Have you ever felt locked in by all the health charts, school transcripts, job résumés, and government records that claim to tell your history? What a relief to learn that your true history is God's unfoldment of eternal, spiritual good! Therefore it includes no trace of mistake, failure, deprivation, or suffering—no element of evil. Step by step, individuals can erase from their view of the past and nullify in their present experience every suggestion of error. The future, too, can be proved to hold only good, for God, the one Mind, Principle, or Spirit, is the creator and cause of good only. He continuously unfolds His creation of spiritual ideas, ensuring the eternal development of His beloved likeness, man—everyone's true selfhood.

Man's authentic history is told in a nutshell in the first chapter of the Bible (see Gen. 1:26–28). And that history is borne out on the human scene whenever people protest sin and sickness by seeking divine redemption and restoration. In fact, every victory prayerfully won over sin, suffering, conflict, disadvantage, and so on, may be seen to eradicate in some degree the false history of materiality and mortality.

Picture for instance Moses and the children of Israel at the shore of the Red Sea with their Egyptian slave masters hotly pursuing. Defeat seemed ready to be written into history. But the parting of the sea for their escape stands as indisputable proof that justice can prevail over injustice even under what most people might consider insurmountable circumstances (see Ex., chap. 14).

Christ Jesus set aside the false history of materialism and thoroughly demonstrated the omnipotence of Truth, God, in ways that radically changed individuals' lives. For example, when he saw a woman who was bowed together—for eighteen years unable to stand upright—he called her to him and said, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." And we're told that "immediately she was made straight, and glorified God." ^{See Luke 13:11–13.} This healing certainly shows that even if false history seems solidified in the flesh, it can still be changed through Christ, the divine ideal that Jesus exemplified.

Sometimes an individual may feel bowed down with what he believes to be his case history of sin, sickness, injustice, lack, or sorrow. He may feel totally unable to lift himself above either his own belief or the weight of general belief that mortal history is irreversible. But Christ, the irresistible divine ideal, is ever able to release people individually and collectively from the bondage of false history that has been ignorantly idolized as though it were one's master. Continuation or repetition of troubles in one's life should signal that there is an ongoing need to draw into accord with Christ.

Progress comes through understanding and demonstrating the history one should cherish as his own—the unfolding truth of the relationship of man to God. Man develops forever because infinite Mind demands infinite expression. God's spiritual, immortal man is not a product of matter or mortals. Man is the immediate and constant expression—the direct effect—of God. Therefore humanity's heritage of today doesn't have to carry out a prognosis based on the false history of yesterday. One can revise his thought of his human history until he is cleansed of all sense of mistake and misery. As he does this, his life will coincide with the truth of God and man.

Through study and practice of Christian Science, one can improve his morals and health, find satisfying purpose and sound direction, and live in peace. All can find increasing evidence of the truth revealed in Science and Health. There Mrs. Eddy writes, "The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history." ^{Science and Health, pp. 470–471.}

Jesus evidently foresaw that the whole claim of materialism will crumble in proportion as individuals demonstrate spiritual reality. Concerning a famous emblem of material history, the temple at Jerusalem, he prophesied: "As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." ^{Luke 21:6.}

As the revelation of Christ to this age, Christian Science explains the allness of Spirit and the resultant nothingness of matter that spell the doom of materialism. When in even a single instance Christian Science healing supplants the illusion of false history with Truth, divine reality, humanity advances a degree. Mrs. Eddy writes: "The spiritual status is urging its highest demands on mortals, and material history is drawing to a close. Truth cannot be stereotyped; it unfoldeth forever." ^{No and Yes, p. 45.}

Truth's expression in good thoughts and deeds will forever progress, will not draw to a close with the close of material history. Like the sundial that records only the sunny hours, as the radiance of Truth illuminates our lives, the record of our human history will more and more include only those moments when man's reflection of God's glory is understood and proved.

CAROLYN B. SWAN