RESURRECTION

PAT PHILIP ADKINS

"Now is the time for resurrection." This is the joyful message of Christian Science. While Christendom in general is occupying itself with the pros and cons of a future salvation, Christian Science is urging its students to prove the practical validity of St. Paul's statement (II Cor. 6:2), "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." That Christian Scientists are responding to this call is evident from the carefully verified testimonies of healing published in the Christian Science periodicals and from those which may be heard in Churches of Christ, Scientist, during Wednesday testimony meetings.

Christian Science makes resurrection an immediate possibility for everyone by revealing its wholly mental nature. Mary Baker Eddy defines "resurrection'" on page 593 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" as follows: "Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding."

It is the ideas that tend to spiritualize thought as opposed to all that would materialize it which evidence the resurrection. Christian Science teaches that God is Life; that He is Spirit, all substance, irresistible Truth; that He is Love, the divine Principle of all real being. This Science teaches that man is spiritual, the image and likeness of God, Godlike in every quality, that man, the expression of God's being, is pure, complete, eternal, sinless, diseaseless, and deathless. These truths, when understood, enable us to experience the resurrection.

Just as the faintest ray begins to replace the darkest night with the light of day, so our individual resurrection experience often begins with the dawning of one simple spiritual idea in human consciousness. Light, however, is potent in any degree; and as each ray of light effortlessly replaces its equivalent of darkness, so each spiritual idea, brought into focus through spiritual understanding. replaces material belief, regardless of the supposed tenacity of that belief. For instance, understanding the spiritual idea of health is a divinely natural way to dissolve material beliefs of disease and to experience resurrection.

Scientifically speaking, the human body is but the externalized expression of human thought. Therefore, what appears as bodily improvement is the natural fruitage of our spiritual growth, or mental resurrection. God, or Spirit, is All-in-all, and matter is nothing. This is the underlying truth enabling us to experience resurrection.

Scholastic theology and material medicine have joined hands in the hopeless venture to account for matter. But Christian Science deals with facts. And since all facts are spiritual, it does not attempt to explain the existence of matter any more than a mathematician would attempt to explain the actuality of a numerical mistake. Christian Science teaches that the only fact concerning matter is its unreality. Therefore, even in the apparent presence of sin or disease, a Christian Science practitioner does not believe that he has a sinful or diseased person to heal. He sees that he only has a false belief of sin or disease to dispose of, and he dispels the belief by realizing the allness of God, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter.

The impersonal Truth underlying the Master's theology inspired him to make this prediction concerning his followers (Mark 16: 17, 18): "These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

The Master's prophecy is being fulfilled in Christian Science today. As St. Paul said to the Corinthians, "Behold, now is the accepted time," so Christian Science is telling us, "Behold, now is the time of resurrection." Through resurrection we gain our complete ascendancy over the aggressive suggestions that man is ever less than the son of God. We know that our spiritual identity is permanently maintained as the individualized expression of the perfect God.

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