Article September 12, 1908 Issue

THE CONSCIOUSNESS THAT HEALS

REV. G. A. KRATZER.

In Christian Science great emphasis is laid upon the Scriptural statements that God is Spirit; God is eternal; God is perfect; and God is the only cause and creator. The creations of God would naturally and inevitably bear His characteristics, and not characteristics opposite to Him. Therefore, the real universe and man were created like to God,—spiritual, eternal, and perfect,—and they so remain, because God's all-power preserves them as He made them. And God, Spirit, knows or discerns His universe and His children as they are; that is, spiritual, eternal, and perfect. If we could discern the universe in the same way that Spirit discerns it, then that would be spiritual discernment on our part; but we are not able to exercise spiritual discernment through the physical senses, nor ever shall be, "for the carnal mind is enmity against God." We may, however, exercise spiritual discernment in spite of the physical senses by reasoning, as above indicated, from God as premise; thus determining what the character of man and the universe must be, and obeying the Scriptural rule of "comparing spiritual things with spiritual."

If we have spiritual discernment, we have faith; for the two are identical. And if we know or discern the universe and man as God knows them, then in our thinking or consciousness we reflect the divine thinking, just as Jesus did. When we do this, we know the power of Mind as did the Master; and the Mind or consciousness which Jesus had was that consciousness which healed the sick, raised the dead, and cast out devils (evils). Having freely received this consciousness from God, he freely gave it to as many as would receive it; and it is our duty to reflect this same consciousness. St. Paul exhorts, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

To have and to exercise this healing consciousness, and obtain results therefrom, several things are requisite. First of all we must understand that all God's ideas and their expression are spiritual, eternal, and perfect; but it is far from sufficient to accept this intellectually, as a creed to be recited in church and on other formal occasions. On the other hand, this view of all that is must become a part of our habitual thinking. The tendency with us, as mortals, is to let our thoughts, moment by moment, dwell upon the subjects presented by the physical or bodily senses, and to be thus directed by what seems to transpire in our bodies and in the so-called physical world. In other words, it is considered "natural" for us to let our thoughts drift with the current of sense testimony. The duty set before us is to make head against this current and never to drift with it a moment, when we can avoid it.

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