Many people carry through their earthly experience the scars of the past. These are sometimes evidenced in bodily blemishes and disfigurements, the result of sickness or accident. More often, however, the scars are mental, the result of inharmonies growing out of discordant human relationships. Yet these scars are unnecessary burdens and blemishes. They are all the result of misconceptions of man's being, and through the faithful practice of Christian Science they can be completely wiped out.

Let us see how this is accomplished. The student of Christian Science acknowledges that there is but one God, divine Mind, who fills all space. In this Mind dwell all the ideas constituting its perfect creation—man and the universe. The one perfect Mind governs all through perfect law and order. Throughout its eternal history neither Mind nor its ideas have had any experience that could leave a scar or blemish. Man's perfection, harmony, and immortality are the gifts of God, and they are forever intact. God's reflection is safe in the unerring intelligence of Mind.

The consistent recognition of man's heavenly nature by the individual begins immediately to eliminate the discordant memories of the past, and with it the mental and physical scars and blemishes that result therefrom. Thus begins the new birth, in which mortality is put off step by step, and man's matchless beauty as the offspring of Soul shines forth in improved mental and physical conditions.

In the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 258), "Never born and never dying, it were impossible for man, under the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his high estate." What is this high estate which belongs to every son of God—to everyone of us? Our Leader tells us that it is spotless purity, because the ideas of the one pure Mind can inherit and express only the unblemished nature of Soul, the original perfection of Spirit.

It is the privilege of each one of us to maintain daily that in reality he has always borne the seal of divinity. Because of this fact we can claim at any moment in our career that we are the ageless, sinless, fearless ideas of the infinite One, and that we have never been touched by any of the false claims of mortality. The prophet Jeremiah wrote of God's eternal care for His perfect ideas (31:3), "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." God never deserts His own. Therefore let us not deny His ever-present sustaining love, but acknowledge our eternal, fadeless perfection as His reflection.

The quickness with which scars may be eliminated from mind and body is illustrated in the experience of a sinful and diseased woman out of whom, it is recorded, Jesus cast "seven devils," or evil conditions. This woman, thoroughly repenting of her sins, was drawn to worship at the feet of the Master in sincere humility. Immediately she received her healing and began to minister to him. Can anyone believe that Mary Magdalene carried around with her any scars of the past? Her mission, from the day of her healing and regeneration, was to follow the Master and to support him in his great work. In a consciousness devoted to this service there are no moments wasted in the sad contemplation of the past, no ill effects from that which was never in reality an element in the life of God's child.

Our Leader has given us in the Manual of The Mother Church an important daily duty. It is interesting that she has included it under the heading of "Easter Observances" (Art. XVII, Sect. 2). She writes, "Those sacred words of our beloved Master, 'Let the dead bury their dead,' and 'Follow thou me,' appeal to daily Christian endeavors for the living whereby to exemplify our risen Lord." Here Mrs. Eddy shows us how to be healed of the scars of the past.

We are to let the dead bury their dead. That is, we are to cease letting thought dwell on the past, with its sorrows, griefs, pains, and deprivations. We are to leave the mortal claims and beliefs of existence in matter to their own extinction. And we are to devote our thought and energy to following the Christ in daily living as exemplified by Jesus. We are to hold fast to the truths of Christian Science, love them, and live them in daily living. And we are to let that Mind be in us which was also shown forth in the career of Jesus.

Thought dwelling on self perpetuates the scars, pains, and disappointments of material living. Thought imbued with the spirit of the Christ, forgetful of self and busy in the service of divine Love, is not troubled with the scars and blemishes of the past. It is identified with Spirit and is whole. Thought imbued with spiritual understanding gives the individual a new life, a new body, a new purpose, a recognition of the kingdom of heaven within, even while one still appears to be dwelling on earth. Let us rejoice in the words of the poet, which present the power of divine Love to eliminate the scars and blemishes of mortality (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 40),

Harold Molter