Applied Science

Clifford P. Smith

"The term Christian Science," Mrs. Eddy has written in her principal work, "relates especially to Science as applied to humanity" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 127). The system of thought that she discovered and formulated is not only the Science of absolute reality: it applies also and especially to human conduct and to human welfare. The latter aspect of this subject is the one that has seemed difficult to fulfill or even to understand. So this explanation is offered with the hope that it may help to elucidate a difficult point.

In absolute reality, all being, all that exists, is infinite Mind and its representatives There is nothing else. The representatives of Mind include individual man and other forms of reality, but no error or evil. There is, then, no mingling of error with man. This absolute truth is what human consciousness needs to accept and prove. This consciousness seems to be a mingling of error with true thought, resulting in an adulterated person having an obscured concept of everything. Of course, such a person needs to be saved: he needs to be redeemed from adulteration. Since this process is not instantaneous, the so-called human being has human needs incident to his transient condition, which continue until human life disappears and the individual no longer seems to be contaminated.

A human being seems to exist by himself and to depend on material resources. These appearances are erroneous. Actually, the divine Mind sustains the human being by sustaining the real man. God, the infinite Life, is always imparting abundant life to every man, regardless of error; for, as Christ Jesus once said, "all live unto him" (Luke 20:38). In short, the divine resources are completely available to the so-called human person because of the real man's relation to God. Directly and indirectly, therefore, the ever giving Love, the ever acting Principle, supplies to every man all that he requires, even while his concept of himself and of his needs is seemingly obscured.

Evidently, the first of human needs is for the individual to apprehend his real selfhood. He needs to see himself as God sees him, not as partly deadened, but as completely living. This need the divine Mind continually meets by imparting true ideas and the power to comprehend them. In the degree that any person truly knows himself and his relation to God, he is freed from hindrances to success in any good service or righteous undertaking.

The particular one of the divine resources which is most important as an equipment for human success is intelligence. Mrs. Eddy has described and rated intelligence as "the primal and eternal quality of infinite Mind" (Science and Health, p. 469). Therefore, it must be also the chief and perpetual endowment of man. Thus, intelligence derived from the divine Mind is that which enables a person to know and to do what he should in any and every situation. Evidently, no gift can be more important than this for coping with the conditions of so-called human life.

Jesus got money from a fish's mouth to pay the poll tax levied for the temple (Matthew 17:24–27). He could disregard the customary modes of acquisition: he was prepared to act in this way. For us, however, acquiring money, or getting an opportunity to earn it, may require more thought for the morrow. On this point, Jesus has been misunderstood, due to faulty translations of Matthew 6:25–34 and Luke 12:22–40. What he spoke against was anxiety for the morrow, not intelligent preparation. His own conduct often evinced preparation, and he commended it in one of his most instructive parables (Mark 4:26–29).

Another of the divine resources always available to any person for human needs is spiritual law. "All causation," Mrs. Eddy has said, "is Mind, acting through spiritual law" (Science and Health, p. 417). When we sow to reap a harvest of opportunity for service, it is spiritual causation acting through law that develops the seed and enables us to reap the appropriate reward. "If any will not work, neither let him eat" (II Thessalonians 3:10, Am. Rev. Ver.). In these words, Paul declared in a negative way an economic and social law which has sanction in divine justice. As yet, the divine law on this subject may not be fully perceived, but the law exists, nevertheless, and is in full operation. Accordingly, the following statement is offered as expressing, at least in part, the application of a divine law to human affairs: Every person who is prepared to render an honest service is entitled to an opportunity and the corresponding reward; divine causation, even divine Principle, is acting with him to this end. Clifford P. Smith

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