate rightness on behalf of what you see. (My 210:9-11.)

You cannot possibly think Truth without having it do something. In fact, a mere declaration of Truth in thought must bring about a measure of realization - if there is any appreciation of its meaning at all. You cannot ever say what God is, without having something happen! Not an audible statement. Hardly! Christian Science is of thought and operates wholly as thought. What one says audibly is decided by circumstances as they unfold. But what one thinks is the thing. The saying will be what it ought to be if the thinking is what it ought to be. Because all is mental, redemptive realization will alter what appears to be external circumstances and requirements, or else it will provide a right statement to be voiced in the situation as it seems to be.

In the absolute sense (and in that sense only), there is but one practitioner. God, being the source of all real action, man's very volition, is the one Practitioner, practicing perfectly. (Mis 255:5-6.) The slightest turning to this Mind is bound to be beneficial, for it means the disappearance of just so much of the dependency upon the human, finite sense of mind. As soon as you turn to the sunlight, you enjoy its radiance, whether you understand or have faith in it or not. (Mis 33:12-20.) The very effort to turn to Principle tends to put thought in line with Principle, and to the extent that this turning is radical, it manifests the nature of Principle. But the practitioner is not a person who treats! It is realization which does the work.

As the conscious unfoldment of Mind, you can know nothing but Mind unfolding. In a certain way, man and treatment are one and the same thing, and this one is Mind's unopposed, unassailable knowing of its own innate perfection. It is instant because infinite. Then it would be legitimate to say in your treatment: This is Mind's infallible and resistless realization or unfoldment, being therefore wholly inviolate and entirely effectual. Being a practical metaphysician you learn to conclude your treatment in reaching realization. When an accountant completes his sum, he knows that he is through; and when you find a practitioner who knows that his treatment is complete, you also find a healed patient. This is arriving through orderly reason, recognition, acknowledgment and conviction at transcendent Being. (S & H 336:23-24.)

Just pronounce the word "God" and dwell in that for a bit. Then consider what you would say from the glorious, high throne of Deity - not as one puny mortal to another, but as divine knowing - what would you say from the seat of Spirit to sin, suffering or death? Surely, God would say, I never knew you! Depart from me! Nowhere in the illimitable range of my conscious reality could there ever arise any imperfection or any sense of imperfection. I know only my own infinite goodness, infinitely manifest and infinitely provided for. This claim that there could be something unlike or contrary to my flawlessness, concord and wholeness, is utterly without foundation or substance, irrational and impossible here in this all-inclusive and all-constituting omniscience. Whatever could be known would have to be my own pure Being, governed from the basis of my own nature, love. Love is the law and this knowing is the enforcement of the law, irreversible and inviolable, to all that is. (No 30:11 only)

The scientific attitude when someone comes for help must always be that of God. If you were to ask the divine Mind at the time, What do you see? that infinite One would say: "I perceive my perfect selfhood as my own creation." If you were to ask Him to see anybody that was sick, that had to be healed, He would unquestionably answer: "Why, in my infinitude, anything that is unlike divinity is unknown and does not exist." The Christ heals because man is well. Consequently, the desire to heal, though laudable, is no part of the healing process. (S & H 147:29-31.) The wish to help may initiate the metaphysical work in this world of belief that something can be lacking or lost, whereas Christian Science demonstration is based entirely upon the claim that man is complete, perfect, harmonious, already and forever, where all desires are dissolved in satisfaction.

The attitude of the practitioner must be the altitude of God. The practitioner does not take an extravagant stand when he silently greets the patient with, "Hail, Son of God!" for then the treatment is launched in divinity. In handling a human situation, keep the divine by not using any expression which might imply that it is human. In proportion as you turn to your sense of right, thought approximates the divine. And in proportion as it approximates the divine, it embodies all the irrepressible power of divinity. Your recognition of good as infinite must include your present experience in its entirety, and so becomes a law to your present experience. Maintaining that conscious Principle is the infinite and only cause, Science reveals a perfect creation, in which everything is exactly as it ought to be and doing exactly what it ought to do, eternally. (S & H 548:5-8.)

Prayer and treatment are really the same thing in Christian Science, but such prayer is devoid of the old theological pleading. The beginner's prayer in Science may be one of desire, for the newcomer cannot grasp the rudiments of the doctrine without the initial urge to do so. (S & H 1:11 to semicolon.) But the advanced idea of prayer is one of revelation, realization, consummation, being the discovery of what we already have and are. Is not this the demonstration of completeness? Satisfying completeness must preclude any longing or anxious quest. (No 39:18-24.) The knowing of what God is is man, even you yourself. This is the prayer of the righteous man that availeth much. It is the redemption of false consciousness.

