"Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven"

HARRY R. COPELAND

It is recorded in the tenth chapter of Luke's Gospel that, when they returned, the seventy disciples whom Christ Jesus had sent forth joyfully told him that even the devils were subject unto them through his name. He assured them that he had given them power over all evil, but he admonished them thus: "Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven."

In this admonition we see a very important point to be applied in our practice of Christian Science, namely, that we are not to regard evil or error as having been real at any time, or as having had power that has been subdued. We are to rejoice in knowing that a perfect, harmonious state of being is the eternal fact. On pages 470 and 471 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, "The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history." Also, on page 428 of the same book she says, "The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal."

When a Christian Scientist has overcome some phase of error he has proved the error to be nothing. In expressing gratitude for the healing he is alert to this fact and does not think or speak of error as having been real at any time. Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 393), "A false belief is both the tempter and the tempted, the sin and the sinner, the disease and its cause."

Perhaps everyone at some time or other has awakened from a nightmare or bad dream, and felt a deep sense of gratitude for the fact that the awakening destroyed the dream with all its dreadful aspects. The gratitude was not occasioned by any thought of victory over the distressing circumstances in the dream, but was due to the fact that the distressing circumstances had been found to be nothing but illusion, and consequently without reality.

Sin, sickness, disease, death, fear, lack—discord of every description—are but the waking dreams of a false material sense of existence, and have no more reality or foundation than the sleeping dream. In order to banish these sense dreams, with their seeming misery, we have only to awaken to the realization of man's perfect spiritual status, which remains eternally unchanged. Similar to the relief and gratitude felt upon awakening from a sleeping dream and finding that there actually were no foes, are the joy and gratitude that come with the realization of the allness and eternality of good. We rejoice, not that the errors, or devils, are subject to us, for they are nothing, but rather that in reality we are always the perfect children of God, and that our "names are written in heaven."

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