How far away is reality with its safety and satisfaction? Only the distance that lies between unillumined and spiritually illumined understanding. Mary Baker Eddy saw that this reality is at hand and that it will bless mankind. She saw too how readily all may know and share its harmony, for says she:

"May the divine light of Christian Science that lighteth every enlightened thought illumine your faith and understanding, exclude all darkness or doubt, and signal the perfect path wherein to walk, the perfect Principle whereby to demonstrate the perfect man and the perfect law of God" (The First Church of Christ. Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 187).

So as men and nations accept the teachings of Christian Science, the human mind begins to part with its limitations. Then do individuals commence to recognize the universe more nearly as it is, and to envisage the health, abundance, and opportunity which are the legitimate birthright of man. Thereby do men and women gain glimpses of that ultimate perfection which characterizes reality; for it would be a bold and mistaken man who would argue that God's creation falls short of perfection.

Biology believes that man began as a low, simple form of life in an inconceivably remote past, and that throughout the centuries he has been toiling upward toward a completion obtainable, if at all, in a future still dim and distant. Scholastic theology teaches that man began perfect, only thereafter to fall through disobedience, and that now his chief concern is to recapture the perfect status he formerly enjoyed. Christian Science insists that spiritual man true selfhood, was never less than perfect, never less than an expression of eternal Life: and that perfection is man's genuine measure now. The reputed fall is a myth.

When it is recognized that God is Mind and Spirit, as Scripture and Christian Science agree, it must be conceded that man in his true make-up, is mental and spiritual. It is of spiritual man, in His likeness, that perfection is predicated. Confessedly man conceived materially is lamentably imperfect. Happily there is no such man. For there cannot be two men, one material and the other spiritual. What is called material man is no more than the human mind's mistaken sense of man; for the human mind, itself limited and material, necessarily entertains a limited and material sense of man and of the universe.

Hence the importance, in Science practice, of insisting at the outset upon present perfection, perfect God and perfect man, regardless of what the human mind or corporeal sense may testify to the contrary, doing so intelligently and gratefully. In this mental attitude, which is the effectual prayer of the righteous man, the individual begins to gain the true sense of self and lose the false. In other words, he commences to part with his heaviness and infirmities and to experience more of the confidence and freedom which inalienably are his.

Thus does he put off the old man mortal and circumscribed, and put on the new man, immortal and unconfined. This is an undertaking to which every individual may direct himself, indeed to which he must direct himself if he would work out his salvation. "Ye shall know the truth," promises Christ Jesus, "and the truth shall make you free."

In this connection Mary Baker Eddy expounds, on page 185 of her "Miscellaneous Writings": "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness. There is no other way under heaven whereby we can be saved, and man be clothed with might, majesty, and immortality."

Fear, danger, bondage—all grow out of the supposition that man is a material creature inhabiting a material universe. Accident, illness, discord are unrealities of the mesmeric mental realm in which man and things are erroneously supposed to be stern and resistant, that is material. Freedom and safety, on the other hand, are assured to spiritual man inhabiting the boundless space of Mind; and, genuinely, every individual is spiritual. There can be no dangers and impedimenta to him, but certain security and inextinguishable existence. Here is the truth which protects one who realizes it from disaster and destruction.

To affirm that man and the universe are spiritual is to challenge the validity of matter. Yet, to question the reality of matter, whether it seems to appear in the human body or in the external world, is not to refute the existence of man the universe, or the things therein; it is only to refute the accuracy of the benighted concept of them, because matter, far from being the formidable substance it seems, is only the human mind's limited sense of things. In disposing of matter, therefore, we do not combat an entity but correct a mistaken concept. And we do so through exchanging limited corporeal sense for spiritual sense, full and unrestricted.

Putting matter in its most favorable light, we may say that what corporeal sense vaguely sees in the landscape, tree, bird, or man is not the actual but a symbol of the true and genuine. And as corporeal sense yields to spiritual sense, the symbols disappear and the stately structure of reality stand forth. To dim corporeal sense the world may seem dull and drab, a place of strife and privation. To spiritual sense the earth is appareled in celestial light, a place of peace and joy and uninterrupted usefulness.

Says Mrs. Eddy, on page 573 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "The Revelator was on our plane of existence, while yet beholding what the eye cannot see,—that which is invisible to the uninspired thought. This testimony of Holy Writ sustains the fact in Science, that the heavens and earth to one human consciousness, that consciousness which God bestows, are spiritual, while to another, the unillumined human mind, the vision is material. This shows unmistakably that what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness." Reality, with resulting safety and satisfaction and emancipation, is therefore at hand, as stated at the outset, and our realization of this fact is dependent only on our awakened understanding.

Peter V. Ross