One great lesson of the Bible is that God dispels misconceptions of Himself and His creation. Step by step Deity's self-revelation has come to mankind, informing them of the true nature of God as Love, Life, Truth, and of man, made in His likeness. To Abram, God gave the assurance (Gen. 15:1), "Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." To Moses came the voice of God declaring Himself to be the great I AM, divine Mind, the one conscious Being. And through Moses, God defined Himself as "a God of truth and without iniquity" (Deut. 32:4), whose work is perfect.

These were tremendous messages which have helped dispel ignorance and the debilitating idolatry that would impel men to fear and worship matter. Spiritual enlightenment has come to mankind with each unfoldment of real being as centuries have multiplied and spiritually minded individuals have proved the truth of God's self-revealments. The climax of this development came with the Master, Christ Jesus, who yielded fully to the self-revelation of God as Spirit and taught God's universal fatherhood and man's inseparable sonship with Him.

The Word of invisible Spirit and the power accompanying it were demonstrated by the Master, who constantly listened for the voice of Truth that he might know the will of God and obey it. Jesus applied the power of God's Word to human experience, subjugating matter and its laws to the will of the Father, which he understood as the one true law of being. He taught us to pray (Matt. 6:10), "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."

Less than a century ago the power of Mind revealed in final statement the truths which dispel ignorance of God and His perfect creation. For Mary Baker Eddy heeded the voice of Truth and discovered the Science which the Master had brought within human ken. She says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 190), "Divine Science demonstrates Mind as dispelling a false sense and giving the true sense of itself, God, and the universe; wherein the mortal evolves not the immortal, nor does the material ultimate in the spiritual; wherein man is coexistent with Mind, and is the recognized reflection of infinite Life and Love."

Here is a correction of the tragic theological mistake which would make man begin in dust and work up painfully to the goal of spiritual life in heaven after death. Science reminds the world of the Scriptural declaration that man is made in God's image, a fact which Jesus proved by healing multitudes of their ills. But the theological error of a man of dust sometimes lingers even in the thought of the Christian Scientist until he identifies himself correctly as Mind's spiritual idea and stops thinking and acting like a mortal with a carnal ancestry of imperfection and limitation.

Rejecting the mortal sense of life becomes spontaneous and effective in healing through Christian Science in the measure that one realizes that the divine Mind and not the human personality dispels this false sense. Power belongs to God alone. The human being must acknowledge and realize the presence of the invisible might of Mind if he would prove the authority of Mind over mortal thought. Then he becomes a transparency for the power which sin, or materialism, and its consequences, ignorance and discord, cannot resist.

Mrs. Eddy says in "Unity of Good" (p. 7), "An incontestable point in divine Science is, that because God is All, a realization of this fact dispels even the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All-Mind."

In applying the Science of Christ to human problems, one finds that the fundamental objective is to rid himself of the false consciousness in which these problems inhere. If one is satisfied to linger in the mortal sense, wishing only that its plagues and disagreeable aspects were removed, he will make little or no progress in Science. And if he believes that he is the power which dispels the false sense, he will meet with frustration. But when he understands the falsity of the illusion of a mind that is not God and the ability of divine Mind to dispel the evil sense, he will bring the power of Mind directly into his experience.

Sickness and sin will then disappear, because the mind which claimed to evolve and stubbornly maintain them has been proved nonexistent. Ignorance will be replaced with a higher degree of understanding, and God's government of all will be correspondingly brought to light.

If mankind seem to be slow in coming to the realization of divine Mind's presence and might, thinking in terms of material personality and human power is the reason. But let men begin to reckon power as the will of the Almighty and corporeal selfhood as the illusion of a false sense which Mind dispels, and progress out of ignorance is immediately noted.

We shall do well to consider deeply the fact that "divine Science demonstrates Mind as dispelling a false sense and giving the true sense of itself, God, and the universe." Christian Science develops the power of Truth to mankind as Mind continues to assert its presence and its supreme government.

Helen Wood Bauman