"LEAVE THY DREAMS"

GLANVILLE OWEN MUSCHETT

What assurance and comfort can be found in the inspiring and healing messages in the hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal! The first verse of Hymn 412 reads,

O dreamer, leave thy dreams for joyful waking,
O captive, rise and sing, for thou art free;
The Christ is here, all dreams of error breaking,
Unloosing bonds of all captivity.

The beliefs of sin, sickness, disease, discord, lack, limitation, and the fear of getting old are designated by Christian Science as dreams, as illusions of the material senses. Through the study of this Science, one is enabled to leave these dreams, that is, to awaken from the false consciousness of life in matter and to demonstrate the real man's true selfhood as a perfect, harmonious child of God.

In "Christian Healing," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 9): "Life in matter is a dream: sin, sickness, and death are this dream. Life is Spirit; and when we waken from the dream of life in matter, we shall learn this grand truth of being."

This awakening is the coming of Christlikeness to human consciousness, as Christian Science avers. We attain the Christ-consciousness as we gain a greater awareness of God's infinite love and presence and of man as inseparable from God, his divine Principle, and as we express Godlike qualities.

The consciousness imbued with Christ, Truth, understands that all is Spirit, God; that God and His Christ are everywhere present; that the dreams of error have no room to operate where the Christ dwells —where the spiritual, eternal nature of God is manifested.

When the fear of sickness, discord, lack, limitation, or old age is replaced with the positive assurance and spiritual understanding that man in God's perfect likeness is eternal, diseaseless, ageless, we leave our dreams and waken to man's true being, to the truth that the real man is never discordant, never sick, never dying.

Christ Jesus knew that the real life of man is never outside God's presence, which includes all health, intelligence, and harmony. He awakened many from the dream of sickness, disease, lack, and limitation to the understanding that God is Spirit, the only substance, life, and intelligence of man. He proved that a knowledge of the fact that the real man, having all that God imparts, lacks nothing is evidenced humanly in abundance of good and harmony.

While in Galilee, Jesus healed the nobleman's son, who was at Capernaum, sick with a fever and at the point of death. The father urged Jesus to go to Capernaum, but Jesus said (John 4:50), "Go thy way; thy son liveth."

These assuring words, affirming the ever-presence of Life, awakened the boy's father from his fear of sickness. Then the boy was immediately healed, for the account states that at that same hour "the fever left him."

Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, states (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 412), "To prevent disease or to cure it, the power of Truth, of divine Spirit, must break the dream of the material senses." And Paul demanded the awakening of the dreamer thus (Eph. 5:14): "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."

When a certain man first took up the study of Christian Science, he was in bondage to the use of material medicines and to the enslaving habits of smoking and drinking. Christian Science awakened him to the fact that the desire for drugs and material stimulants was a waking dream of mortal sense, obscuring the light of spiritual sense.

As he gained in spiritual understanding, he saw very clearly that he could not assimilate truth through spiritual sense by right talking and wrong acting. He became increasingly aware that right where the false suggestions seemed to be, the Christ dwelt, breaking the dreams of the corporeal senses.

He realized that the real man of God's creating is stimulated and vitalized by the divine energies of Spirit. This spiritual awakening healed him of the false habits, and he gained spiritual dominion, a greater sense of well-being, and better health.

As one gains the assurance that the spiritual, perfect man is here and now God's harmonious, immortal, incorporeal idea, he awakes to his true identity as a perfect son of God, good. Then he knows with increasing certainty that the dreams of error are unreal and temporal, that he is actually receptive to good only, and that illimitable good is his perpetual possession.

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