Christian Science teaches us that the state of limitation to which the material senses seem to condemn man has actually nothing to do with his true selfhood. This is being increasingly substantiated today by an ever-mounting tide of witnesses declaring the power and continuity of Spirit, and evidenced as Christian Science healing.

Thus we are brought to the acknowledgment that sickness is overcome by the spiritual truth that health, wholeness, is the real essence of being; that want is no part of the complete satisfaction which belongs to man; that even death surrenders its false claim and yields to the all-presence of Life as the spiritual fact is clearly apprehended.

At our Wednesday evening meetings we hear specific testimony of how Christian Science, flooding consciousness with the light of Truth, disperses the dark images of disease, lack, unhappiness, and replaces them with the manifestation of health, harmony, and joy. This appears to the human concept as the healing of some bodily ailment or the improvement of some material condition.

How does this change from sickness to health, from evil to good, come about? It is really a removing of the false concept of man, and is incidental to the conscious affirmation that man is at one with his divine Principle, God, and that his true identity as the manifestation of Mind includes infinite ideas and the continuity of the eternal now.

Spiritual awareness in the face of the falsity of material appearance is beautifully illustrated in the story of Elisha, a story we all know very well; but like so many instances recorded in the Bible, its spiritual significance continues to unfold and act as a guide for our individual conduct today.

We read that the servant of Elisha, rising early one morning, found that during the night the city of Dothan had been surrounded by an enemy host, which had arrived with the avowed intention of overcoming the divine power that his master wielded, and of making him a prisoner.

Would it not be permissible to think of that city as consciousness, and of the servant as mortal thought filled with fear, crying out, "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" That same mortal thought is still calling out much the same thing. It will help us, therefore, to see how Elisha met the lie which tried to ensnare him. According to the story, spiritual awareness finds Elisha praying that the eyes of his servant may be opened. That prayer, based on spiritual understanding, resulted in the revelation of the power of Spirit; and in accordance with the exigency of that moment Elisha must have discerned a far outnumbering army encamped on the hills of spiritual vision, for we read, "Behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

Elisha did not have to wait for the hosts of the Lord to come; there was no process, no time element; they were already present. Spiritual understanding, when demonstrated, is always destruction to all material claims to power. So-called mortal mind, with its belief of time, may seem to require process in the elimination of evil; but as we realize more clearly that "time is no part of eternity," as Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 468), that there can be no measurement in spiritual thinking, we find that healings which had seemed to require process for their completion now can be accomplished instantaneously. Process gives way to presence, the presence of good as All; prayer and its answer coincide; impulse and accomplishment are found to be one, the oneness of divine Mind and its idea.

As we recognize the Science of being to be timeless, so we establish the now of eternity in place of the material concept which seems to prevent us from accepting that "perfect law of liberty" spoken of in James.

One of the earliest methods of measuring time was, of course, by the moon; but, as recorded in Revelation, John saw the symbolic picture of a woman with "the moon under her feet," which might indicate one's dominion over the sense of time. Mrs. Eddy tells us (ibid., pp. 598, 599), "Time is a mortal thought, the divisor of which is the solar year." And she continues, "Eternity is God's measurement of Soul-filled years." To think rightly is essential to a more harmonious aspect of life, that we may realize the all-presence of good here and now, without any time element to cause delay. From that spiritual standpoint we see also that there is no element of mortality, no deterioration, no separation; for all is Mind, continuity forever declaring the wholeness of being, timeless joy, the perfection of beauty.

In spiritual reality we are immortal; and when this is fully understood, time is no longer.