Article May 24, 1947 Issue

A Right Sense of Being

CAROLINE B. WINGERT

A Right sense of God, man, and creation is essential to present well-being. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 489), "A wrong sense of God, man, and creation is non-sense, want of sense." In contrast to the uselessness of a wrong sense of God and creation Mrs. Eddy thus emphasizes the potency of and need for the right sense of God and man (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."

If we spiritually understand the Scriptures, we acknowledge but one infinite, omnipresent God, the God whom Jesus declared to be Spirit, Like produces like; thus the only rational conclusion we can reach is that man, created in God's likeness, must be spiritual. Again, if we accept God as Love, we must accept His likeness, man, as loving and lovable. And since God is Mind, His idea, man, consciously and actively expresses every quality of this Mind. Then, are not "the beliefs of material sense" to the contrary well described by our Leader as "a bald imposition"?

More than twenty years ago a close friend of the writer's was permanently healed in Christian Science of a malignant growth which a medical doctor had pronounced cancer. What actually occurred in this healing was that a true sense of being was realized. The incorporeal, spiritual nature of man was seen so clearly that a false sense of man as a combination of matter and Spirit was obliterated. Sick matter was not made into well matter, but a false sense of substance was replaced by the true sense; and the recognition of true substance as Spirit, Mind, and man as its idea was evidenced in a healthy body. This verity was clearly realized (ibid., p. 301): "As God is substance and man is the divine image and likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only the substance of good, the substance of Spirit, not matter."

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