In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy compares the physical healings of Christian Science with those of Christ Jesus and his followers and states that they result from the operation of God, or divine Principle. She says of these works in the Preface (p. xi), "They are the sign of Immanuel, or 'God with us,'—a divine influence ever present in human consciousness and repeating itself, coming now as was promised aforetime,

It is the "divine influence," which is never absent from human consciousness, that lends dignity to human existence, and one's dignity is in the measure of his reflection of Spirit's nature and power. This "divine influence" has ever shone with varying degrees of clarity in the lives of those who have discerned the presence and reality of God, and who have been conscious of God's recognition of, and love for, His own. What appears humanly as conscience and moral rectitude actually evidences spiritual consciousness—real selfhood, which is intact, but which needs to be fully revealed to mankind.

Man, Mind's reflection, can never be completely concealed to human sense. Neither the corporeal senses nor their fleshly concept, neither race, nor creed, nor personal aberrations, can entirely hide the individualized manifestation of Life, which everyone's existence hints. There is but one good, and the good expressed in human consciousness, however slight it may seem, is God-derived and immutable. It witnesses to the immortal unity of God and man, and deserves deep respect.

Christian Science teaches mankind to deny the mortal sense of existence, and thus to lift the condemnation of the false accuser—the belief that man is limited and evil and subject to death—from the human sense of self. Mrs. Eddy speaks of this process of spiritual liberation in "Unity of Good," where she says (p. 25): "This denial enlarges the human intellect by removing its evidence from sense to Soul, and from finiteness into infinity. It honors conscious human individuality by showing God as its source."

It is the good expressed in human character that binds humanity to divinity and opens the way for full realization of man as he ever is in Science—God's likeness. Error's seeming admixture of false consciousness can never change the fact that every individual actually has his source in God, divine Principle. The least unveiling of spiritual reality through Science assures one's liberty to gain full access to the treasures of infinity, and it fosters self-respect.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul besought his friends to be worthy of their Christian calling and to use the gifts of Christ according to the measure of their receiving, "till we all come," he wrote, "in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

It is Christ which reveals man as God's perfect son, for Christ is God's ideal and ever acts to enlarge the evidence of divine reality to human consciousness. To lump one's entire human personality in the sum of illusion and deny its existence is not Christian Science, for Science never fails to acknowledge the "divine influence ever present in human consciousness," an influence which does exist and which is as indestructible as Deity.

In the first three questions and answers in the chapter of Science and Health called "Recapitulation," our Leader states the Principle which underlies the practice of Christian Science. Following this she presents the human problem, which the understanding of Principle and its idea is destined to solve —the problem of duality, which has troubled logical thinkers for countless generations. To the question (p. 466), "What are spirits and souls?" Mrs. Eddy replies in part, "To human belief, they are personalities constituted of mind and matter, life and death, truth and error, good and evil; but these contrasting pairs of terms represent contraries, as Christian Science reveals, which neither dwell together nor assimilate." Then she proceeds to distinguish reality from unreality and describes Science as the fan which separates the chaff from the wheat.

It is the mortal elements in human consciousness—such false qualities as hate, selfishness, and fear—that must be destroyed, and not the energies of goodness, understanding, and truthfulness, which emanate from God. Christian Science explains all evil as the belief in a mind which is not God, and it overcomes sickness and sin by revealing Deity as the only Mind and man as Mind's idea. The student of this Science gradually becomes aware of his real status as a divine idea as he abandons the belief that he is an independent mind and has a will of his own and yields to the full control of God's will, which ever governs His spiritual expression.

The Master proved that the good he embodied could not be destroyed. The divine Father eternally preserves the qualities of integrity and love which He evolves, and He preserves the identity through which these qualities are manifested. The persecutors of Christ Jesus were so blinded by the evil beliefs which impelled their deeds that they could not fathom the tender humility of him who could say (Luke 23:34), "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." But it was the power of that unheeded love, hidden to their carnality, that made it possible for the Master again to walk the earth in the sublime dignity of Christ, his immortal selfhood. It was the divinity of good that lifted Christ Jesus above humanity in full proof that life is not in matter and that man is constituted of love and truth, which are immortal.

Christian Science, redeems human consciousness by enlarging its good and diminishing its evil—by bringing to light the Christ-man, God's idea, and by destroying the false sense of being, which has no substance or reality. It is destined to lead those who grasp its great significance to the full coincidence of the human and the divine, when the mortal sense is completely abandoned and existence is seen as spiritual alone. Then the obscuring mist of human limitation must inevitably disappear and incorporeal man, whose source is Spirit, be found to be as ever present, and perfect as his Maker.

Helen Wood Bauman