"MORTAL existence is a state of self-deception and not the truth of being," Mrs. Eddy declares (Science and Health, p. 403), and the deceptiveness of certain phases of human experience is clear to every one. The dream of sleep presents a world of fantastic forms and conditions which, although seemingly real from the dream standpoint, is found to be unreal as soon as the more normal conditions of the waking state appear. Likewise, one who yields to the belief of hypnotic power exercised by another, seems to see and feel objects which in reality exist only as illusions of an abnormal consciousness. The insane may labor under the delusion that they are beset by demons or are journeying in foreign lands, when the situations experienced are purely imaginary. Hallucinations and superstitious beliefs of various descriptions also illustrate in milder ways the erratic tendencies of the human so-called mind. No form of delusion appears as such to the consciousness which entertains it. The fact that mankind has set for itself a certain standard by which it adjudges itself rational, normal, and undeceived, is in itself no proof that it is so in the truest sense.

Such a conclusion fulfils the requirements of human belief and nothing more. Although the world does not appear in exactly the same fashion to any two of the billion and a half inhabitants of the globe, each one is, as a rule, pretty fully persuaded that his own conception of things is essentially right. The fact, however, that a particular view is universally held is no guarantee that it is correct, for many of the most egregious errors have obtained worldwide credence. Because material existence, then, is believed by nearly every one to be real and genuine, it by no means follows that it is so. When thought escapes sufficiently from the circumscribed point of view and narrow limitations of material concepts to discern the nature of real being, the unreality and dreamlikeness of the condition known as mortal existence becomes apparent. This does not imply that all which seems to exist or transpire in human experience is misconceived and must be undone. We pronounce a dream unreal not because its every impression is fictitious, but because the standpoint from which the phenomenon as a whole is conceived is erroneous. So with regard to the matter-world which constitutes the daydream of mortals. While nature, even as materially construed, seems to possess elements of beauty, orderliness, and genuineness, the whole scheme of life on a material basis is found to be self-contradictory and inconsistent, when regarded from the standpoint of the existence of a creator who is infinite in wisdom, power, and goodness.

Nearly two thousand years ago a Galilean reformer excited the ridicule and hostility of learned and ignorant alike, by insisting that the commonly accepted notions about the universe were false; that in reality creation was spiritual, and that the materially conceived and evolved order of things was but an illusive appearance growing out of an unspiritual point of view. Furthermore, he proceeded to substantiate his view by works which, to the material thought of his contemporaries, seemed subversive of the method and order of nature. The normal, actual order of things as God had constituted it, and as it appeared to the spiritually awakened vision, he termed the "kingdom of heaven." He declared also that this order of things was always at hand, awaiting human recognition. He showed that substance, law, and order were spiritual and harmonious, and that the universe appeared to be subject to discord, suffering, sin, disease, and death, only because mortals saw it out of focus by reason of their abnormal point of view. He saw evil, or error, to be sure, in all its manifold phases; but he also saw through it as an imposture, an unreal exhibition of assumed power without foundation or support in truth or fact. He repudiated the material concept of existence as unnatural, illegitimate, at variance with the fact—in short, as the work of "the devil," whom he characterized as the personification of falsity, deception, fraud,—"a liar, and the father of it."

This wrongly conceived order of things he referred to as "this world" in contradistinction to the real and abiding, the spiritual world ordained and sustained by God. He instructed his followers to set about overcoming, as he was doing, the belief or sense of materiality, through a spiritually enlightened understanding of God and His idea, or creation. "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." In thus making the ability to do the works which he did the test of his students' understanding of his teaching, he was exercising no arbitrary authority; He was simply voicing the truth, previously unrecognized to any definite extent, that the consciousness of God as All-in-all logically and inevitably results in disestablishing the claims of material sense which uphold the presence and power of matter or evil.

As a steam-gauge registers the pressure within the boiler, so the great demonstrator of Christianity recognized in the ability to heal by divine power an indication of the spiritual status of the individual's thought. Error's stronghold has always been the plea that the world was made conformable to material law, and that it would be foolish to try to change conditions which an all-wise creator had seen fit to establish. But Christian Science shows that the world is not and never was made as it appears to material sense; and that it is our business to correct the errors of belief until human concepts shall tally completely with the divine idea, the world as God has created it.

Students of physical phenomena in all ages have recognized the deceptiveness of sense testimony; but they had not realized the self-deceived state or condition of the type of mentality which conceives of life as conditioned by physical modes, until Mrs. Eddy discovered the Principle and Science upon which the earlier demonstrations of Christianity were based. Through experience she reached the realization that the universe is spiritual, and that materiality disappears to the degree that the Mind which was in Christ Jesus is realized. She tells us that "the fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth, are the fleeting concepts of the human mind. They have their day before the permanent facts and their perfection in Spirit appear" (Ibid., p. 263). By proving that material sense is, relatively speaking, a dreamlike condition foreign to man's normal consciousness, Christian Science shows why speculative thought has been forced repeatedly to abandon the attempt to solve the problem of being in any true and ultimate sense. Every endeavor to explain or account for the phenomena of a dream from the dream standpoint must result in "confusion worse confounded."

Mortals must wake sufficiently from the dream of material existence to recognize it as such before they are in a position to comprehend the meaning of life on a spiritual basis. The healing work of Christian Science tends to bring mortals to a realizing sense of their false view of things and to cause them to feel the necessity of working out their salvation from the standpoint of real being.