When our Master, Christ Jesus, did his glorious healing works, he proved that the understanding of man's spiritual perfection removes the illusion of disease and error and brings to human apprehension the harmony of man in the Science of being. Spiritual healing is the demonstration of the truth of being. In place of mortal mind's false concept, the divine idea is proved to be present and supreme.

When Jesus healed a blind man, he did much more than destroy belief in blindness; he emphatically demonstrated the unchangeable spiritual faculty of vision. Jesus said to the blind, "Receive thy sight." It was as much as to say: "You have sight. Receive what is always yours and what is already here. Receive thy sight—already possessed, because already created." And he who was blind received—accepted without delay or argument—his sight.

Spiritual faculties do not depend upon matter for their expression; they are expressions of Soul, God. Jesus was not changing matter to heal blindness. He ignored matter as power, reality, or person, and insisted on the Science of man's being as all that could be expressed in man or as man. Thus he showed that the spiritual faculties of being are present and permanent, that real sight never departed from man, and that the human need was to have this spiritual fact revealed.

A clear and helpful statement of Christ-healing is made on page 190 of "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mary Baker Eddy, where she elucidates the statement in Luke: "And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake." Our Leader writes, "In this case it was the evil of dumbness, an error of material sense, cast out by the spiritual truth of being; namely, that speech belongs to Mind instead of matter, and the wrong power, or the lost sense, must yield to the right sense, and exist in Mind."

The Science of being reveals the fact that man's Godlike perfection has always existed. It shows that man's real spiritual being does not blend with the human concept, but that the spiritual understanding of the Science of being displaces erring mortal views. It discloses that man does not have two states of being, one mortal and the other immortal; but that the spiritual is the real and the material unreal. But has not humanity been in darkness on this point? That is why at first it may seem difficult to accept the Science of being until thought is better educated along spiritual lines. But the further one pursues the study of Christian Science, the more readily is the Science of being accepted and consistently demonstrated in daily living.

The Science of being compels us to know man rightly. Even to begin to consider the perfect Science of man's being will start an unfoldment in thought of the infinite capacities of man governed by God, of the harmony, completeness, and perfection that always belong to him. Thus we begin to identify ourselves with what we truly aspire to be. We live our thoughts. Spiritualized thinking results in spiritualized living. Knowing God results in being good. Consciousness of harmony, peace, purity, substance, leads to the externalization of these qualities in our experience.

Holding in thought man's glorious spiritual being, we have the right to know and declare: "I am spiritually complete as a reflection of the Supreme Being. All that constitutes my individual being has its origin, activity, and support in Soul, God. Consciousness of my real spiritual being is my only true consciousness; therefore, I know my health is unfailing, my supply unlimited, my activity successful, for God governs me and I dwell in the kingdom of God." It is divinely natural that one should know this, for God's man lives as the expression of Life, his wisdom is the reflection of Mind, his acts are the manifestation of Truth.

In the Science of being, man is not immersed in problems, beset by fear, taunted by doubt, or thwarted by failure. Through knowing man's spiritual selfhood, Christ Jesus was enabled to face the errors of human experience in the understanding that they were illusions, hence false conditions to be disbelieved and destroyed. Jesus knew that spiritual man has never lost his harmony in the Science of being, and he could therefore unsee the material illusion of disease, sin, and death as illegitimate, and as powerless to enforce its claims when the scientific truth of man's being is understood. Jesus' works proved that healing is the evidence that divine Principle governs man; that healing is proof of God's presence, and that divine Love provides the way for the correction of all error. From the richness of Spirit comes the fullness of healing; from the spiritual abundance of good comes the evidence of supply.

Since human consciousness does not yet understand the completeness of the Science of being as did Christ Jesus, a certain amount of spiritual healing at present seems to be along the line of improving human beliefs, the essential first step towards a fuller spiritual understanding and practice. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 296 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "An improved belief is one step out of error, and aids in taking the next step and in understanding the situation in Christian Science." We may therefore rejoice that through Christian Science we can take the intelligent footsteps out of error toward the glorious goal of achieving man's real being. We make spiriutal truth practical proportionately as we correct error with the perfect rule of the Science of being.

Spiritual sense alone understands spiritual truth, and spiritual sense utilized results in demonstration. Material sense disappears in proportion as spiritual sense bears witness to God as the source of true wisdom, impulse, motive, and desire. As one progresses in his demonstration of Christian Science, he learns to lean not on his own personality or human intellect, but upon God, Mind, the source and cause of all creation.

Demonstration is the manifestation of spiritual law, the visible proof of God's presence and power. In scientific demonstration one rises from the belief of a false mortal sense to the understanding and proof of the spiritual truth regarding man. Our individual demonstration of true being is not in concepts of matter; it is attained as we rise out of the belief that man is in matter, through the spiritual understanding that man is purely spiritual and always in the presence of Spirit. From the human viewpoint, we come to the recognition of the forever reality of our spiritual being and forsake the material concept.

Our Master ascended purely by recognizing and demonstrating spiritual life as apart from the human concept. Jesus' spiritual understanding of his at-one-ment with the Father reveals the spiritual atmosphere in which his demonstrations were made. He constantly maintained the fact that he and the Father were one. Throughout his human experience he increasingly demonstrated the superiority of Spirit over matter, and advanced out of a material sense of being to the understanding that being is spiritual. Thus his clear knowledge of the Science of being erased every false concept.

Spiritualization of thought and acceptance without reservation of the fact that man is now intact and perfect in the Science of being set us free to overcome mortal beliefs and inherit our God-made true selfhood. Wrote John in the book of Revelation, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." What a glorious and profitable work is this overcoming, which brings the inheritance of all good! To recognize and prove that we are the sons of God is indeed the Science of being in its fullness.