"Come now and let us reason together," saith Mind - and that means communion, not supplication. Here in the bosom of the Lord, "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." (Isaiah 1:18.)

Divine Communion is the touchstone, and that you find in the sacred quiet of your mental closet. (S & H 14:31-18.) Both Jesus and Mrs. Eddy found it expedient to seek physical seclusion on occasion, and there are times when every metaphysician feels the need for human privacy. But the great thing is that we turn to thought instead of things in working out the grand verities of Life.

  
Practitioner and Patient

In becoming a public practitioner of Christian Science, one assumes a professional status which involves many things heretofore undreamed of. As in all other fields, he can profit by the experiences of his colleagues - not, of course, by imitation but by considering for himself the values set forth therein. To discuss the ethics, the conventions and the techniques of the profession, one's observations may be tinged with personal opinion, but much that can be said has to do with universal principles of unvarying import. There are features of the work upon which we may profitably confer.

Whether you become a public practitioner of Christian Science should never be a matter of personal decision, but one of scientific demonstration. Can't we all see eye-to-eye on that? Many who gave this no thought or assumed there was no problem, learned bitter lessons. There was the fondly-known Andrew J. Graham, who hung out his shingle under the most propitious circumstances, but had to wait nine months before anyone came to his office asking for help! Dr. Graham was a public figure of considerable stature, but it was not until after word-of-mouth advertising took root and spread that there was any harvest. ("Autobiographical Notes," by Andrew J. Graham.) That took time. Then there was the renowned Methodist preacher, Reverend Severin E. Simonsen, who rode into the field on a flaming chariot of favorable publicity, following Normal Class at Mrs. Eddy's invitation, only to mark time in an empty office for a year, a laborer without a vineyard. ("From Methodist Pulpit into Christian Science," by S. E. Simonsen.)

Like many others, these men withstood the corrosion of waiting and became highly successful practitioners. But they might have avoided this trying and profitless detour. As we advance in our understanding of Christian Science, people begin coming to us for help and they get it. When those coming to you in this way become so numerous as to require the major portion of your time and attention, you are a public practitioner of Christian Science and can safely announce yourself so. To repeat: you get into the practice by knowing that there is no sickness to be healed, for in this world of sick people the fact of health can appear only as people being healed. It need hardly be added that you can do invaluable metaphysical work whatever your profession. Do not leave your work, whatever it is, to go into Science practice; rather, let your work leave you, naturally, effortlessly, harmoniously. Then your sense of profession or occupation is being transformed, not obliterated. (S & H 326:3-4, 182:1-4, Man 49:4-6.)

Any practitioner worthy of the name knows enough to know that he does not depend upon people being sick for his livelihood. He knows that everything about his universe stems directly from and is sustained solely by divine Principle. But he also knows that this can be demonstrated in a practical manner. So the fact of divine sustenance may appear to be financial income from his professional practice or from any other source or sources. Meanwhile, it is his duty to see that each patient understands that, although God's work is without money and without price - that he cannot evaluate it in monetary terms - there must be right appreciation for what is done in his behalf. Where there is this appreciation there will be the evidence of it. (S & H 354:18-20.)

To an obligated client who bubbled that she knew not how she could ever show her appreciation, Clarence Darrow remarked: "My dear woman, ever since the Phoenicians invented money, there has been only one answer to that question!" Pretty blunt, but he has something there. What he is saying is that anyone who is sincerely appreciative will express himself in a manner mutually comprehensible. In order to have some standard that is generally acceptable, we are directed to establish fees comparable to those of reputable physicians in each community. Practitioners who do not abide by this rule are remiss in their duty to the Movement, are lowering the dignity of the profession and belittling the whole activity. (My 237:16-18.)

Naturally, the right kind of practitioner would make reductions and allowances wherever there is a legitimate need for that. In this world of misfortunes and inequalities, there are many worthy people who are both sick and poverty-stricken. Until their true heritage is humanly demonstrated, they obviously must be cared for, and so more than half of one's work is in the category of charity. (S & H 365:11-14.) Where one does extend a helping hand, he must make sure that there is a proper understanding of his gesture, so that his efforts are not taken for granted. All things have just the value for us that we concede them, and so Mrs. Eddy writes that the patient is more likely to recover who pays whatever he is able than he who withholds. (Mis 300:29-32.) "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully." (II Corinthians 9:6.) While no patient is expected to act beyond his proven means, it is evident that there is no gratitude where words are substituted for deeds.

"The divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus," and there is no Christian spirit where there is no humanitarianism. (S & H 25:31-32.) There are, as we all have seen, the calloused bigots and their dupes who would restrain the kindly philanthrophist, with the specious argument that charity robs the recipient of his individual demonstration. Jesus settled this with finality, O so long ago, with his beautiful story of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:30-37.) James brought the lesson home in his epistle, where he wrote that the fortunate cannot turn the unfortunate away with platitudes, but must demonstrate that there is no lack by actually feeding and clothing the poor. (James 2:15-17.) Mrs. Eddy insists that divine Love is humanly apprehensible in no other way than as human affection, manifest in charitable and sympathetic works. (Mis 250:14-29.)

This brings up the question of helping those who have not asked for help. Our Guide points out the impropriety of thrusting our work upon others, saying the Golden Rule can be trusted. What she warns against is the idle, perverse or aggressively manipulative attitude. "The abuse which I call attention to is promiscuous and unannounced mental practice where there is no necessity for it," she writes, for "If the friends of a patient desire you to treat him without his knowing it, and they believe in the efficacy of Mind-healing, it is sometimes wise to do so, and the end justifies the means; for he is restored through Christian Science when other means have failed." (Mis 282:21-25, 29-2.) Right treatment is never personal intrusion, but the knowing of impersonal Truth. Treatment does not mean directing influences at people! It is healing realization achieved through purposeful endeavor. Nothing and no one can exempt us from the duty of rectifying, where we are thinking, every error cognized.

What is the responsibility of the practitioner exactly? His responsibility is always to know the Truth, so far as his advancing understanding permits, in every situation. That is all he can guarantee to do. If he does just this, he need have no regrets, whatever the ensuing evidence. Having given your all, you can be at peace; and if the healing from your work is not as satisfactory as you think it should be, you can still know that it is bound to be eventually. Where healing is not immediate, it indicates that there is more to be known and realized. Nothing else. You go on from there. But you can never excuse the practitioner by accusing the patient - or vice versa. That would be rank malpractice. Metaphysics, like charity, begins at home. If in belief you are the practitioner on a case, you have to handle the claim where you are thinking and as what you are thinking; conversely, if belief says you are the patient working with a practitioner, you are still alone with your own thinking. The situation is no different if you consider yourself an onlooker. Ultimately, you alone are always responsible for what you are accepting as consciousness. (S & H 495:1-2, Un 46:9-12, '01 20:8-9.)

The unremitting demand upon you individually is that you adhere to the truth of being, whatever the current appearance. While doing this, you have no alternative to taking whatever measures humanly seem to you at the moment necessary or desirable. If your understanding seems to you inadequate to the occasion, you are going to have to call in a practitioner. The rule is simple and invariable: if you do not readily heal yourself, you should early call "an experienced Christian Scientist" that is, turn to demonstrable understanding in the only place where you can find it manifest, even if that understanding appears to be the private understanding of someone else. (S & H 420:4-9.) If you know that it is Mind to which you are turning, notwithstanding that there appears to be a person involved, the practitioner's work will prove equal to the need or else demonstration will bring about a change of practitioners.

An insidious suggestion is embodied in the misuse of the statement, "I must work out my own salvation," for the belief that you must personally accomplish the healing is fully as dangerous as believing that you are dependent upon someone else to accomplish it personally, so that you are deprived of essential help coming to you in the only form humanly comprehensible. It is evil in the guise of good which would have you decide you don't depend upon people and then stop there. Carried to its logical conclusion, such an argument would eliminate the need and value of even Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy, whose examples and precepts predicate your own progress.

Anyone grasping the merest rudiments of Christian Science knows that he does not depend metaphysically upon persons, but he is still obliged to seek understanding wherever and however he can find it. The tendency to ascribe divine realization to yourself or to another privately is detrimental to all progress and demonstration. (S & H 506:5 only, 251:17-24.) You can humanly give credit where it is humanly due while still knowing that all good is of God. Mrs. Eddy herself had metaphysical help constantly from her students, as related in the published Memoirs of Adam H. Dickey and also in the official biographies. No one has ever been able to segregate himself from his universe, and the fear that you are likely to become too dependent upon your practitioner fastens that very claim upon you.

The question of personal interdependence is never an issue with you if your thinking is conscientiously referred back to Principle and borne out in demonstration. A patient and a healer and an onlooker, there things are all in the realm of finite belief, wholly incidental to your evolving and involuntary interpretation of divine being. Recognizing this, you will not become sidetracked by something small that is wrong about something big that is right. As idea, you are unalterably one with Mind, but as a human being you must be practical and reasonable, emerging gently from matter into Spirit as the result of spiritual growth unhampered by willfulness. (S & H 329:7-23, 485:14-17.) Turning to Principle, the ordinary restrictions of human thought necessarily give way to the divine unfoldment, and the result is an improved condition all around.

