Christian Science teaches us to reason along the positive, affirmative line of spiritual facts. As we grow in our understanding of these facts through practice and demonstration, we find that our work of realizing the truth regarding God and man is more spontaneous and more effective when we do not unduly prolong the denial of error but hasten to affirm the eternal truths of spiritual being.

Mary Baker Eddy tells us how we may discern the spiritual fact which will heal every situation. She says in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 60, 61), "Every material belief hints the existence of spiritual reality; and if mortals are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that material belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand." For best results in demonstration, then, we need to dwell not upon the manifestations of material belief, but upon the spiritual "verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand" which appear when we reverse the discordant evidence of the material senses. Further useful instruction regarding the reversal of error is given by Mrs. Eddy on pages 120 and 129 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," under the marginal headings "Reversal of testimony" and "Truth by inversion."

The realization of the truth regarding any situation is the most effective denial of a false belief about it. Because the false belief is not true, it is not real. It is never some thing but always no thing, and the specific truth about it destroys its seeming reality. There is then in every case not something to heal, but something to reveal; not something to change, but a spiritual fact to perceive and demonstrate.

A study of Jesus' words and works would indicate that this was his method of healing. Mrs. Eddy says of him (Science and Health, pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." We note that it was the "correct view," the perception of reality, which healed.

Humanly speaking, a correct view requires a vantage point from which to survey the scene. So in Christian Science, in order to obtain the correct view, we must look out upon the scene from the highest pinnacle to which our understanding of divine Principle carries us. We must not merely look up, raise our thoughts, to this Principle; we must start all our work, our reasoning, from the basis of Principle. The real man, the spiritual idea of God, is ever one with and inseparable from his perfect Principle. He is ever at the standpoint of perfect spiritual understanding. To accept these spiritual facts as true of our own real selfhood and that of our brother is to acquire an ever clearer view of the spiritual idea, man.

When Christian Scientists are confronted with the apparent necessity for healing, whether for themselves or for others, they need not ask themselves, "How am I going to get rid of this unlovely picture?" Instead, they can deny its reality, for any evidence of imperfection is contrary to Principle; therefore contrary to fact. Since imperfection is false, its opposite must be true, and false evidence when reversed can be made to point to what is true. They can know that the divine Mind is ever present and is revealing the truth which destroys even the seeming presence of discord. They can deny that there is something to hate or fear and claim the perfect evidence of God, divine Principle, who makes all things to express Him. They can rejoice that good is unfolding to them, and that they can behold it.

This scientific reasoning was employed by a Christian Science practitioner when a patient came to him to be healed of an abnormal growth which he had endured for many years. Although this man had experienced many other healings through Christian Science treatment, this ailment had thus far failed to yield. The practitioner reasoned that the opposite of abnormal, material growth is spiritual growth, or divine unfoldment, which is normal and natural to the real man.

In a paragraph with the marginal heading "Growth is from Mind," on page 520 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy comments on the fourth and fifth verses of the second chapter of Genesis. Among her statements is the following: "Here is the emphatic declaration that God creates all through Mind, not through matter,—that the plant grows, not because of seed or soil, but because growth is the eternal mandate of Mind."

Since "growth is from Mind" and "the eternal mandate," or command, of the one infinite Mind, God, good, reasoned the practitioner, there can be only one kind of growth, and that one wholly good. Since Mind is All, this true growth, or unfoldment, is all that is going on or ever has gone on in man, the reflection of Mind. This spiritual unfoldment is going on now, and it will never cease. All that is real is the evidence of this true growth, or unfoldment of Truth. All there is to see is Truth evidenced in perfect harmony. The patient was aroused to the necessity of expressing spiritual activity, or true growth. He took a renewed interest in the study of Christian Science, announced his intention of joining a branch church, and was healed in two weeks.

The Christian Scientist can employ this method of right reasoning to the healing of every phase of error. Where to mortal sense lack seems apparent, the Christian Scientist beholds by reversal the spiritual fact of the abundance of good. Where mortal sense cries, "Sin, sickness, sorrow, death are here," Christian Science replies, "Purity, health, joy, and immortality are the spiritual facts of being, ever present and forever manifested."

Through right reasoning the spiritual fact is revealed to consciousness and so magnified in thought that inharmonious evidence disappears and only the "correct view" remains. When God, good, is seen to be All, there is no belief, no fear, no evidence of evil. Thus salvation is the exchanging of false beliefs for the demonstration of right ideas. False beliefs exist only as a claim of the absence of God and melt away in the discernment of the ever-presence of the one right Mind and its ideas.

The understanding of the all-presence of God and the results of such understanding were foretold by the prophet Isaiah when he said (Isa. 35:5, 6, 8–10): "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. ... And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it.... But the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads."