Article April 23, 1927 Issue

Risen with Christ

SUSAN F. CAMPBELL

As the great truths of Christian Science dawn on human consciousness, mankind begins to change the basis of its thinking from a material to a spiritual foundation, and finds at the same time that its demonstrations naturally undergo a change, too. Up to this time much of the attention and energy of men has been given to what might be called "demonstrating" material things and conditions. To be sure, they may have been striving for the betterment of humanity and desiring to help their brother-man, but for the most part their efforts have been along material lines.

When this mental change begins to take place, the student of Christian Science realizes that in order to progress in this great teaching he must give his thought to knowing more about God and God's perfect spiritual creation, including man, and must cease from his former endeavor merely to readjust the dream shadows of a mortal material concept of the universe. He therefore gives up praying for that which is material, or for that which pertains to materiality. To pray for matter in any form would be anomalous to the student of Christian Science, since he is striving to understand the allness of Spirit and the nothingness of its opposite, matter. Since so-called matter is merely an erroneous concept of the carnal mind, he certainly does not want to demonstrate that!

Paul, through his marvelous conversion and the strenuous experiences which followed, saw the tendency of the so-called human mind to seek materiality through spiritual means, and tenderly appealed to the Colossians to avoid this in these words: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." And Mrs. Eddy has written on page 28 of "Retrospection and Introspection," concerning her great discovery of Christian Science: "I had learned that thought must be spiritualized, in order to apprehend Spirit. It must become honest, unselfish, and pure, in order to have the least understanding of God in divine Science. The first must become last. Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of and dependence on spiritual things."

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