You will not be held by the terrors of the night nor yet by the pestilence that walketh at noonday if you really know that it is His grace which is sufficient unto thee. Wisely, the First Aid Handbook of the United States Office of Civilian Defense begins with this statement: "Horror and its kindred sensations are caused by helplessness; when we have the power and knowledge to deal with horror, it disappears."

Traditions and unwritten customs quickly establish themselves in any human activity, and you must not be straightjacketed by any of them, for your own sake and for the sake of the Movement. Don't waste time with the don'ters. Sometimes they will be most convincing with their "It just isn't right action!" - even though this has no more authority behind it than their own substitution of precedent for Principle. If you are not wary, you will be yielding your sovereignty to the point where you will actually hesitate to recommend or to read to your charges anything not approved by tradition or officialdom. Now, after all, you do not have to have everything pre-digested for you, do you? If you are to keep your conversation in heaven, you are going to have to rely upon demonstration rather than upon habit or decree. There can be no progress where initiative is banned. Our books explain that, under scientific dispensation, healers become a law unto themselves - though not to each other - since whatever is of Mind, being "imbued with this Science of healing, is a law unto itself, needing neither license nor prohibition." (No 8:19-13, Ret 87:17-23, Mis 260:28-30, Mis 303:6-16.) The Christ cannot be legislated.

Not infrequently, you will be told we never give advice. "Never" covers a lot of territory. To be cautious about advising is a good general rule, but advising cannot always be avoided. It is a curious commentary that those who shout loudest "No advice!" are not at all backward about telling patients and colleagues what to do and what to do without. The simple truth is that, with Principle and not persons your guide, demonstration will continuously correct your course and keep you on an even keel. In human experience, you do not have a choice between total right and total wrong, but always have to weigh the circumstances of the moment and then proceed with what appears best. (Mis 289:8-11, 288:13-15.) The basic requirement is that you gain the Christ consciousness and help others to gain it. With that ideal uppermost, you will not go far astray.

When a patient pleads for specific advice, he must be made to understand that we cannot work out a belief along the lines of belief. (S & H 62:22-26, 326:3-4.) Our demonstration must be made without reference to the beliefs about it. If it is a matter of judgment which is involved, it would seem that the best demonstration would be to have divine wisdom unfold as right decision on the part of the patient. But this is not always so.

In the case of a labor strike, it is necessary for you to know which side is right in order to handle the case intelligently. If you have been called in by the employer, you must be sure he understands that we are not in the business of manipulation, for he must be prepared to accept whatever demonstration brings forth. He is entitled to expect justice demonstrated, but he is not entitled to be the final judge about how that must appear. You do not undertake to decide and then prove which side is right - if either. (S & H 454:22-23.) You endeavor to prove that Principle, good, does govern. Then, with a truly open-minded attitude on all sides, what develops will prove to be both right and satisfactory. (S & H 1:11-14.)

When advice is urgently sought by a patient, you will just have to do the best you can with the situation, without accepting any responsibility beyond your effort to establish divine realization. As your work progresses, you will find less and less demand on you for personal guidance which transcends the personal sense all around. But there can be no arbitrary rules imposed about what you can say in the sanctity of the consulting room. If rule there be, it is that you yourself seek guidance within, alone with Principle - meanwhile helping your patient to do the same as far as he is able. If the suggestion is that your patient is unresponsive, handle that suggestion away. Get rid of the unresponsiveness, not the patient! Does evil say you are incompetent? Handle that as false suggestion, instead of resigning yourself to it. But never take refuge in the unchristian sophistry that says, "It's all in the other fellow's consciousness!"

Reports are an essential feature of the practice. How early you may expect the patient to call back, or how frequently, depends upon the situation. If the symptoms are violent and alarming, you might say, "Let me hear promptly regarding any turn of events." To an advanced student you could say, "Telephone me in a little while if you do not feel that we are getting the upper hand as we should." The usual thing is to instruct your patient to let you have a report the next day. Sometimes they do not see the purpose of reporting, and fear to "voice error." According to our books, we avoid the idle or malicious recitation of evil, since that would tend to confirm it, but we are required to take cognizance of and handle errors specifically. (No 8:6 only, S & H 448:9-11.) The patient must see that an unhesitant report indicates confidence in the practical dependability of Christian Science. That you are advertised before the world in the Journal, the telephone directory or otherwise, as a Christian Science practitioner, is not only an acknowledgment that there are sick people in the world, but - what is far more important - that you recognize they can be healed.

