If the insistence of Christian Science upon the allness of God and the consequent nothingness of matter seems startling or troublesome to mortal mind, this does not warrant a contemptuous dismissal of the proposition without investigation. If it be true, indeed, that God is All, this is the most necessary knowledge in the world for a man to attain; and because this teaching is in advance of what the world conceives, it does not thereby ignore the world's present need, but rather meets that need by providing a remedy for human ills which has not been found in material ways and means. In presenting the allness of God, Christian Science is not introducing an innovation, for the infinity of good is an eternal fact which has been discovered. An eternal fact cannot be successfully denied. Men may blind themselves to the fact and suffer the illusive consequences of their own delusion, but the fact remains unmoved. So it is that in its presentation of the perfection of God and of spiritual man in the likeness of God, "Christian Science is the unfolding of true metaphysics," as Mrs. Eddy writes on page 69 of "Miscellaneous Writings;" "that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes. Science rests on Principle and demonstration. The Principle of Christian Science is divine. Its rule is, that man shall utilize the divine power."

The very fact that the perfection of being seems incomprehensible to material sense, shows that the human being is obliged by the limits of finite conception to grow to an appreciation of what is perfectly simple truth in divine metaphysics. Out of his own illuminating experiences, Peter very appropriately spoke of the necessity of growing "in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Spiritual growth is the result of perception and understanding; and divine ideas, hidden and remote to material sense, unfold with every advancing step, and these ideas, properly conceived, are subject to demonstration. The Science of being reveals the truth that spiritual man, the only man that really exists, is made in God's likeness. The human being cannot grasp the vastness of this fact of being or demonstrate it in its entirety; but he can immediately begin his emergence out of the material sense of existence into the verities of being by correcting and destroying the more palpable errors of the human mind. The perception of spiritual man in God's likeness is a spiritual awakening. This purely conceived spiritual idea is necessarily at first nourished by the simple truths of divine Love that the human being is able early to perceive. Thus, to quote Peter again, every one may, by "laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word," that he may grow thereby.

Because Science unfolds infinite demonstrable Principle, it is obviously impossible for one to grow into the understanding of God and man through another 's demonstration. It is true that one may assist another in the overcoming of some specific manifestation of error, just as Jesus healed the multitudes and helped his disciples over the rough places. But demonstration is knowledge utilized, and demonstration is therefore the only means of spiritual growth. Each one has the task of gaining for himself the knowledge of God, or Principle, and until this knowledge becomes his own, he cannot demonstrate it or grow thereby. The disciples were lifted up to heights of spiritual serenity and joy in the companionship of their great Master, but when his spirituality was advancing beyond what they could perceive, they returned to their nets; they were exactly what they were by their own knowledge of God, and it was not until after their individual Pentecostal illumination that they were able to go forth in their own understanding of God and utilize the divine power in anything like the extensive overcoming of sin, disease, and death that Jesus the Christ had shown them how to do over and over again.

It is impossible for a man genuinely to advance in the understanding of Christian Science through felicitous association with those who are demonstrating their knowledge of God in destroying disease and overcoming material obstacles; nor does he rise to the knowledge of God through any prestige of position or by external advantages. He grows by the good that is unfolded in his own consciousness and by his ability to demonstrate that good in destroying the beliefs of material existence. This is surely what Mrs. Eddy reveals divine Science and its operation to be, when she writes on page 68 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "Christian Science presents unfoldment, not accretion; it manifests no material growth from molecule to mind, but an impartation of the divine Mind to man and the universe."

Jesus' scientific demonstrations of the divine power unfolded the reality and supremacy of good, and by his proof he showed conclusively, not for his day only, but for all time, that evil, matter, is unreal. It is sufficiently clear that it was his realization of the Mind of the Christ, the Mind which utterly repudiates the existence of any carnal mind, that enabled Jesus to do his mighty works. This makes it amply clear that the understanding of divine power which overcomes all error is unfolded only as a man departs from the carnal or material belief of existence and lets that Mind be in him which was also in Christ Jesus. This unfolding of spiritual power through individual perception and demonstration constitutes the necessary growth out of human concepts toward the spiritual perfection which Jesus the Christ revealed as the true status of being. On page 103 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy writes, "Infinite perfection is unfolded as man attains the stature of man in Christ Jesus by means of the Science which Jesus taught and practised."

A man becomes like that which he most contemplates. Material thinking is necessarily evidenced in material living and in want of spiritual power. Holding thought unswervingly to the spiritual truth of perfect God and perfect man produces the inevitable effect of growth toward harmony. The material sense of existence diminishes and spiritual consciousness in the likeness of God is unfolded; for, with thought uplifted and conforming to Principle, "we all," as Paul declared, "with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord."