Christians are not Christians simply because they believe the Bible to be true. They are Christians only as they realize for themselves the truth contained in the Bible. It may even be said that one is not actually a Christian until he realizes that the Bible is simply corroboratory evidence of what has been revealed to himself. This by no means belittles the Bible. Quite the reverse; it actually establishes it as the inspired and holy work that it is, one universally reverenced by thinking people.

Of course the vision of Truth which comes to an individual and thereafter justifies his claim to be called a Christian, was first presented to him in the Bible record of other men who had received the same revelation, but the mere presence of the record in the Bible does not make it true. It is in the Bible because it is true and not true because it is in the Bible. These Biblical narratives are presentations to the human consciousness of metaphysical truth through the medium of the written word. Now a word is but the invitation to entertain a definite idea. This invitation may be addressed to the human mind through the medium of sound or through the organs of sight, and we speak of it as either the spoken or the written word but the actual process in either case is wholly spiritual, for the obvious reason that idea can originate only in Mind,—in fact, is the action of Mind. So the only way in which true idea can be entertained or presented is through a spiritual process. What is ordinarily termed a conversation between persons, or an exchange of true ideas between a person and a book, is of course Mind being expressed, or if we call it the awareness of ideas we have said the same thing precisely. Obviously neither party to a conversation or to an exchange of right ideas—and there are in fact no others—creates the idea; he merely acknowledges it and by some token understood by all directs attention thereto.

Everybody concedes this in the realm of mathematics, which is the most nearly metaphysical of all human mental processes. No one believes himself to be the originator of an arithmetical fact. Even the most abstruse mathematical reasoning is seen to be merely consistent acknowledgment of what already exists and needs only to be apprehended, not something to be created by the mental effort of the individual. A person reciting the multiplication table, for instance, is not creating ideas; he is merely a witness to them. Nor is a person discoursing upon the beauties of a sunset creating ideas; he is being a witness to their existence. Now suppose, for a moment, that the multiplication table were being incorrectly recited; it would still be the effort to present mathematical ideas, but the statement of them would be erroneous. On page 277 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy says, "Matter is an error of statement." May we not rightfully conclude that it is the erroneous statement about a sunset that makes it appear to be matter? Is it not obviously an erroneous statement to say that it has an origin in some power other than the one infinite cause, God? But never could there be the justifiable conclusion that there was no actual phenomenon of which the erroneous concept is the counterfeit! As well say that there is no multiplication table because it has been mistakenly recited! On page 87 of "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy is very explicit in this regard. She says: "To take all earth's beauty into one gulp of vacuity and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature God's creation, which is unjust tohuman sense and to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: 'I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied.'"

This is exactly what John is saying in his first general epistle in the passage read at the close of every Sunday service in Christian Science churches, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." This is sometimes read with such emphasis on the word "shall" as to suggest that we shall at some time be something different from what we are at present, a meaning that cannot be intended by the writer. Emphasis properly belongs upon the "be," making the passage read, "and it doth not yet appear what we shall be," that is to say, what, exactly, we shall be like, but "we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him." That this is the true meaning follows from God's statement that He made man in His own image and likeness.

Of course man is a synonym of "the created," "the creation," "the universe," which must include multiplication tables and sunsets as well as all phenomena, for as Mrs. Eddy avers on page 26 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "The only logical conclusion is that all is Mind and its manifestation, from the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a potato-patch." Man will appear in his true likeness when he "purifieth himself, even as he is pure." Here, too, the emphasis properly belongs on the word "is," for is it not self-evident that unless man is already pure he could not of himself change his own nature, unless he were endowed with a power superior to that power which first formed him? When Christ Jesus, that master logician, commanded that man should be perfect even as his Father in heaven is perfect he was not setting up a task impossible of accomplishment, nor, as is sometimes imagined, was he admonishing us to attempt a wholesale reformation of ourselves. On the contrary he was emphasizing the necessity of being pure or perfect in logic, a perfection that never allows a statement about the effect that is untrue of the cause. Man, the effect, is perfect; and acknowledging it, is glorifying God, the one and only cause. This is being a Christian.