Every practitioner has had many instantaneous healings, but he has also had many cases not so readily met. Some continue for hours, days, weeks or even months before yielding to the work. Understanding this, you are neither discouraged nor nettled, and you learn to handle chronic cases with sufficient poise and skill to eventually meet them. It is so often said that the Master healed everything instantly, but this does not accord with the record. In his own home town, he did not many mighty works. (Matthew 13:54-58.) In the singular account of the man born blind, his first treatment enabled the man to see dimly. A second treatment was required, after which the man saw clearly. (Mark 8:22-25.) Judas unquestionably received his Master's fullest attention over a long period, but never responded to the healing Christ which Jesus represented. Think on these things, and you will find strength to go on up the rugged path. (S & H 22:13-20, 329:5-31, 254:2-8, 426:5-11.)

The double injunction of the Master, "preach the gospel and heal the sick," is echoed and re-echoed by our Leader. Notwithstanding this, sometimes one's right to teach is challenged on legalistic and ecclesiastic grounds. How can you get around Mrs. Eddy's assurance that "the student who heals by teaching and teaches by healing, will graduate with divine honors, which are the only appropriate seals for Christian Science"? (Mis 358:4-6.) Anything said on metaphysics to enlighten is obviously teaching, and who is to say how systematic, how specific or how general such teaching is to be? Of course, by the very nature of the case, the ordinary practitioner's teaching is largely individual. And, if he is a member of The Mother Church, he is not permitted to teach groups without official sanction. (Man. Art xxvi.)

The reason for this institutional restriction is that no organization could long endure which permitted the setting up of independent groups within it. The early history of the Movement and Mrs. Eddy's available correspondence bring this out unmistakably. Outside the organization, of course, the Church Manual does not apply, and so the nature and extent of one's teaching is determined entirely by individual demonstration. In any event, teaching is inextricably bound up with the healing. While metaphysical work is silent, wherever one talks with is patients, the work is that of instruction clearly.

Differences of presentation may be regarded mainly as vagaries of the human drama which should serve only to remind you the more of the infinitude of Mind. Whatever has meaning to you will not return unto you void but will prosper in the way whereunto you send it. Whatever glimpses you can give to others of what of infinite Life is appearing to you are all to the good surely. In any case, you must freely express Truth in whatever ways seem intelligent to you.

The honest student of Mrs. Eddy's writings knows that no individual or group has a monopoly on Christian healing and teaching, and is not tempted to arrogate to himself or his group any priestly privileges. (S & H 141:10-23.) He respects Christianity wherever found and learns to toil in his own vineyard. (S & H 359:18-20.) He is well aware that nowhere does either Jesus or Mrs. Eddy say anyone can escape his constant obligation to heal the sick, preach the gospel and raise the dead, as far as possible to him. The invariable rule is to give a cup of cold water in the name of Christ, fearing never the consequences - whether human belief places the giver within or without organization. How could any of us ever be deprived of the ability - nay, the duty - to go on healing and teaching? Mere belief in any form, whether called organized or unorganized, has neither right nor power to intrude upon such holy work. (S & H 54:29-1.) It is outlining in grossest materiality to say that Truth can come only through a particular instrument, organization or otherwise.

When the busybody rushed to tell Moses that Eldad and Medad were prophesying "out of bounds," Moses rebuked him for his envy, adding, "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets!" (Numbers 11:16,17,25-29.) Eons later, when John told our Master that his disciples had reprimanded someone for casting out evils in his name because the healer was not a member of their society, Jesus said: "Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me; for he that is not against us is on our part." (Mark 9:38-42.) And when the disciples would have cast down fire on the nonconformists, Jesus murmured sadly, "Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of!" (Luke 9:54-55.)

The ethics of Christian Science practice are not unlike those of the other legitimate and respectable professions. With a basic attitude that is humanitarian, you need not be reminded that what is said to the practitioner must be held as sacred as if told to God. Intelligence will provide decorum, and reverence will be manifest outwardly as true and impressive dignity - a dignity that would never stoop to dramatizing yourself or your profession. Spiritual poise will extend to every last detail of your daily conduct, without any self-conscious striving for propriety. A worthy practitioner could never meddle in the affairs of either his patients or his colleagues. (Mis 287:31-12.) Understanding that mortal mind sees what it believes, he does not go searching for evils of any sort, but leaves the uncovering of error to Truth. (S & H 86:29-30, 542:5-9, 19-21.)

It is not alone the ever-changing circumstances which prevent your settling on inflexible means and methods, but the fundamental fact that your problems inevitably advance with your advancing understanding. When confronted with something new and disconcerting, consider this. Then you may find that it is not an evidence of apathy on your part, but of progress. The pupil in arithmetic, after mastering addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, becomes aware of problems heretofore unsuspected. He becomes "fraction conscious." At such a point, instead of yielding to resentment and its resultant confusion, he should rejoice that he has reached a place where he can handle the greater things. (Mis 85:25-31, 221:3-10.)

As the metaphysician, you must recognize in your advancing problems your own progress, and be grateful that your very consciousness of evils as problems to be solved, shows your capacity to cope with them. You could not see them as errors in your experience if you were not first aware, at least intuitively, of the Truth which exposes them. The problems can never be beyond your ability to solve them, for the errors uncovered cannot exceed the Truth you know which uncovers them. A comforting and sustaining thought, withal scientific.

There are occasions when the negation appears to stress the truth even more than the simple assertion of fact would. My statement that twice-two-is-four might pass without notice, while I cannot whisper twice-two-is-five without rousing the mathematician's militant challenge. To the genuine Christian Scientist, the presentation of substance as matter but serves to accentuate its essential spirituality. An erroneous claim can only awaken the real student to what he knows and compel him to apply it. (S & H 266:10-12.) Thus the onslaught of evil must be understood as the pressure of Truth's apprehension forcing you higher, so that it can only come as what best serves to promote your growth. Tribulations mastered are character builders.

If Christian Science is genuinely scientific, its logic must prove inescapable and its work irrefutable, so that it can know no competition. Truly scientific thought recommends itself to acceptance and spreads itself without organized effort - as shown by mathematics or any other science. Genuine science must be operative forever everywhere, and operative independently of class, color, creed or human institutions. The honestly scientific attitude allows such freedom of speech, press and religion as must inevitably discredit and weed out illogical conclusions and unworkable methods. To paraphrase the Scripture we have always so piously quoted: If this teaching be of Science, no opinion can overthrow it, but if it be mere dogma, it cannot stand.

  
Footsteps and Concessions

All things are possible to God - but not all things are possible to mankind at this stage of understanding, obviously. We constantly strive for perfection, but we must not make claims beyond what we are proving, or we shall discredit the work and invite disappointment. Yes, there are innumerable cases recorded and substantiated of the healing through Christian Science of diseases and conditions pronounced incurable by the medical fraternity. But we are not yet walking the water. (S & H 323:13-18, 329:5-25.) So Mary Baker Eddy speaks of the unfailing success of her doctrine when "applied under circumstances where demonstration was humanly possible." (S & H 147:7-13.) Many of us today are convinced that we have seen the dead raised - but not the long-dead. We are not presumptuous, but base our practice on proof.

The competent practitioner would not, because of its severity, hesitate to take any case brought to him, for he knows full well that he can always achieve immeasurable good, alleviate pain and distress, and possibly demonstrate all that could be desired. One thing is certain: our point of view must be that we can always bring about, through our work, whatever is necessary humanly. Whatever has to be done can be done. Of that we are sure. Perfection is demanded of us, but only as we are able to reach it step by step. (S & H 253:25-23.) How soon the ultimate will be attained is not a matter of time, but a matter of understanding, and that may be rapidly found.

What are called the "human footsteps" are unavoidable aspects of our evolving interpretations of being. That these "steps" should be right is a matter of demonstration, of course. And, remember, you can only demonstrate that which is. There is nothing going on but Mind disclosing itself as that which is, Truth, and that's permanent. That means that there must be a truth to each human footstep. If you regard any action as a temporary expedient, you are putting it outside of Truth, good, and so making it totally evil. See that it is your sense or interpretation of the true action that is temporary, not the action itself. Get everything into Mind, Truth, good, and keep it there. (Hea 7:8-13.) That is your sole hope. Only by identifying it with good can you bring out the good of it. And you cannot do this without admitting that it is God, good, manifest, though called human activity.

Naturally, God isn't trudging from stage to stage, but your intermediate interpretations of spiritual being, prior to sabbatical realization, must exhibit those stages which are indispensable to your progressing sense of completeness, plausibility and feasibility. While acting up to your highest concept at all times, you can save yourself much heartbreak by not overreaching yourself. "Radical reliance on Truth" does not mean radical defiance of human requirements, but inner spiritual integrity. (S & H 167:30-31.) If that is maintained, the seemingly outward activities will be all right. Spirituality is subjective and is therefore neither dependent upon nor subject to the objective patterns of human activity. The outward doing is an aspect of the inward knowing. Conformity to finite standards neither promotes not retards spiritual progress. It doesn't touch reality at all. ( S & H 220:26-30.)

Absolutely speaking, we are not doing anything, we are not bringing anything to pass and, least of all, are we creating anything. We are only perceiving, understanding, apprehending that which already and forever exists. Mind does not require time in which to do anything, nor process, because all the things of God, of reality, are now. If you have a goal to reach, know that you are already there. But don't consider the intervening developments in your experience as something going on outside of Truth, in belief, or your fear of their outcome will impair their meaning and value for you. Take your steps as they are given you to take, all the while keeping your eye on the only cause. Only by a right use of your present sense of things can you arrive at the absolute - never by fighting with your sense of reality. If you are really knowing that divine Mind is all there is to unfold, all that consciousness includes will be found both purposeful and successful.

You can learn to let Mind unfold for you without neglecting the demands upon you humanly. When we are told not to "outline," we are simply being cautioned not to visualize objectives materially and then insist that a satisfactory solution can appear in no other way. Speculating or forcing issues from a physical point of view is inimical to progress. But we cannot hope to avoid outlining. You couldn't walk across the room without outlining your course and type of locomotion. (S & H 264:10-12.) When Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus, he did not say, "If it is right, Lazarus will come forth." No, he seized upon the prerogative of Mind, the Mind which could know no death nor deterioration nor absence, and commanded, "Lazarus, come forth!" While you may not be able to imagine the proper functioning of an organ, you must positively declare its perfection, harmony and completeness before you can demonstrate it healthy. You cannot foretell the course of Mind as humanly perceived, but you can know its inevitable divinity.

It is far more important to know that right is, than to know what right is. In the measure that you affirm and know that right is, you will know what to do, and you are not then likely to ask yourself or anybody else what is the right thing to do or what is the wisest path to pursue in any event. There is nothing iffy about Science. What is right is, and there is no opposite. In all situations, the course you can discern is the right course, as you turn to Principle. Ifs and buts belong to mortal mind. The "good" of mortal mind is always relative; but you establish as your Mind the Mind that is immortal. God is not uncertain. Decisiveness is an intrinsic property of Mind, and you can therefore demonstrate it.

Do not enter upon any undertaking with an if. (S & H 422:31-32.) Even when the step does not seem right, start with the silent and serene declaration that right is. Then any necessary change will come about in the situation. But when decision is required, do what you feel is right unhesitatingly, with the assurance that comes of the knowledge that perfection is the only law, whatever the appearance. Do not say, "If it is right, I will do it." Say, "Right is!" Then, when judgment has been clarified, take your step and every step to follow with the conviction that Mind's direction is unerring. Mind's communion is manifest in decisive action, for thinking is being and must appear as doing. Such doing does not always conform to the preconceived pattern, nor is it responsive to finite jugglery, mental or otherwise. But invariably the human doing of the Scientist is divinely guided in ways comprehensible to him.

To believe that divine leading comes through hunches, or urges of untraceable origin, is rank superstition. "Voices" are always suspect. Intelligence can only appear as rationality. (S & H 223:21-22.) God's guidance may come as driving convictions, arrived at logically, or as compelling circumstances. Principle demonstrated is all there is to judgment or circumstances. The outcome may not seem at the time to be what is the very best in the situation, but it will be seen so in retrospect, after further unfoldment has broadened the perspective. (S & H 22:18-20.) Always, the question of right human footsteps is to be solved scientifically.

All being mental, what you do depends upon how you are seeing things. You act necessarily within your current interpretation of being. You are obliged to proceed according to your sense of reality. (S & H 444:4-19.) But your progressive knowing changes that sense or interpretation progressively, so that what serves today may not serve tomorrow. You take what appear to be necessary human footsteps for the simple reason that they appear to be necessary. In the ratio that you understand all experience to be Truth disclosing itself, the more cumbersome and involved aspects of your interpretation, its grosser implications, fall away, so that you automatically dispense with the belief of intermediate processes and intervening expedients. Spontaneous being ensues without recourse to "artificial aids" in belief. "leaning on a material prop" merely means misinterpreting. There is actually no "prop" to be destroyed or done away with but, so long as the fact of sustenance appears to be a prop, there is a misinterpretation to be corrected through spiritual apprehension of reality.

You cannot abandon material expedients peremptorily; you must outgrow them. When it is said that we can eventually dispense with concessions and expedients, it is meant that a point will surely be reached where we no longer have to think of results as contingent upon any sort of material procedure or device. In proportion as you grasp the fact that your world is Principle manifest, the inbetweenness of finite means and methods ceases to be a part of your interpretation. The great thing is to see that while these concessions and expedients may be an essential part of your sense of Mind being, nothing whatever depends upon them. They are not the cause of your demonstration, but an incidental aspect or accompaniment. Let us then lay no unnecessary stress on the outward seeming, but rather endeavor to get at the inner reality.

