The masthead of this magazine says Christian Science Sentinel. If those words, Christian Science, aren't familiar to you, it may only be because you've never had occasion to visit a Christian Science church or Reading Room, hear a Christian Science lecture, or even meet someone who is a Christian Scientist. Christian Science, however, isn't primarily about church activities or about organization, as important as these things are.

Christian Science is the law of God and reveals His allness, His ever-presence. The presence and allness of God, when understood, can mean more than anything else. Knowing the all-presence of God, the Psalmist of the Old Testament asked, "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?" (Ps. 139:7). Spirit is a Biblical term for God. Divine Spirit, God, is not a bodily presence; Spirit is not finite, not bound by matter or time in any way. Yet, God is present—always. Spirit supersedes mortality and is timeless, or eternal—and is infinite good. Realizing and accepting the presence of God's goodness is what makes us feel the tremendous meaning of the allness of God, divine Spirit.

"The fruit of the Spirit," the Bible instructs, "is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" (Gal. 5:22, 23). You begin to prove the presence of limitless good—of Spirit—and your genuine, spiritual nature, inseparable from good, by expressing "the fruit of the Spirit." This spirituality is not just some function of the human mind, not just the exercise of human goodness; it is the actual reflection of God. Man—spiritual man—is God's creation. God's conception, spiritual man, expresses divine Spirit. Expressing the spiritual qualities that are naturally a part of you as God's creation accomplishes what nothing else can. It enables you to demonstrate more reality, and consistently, the power of divine law.

"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," was how Christ Jesus put it. He said this after healing a man who'd spent the past thirty-eight years unable to walk (see John 5:1–17). In this wonderful healing, Jesus brought the law of God to bear not just upon dysfunctional limbs but upon anything that would cripple. God's law is a term for Christian Science. "How would you define Christian Science?" someone once asked Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science. "As the law of God," she answered, "the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1).

God's law of universal harmony is universally applicable, too. People can always appeal to God's law of good no matter where they find themselves, no matter what their past is like, no matter how long they've turned away from this law. God, known also as divine Love, is ceaselessly and unreservedly affectionate toward His creation.

If God, divine Spirit and Love, is All, then comes an inevitable, yet vital, question if we are to go any further. In the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy asks: "Christian Science and Christianity are one. How, then, in Christianity any more than in Christian Science, can we believe in the reality and power of both Truth and error, Spirit and matter, and hope to succeed with contraries?" (p. 372) The fact that Spirit and matter are contraries is actually encouraging. It means that only one is real.

Direct contradictions cannot both be true. Consider these two direct contradictions, for instance: 1. This page is made of white paper. 2. This page is made of red paper. The statements cannot both be factual since they are contraries. To know and understand what is true, however—that this page is made of white paper—nullifies the erroneous statement that this page is made of red paper. Similarly, God, divine Spirit, and matter cannot both be factual, because they are direct contradictions of each other. The statement "God is All" contradicts "all is matter."

As we understand the truth of spiritual causation, we recognize as a lie the age-old assertion that man is material. The issue of God's reality and matter's unreality doesn't stop at simply being philosophical; this fact is useful and provable, step by step. To realize that man's identity is spiritual because man is God's own likeness and therefore reflects divine Spirit, is practical and safe. "Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal harmony, the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil," states Science and Health (p. 293). Through Godlike thoughts and actions we can prove that only God is real, and that in God's creation, evil isn't.

A life of materiality may seem satisfying to some. Nonetheless, God's allness is the fact; we must all come to know God and prove His allness sooner or later, even if only one step at a time. Here is how an understanding of the nature of God's ever-presence healed a little boy who'd become ill and had been sick every hour or so during the night. As the boy's father pondered what God's allness and presence meant, he realized something he'd never understood as clearly before. If God is All, and utterly good, then the child was in only the presence of God. Even though the boy seemed to be sharing his world with illness, physical health-rules, fear, and so on, the fact of God's allness contradicted this picture. Contraries cannot both be true; this boy's illness and God's allness are contraries, so one must not really be factual or present.

The boy's father saw that he wasn't required to pray against "real" disease, but to understand, in the light of ever-present divine Spirit, why the disease was clearly unreal. The answer to the prayer came with the realization that all that the child, God's spiritual creation, could ever be present with was God, Love. The child's life wasn't divided between harmony and disease, but was solely in the presence of God's goodness. The boy was healed by the recognition of this powerful truth. "The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth," says the Bible (Ps. 97:5). God loves His creation so much He doesn't allow anything but His tender presence. Each day we can feel and know this more and more.

The divine reality of universal harmony is eternal and always present. This is what Christian Science, the law of God, teaches. And doesn't everybody have the right to claim this universal law, not just the members of the Christian Science Church? The words on the cover of this magazine say Christian Science; it's the Science of Christianity, which is available to everyone, everywhere. The Christian Science Church itself includes people in all walks of life, people around the world who are working with all their hearts to know and feel God's all-presence and prove it through healing. A student of Christian Science is a student of the Bible, especially the example of Christ Jesus. Hand in hand with the Bible comes the study of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, a book in which the universal laws of God are outlined systematically so they may be better understood and practiced by anyone anywhere.

"Christian Science is dawning upon a material age," states Science and Health (p. 546). And we all know, even if only intuitively, that there is something much more than the emptiness of materiality. "Paganism and agnosticism may define Deity as 'the great unknowable,'" this book says, "but Christian Science brings God much nearer to man, and makes Him better known as the All-in-all, forever near" (p. 596).

Mark Swinney
Managing Editor