A great revelation came to Moses when he heard God declare His name to be "I AM" (Ex. 3:14). It was thus that God asserted Himself as Mind, for what but Mind could name itself I AM, or consciousness, one Ego? Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 258), "The name, I AM, indicated no personality that could be paralleled with it; but it did declare a mighty individuality, even the everlasting Father, as infinite consciousness, ever-presence, omnipotence; as all law, Life, Truth, and Love."

The supposititious opposite of divine Mind is the carnal, or mortal, mind, the counterfeit mind, which presents the reverse of all that is real and true. Divine Mind acts upon and affects human thought; but mortal mind cannot touch or affect Mind or its ideas. The action of Mind is always beneficent; it destroys the mortal element in human consciousness and leaves those who hear Mind's self-declaration uplifted and purified as well as happier and healthier than they were before they yielded to the divine action.

Christ Jesus was acknowledging the action of Mind when he said (John 14:10), "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." The Apostle Paul was acknowledging the same action when he wrote to the Thessalonians of the message he had sent them, "Ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe" (I Thess. 2:13). And to the Ephesians, Paul described the beneficent action of God as "the power that worketh in us" (Eph. 3:20).

Yielding to this power made it possible for the Master to demonstrate the might of Mind in healing works. He let the truths which Mind is forever declaring well up in his consciousness and destroy the untruths confronting him—sin, disease, death, and all the limitations of matter. Mrs. Eddy searched the Scriptures until she found the Science of Biblical healing works and could repeat them. She says of Jesus (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 3), "He wrought the cure of disease through the divine Mind, which gives all true volition, impulse, and action; and destroys the mental error made manifest physically, and establishes the opposite manifestation of Truth upon the body in harmony and health."

One is greatly helped in the practicing of Christian Science when he understands that the slightest impulse of good is evidence of Mind's action upon human thought. The impulsion of justice, love, truthfulness, or intelligence begins with God and not with the individual. For volition belongs to God, not to mankind, not even to spiritual man, who is Mind's idea. One needs to be certain that the slightest evidence of good hints the unseen presence of infinite good. In Science one learns that good is not portioned out meagerly to many minds, but is indivisible and infinite; and man reflects it without measure.

According to scientific revelation, Mind is All and governs all, and this truth extends to human experience. When understood, it dispels material illusions, demonstrating Mind's control progressively until all error is eliminated from human consciousness.

Writing of the need for learning how mankind govern the body, Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 251), "We should learn whether they govern the body through a belief in the necessity of sickness and death, sin and pardon, or govern it from the higher understanding that the divine Mind makes perfect, acts upon the so-called human mind through truth, leads the human mind to relinquish all error, to find the divine Mind to be the only Mind, and the healer of sin, disease, death."

We can be certain that the divine Mind is acting upon all men with the resistless might of omnipotence and that mankind are receiving the beneficence of that action as fast as they are ready to respond to the power of the truth. There is no limitation of divine action, and there is no lack of divine power. All that mankind need is to yield to God's presence and to realize the powerlessness of human thought to resist it. The Word of God will effectually work in us when we become humble enough to realize Mind's allness and reserve no place in consciousness for anything untrue.

One watches with joy the beneficent effect of the action of divine Mind throughout the world as the truth of being breaks down prejudice and injustice, increases longevity, raises living standards, and lifts many voices in protest against the barbarism of war. In the field of natural science, we note Mind's action on the human mind as a more enlightened evaluation of matter is made, and improved beliefs of transportation, communication, and distribution remove some of matter's limitations.

Mrs. Eddy yielded to Mind's self-assertion, and she has given God's message to mankind with perfect clarity. Our work is to recognize what is happening in our own sense of life through the Science she discovered and to devote ourselves to the yielding of thought to the action of divine Mind as it demonstrates the power of truth over error. The same I AM that asserted its presence to Moses is declaring itself today through Christian Science. In the measure that we yield to its beneficent action, we shall be blessed and purified.

Helen Wood Bauman