In writing of the liberty and the glory of the spirit of the Lord, Paul tells us that we "are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." This change is naturally the supreme desire of every Christian Scientist. As it is by "the Spirit of the Lord" that the change takes place, the student's aim is to gain a richer, fuller understanding of the Supreme Being named God, and through this understanding he begins to find himself as God's image and likeness.

Because God, Love, is infinite, there is nothing outside or beyond infinite Love, and it is through spiritualization of thought that the student becomes aware of the all-embracing, all-inclusive gentle presence of Love, which is forever loving. The Love which is God knows nought of the vagaries of the human affections, for Love is invariable, and forever bears its beloved from glory to glory.

God loved man before the foundations of the world. Solomon was speaking of wisdom; nevertheless he caught a glorious glimpse of the eternal nature of God and His beloved when he wrote: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, ... I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth.... Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth.... When he prepared the heavens, I was there ... as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him."

Man, knowing his forever unity with Love, looks out from and into the infinitude of Love, and is conscious of his spiritual ancestry and heritage as the offspirng of Love. In this gentle presence he is forever aware of the spiritual fact of divine sonship.

The unity of God and man—God enjoying man and man enjoying God—goes on throughout eternity. It can never be halted, arrested, interfered with or altered. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 465, 466), "Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Being, and His reflection is man and the universe." This oneness constitutes power, knowledge, and activity. No other power, knowledge, or activity exists or brings forth manifestation. This spiritual fact is disputed by the evidence of the material senses, but material evidence appears only as a false mental concept, in other words a lie; therefore it has no weight or permanence. For of what value is the evidence of a lie to one who knows the truth?

Spiritual power, knowledge, and activity are revealed through spiritualization of thought; they can appear to human sense in no other way. In reality they are forever appearing. All that is good and real must be eternally unfolding and revealing itself to spiritual consciousness. There will never be a time when there will be an end of anything that is real. It is to false mental concepts and their evidence only that there can be an end.

Love is Life, and Life is self-revealed and self-expressed, declaring itself as man. Material existence is not Life, and it loses its entity or distinctness in human consciousness as Life becomes more distinct and real. On the island of Patmos "a new heaven and a new earth" dawned on and finally filled John's consciousness, obliterating his former sense of heaven and earth. As human consciousness adopts the real and repudiates the unreal, it is led on, as was John, from glory to ever greater heights of glory!

Salvation and spiritual continuity are entirely individual. Jesus proved this when he made the ascension alone. He had done all that it was possible for him to do for each one whose life he had touched on earth. By his words and works, he showed his friends how to work out their salvation and then he led them as far as Bethany, and there they witnessed his release from the Adam-dream through what is called the ascension. But he had to leave it to them to wake up individually; he could not work their way out for them! Jesus reached that glad day at Bethany entirely as the result of spiritual knowing. Every individual will express this ascending thought as man-made dependencies lose their foothold and he finds himself alone with God, unfolding from glory to glory.

Enoch dispelled the Adam-dream. He walked with God, and, according to personal sense, "he was not." He was wise in that he walked straight on instead of coming back to dream a little more or to see how others were getting on with their dreams. He walked on, and up, and out, to where he could see that the dream was nothing. Enoch had thought his way out! There is nothing to prevent anyone from doing this. Personal sense, the murderer, will try to prevent us from thinking our way out; but it cannot stop us, unless we let it do so.

According to the record, Enoch took a long time to clear his thought of the Adam-dream. Jesus quickly ascended above it. Our great Exemplar was too wise to take human steps which would land him more deeply in the dream; he was always leaving dreamland behind, thinking his way onward. That is what the genuine student of Christian Science is striving to do: he is thinking his way out of the Adam-dream by rising into radiant unlabored thought, mounting from glory to glory.

As sin, disease, and death, limitation, lack, and loneliness, fade out of consciousness there will be unceasing progress, not in overcoming and correction, for thought freed from sin needs no correction. Wider and ever wider views of infinite Love are the forever experience of spiritual man, for man is God's expression of Himself throughout eternity. Mind and individual consciousness are one, and must be expressed in individual completeness, unlimited freedom, immortal satisfaction, and eternal revelation.

But someone might ask, What has that to do with my present experience? The answer is that every time a spiritual fact is realized it has everything to do with present experience. Mrs. Eddy writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 159): "The infinite will not be buried in the finite; the true thought escapes from the inward to the outward, and this is the only right activity, that whereby we reach our higher nature." The true thought must be continually recognized within, or what is there to escape to the outward? We reach our higher nature in proportion as we recognize and cherish spiritual facts. It is through affirming the presence of the kingdom of God within, loving it, living it, recognizing its potency and feeling its presence, that false beliefs and dependencies are outshone. The true thought outshines the belief, latent perhaps but still many times apparently forceful, that man is formed of the dust of the ground and has only succeeded in raising himself a few degrees above the animal kingdom through the refining of animal instincts.

The nature of man as the son of God is a state of consciousness and must first be recognized and cherished within, before it can escape to the outward and demonstrate man's higher nature. That is why it is the most practical thing in the world to do the thinking which reveals the kingdom of God within. Indeed it is very impractical for one calling himself a Christian Scientist to spend time and thought building earthly castles, whatever form they may take, for they will all fade away as his true selfhood outshines the mortal dream.

The sun has no contest with darkness. There is not a fight every morning between the light and the darkness when the sun rises. The sun just outshines the darkness! So it is with the true thought or spiritual idea. As it has ascendancy in consciousness it simply outshines all that is mortal and human. Trouble comes when the pleasures of personal sense are being held to tenaciously. Spiritual ideas are never troubled any more than the sun is troubled by the darkness of which it knows nothing. The sun just shines.

The pains of sense force students of Christian Science to look within to spiritual selfhood, that they may find the real man. Sometimes they are reluctant to do this, so intent are they with their dreams. Nevertheless, if they are wise, they will search diligently for a clearer view of Love and Love's idea, for this is the only permanent way out of their difficulties. The pleasures of sense are much more deadly to the student of Christian Science than the pains, for they have a tendency to lull him into apathy and contentment with the Adam-dream. But as we become aware of true selfhood, that glorious being which God forever knows and cherishes, loves and enjoys, we see the folly of personal sense in any form and willingly cast it from us even as we cast off any other encumbrance, rejoicing to be rid of it.

Through the teachings of Christian Science, students do not merely go from bad dreams to better dreams or from limited matter to abundant matter; they begin to feel in their ascending thought the freedom and spiritual joy of mounting from glory to glory, abundantly satisfied because consciousness is being changed into the Christ-image, finding completeness in God's great love. Mrs. Eddy has written in Science and Health (p. 527), "Man is God's reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete."