The gates go down; the huge walls crumble to dust and blow away; the towers of stone dissolve into the earth. Does this kind of demolition sound impossible? It is entirely possible, although it could take centuries. But, among human beings, demolitions just as dramatic as this, and just as unlikely-seeming, occur every day. And they often occur quickly, sometimes instantaneously. These demolitions are healings through divine Spirit.

In some of them, wrongs that seemed impregnable crumble into nothing; disasters that seemed total are turned into triumphs; the "incurable" is cured; the "impossible" happens. And it happens without fanfare, without the crash and casualties of human strife.

It happens, usually, when no one is looking. In healing through divine Spirit, we don't see a victory while we are seeing an enemy.

Spiritual power can right whatever seems wrong in our day-to-day living. Some of those changes appear as improbable as vanishing castles—yet they occur.

They do not appear improbable to Christian Scientists who have seen so-called impossible healings take place in their own lives or in the lives of their friends and acquaintances. How has this happened?

There is a lovely paradox here: healing comes in part from knowing that healing is not needed.

It works like this: Human experience is linked to human thought. When our thought is corrected, a better experience follows. The body is healed, or a wrong situation is set right, or a right ambition is achieved, or poverty disappears in prosperity, or happiness overwhelms grief. Such victories occur when our thinking is brought into harmony with ultimate Truth.

This Truth is universal and divine, and in it man is not really a material being at all, but a spiritual one. Our eyes and ears may tell us differently, but they can't perceive even an emotion or a thought, and certainly not a spiritual concept. Yet feeling, thought, spirituality, are certainly real; and they hint at the essence of man, his fundamental reality. That reality is wholly mental, spiritual.

And it is perfect. Spiritual man is perfect because God is the perfect Principle that controls him. Spiritual man is perfect because God is the omnipresent Mind that knows him, and Mind is not a cold intellect but warm and boundless Love, totally effective. The reality of man is perfect because God is the perfect Soul of man, and the perfect Life from which all living things derive their uniqueness and vitality.

Because man is spiritual, all his needs are met spiritually; and they are met now. "Fear not, little flock," said Christ Jesus, "for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." ^{Luke 12:32;} It is God's pleasure to bless His children now. As we know this, hold steadfastly to it, our problems melt, wither, vanish, even if they had loomed large and solid-seeming as castles of stone.

All this is not mere theory. It has been proved true thousands of times. How is it possible?

I find this picture helpful: Imagine a straight flagpole standing erect in the light, throwing a shadow on the ground. If the ground is flat, the shadow is straight. If the ground is rough, the shadow is crooked, and no amount of heaving at the flagpole or kicking at the shadow will straighten the shadow. But if we straighten the surface of the ground, the shadow is straightened instantly.

Now let's consider the flagpole as a metaphor for the spiritual reality of every person, standing tall and upreaching in the light. The reality can be seen only by looking up. When our gaze is earth bound, we see the shadow, not the reality.

Our human affairs can be likened to that shadow, resting on the ground of thought. To straighten the shadow, we straighten the surface on which it appears. To heal the physical body, we heal the thought that manifests it. To heal our experience, or any circumstance of it, we heal the thinking that governs our human experience. It is within our thinking that the frowning castles of unhappiness can be demolished.

The mental demolition is not done by studying shadows—which have no reality anyway—but by looking to the reality. Nothing in God's spiritual creation needs straightening out. As we realize that fact, our thinking rises into harmony with Truth, and so does our experience. That is how healing comes from knowing that healing is not needed.

To understand all this works wonders. It is working wonders now; it has worked them for centuries, and it will continue to work them.

This understanding is wholly spiritual. "For," said Paul in the first century a. d., "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds." ^{II Cor. 10:4;} Mighty through God, not through men: through Spirit, not matter. Paul is one of the best authenticated of Bible heroes, and over and over again, in his stormy, dedicated, triumphant career, he proved the power of spiritual understanding to be "mighty through God."

His contemporary, John, said, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." ^{I John 1:5;} We can overcome the crooked shadows that misrepresent us. We can look toward that perfect light, and thereby correct the ground of our thought. Then we can perceive our real selfhood to be tall, straight, upright, and unshaken. Joy follows.

"What seems to be of human origin," writes Mary Baker Eddy, "is the counterfeit of the divine,—even human concepts, mortal shadows flitting across the dial of time."  ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 71.} Christian Science, which she discovered and founded, has solved all sorts of problems that seemed to be of human origin. They are solved as we correct the thinking that harbors mistaken "human concepts, mortal shadows." This process of thought correction, calm, confident, and exhilarating, is the warfare "mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds."

I have seen it victorious many times in my own life, leading me out of poverty, frustration, ill health, assorted addictions, a violent temper, professional futility. It has brought me achievements that seemed impossible. Other articles in this Sentinel will show how the truths of Christian Science have been used, and can be used, to bless anyone who will take them and live them.

These truths are "the weapons of our warfare." They work silently, tenderly, and with irresistible power.