One of the many Old Testament prophecies of the coming of the Messiah, or Christ, promises that "the crooked shall be made straight." ^{Isa. 40:4.} This prophecy was fulfilled in the redeeming and healing works of Christ Jesus. Religious teachings that had strayed from spiritual straightforwardness were corrected by the Scriptural revelation he taught and the divine law illustrated by his very life. He rescued those whose wandering ways departed from moral straightness. He healed those who were physically deformed, including at least one individual with a longstanding crippling disorder.

Luke tells of a woman who was so bent over that for eighteen years she had been unable to straighten up. The text says that Jesus "called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." And at once "she was made straight, and glorified God." ^{See Luke 13:11–13.}

Dummelow's Bible Commentary sums up this marvelous event as "An unasked-for cure."

How wonderful to know that it was, is, and will be possible, as long as anyone needs it, to receive Christian healing when we expect it and sometimes even when we don't! But how is it possible today to walk freely and firmly in the straight and narrow way that Jesus taught and exemplified? We can grow to understand Christ, the divine nature and manhood which Jesus fully expressed. And as we do, we too feel the clarifying, strengthening influence of Christ that uplifts mankind physically, morally, and spiritually.

Christian Science makes this possible. This Science is the message of Christ, Truth, that teaches and reinstates Christian healing. It calls us to awake to the divine nature that man, shaped in God's likeness, is formed to express.

Because God is infinite Mind, or Spirit—all intelligence and substance—man, our true identity, is spiritually constituted. Because God is complete and forever intact, man embodies completeness and undiminishing soundness. Because God is infinite, immortal good—without equivalent or opposite—man, His infinite idea, is immortal. The mortal is not man but a mere counterfeit, a fatally flawed deception that need not deceive us.

God's formations are flawless. Because creation is as immutable as its creator, it cannot become flawed by any means. God's man has no history of defect or disease. Man has no moral deficiency; he cannot inherit or acquire any so-called genealogical or biological fault. And because God is the only Life, and the preserver of all, man is not subject to accident or aging. These misconceptions of divine Life and its perpetuity have no helpless victim and no true witness. As Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Inasmuch as God is good and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error. Divine Science reveals these grand facts. On their basis Jesus demonstrated Life, never fearing nor obeying error in any form." ^{Science and Health, pp. 243–244.}

Christian Science calls with the saving voice of Christ to whoever has become mesmerized with the illusion of the material senses. This Science urges all to awake and accept the liberty that belongs to God's children (see Science and Health 227:24-26). Demonstrating Science enables everyone to realize fulfillment of God's pledge, given in the words of Isaiah, "This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise." ^{Isa. 43:21.}

Spirit, not matter, is the substance that shapes our destiny. Through obeying Christian precepts we conquer the temptation to look to matter for pleasure, so we at the same time defeat the suggestion that matter can limit or pain us. Study and practice of Christian Science increase our dominion over the illusion of material sense called matter by enriching our understanding of the substantiality of God and His man. This was brought home to a new student of Christian Science.

Two dentists, at different times, had told her that her wisdom teeth were so crookedly formed that they were impacted and would someday need to be surgically removed. Then several years later, after the study and practice of Science had begun remolding and refashioning her understanding and her character, she moved to another city and visited still another dentist. While examining her teeth, he remarked that she was cutting her last wisdom tooth. When she inquired about the status of the other three, he said that they were all nicely in place! He of course had no knowledge of the earlier prognosis, and he added that he had seldom seen a mouth so full of good teeth.

At first, the student found this experience incredible. She had not even asked for this healing: how could it just happen? Soon understanding began pouring in to satisfy her wondering and to assure her that in Christian Science she had indeed found the Christ. She realized that her study and practice of Christian Science had brought her into accord with an ever operative law of healing revealed in Science and Health: "Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew." ^{Science and Health, p. 425.}

Every belief that evil can coexist with, disfigure, or deface good must and will yield to the divine revelation that because good is God it is imperviously whole. Every suggestion that disease, mishap, or decay can misshape or disable Godlike man or whatever concerns him must give way to the understanding that man is not only without defect, he is indefectible. Science and Health gives the fundamental reason why: "Spirit and its formations are the only realities of being." ^{Ibid., p. 264.}

CAROLYN B. SWAN

See testimony, page 224.

I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

Isaiah 45:2, 3