Article July 8, 1911 Issue

AWAKENING

BERTHA W. TIFFANY.

MRS. EDDY tells us that "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick" (Science and Health, p. 476). In endeavoring to understand better what this "correct view" was, and how to attain it, several experiences and many lines of reasoning assisted the writer to draw nearer its right apprehension. One said to me that it was impossible to hold in thought an ideal, every step of the way to its attainment being unknown. In replying to this objection, the thought of what Columbus did not know regarding the perils of the voyage, the distance to be traveled, or what the land, if discovered, would be like, or when he would reach it, proved conclusively that we can and do hold ideals beyond the limited sense of our present experience.

When Columbus embarked on his voyage he began a crusade against the narrow view of the world that then obtained, and on making the discovery he healed the world of one phase of ignorance. He did not evolve a continent by imagining it to be there, but he lifted the veil of ignorance and exposed to view the fact that there was another continent; that it was as real as the old world, and that it always had been. The ignorance of the people regarding its existence had not affected its existence any more than does the ignorance of mortals respecting man's perfection and spirituality make man less than perfect. But, in proportion to our realization that there is one perfect, spiritual cause, hence but one perfect spiritual effect, we are better able to behold man as the image and likeness of Spirit, God; and having always been so, as neither sick, sinning, nor dying! Is not this, then, the "correct view" of man that heals the sick, reclaims the sinner, raises the dying, and demonstrates man's spiritual origin and status?

The healing of sickness or sin in Christian Science is the lifting of the veil of ignorance about man's perfection,—past, present, and future,—and the awakening of human consciousness to the actuality of this fact, here, now, and everywhere. As Mrs. Eddy better states it, "This awakening is the forever coming of Christ, the advanced appearing of Truth which casts out error and heals the sick. This is the salvation which comes through God, the divine Principle, Love, as demonstrated by Jesus" (Ibid., p. 230).

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