Editorial February 23, 1974 Issue

"In Thee I have no pain"

Carl J. Welz

The consciousness of reality does not include matter or disease, and it does not include pain. "Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal,"^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 335;} writes the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy. God, Spirit, is All. He is the only Life there is. And He is good. Spirit's allness and goodness constitute spiritual reality. Dwelling in God, as God's child, is being conscious of Him as All and as good.

Pain is a phenomenon of the false consciousness of life outside of Spirit. It appears to be a persistent and insistent material phenomenon, taking over one's consciousness of himself to such an extent that it seems difficult to think of anything else. Yet it is an unreality, and one can prove it, and its apparent cause, to be so.

When Christ Jesus welcomed his seventy disciples, after their successful healing missionary journeys, he said: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions . . . and nothing shall by any means hurt you."^{Luke 10:18, 19;} Later the Apostle Paul proved these words. A viper came out of a fire he was building and "fastened on his hand. . . . And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm."^{Acts 28:3, 5;}