Article March 16, 1918 Issue

Names Written in Heaven

RALPH B. THOMPSON

On a certain momentous occasion the disciples returned after a joyful mission of healing, of practicing the truth which Jesus had been teaching them. The success of their efforts had evidently greatly surprised even the most enthusiastic of these students, and they felt that they must tell the Master what had been accomplished. In like manner, when a student of Christian Science has applied his individual understanding of this same unfailing Principle to a problem of sickness or sin, either for himself or for a friend, and has seen the healing Truth manifest itself in the destruction of the erroneous condition, he too must experience in some degree the joy that the disciples felt, when they said upon their return over nineteen centuries ago: "Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name."

It is natural at such a time that the student should desire to share with others this new-found treasure, but in his eagerness to tell of the healing he frequently loses sight of the fundamental fact which makes the healing possible; namely, that God, good, is now and has always been All,—that is, the one infinite Power, the one infinite Mind, the one infinite Presence, and that the discords or "devils" never were real except to a false sense of things entirely apart from God's creation or knowledge. It was Jesus' constant realization of this fundamental fact that led him to rebuke the impulsive state of thought which sees only the manifestation of healing, and loses sight of the great truth which makes the healing possible. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had said: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Carrying further the same rule he said to his disciples, "In this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." He bade them rejoice, not simply because of the benefits, but rather because man's true existence had been discerned as inseparable from "the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony," as Mrs. Eddy says on page 1 of "Rudimental Divine Science."

In like manner, Paul realized the supreme importance of that state of thought in which spiritual realization predominates and governs, and the secondary importance of the natural results following this consciousness and made manifest in physical healing. In his second letter to the Corinthians he counsels them thus: "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

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