After stealing the birthright which belonged lawfully to his brother Esau, Jacob suffered from guilt and fear of retaliation. His mental struggle, objectified as a wrestling match with error, resulted in his demonstration over the material senses through the understanding of the power of Spirit. This understanding healed his false concept of selfhood, whereupon his name, or nature, was changed. Later, when he saw his brother, he was able to say (Gen. 33:10), "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me." Healing always accompanies the turning of one's thought from a material to a spiritual basis. When we see the face of our brother as though we "had seen the face of God," we unsee the lie that man is a sinning mortal and see instead the truth that man in God's image and likeness is spiritual and perfect.

Jesus practiced divine, spiritual knowing constantly, and his clear vision resulted in healing for all those who sought help from him. In her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy explains Jesus' method. "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man," she says (pp. 476, 477), "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."

As Mrs. Eddy indicates, Jesus did not accept the testimony of the senses as real. He did not identify with man the false beliefs with which sense testimony was claiming to engulf others. Instead, he realized the spiritual truth about man. And what is this truth? Simply the fact that God makes man in His own image and likeness; that therefore man is perfect because God is perfect. It is obvious that perfection and imperfection cannot exist at the same place any more than light and darkness or truth and error can coexist. Since the truth about man is that he is spiritual and perfect, man cannot be sick, sinful, or discordant.

The work of spiritual rehabilitation is the ministry of Christian Science. Jesus declared (Matt. 17:11), "Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things." In the Glossary of the Christian Science textbook Mrs. Eddy defines "Elias" (p. 585) as "prophecy; spiritual evidence opposed to material sense; Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold; the basis of immortality." Christian Scientists are followers of Christ Jesus and therefore are dedicated to the carrying on of the work of spiritual rehabilitation.

A common meaning of the word "rehabilitate" is to restore to normal activity those who are disabled, particularly war veterans. Many young men and women have been discharged from the armed forces with so-called service-incurred disabilities. We can constructively aid them to return with freedom and joy to normal civilian life by restoring in our consciousness the true concept of man as the perfect son, or idea, of God. Everyone has the right to claim his God-bestowed dominion; everyone has the joyous privilege of gaining a deeper understanding of man as the perfect child of God. Whenever sense testimony reports a disability, let us remove the false concept of man from our own thought and replace it with the truth of man's harmonious being. By thus spiritualizing our thought, we are seeing in some degree the perfect man that the Master beheld in Science.

Medical science claims that after every war veterans must undergo a period of readjustment, an interval during which their rehabilitation is accomplished by a gradual shifting of their attitudes and habits from a warlike to a peaceful basis and by the acquiring of new skills to replace lost abilities. Actually there is no interval during which God is not all-powerful, nor is there ever a time when He is not expressed by His reflection, man. Rehabilitation is a mental process; consequently, the Christian Scientist contributes to this restoration by realizing that the only man who exists is the man of God's creating. Man needs no period of readjustment in order to regain the dominion, health, and strength which God has given him. Instead, he exists constantly at the standpoint of perfection, neither falling from nor returning to that state.

This fact was proved in the experience of a young man in the Army Air Forces who was confined to a station hospital with an injured leg. He became attracted to Christian Science through his squadron commander. Since the doctors were unable to diagnose his case, he asked to see the Christian Science Wartime Minister. After a brief explanation of man's true selfhood as unfallen, perfect, and complete, and of the ever-availability of the healing Christ, Truth, the minister left a copy of Science and Health with the young man.

The next morning the Christian Scientist received a telephone call from the excited squadron commander, who said to come out at once. Upon arrival, the Wartime Minister was delighted to find that the sores on the young man's leg had opened and drained and the stiffness had disappeared; in fact, the leg was completely healed. The boy explained that he had read the textbook from cover to cover without stopping to eat or sleep, and that, while he did not understand all that he had read, he knew that its statements were the truth. There was no period of convalescence, but, instead, immediate freedom as the result of his recognizing the truth of being.

This is but one example of the rehabilitative work which is being accomplished through Christian Science. In its highest sense, all spiritual healing is rehabilitation, whether it be the healing of injury, sickness, or sin.

If a member of our household is manifesting some disease, or perhaps an unlovely trait of character, let us stand constantly on guard over our thoughts, instantly denying material sense testimony which argues for the validity of affliction, sin, or ill temper. Turning at once to the perfection of man in God's likeness, the only man there is, we see the unreality of the counterfeit presentment which claims to be parading before us. Perfect man, whom God creates, can never be less than whole. Each of us is responsible only for his own thinking. Spiritual knowing destroys the false concept of man.

Wherever we may be, we must see our brother's face as though we "had seen the face of God." As we walk along the street, transact business, ride in a public vehicle, or while we attend church services, we should refuse to accept as man anything but the reflection of God, good. Let us be ever careful that we are not like the Pharisees of Jesus' day who, intent upon observing the letter of religion, forgot to love. Ours should be the joyful experience of expressing the spirit of true Christianity by constant and prayerful realization that Truth is the Life of all, and that all can avail themselves of the truth of being and find freedom, joy, and peace.

The spiritual rehabilitation of Christ, Truth, is beautifully expressed in the following words from one of our hymns (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 202):

Blessed be the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my
supplications. The Lord is my strength and my shield; my
heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart
greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.

Psalms 28:6, 7