The Bible and the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, teach one God or creator and one universe or effect, which is motivated by the law, or will, of God. They also teach that God is Spirit, and that His universe and His law, or will, are like Him in essence, wholly spiritual and immortal.

Whatever the mortal, material senses bear witness to is a mortal, material misconception of Spirit and its manifestation. Mortals term this mortal mind concept the material world. In sleep a human being may entertain dream concepts of the supposititious temporal world. During the period of time he is asleep and perhaps dreaming, he is wholly oblivious of certain material objects and things which in his waking hours he considers to be his most cherished possessions. Instinctively the dream concepts of a sleeper, who has been brought up in the school of material sense, appear to be material. The dream naturally calls itself a dreamer. The dreamer entertains only that which is latent in dream consciousness. To the dreamer anything above, beyond, apart from, or outside of his dream is an impossibility. To believe otherwise would interrupt or end the dream and banish its dreamer. With the sleeper's awakening, the dream and its dreamer disappear.

Awake, the human being realizes that his entire dream impression was simply falsely mental, a delusion of a deceived and deceiving sense. Because dreams are humanly acknowledged to be unreal and untrue, hallucinations, one readily understands that he cannot take the dream illusion which he entertained as his while asleep with him into his daily human experience.

Awake, unenlightened human beings blindly accept material sense testimony regarding cause, effect, and law at its face value, in much the same way as sleeping dreamers accept their dream sense. Christian Science has revealed the fact that this perverted mortal, material sense testimony constitutes the Adam-dream.

In the inevitable unfolding order of progress Spiritward reason, revelation, and demonstration have quickened human consciousness. No longer do human beings depend so much upon the material senses for their concept of man and God's law. Prophets and seers glimpsed the truth that reality is ever spiritual and immortal, and Christ Jesus confirmed it. The second appearing of the Christ in the Holy Comforter, that "Spirit of truth" leading into all truth foretold by the Master, was revealed to mankind by Mrs. Eddy in what she named Christian Science.

The rules and laws pertaining to this Science of being have been stated and proved in numerous individual instances. To expose the Adam-dream in all its errors of commission and omission for what it really is, delusion, divine Science needs only to become more universally understood and practiced. Science explains the impossibility either of an absence of intelligence or of a presence of its opposite, nonintelligence. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science writes in Science and Health (p. 249), "God never slumbers, and His likeness never dreams."

It must be plain to thinkers that the waking dreamer cannot, any more than the sleeping dreamer, take his mortal, material waking-dream concepts of being, substance, and power with him into the realm of the divinely mental and spiritual. There is, to one who has eyes to see and ears to hear, a striking resemblance between the Adam or day dream of human experience and the sleeping dream. To spiritual sense both are unreal and untrue. Viewed humanly, both have beginning and ending. The true concept of reality is spiritual and eternal, without beginning and without end. Matter is the identical stuff, the states and stages of objectified mortal thought, which sleeping dreams are made of. Neither dreamer can take his dream accumulation of variable, finite, material belief in experiences, wealth, and substance, however much he cherishes it, with him into the realm of immortality. It exists only in the false and fleeting so-called dream consciousness and disappears with its disappearance.

There is also a pronounced difference between these two dream states. In the admitted sleeping dream the dreamer is dealing with a state or condition of thought wholly subjective to his own individual human consciousness. It is a dream within a dream. In the Adam-dream, prevalently imagined to be existence itself, mortals are dealing with both objectified individual and collective mortal, material consciousness. In its specious attempt to counterfeit infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation mortal mind claims to be one and all. Thus in belief a whole race of finite mortals is participating in one mass illusion, delusion, of material sense. The sleeping dream is wholly the product of individual self-deception, while the daydream is the product of both individual and collective deception.

In both instances the individual has a vital part to perform in breaking the illusive bonds—fleeting pleasures, sin, disease, and death—that bind and fetter him. In addition to being just to himself he must learn also to be helpful to others and never do aught that might lead another astray. No one else can do another's awakening for him. Christian Science, the divine Comforter leading into all truth, is here and now available to one and all alike. It is quickening, awakening, and transforming the consciousness of those who are receptive. It is enabling them to behold error as error and then to repent and reform. Nothing but Christ, Truth, fully exposes error as error and so destroys it, that is, makes nothing of it, because the allness of Truth, including its manifestation, has been perceived. Our Leader defines "Christ" in Science and Health (p. 583) as, "The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error."

Jesus of Nazareth illustrated tangibly and practically the spiritual influence which the eternal Christ, Truth, exerts in individual human consciousness. He questioned his disciples to find out their estimate of him and his healing works. Simon replied for his brethren (Matt. 16:16), "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." The Master evidently approved the answer, saying, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." Thus we learn that the eternal spiritual facts of being, which flesh and blood have never known and can never reveal, but which our Father-Mother God ever knows and ever reveals to individuals whose consciousness has been spiritualized, can be gained while still on this plane of existence and throughout eternity retained by them. Reason and revelation make plain that in the ascension Christ Jesus retained all the spiritual ideas which God had revealed to him while here in this world. He is our Way-shower. As he did, so must we do.

The master Christian so lived the Christ, Truth, that the title of the Christ was bestowed upon him. He further commended the spiritual receptivity and comprehension evidenced by his disciple Simon. He bestowed upon him the spiritually endearing term of "Peter," derived from the Greek word petros, meaning rock or stone, and declared (Matt 16:18, 19): "Upon this rock [this spiritual understanding of being] I will build my church. ... I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Could anyone ask for a fuller or more definite answer than this as to what those who experience the new birth here can do with what comes to them through its spiritual revelation?

Material existence is the Adam-dream from which mankind can be, and eventually must be, spiritually awakened. This is indeed true salvation, being saved from entertaining dreams, delusions of mistaken sense, but roused to spiritual awareness through divine Mind's clear revealings. The loss of a dream, an illusion, through the revelation of Truth is certainly a case where loss is gain.

Christian Science explains that human beings do not gain the real or true concept of anyone or of anything unless and until God, divine Mind, reveals it to them. Then all that they have spiritually demonstrated and known of divine reality is theirs forever and evidences their true and eternal being.