Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, gives us the perfect recipe for demonstration when she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 4), "We reach the Science of Christianity through demonstration of the divine nature." This statement should arouse the reader to see that material things or conditions cannot be demonstrated by spiritual means. Then to attempt to demonstrate anything other than a spiritual effect by spiritual means would result in failure.

The premise of the Science of Christianity is that God, Spirit, Mind, is All-in-all; hence He is the only power, presence, and intelligence. Man being the reflection or expression of this infinite Spirit or Mind, is as perfect as his creator. Evidence or proof of this fact is true demonstration.

Mortals reasoning from the false premise that man is material, with a mind of his own, separated from good, try every known method to gain release from the resulting inharmony. They sometimes misuse the truths of Christian Science, thinking to heal an inharmonious situation, the outcome of material-mindedness, without doing anything to the erroneous thinking that is causing the discord. They strive by any and all means to get what they think is outside of themselves, such as happiness, health, home, protection, companionship, and the like. They attempt to take the kingdom of heaven by storm, but of course failure is inevitable, for Christ Jesus said this kingdom is within us. In other words, he implied that because man is the perfect expression of divine Mind, infinite good, his divine nature includes everything necessary to express the glory of God. Someone once wrote that one could not have the sun in his lap and not have light. Just so we cannot express the divine nature, which is now and ever will be our true being, and not have the kingdom of God in our experience.

We should not try to use Christian Science in an attempt merely to change a material condition. Our work is to live the truths it teaches in thought and deed, and in the degree we do so we are demonstrating the Christ, Truth. We begin to accept God's thoughts, and cease our fruitless reading, thinking, and talking about Him. We are then able to perceive from a spiritual standpoint God's nature and His harmonious universe, including spiritual man.

In  James 1:22-25 (Weymouth's translation) we are given the proper procedure: "But prove yourselves obedient to the word, and do not be mere hearers of it, deluding yourselves. If any one listens but does not obey, he is like a man who carefully looks at his own face in a mirror; for although he looks carefully at himself, he goes away and immediately forgets what sort of man he was. He however who looks closely into the perfect law of freedom and continues looking, being not a hearer who forgets, but an obedient doer, will find blessing in the very act of obedience."

A demonstration was experienced by an earnest student of Christian Science who was an active church member and had had class instruction. She found that she was faced with a serious physical problem called a tumor. Although she had help from several practitioners, the condition became so alarming that a member of her family who was not a Christian Scientist insisted that she go to a physician for treatment.

Knowing that this loved one was eager to see her freed from the aggravating condition, she asked if she might have a little more time in which to work the problem out in her own way. The request was granted, and in what seemed the darkest hour of her entire life she prayed wholeheartedly to God for light and guidance. The answer to her prayer swiftly came, and led her to call on a practitioner and friend whom she had not thought of consulting before. At the first visit the practitioner asked the student if she was trying to remove some thing with Christian Science treatment. The honest answer was given that that was no doubt what she had been trying to do all these weary months.

With the tenderness of divine Love, the practitioner said: "My dear, in reality Christian Science does not remove things; its primary purpose is to reveal God's ever-present, perfect selfhood, and man's perfect being, which expresses Him. If you are willing," she continued, "to stop trying merely to get a physical healing, and will start demonstrating the Christ, or divine nature, I will help you."

Thus as one opens the pages of a new book, so the student began an entirely new line of thought, a complete about-face from the former efforts employed to gain her freedom. Instead of starting each new day with a heavy and discouraged approach to her daily duties, she greeted the dawn joyously anticipating the opportunities to watch each thought, and to bring each one into "obedience to Christ." She watched her mental attitude towards others, to see that she was beholding only good at all times. Even the tone of her voice became loving instead of impatient or irritable.

She saw that all that needed to be dissolved was self-will, self-justification, and self-love, unlovely traits of disposition, and that only Love could do the dissolving. Mrs. Eddy's words in Science and Health (p. 242) were a great help to her, "In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."

Instead of putting in hours of studying the Bible and our Leader's writings to change a material condition, she read less and applied more of what she knew of spiritual truth. She began to express the truth, or to claim the divine nature, which was then as always free, joyous, and complete. The tumor, which was merely the false effect of a false mental premise, dropped away in a very short time, for the erroneous thinking that had produced it was nullified.

Everyone has the right to expect healing in Christian Science from any and all ills by applying his knowledge, however slight, of this great truth, but a more advanced student is not permitted to go on indefinitely in the kindergarten stage. He must progress, because progress is the law of God, and he progresses only in the proportion that he applies Christian Science correctly.