Article November 3, 1997 Issue

Penniless, I watched God supply our need

Edward Daryl Francis

In one sense, the practice of Christian Science is like the practice of art. The Christian Scientist is bringing out in his or her life the vision gained of spiritual reality, of God and His harmonious creation. Christ Jesus is the Master and the example in this. His perception of spiritual reality healed those who were ready to receive divine Truth, to hear and feel the Word. It is worth remembering that Jesus lived, embodied, this vision of spiritual reality. It was alive to him as the only view.

When he was tempted to lay down his all for "the kingdoms of the world," his response was "Get thee behind me, Satan" (see Luke 4:1-13). The vision of reality that Jesus demonstrated can also be demonstrated today. But to do this we must follow his example in our lives and guard our thinking, admitting only what is in keeping with the spiritual reality he brought to light.

The Apostle John must have had this kind of watchfulness in order to have gained the new view of the perfection of reality that he describes in Revelation. He writes, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea" (Rev. 21:1). About John's experience, Science and Health comments: "The Revelator was on our plane of existence, while yet beholding what the eye cannot see,—that which is invisible to the uninspired thought. This testimony of Holy Writ sustains the fact in Science, that the heavens and earth to one human consciousness, that consciousness which God bestows, are spiritual, while to another, the unillumined human mind, the vision is material." The book adds, "... St. John's corporeal sense of the heavens and earth had vanished, and in place of this false sense was the spiritual sense, the subjective state by which he could see the new heaven and new earth, which involve the spiritual idea and consciousness of reality" (p. 573).

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