Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he Who finds himself, loses his misery.

Many philosophers and sages have proffered similar advice to this of Matthew Arnold's, but it remained for Mary Baker Eddy to reveal the wisdom to profit by it. In her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." she writes (pp. 515,516): "Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the refection to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God."

We look to astronomical science to tell us what is true about the universe and learn to our profit that the earth is not flat but spherical. As we look to Christian Science to discover what is true of ourselves, we learn that man is not material and imperfect, but spiritual and perfect, the image and likeness of God, endowed with dominion and subject only to God's law of health, holiness, progress, and freedom. We are taught that God, as divine Principle, governs and controls man; that, as Mind, He motivates, inspires, enlightens, and guides him: that, as Soul, He bestows upon him dignity beauty, and serenity; that, as Spirit. He imparts purity, peace, health, and holiness; that, as Life, He gives vigor and immortality; that, as Truth, He confers integrity and uprightness, soundness and stability; and that, as Love, He tenderly enfolds, companions, supplies, and satisfies. Christian Science bases its authority for these statements on the Bible, especially the first chapter of Genesis.

But what of that personality, or self, which seems subject to all the vicissitudes of mortal experience? Christian Science avers it is no more real than is the identity we seem to have in our dreams. The dreamer and the dream are one— the dream. The mortal self and its mortal experiences are one—mortal mind. Material existence seems real, but is not. On page 525 of Science and Health we find this standard by which to distinguish between the real and the unreal: "Everything good or worthy, God made. Whatever is valueless or baneful, He did not make.—hence its unreality." And through the study and application of Christian Science we learn to eliminate the valueless and baneful from our experience by discarding or barring it from our thinking and identifying ourselves with the spiritually real and true.

We need to watch lest we accept the world's appraisal of us, together with its predictions, its lies of limitation, inhibition, prohibition, heredity, and so on. So-called mortal mind is prone to declare, "He's a chip of the old block," and then label one with dispositional traits, sometimes good, sometimes bad; with a strong or weak constitution; and even with mental and physical eccentricities.

Christian Science, on the other hand, bids us heed Isaiah's words (51:1), "Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn." It urges us to awaken from this dream sense of existence and look again and yet again into the mirror of divine Science. Then we see that the illusory mist of mortal mind called matter cannot obscure the health, holiness, completeness, radiant beauty, and grandeur of true selfhood. These qualities shine forth, not through matter or by means of it but, regardless of its apparent reality, in obedience to God's law of reflection.

Looking into the mirror of divine Science, we find our spiritual selfhood, not separate from God, but forever one with Him. This is real self-consciousness, and it is forever free from all the impediments imposed by the belief that man is a mortal. This exclusive consciousness of good precludes the seeming manifestation of evil.

The following experience may help to clarify this matter of finding, freeing, and being one's true self. A student of Christian Science had battled long and futilely with a problem which the medical profession would have diagnosed as gallstones. She realized that the difficulty was primarily mental rebellion against what seemed hard, implacable circumstances. She endeavored to apply her understanding of Christian Science, but she was somewhat like the individual the Apostle James described when he wrote (1:23, 24), "If any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was."

She too forgot what manner of man she was; forgot that she was, in reality, a perfect reflection, or idea, of God, harmoniously related to all other ideas, surrounded by God's loving care and included in His all-wise plan. Instead, she often thought of herself as a helpless mortal involved in difficult circumstances. In short, she failed to heed the concluding words of the apostle, "Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."

One night, in great pain and very much discouraged, she called a Christian Science practitioner for help. She ceased struggling with the problem and trusted entirely in God, and upon retiring immediately fell asleep. She dreamed that she was dramatizing the sad story of Enoch Arden. In her dream she tried to change the plot, the circumstances, and the characters so as to bring the story to a happy conclusion for everyone, but in vain. She awakened in the morning completely free. More important, she was awake spiritually.

Almost her first thought was this loved passage from Science and Health (p. 14): "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth." This set her thoughts to work in a spiritual direction and led her to reason as follows: We never need to solve the illusory problems within our dreams. We need only to awaken! And the so-called problems that torment us when we are apparently wide-awake are but "such stuff as dreams are made on," as Shakespeare expresses it. To look upon them as realities instead of illusions is to make of their solution an arduous task.

Our need is to awaken spiritually to the true consciousness of ourselves as children of God. We must bend our efforts not toward changing other people but our own thinking, keeping it ever true to divine Principle. We never need wait for circumstances to change in order to be happy, for fortuitous circumstances and happy events await joyous spiritual awakening. Truly it is divine Love that awakens us and frees us, dissolves the false sense of self and reveals the true. God's unthwartable purpose for each one is that he be Love's radiant reflection.

The student's healing was complete and permanent. Moreover, through consecrated study of the Bible together with the Christian Science textbook, she learned more and more how to be her true self and how to claim man's everlasting birthright of spiritual enlightenment which can never be invaded by the unhappy dream of discord and disease.

If ever our efforts to prove the healing power of Christian Science seem unavailing, let us look into the mirror of divine Science, see and accept at once the gloriously free, untrammeled, spotless spiritual individuality which each one derives from God, the Father of all. This does not mean that Christian Science disregards the human need for healing, redemption, liberation. It simply signifies that through its teachings Paul's words to the Corinthians become practical and demonstrable (II Cor. 3:18). "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

Through the revelation of Christian Science we learn that as we perceive the perfection of God, and man in His image and likeness, and make that perfection the basis of our thinking and acting, there will be manifest in our experience less and less materiality with its wants and woes. The material will gradually give place to the spiritual and finally disappear.

First to drop away are the mental, physical, and moral abnormalities, which surrender to normal, harmonious states of mind. Indeed, holding fast to the spiritual, eternal truth of all things, we shall find the dream sense of existence improving; and so it will continue until we are fully awake to real life in Spirit.

Does someone perhaps feel that this is too good to be true, that a demonstrable understanding of Christian Science is beyond his grasp, that freedom, health, and harmony may be attained by others but not, for some inscrutable reason, by him? Let such a one take heart! With the aid of the Concordances to our beloved Leader's writings let him seek out those passages containing the two little words "Dear reader." He will find therein tender comfort and wise counsel.

The writer did this and was richly rewarded when it dawned upon her thought, "Why, Mrs. Eddy means me!" Our beloved Leader means you too. So then, awake! Look into the mirror of divine Science! Then in the words of a loved hymn you can say (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 16).