The teachings of Christian Science are daily enlightening and teaching the receptive thought how to apprehend and appreciate the indisputable legality, beauty, and virtue of spiritual facts, and to detect the unreality and illegality of their opposites, materialistic beliefs. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, vividly states this truth in a thought-provoking paragraph in her textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which reads in part as follows (p. 129): "We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things. Can we gather peaches from a pine-tree, or learn from discord the concord of being? Yet quite as rational are some of the leading illusions along the path which Science must tread in its reformatory mission among mortals. The very name, illusion, points to nothingness."

God and His wholly good creation, Christian Science designates as the real, because God, or Spirit, and His reflection, spiritual man and the universe, alone are immutable and eternal. Similarly, the carnal mind and its counterfeit creation are recognized for exactly what they are—nothing claiming to be something.

The perception and acknowledgment of the substance and supremacy of spiritual good, which involves the casting out of consciousness of all that denies God's (good's) allness, is the Christianly scientific method of healing employed in Christian Science, and it is eminently practical and potent in its application to daily life. The realization of the presence and perfection of God and His ideas destroys the physical evidence of sickness, lack, fear, and all the ugly train of evil beliefs and suggestions included in mortal thought, and establishes the true consciousness of harmony, joy, and progress. Always the mental state is found to govern the material or physical.

The constant looking above and beyond matter into the changeless perfection of Spirit quickens and increases our expression of true intelligence, insight, and perspicacity. Thereby we come to know and rely upon spiritual discernment as infinitely superior to and controlling the unreliable testimony of matter.

Many earnest students of Christian Science have found that this radical reliance upon divine Mind and its faultless faculties has resulted in improved material vision, in some instances enabling those who have worn glasses to dispense with their use. It is this inner and indestructible spiritual vision to which Isaiah referred when he wrote (Isa. 64:4), "Since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him."

A Christian Scientist who had been requested to conduct a public meeting found, to her dismay, that the lighting of the platform was extremely dim and that the print from which she was to read was very small. There was not sufficient time to remedy either condition. Quickly she recognized that, first of all, the temptation to condemn others for the inadequate lighting facilities must be overcome and replaced by a greater sense of love and humility on her part. This she instantly and prayerfully endeavored to do. Then, with implicit confidence in the heavenly Father's protection and provision, she refused to accept the suggestions of failure and embarrassment and, instead, looked gratefully and expectantly for the light of divine Love and Truth to illumine her consciousness with its healing rays. As she opened the book to read, she was not surprised to discover that every word stood out clearly and distinctly; and complete harmony and freedom reigned throughout the meeting. By looking away from the darkening suggestions of material sense into the brightness of divine realism, she had proved the irradiance and infallibility of true being.

In thankfully reviewing the lessons learned from this experience, the Scientist's attention was arrested by this pertinent passage in the Christian Science textbook (p. 316) under the marginal heading, "Spiritual government ": "Jesus represented Christ, the true idea of God. Hence the warfare between this spiritual idea and perfunctory religion, between spiritual clear-sightedness and the blindness of popular belief, which led to the conclusion that the spiritual idea could be killed by crucifying the flesh." She saw that under God's government "spiritual clear-sightedness" is ever and always victor over "the blindness of popular belief," irrespective of how, when, or where such material or popular belief may wage its warfare.

Someone has said that "good hearing is hearing good." It may also be stated that good vision is the ability to envision good. To look for and to behold perfection in ourselves and in others, as God's witnesses, not only will bring freedom from the harmful habits of condemnation, unjust criticism, pessimism, defeatism, et cetera, but also will vivify and beautify our lives, widen our horizon, and lead us on to greater progress and true attainment.

The mental process of intelligently dividing between the true and the false, the real and the unreal, determines the harmony and success of our lives. Faithful study of the Bible, together with its clear interpretation as found in the teachings of Christian Science, yields rich fruitage in spiritual harmony and dominion over the claims of evil.

In the fourth chapter of II Kings is the inspiring account of the Shunammite woman, whose unwavering trust in God as the origin, maintainer, and protector of man's immortality and intactness, fortified by the clear vision and prayers of Elisha. "the man of God," completely obliterated the mental pictures of sorrow and death, and restored to life and activity the woman's young son. Later in his experience Elisha, when pursued by the hostile hordes of the king of Syria, prayed earnestly to God to open the eyes of the faithful servant who accompanied him, that he too might behold the proximity of divine deliverance so apparent to Elisha's keener spiritual perception. We read (II Kings 6:17), "And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

These instances of insight into spiritual reality are possible in this age, and indeed are being approximated and experienced in some degree today where spiritually-minded men and women are relying unequivocally upon divine Love for inspiration, direction, and protection. More and more let us look away from the flimsy and fallible evidence presented by matter, and steadfastly behold and properly evaluate divine actuality, Then shall we grasp more clearly the meaning and increasingly demonstrate the practical potency of our Leader's words on page 486 of Science and Health: "Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are eternal. They cannot be lost. Their reality and immortality are in Spirit and understanding, not in matter,—hence their permanence."