Editorial April 8, 1950 Issue

THE CERTAINTY OF HUMAN SALVATION

George Channing

The certainty of human salvation lies in the fact that spiritual ideas, permanent and perfect, are present in the immediate consciousness of every individual here and now. Material notions, seeming hypnotically to be also present, deceive only themselves and do not in any way vitiate or affect the presence of spiritual ideas. Spiritual ideas and material notions do not dwell together, and do not mix, because material notions do not truly exist. It is the false and seeming dwelling together of spiritual ideas and material notions that is named, for convenience, human mind, or the mind of a so-called human being.

Spiritual ideas appearing in the mentality of a human being are definitely labeled in Christian Science as one phase of human consciousness, while material notions seeming so to appear are labeled as another. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, states this truth clearly over and over again in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." for instance, after pointing out that John, the Revelator, was still on the plane of human existence when he beheld some aspects of spiritual reality which material sense cannot see, she writes (p. 573), "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." Note that Mrs. Eddy speaks of "one human consciousness, that consciousness which God bestows," and then of "another, the unillumined human mind."

Such precise statement should clarify and dissolve all misunderstanding regarding the alleged perfectibility of human thought and experience. In reality there is no human thought, no human experience, and therefore there is no opportunity to perfect either. There is individualized spiritual consciousness, by which God, the one and only Mind, expresses Himself, and this consciousness is already perfect. Being one and only and infinite, the divine Mind renders impossible the existence of either a mortal mind or a human mind. Since all that is real of what appears as human is the emanation of divine, eternal Spirit, the awakening of every individual to his divine status as man, the son of God, is not subject to successful prevention. The progressive realization of this is to human sense manifest as salvation.

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