If you would make one supreme effort to reform the world, reform yourself," counseled a well-known lecturer. To the student of present-day needs there is great encouragement in this simple advice to look within if we would solve humanity's problems. To learn to keep a vigilant watch over false tendencies by guarding thought against all that is unlovely or burdensome is a task at hand, an immediate opportunity.

He who studies the lifework of Jesus of Nazareth becomes aware that he exercised a power, a spiritual ascendancy, which transformed human experience. His discernment of reality enabled him quickly to detect and reject that which did not measure up to the divine standard. It was Jesus' spiritual understanding dominating his character which enabled him to perform his mission and made his influence on human history immortal. He exhibited an apartness from and a dominion over human circumstances; so-called laws of nature, worn-out traditions, and material limitations were set aside by him who moved calmly and steadily forward on the road of spiritual victories to his own resurrection or victory over death, and then to his complete ascension above matter and its conditions.

Jesus' life blessed all who came willingly and humbly within the radius of his teaching, and it furnishes a model for all who desire that their human life may be transfigured and exalted. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:2). Here is profound and far-reaching admonition from Paul, whose life bore witness to the transforming power of Truth.

To one Scientist the word transform brought much illumination, for she perceived that if the Science of Life which she was studying and practicing was to have the dynamic and far-reaching results which she desired, she must let her nature be transformed. The groundwork of speech, thought, action, must be changed from the human to the divine. The loved words in Isaiah (55:9) took on new inspiration: "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Here was the voice of God speaking to the human consciousness of the things of God to transform thought by accepting the spiritual ideas of being with which divine Mind constitutes the only real consciousness of man.

Turning to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, she read under the marginal heading "Heaven's sentinel" the following passage (p. 49): "Forsaken by all whom he had blessed, this faithful sentinel of God at the highest post of power, charged with the grandest trust of heaven, was ready to be transformed by the renewing of the infinite Spirit." With new understanding she saw how clearly Mrs. Eddy foreshadows in these words the ideal attitude of thought, the willingness and readiness to be transformed.

When in the last century our Leader revealed through her life and writings the scientific application of the spiritual truths given by Christ Jesus to the world, she made available certain means for the betterment of the human race. Heretofore personal fortunes and lives had been devoted to special causes, and philanthropic efforts on both a small and a large scale had contributed to the alleviation of various problems; but the fact of man's original perfection and spiritual heritage had remained undiscerned and undemonstrated. Consequently the individual's emancipation from the fetters of matter beliefs, from false education, and from what Mrs. Eddy has named "the ghastly farce of material existence" had hardly begun. "It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce of material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, which really attest the divine origin and operation of Christian Science" (ibid., p. 272).

Pondering the illumination thus received, the student was helped to understand how to distinguish between thoughts that are of God and those that deny Him by the following passage from Science and Health (p. 462): "Anatomy, when conceived of spiritually, is mental self-knowledge, and consists in the dissection of thoughts to discover their quality, quantity, and origin. Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question. This branch of study is indispensable to the excision of error."

We need to guard well the doorway to consciousness that the angel messages of God may find ready welcome, for through them we shall uninterruptedly perform our various tasks in obedience to divine direction and spiritualize our concept of the universe and man. Allowing ourselves "to be transformed by the renewing of the infinite Spirit," we shall lighten humanity's burden by seeing that its needs are fundamentally spiritual and that the healing capacity of thoughts higher than its thoughts is unlimited. In this way will individual and collective experience be transformed through the operation of Truth, according to the divine plan.