Material sense bases the belief that life, substance, and intelligence are in and of matter. This sense, limited and false, cognizes only the temporal phenomena of so-called material existence. It has no place outside of supposititious mortal mind. To break this false sense, the human mind needs to be instructed out of its false assumptions, and through a process of right reasoning to become convinced of its erroneous postulates, and to abandon them for the true.

In her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy shows how the change from a material and illusive sense of existence to the perception of spiritual realities may be accomplished. On page 298 she says, "Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality." To involve is to infold, to include, or imply. "Spiritual sense," denying or contradicting the material senses and their evidence, reveals those qualities of divine Mind through which the evidence of the senses is reversed.

Spiritual intuition may be said to possess immediate and spontaneous cognition of the absolute truth, which is true knowledge. Spiritual intuitions, "the angels of His presence," writes our Leader (Science and Health, p. 174), "are our guardians in the gloom." They lead the perturbed thought away from material sense and self, and enable us to understand God as Spirit and to apprehend the wonderful heritage of man created in His image and likeness. Hope and faith give pinions to right endeavor; while understanding distinguishes between the true and the false, the real and the unreal. This enlightenment comes through spiritual sense, changing human consciousness until fruition is realized and reality appears.

This process of intelligently and scientifically contradicting the false suggestions of material sense has been made possible to all through the application of the teachings of Christian Science to the problems of daily life. Why accept the unjust, untrue, and often terrifying statements one hears in regard to the untoward financial conditions of our time? Why believe that unemployment, penury, and limited means and opportunities are necessary occurrences? Progress out of the present economic situation seems slow because we, perhaps unwittingly, give hospitality in thought to the error of limitation and acquiesce in the belief that we must work out of a general inharmonious state of affairs which, rightly understood, has no reality. Human reason, spiritually illumined, leads to the understanding which detects these false assumptions of mortal mind, denies their validity, reverses their evidence, and reëstablishes normal, healthful, prosperous conditions.

"Why should ye be stricken any more?" cried the prophet Isaiah to his people at a time when their land had been made desolate, and greed and corruption had dimmed their vision of God. "Come now, and let us reason together," he represents God as saying; "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." When we rightly base our reasoning on God, on our highest concept of Him as FatherMother, we find that He knows only purity and love, and cannot see evil of any kind. Man, made in God's image and likeness, as the Scriptures declare, reflects God. The Christian Scientist who knows and demonstrates this great fact will contradict every evidence of sin, sickness, limitation, and death, assured that the spotless purity of God's child never has been touched by any error of mortal sense. God is good, and He showers upon all His creation multifold blessings, not afflictions. It is ignorance or a false sense of God which causes suffering. The entire web of materiality, with its false sense of pleasure and pain, its sin and sickness, its phases of unemployment, is woven in the loom of supposititious mortal mind, and has no more reality than has the fabric of a dream. The need of stricken humanity is for an awakening from the material dream through the enlightenment of spiritual understanding.

Reasoning from the basis of Truth, we affirm God's allness, which simultaneously or denies the possibility of the existence of other gods. Attributing all-power to God leaves no logical room for the assumption of any other power. Declaring the ever-presence of God, good, accords to evil no place in which to manifest itself. Accepting the Scriptural statement that God is Spirit excludes matter and all its claims; while, communing with God as Mind, we learn that, God being good, He can know no evil, can threaten no disaster. Daily proving that God is Love destroys doubt, fear, discouragement, and relieves depressing circumstances. Through such affirmations of Truth and denials of error we are able to declare with authority that evil has no power to simulate good, mystify reason, prognosticate disaster, or bring anything real to pass. We can know at once and persistently that God does not ordain confusion of any sort. God knows no evil; neither does He make it or cause it to be made. We need not, therefore, be afraid of evil. When evil claims to have entity, claims to be intelligent, we must know, as did the Master when dealing with the tempter in the wilderness, that notwithstanding its enticing pretenses evil is but an illusion of material sense, which the power of Truth can and will utterly destroy.

Reasoning thus, in accord with Truth in the light of divine Science, and denying every manifestation of error, brings comfort to human consciousness. As the reality of all things spiritual appears, and Truth and Love become dearer to us, the seeming valleys of depression will present a gladsome change, for "Christian Science, contradicting sense," as our revered Leader writes (Science and Health, p. 596), "maketh the valley to bud and blossom as the rose."