But, you ask, does not progress depend upon refusing to make concessions? On the contrary, "until one is able to prevent bad results, he should avoid their occasion." (S & H 329:15-17.) That's concession - and without it, your defiance of pressing demands upon you must prove so disruptive as to stifle the inspiration requisite for progress. If you will just act up to the very limits of your demonstrable understanding, you will progress with maximum dispatch. But plunging beyond your depth is unscientific and foolhardy. As for "taking a stand," that is not a matter of stubborn insistence but a matter of true realization lifting you above finite considerations. (S & H 329:21-23.) Such realization proves itself practically, and is not a mere retreat into fantasy. It is not a case of doing or not doing something; it is a case of conscious dominion.

Working as Mind, you will neither flee nor pursue seeming externalities, knowing that they are but your subjective view of being, transformed for the better as better understood. Fearing or hating what you term a temporary concession to human belief fixes it as a part of your interpretation of being, so that it is difficult to transcend it. Trying to do away with something gives you something to do away with, so perpetuating it as a problem unsolved. Refusing to take someone's hand who is trying to pull you out of the raging sea is not radical reliance on Truth but an ignorant demand that the Christ shall save you only in the way you imagine he should. If your escape from drowning is by a helping hand, that is your way of seeing good, God, manifest, is it not? (Mis 370:12-13.) "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God!" (Matthew 4:7.)

All this is so beautifully exemplified in Jesus' application of divine law. He did not cavil over forms and procedures. He did not heckle the woman who could only conceive of her healings as coming through the touch of his robe. He knew that the touch of a robe - or the touch of a scalpel - would have to be in the realm of belief, but he nevertheless said, "Go in peace!" He was accepting health as her natural state, notwithstanding her mistaken notion of how it came to her. He did not say that she would have to retrace her steps or that she had relinquished her innate spirituality. Such concessions facilitated the establishment of the gospel light, and he made them in many fields. (S & H 56:4-6.) He did not evade taxes, so long as they were required of the citizens, but procured the legal tender apparently from a fish's mouth. He did not disdain material clothing, so-called, but wore himself the seamless robe - the most expensively luxurious garment that could be purchased in that day. Even after his resurrection from the tomb, when the disciples were plying him with questions about that event, he asked, "But have ye any meat?" and then went on to eat broiled fish and the honeycomb which they gave him. (Luke 24:34-43.)

You would not deprive the cripple of his crutches until you could prove that the crutches were an unnecessary gross sense of support or sustenance. If support can only be seen as a crutch just now, thank God that you are able to see support any way. Metaphysically, you understand that idea must be sustained, and the thing that sustains idea is its Principle, whatever this may look like from where you stand. Meanwhile, our sense of need, to be met, must be met according to our sense of it.

If a crutch is our sense of being provided for and we can't see it any other way, we can be unreservedly grateful that we are seeing the fact of sustenance, however dimly and incorrectly. No matter what the form of perception at the moment, we can improve our interpretation of divine provision only by ascertaining the underlying fact more clearly -never by trying to tamper with the appearance directly. To be dogmatic about such things is stupid and cruel. As human beings, we all see things differently and, as Scientists, our job is strictly to achieve and help others to achieve an understanding of Truth and not to dictate human procedures.

No one is immune to the pull of old habits of thought, and nothing is gained by regrets and recriminations. One of Adam H. Dickey's students came upon him as he was donning a pair of spectacles for reading. "Oh, Mr. Dickey," she thoughtlessly exclaimed, "do you wear glasses?" He laughingly countered, "Yes, I wear my error on my nose; where do you wear yours?" You do not campaign against spectacles. (S & H 444:7-12.) Mapping events humanly is not conducive to the demonstration of divinity. As you come to understand that vision is Mind's awareness, you no longer think of sight as involving glasses. Until then, your glasses may be an essential aspect of your current interpretation of Mind seeing. Observe that students who inveigh against glasses do not inveigh against eyes, per se. That is inconsistent, for both represent the interpretation of the mental as physical.

The necessities of belief remain necessities until you prove that they are no longer such in belief. This does not delay, and assuredly cannot thwart, your progress toward the absolute. One thing that could retard the ascending thought would be for you to engage in controversy over them or see in them something to be defied. That would dethrone the infinity of good. This is particularly noteworthy in the province of dentistry. When you are consulted, as you will be, about fillings and extractions, what are you prepared to think and say? In her famous open letter on the subject, the Founder of the Christian Science movement proclaims to the world that we do not refuse to abide by the usages of men - except in instances where such usages definitely offend conscience. (Boston Herald, Dec. 2, 1900; Sentinel, Vol 3, p 217; Journal, Vol 18, p 593.) She says, moreover, that if a doctor is called in, it is wise to cooperate with him fully, so as not to raise the belief of confliction. There could be no mistake about her position or her unassailable logic herein.