The Psalmist sang, "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." Fervent desire for true spirituality, as expressed by the Hebrew singer, accompanied by constant striving for its attainment in right living, is a prayer which can never go unanswered.

The nature of God, which the Psalmist longed to comprehend and reflect, was fully known to Christ Jesus, who revealed and exemplified in his life, words, and works his understanding of God as the one infinite Mind, or intelligence, and of man as God's son. The Master could state with conviction, "I and my Father are one." And this brief statement shows that he recognized God as all-inclusive Spirit, and man as coexisting with Him. Further, Jesus' spiritual insight into the truth of being enabled him to demonstrate the Christ, his spiritual and eternal selfhood. "Christ" is defined by Mary Baker Eddy in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583), as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Jesus was referring to Christ, "the divine manifestation of God," when he said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep." It is through Christ that one enters into the sheepfold, wherein all are recognized as "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

Christ, Truth, reveals God and His loving nature to human consciousness. Because God is Spirit, then Christ, or "the divine manifestation of God," must of necessity be spiritual. It was the Christ which enabled Jesus to forgive sin, heal all manner of disease, raise the dead, and finally nullify in his own experience the superstitious belief of mortals that the grave is a resting place for man, who, in reality, is God's perfect spiritual idea. In consequence of expressing his spiritual selfhood, he overcame hatred and death.

Because of man's relationship to divine Mind each of us has the ability to be Christlike, to voice good, to exercise the healing and redemptive power of true spirituality. Moreover, each of us has the power, through the Christ, to overcome for himself and others sin, disease, limitation, fear, hatred—all errors, indeed, arising from false material belief. Nothing corporeal, selfish, personal, or sinful manifests the Christ; whereas, all that is pure, selfless, impersonal, tender, meek, and loving does.

Christian Science has come to awaken mankind from the stupefying illusion of life in matter to a realization that Life is Spirit. What is called matter, whatever form it may appear to take, is but a false mental concept. It is a lie about true spiritual substance. Through Christian Science there is dawning upon human consciousness, in a steadily increasing degree, the vital spiritual fact that God, Spirit, is the only substance, and that man is altogether spiritual, molded and fashioned after the nature of infinite, perfect, changeless, omniactive Mind or Spirit.

Mortals unenlightened through Christian Science fail to recognize the perfect and eternal nature of divine Mind and man's true individuality, which expresses every quality of this Mind. There are, nevertheless, in human consciousness rightful desires and aspirations after more abundant life, health, happiness, and progress. But the mode of satisfying these desires proffered by material agencies affords no real satisfaction or lasting benefit. Promises of more abundant life, health, and supply, founded solely upon spiritually unenlightened human reason, hope, and desire, are invariably disappointing. "Hence the unsatisfied human craving for something better, higher, holier, than is afforded by a material belief in a physical God and man" (Science and Health, p. 258). Only God, through Christ, Truth, can give life, health, happiness, and supply.

In Christian Science we learn that God has a divine purpose for each of His children. This purpose unfolds to human consciousness as one assimilates spiritual ideas, those ideas which are ever expressed by infinite Mind through His creation, man.

God's spiritual ideas are good thoughts. Man reflects these thoughts or ideas; and it is the privilege of all men so to hold their thought in relation with the divine as to replace the false sense of hatred with love, impurity with purity, sorrow with joy, fear with spiritual expectancy, and lack with sufficiency. The unfailing spiritual and purifying forces of infinite Truth constantly work on behalf of those who lovingly and patiently strive to overcome with spiritual thoughts the false beliefs of the carnal mind. Great joy and lasting satisfaction are experienced by all who accept and exercise man's God-given ability to think and act rightly.

Jesus manifested sublime spiritual satisfaction because he realized that the real man is inspired by God. "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do." His saying implies that man cannot exist apart from God. It implies also that since God is incapable of experiencing evil—sin, limitation, disease, and death—so, likewise, is His reflection, man, incapable of experiencing evil. In order to prove these things in human experience the Christian Scientist considers it a binding obligation to watch incessantly his thoughts. One does what he sees the Father do as his consciousness, harmonizing with divine Love, reflects the immortal qualities of his Father-Mother God.

In Christian Science we learn to identify the real man as at one with his Maker, regardless of sense testimony. With confidence we gratefully recognize our real selfhood as safe in the keeping of Soul. Christ Jesus restored the widow's son to life by means of the unfailing spiritual sense which enabled him to identify man as ever at one with the eternal Parent, Mind. In proving that the son expressed deathless Life, he proved material birth, growth, maturity, and decay to be unreal. He denied and silenced this baseless material assumption wherever and whenever he encountered it.

Material views of life, however pleasingly enchanting and alluring they may seem, offer no permanet satisfaction.

The rosiest aspects of mortal existence, with its false hopes and pleasures, must eventually lose their fleeting charms. But the spiritual universe and man, created by divine Principle, are and will remain perfect. In this spiritual and only real creation there is nothing left to be desired. Divine approval of His creation—His universe—was expressed when "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

Satisfaction is an attribute of God; and it is attained and made manifest in human experience in proportion as it is realized that man's true dwelling place is in omnipotent divine Truth, Life, and Love.

Copyright, 1936, by The Christian Science Publishing Society, One, Norway Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Entered at Boston post office as second-class matter. Acceptance for mailing at a special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 11, 1918.