CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS do not minimize the importance of baptism, but recognize its true significance. In the Christianity of scholastic theology salvation from the sins and diseases of the world is to be found in the church. The grace of God opens the way for this salvation, and obedience to the laws of God enables one to face with God-derived authority the claims of both sin and disease. The rite, or sacrament, of baptism in scholastic theology is the promise; "the baptism of the Holy Ghost" in Christian Science is its fulfillment.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 20): "Jesus' history made a new calendar, which we call the Christian era; but he established no ritualistic worship. He knew that men can be baptized, partake of the Eucharist, support the clergy, observe the Sabbath, make long prayers, and yet be sensual and sinful."

Individual salvation is achieved only through spiritualization of thought, motive, and act. The greatest difficulty in this spiritualization is to see the unreality of matter. To deny reality to matter from the standpoint of the allness of Spirit enables us to understand something about ourselves that we would never know without this denial. It enables us to gain a sense of ourselves so superior to anything we have ever attributed to matter that a completely new set of values begins to unfold. We begin to see ourselves in a new light, to understand who and what we really are.

Who are we, really? We are sons of God, reflections, or expressions, of deathless Life, of sinless Soul, of omniscient Mind. Instead of being physically corporeal mortals, we are actually spiritually incorporeal identities in no way dependent upon or subject to matter or material conditions.

What are we, really? We are spiritual ideas, reflections of Mind, existing in Mind and showing forth the nature of intelligence that is complete in itself. Why do we exist? To glorify our heavenly Father, divine Principle, Love. The very essence of baptism is the purification and spiritualization of thought which come from such truths.

Mrs. Eddy uses the phrase "the baptism of the Holy Ghost" to explain a profound change that takes place in us as we give up a material sense of ourselves for the spiritual sense. She says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 204), "The baptism of the Holy Ghost is the spirit of Truth cleansing from all sin; giving mortals new motives, new purposes, new affections, all pointing upward." In the same paragraph she later says, "It develops individual capacity, increases the intellectual activities, and so quickens moral sensibility that the great demands of spiritual sense are recognized, and they rebuke the material senses, holding sway over human consciousness."

This baptism corresponds to the new birth that Christ Jesus told Nicodemus would enable him to enter the kingdom of God. Said Jesus (John 3:5), "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Water was used in the Bible as a symbol of purification. To be born of water is to be cleansed of the belief that we have ever been born of matter. It signifies putting off a material sense of oneself. To be born of the Spirit is to spiritualize consciousness, to "call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven," as Jesus taught (Matt. 23:9).

To acknowledge that God, Spirit, is our Father is to acknowledge that in reality we are spiritual. Our identity, individuality, consciousness, being, are spiritual, not material at all. We lay off a finite sense of ourselves, the belief that we have a long line of ancestors from whom we have inherited certain mental and physical tendencies and to whom we are indebted for our being. We turn from brain cells to divine Mind as the source of intelligence. We find ourselves free from the chains of sin and disease, released from restrictions imposed by godless materialism.

Because man is spiritual, he consists of the spiritual faculties, capacities, and qualities that he embodies, or expresses. Understanding that our being is spiritual, we prove that our abilities and capacities are derived from Spirit, that they remain forever in their divine source and are never in danger of being impaired or lost. Manifesting the nature of Spirit, our abilities and capacities are forever present, incorruptible, indestructible. They are unlimited, ever developing, never subject to depletion.

The recognition that Spirit ever cares for its own, that Soul supplies health, vitality, and freedom, enables anyone to annul the decree of mortal mind that old age is synonymous with helplessness and hopelessness. Longevity would be a travesty if it made the latter years of human existence periods of inactivity and uselessness. It is not longevity that threatens to impose upon men and women periods of indignities of privations. It is the false beliefs that attach to it. These false beliefs act mesmerically to induce the very conditions these beliefs espouse.

To be baptized of the Holy Ghost is to see our abilities and capacities renewed year after year. Such baptism makes Christianity a vital influence in our lives. As Mrs. Eddy puts it in Science and Health (pp. 516, 562), "John the Baptist prophesied the coming of the immaculate Jesus, and John saw in those days the spiritual idea as the Messiah, who would baptize with the Holy Ghost,—divine Science."

Ralph E. Wagers