Article April 8, 1922 Issue

Promise and Fulfillment

W. STUART BOOTH

The appealing promises of protection and power, of providence and peace, of health and life, with which the Bible is replete, have long been read by Christian believers, sometimes with awe and wonder, ofttimes with adoration and religious fervor, occasionally with resentment at their seeming mockery, but always with hope and longing for their fulfillment. For, in the experience of every man, the inability of matter and of human theories and inventions to provide protection, health, life, and peace is sooner or later proved so, invariably and decisively, that men intuitively turn to some power above and outside themselves. The strong appeal of Christ Jesus' ministry lay in his assurance of present-day fulfillment and realization of good. He began his preaching with a reiteration of John the Baptist's words of announcement, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand;" and he proved the verity of his words by his Christian works of healing the sick, liberating the sin-bound and sin-burdened, comforting the sorrowing, and raising the dead. Christian Science, being the restatement and reinstatement of primitive Christian teaching and practice, reechoes those encouraging words, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," and points with the assurance born of an understanding of divine Principle to the Bible promises, which speak of God's continuing care and deliverance for all who look unreservedly to Him in time of need.

A retrospect view by the student of Christian Science shows that his old and wrong concept of God was responsible for the lack of fulfillment to him of the Bible promises he may have read so often. The trouble was not with God, nor with God's promises; but with his own thought regarding God, which governed his attitude toward all things. When God is conceived of as dividing His power and dominion with evil, manifest as sin and sickness, these evils are necessarily accepted as real, true, and inevitable. Therefore, the promise of deliverance from the bonds of disease and sin, though stimulating his hope, do not appeal to his reason when he is thus accepting evil's claim to power, law, and attraction.

Christian Science corrects all false conclusions by correcting their erroneous premises regarding God. It points out with Christian compassion and scientific exactness that the one primal cause of all that is true and real must be good in nature, activity, and effect; and that evil is not constructive, but destructive. The source of all that is true must be all-embracing Truth, or infinite Truth, the divine Principle, or Love. This correct concept of God finds ample justification in the words and works of Christ Jesus, whose success in proving the power and presence of God was due to the fact that his every thought was based on this spiritual understanding of his Father-Mother, God. As we accept this true concept of God and begin to embody it in our living, the fulfillment of the Bible promises begins immediately to be realized to a satisfying and encouraging degree. One who thus learns of the omnipotence of good, simultaneously begins to lose his belief in and fear of evil; and thus the promises of deliverance from evil are proved to him, at least in a measure. As he continues to press along this line of spiritual understanding by accepting only good in his thought, and rejecting evil suggestions as untrue, illegitimate, and impotent, he realizes somewhat that the kingdom of heaven, the "reign of harmony," to use Mrs. Eddy's words on page 590 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," is here and now available to all who will but accept and abide by the rule of harmony, God's law; for, as she states on page 55 of the same book: "The promises will be fulfilled. The time for the reappearing of the divine healing is throughout all time; and whosoever layeth his earthly all on the altar of divine Science, drinketh of Christ's cup now, and is endued with the spirit and power of Christian healing."

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