The Fruits of Spiritual Understanding

[Original article in German]

ANNA EMMA META LANGEN

Christian Science reveals God as invariable Love, all-embracing divine Mind, immutable Principle, the sole cause and creator of all that really exists. Thus this Science reveals God's infinite and eternal nature, His omnipresence, His omniscience, omnipotence, and invariableness. God, Spirit, includes all that is good, true, and perfect. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 113), Mary Baker Eddy states that "God is All-in-all."

Christian Science teaches that man is God's image and likeness, in accord with the statement in the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." Man, created spiritually, is one with God and expresses all the qualities of his creator. Christ Jesus recognized his unity with the Father when he said, "I and my Father are one;" and, "What he seeth the Father do ... these also doeth the Son likewise."

In order to become conscious of our unity with God, our Father, we must learn to understand and love Him. We must have absolute trust in Him, be altogether obedient to divine law, and express this obedience in practical ways. Just as one looks into a mirror and sees the reflection of his face, so can one, in divine Science, see spiritual man reflecting God, Spirit. Since God is Love, His reflection, man, expresses love, not selfishness or hate; good, not evil. God is Life. Consequently man, His reflection, expresses health and freedom, yes, eternal life. God is omnipotent. Consequently man, His reflection, reflects strength, power, dominion.

The student of Christian Science reflects spiritual power to the extent that he acknowledges God as the one infinite and only Mind. The so-called mortal mind must be seen as unreal. Its false material beliefs must be destroyed by spiritual ideas, which express divine power and intelligence. "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds" (ibid., p. 4). "Self-forgetfulness, purity, and affection are constant prayers" (ibid., p. 15). The practice of these virtues develops the spiritual understanding through which we perceive spiritual facts, and thereby express spiritual power.

Error, sickness, and lack are unreal false beliefs of the so-called mortal mind. This mortal mind has nothing in common with the divine Mind, but sees all things as temporal, and subject to inharmony and decay. In divine Mind, which creates and maintains all that is real, everything is eternal and perfect. In the measure that we establish our oneness with divine Mind by reflecting divine qualities, we behold the universe as God sees it, spiritual and perfect.

Christian Science shows us the way to awaken from the dream of mortal existence to behold the reality of spiritual being, its power and glory. Step by step, students of this Science learn to understand "the deep things of God;" and they must express their understanding in their daily lives, so that their vision of reality shall expand. Thus one is led into the promised land, there to express ever greater freedom and harmony.

Mrs. Eddy writes (ibid., p. 99), "The calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-immolation, must deepen human experience, until the beliefs of material existence are seen to be a bald imposition, and sin, disease, and death give everlasting place to the scientific demonstration of divine Spirit and to God's spiritual, perfect man."

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