Editorial April 15, 1950 Issue

CHRISTIAN REQUIREMENTS

Helen Wood Bauman

Demonstrations of Christian Science do not merely happen. There is not the slightest element of chance about them, for they are manifestations of divine law, and divine law acts with an exactness that no human power can match. In much the same way that the mathematician knows what to expect when he follows certain numerical procedures, so the Christian Scientist knows that healing is inevitable when he fulfills the Christianly scientific requirements for the demonstration of God's law. In some way, consciously or unconsciously, all who have benefited by Science have met those requirements. Something about their thinking, their character, has led them to yield to the presence of Spirit and its idea—the presence that dispels the mortal illusions which seem to hide God's spiritual realm.

Through Christian Science, mankind learns how to gain the Father's blessing unfailingly. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 367), "This Science requires man to be honest, just, pure; to love his neighbor as himself, and to love God supremely." These Christian characteristics and others which the Master stressed in the Sermon on the Mount are real and God-derived. They prove the presence of Love's image, which is tributary to God alone. When they are cherished and understood as the elemental substance of man, they dispel the shadows of sickness and evil that darken human experience; they destroy the illusion of mortal manhood and evidence real, undefiled manhood shining forth. Without the Christian elements that comprise man in God's likeness there can be no healing, for healing is the awakening of human consciousness to the presence of God's perfect man.

If Christian qualities of thought seem to be lacking, Science reveals the Principle and rule by which they may be brought to light as inherent forces of man's being. It leads humanity to grasp the fact and declare firmly that God, or Principle, is cause, and that He expresses His divine nature through man, His effect; that man is formed, not of flesh and evil qualities, but of such spiritual components as intelligence, nobility, justice, joy, and integrity—divine energies which emanate from God in constant and untrammeled freedom. Science instructs those who seek Truth to identify themselves as God's conscious, incorporeal ideas and to give up the mortal conviction that they are physical personalities, often enslaved by animal instincts, self-interest, fear, and disease.

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