Article January 23, 1932 Issue

The Realm of the Real

GWENDOLYN M. L. THOMAS

A woman was once talking to a sympathetic guest about her own and her friend's experiences of relief from suffering and escape from difficulties when relying on God as the only power, a state of trust made possible by what they had learned whilst studying Christian Science. The stranger listened carefully, for his venerable hostess had a wide knowledge of life, having seen it from many angles and in many lands. But when she embarked upon further assurances that he too as a child of God and a spiritual being was entitled to joy and safety, health and happiness, he could no longer refrain from surprise and broke in with the ejaculation, "But, dear lady, this is a fairy tale that you are telling me!"

Christian Science does teach the existence of a better world than the one we usually envisage, and does declare that if we truly investigated we should find out our true nature and our rightful heritage to be all bliss. But since there is a vast discrepancy between the experiences of men and women involved in debt, difficulty, pain, and suffering from all manner of frustrations and the beauty and wonder of the God-controlled universe, where all is maintained at the point of perfection, and sorrow and sickness are absent (which is the universe presented by Christian Science), explanations are necessary; and we should not be surprised if thought that has been long pent within the prison house of fear looks out bedazzled and says, "Why, here is a marvel!" Mrs. Eddy herself must have met with this type of thinking, for she says in her Preface to "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. xi), "Realism will at length be found to surpass imagination;" and by "realism" she means things as they really are—the deepest realities, embracing earth and heaven. Thus she gives the answer to those who to-day, though they would love to believe it, still think her interpretation of man's destiny as a son of God too good to be true.

Many a beginner reading the first chapters of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy must have come up against this feeling. Yet, if he will turn to the New Testament and read the words of Jesus, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," it will help him to see that in promising all good to those who turn to God for help our Leader was but following up and restating what the Master taught. It is from this plane that we must begin our studies in Christian Science. Indeed, it is by learning, sometimes suddenly, that they are "the sons of God" and own no other parentage—because in reality each one is a reflection of the divine Mind, and as such knows only beauty, health, and purity—that sick people are lifted up into a higher atmosphere of thought, where they find themselves healed through Christian Science; for healing comes only as the result of our own or someone else's understanding and realization of our divine sonship and our true nature as God's image.

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