"The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is indeed God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human; and man's ability to meet them is from God; for, being His likeness and image, man must reflect the full dominion of Spirit—even its supremacy over sin, sickness, and death." So says Mary Baker Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 16). Perhaps someone thinks, "Yes, these things are true of my selfhood." Are there two selfhoods? Mrs. Eddy gives a negative reply (Unity of Good, p. 49): "There are not two realities of being, two opposite states of existence." Christian Science teaches that error is not real, but is a false claim, and shows us how to destroy it. If a student finds a difficulty continuing, it may be that while he recognizes it as a false claim, he is not going on to prove that it is no claim at all.

Our Leader writes (ibid., p. 54): "To say there is a false claim, called sickness, is to admit all there is of sickness; for it is nothing but a false claim. To be healed, one must lose sight of a false claim. If the claim be present to the thought, then disease becomes as tangible as any reality. To regard sickness as a false claim, is to abate the fear of it; but this does not destroy the so-called fact of the claim. In order to be whole, we must be insensible to every claim of error."

In Science we understand that error is neither material person nor thing, but only erroneous belief—the product of ignorance. This shows the mental nature of error. Thus we correct it with true thoughts, not with things. While error is to human thought a false belief, actually it is nonexistent. To say, "I know error is not real, but it certainly seems real," is to give it the recognition it seeks. Let us be less ignorant and more spiritually innocent. Ignorance is a claim of mortal mind, which knows nothing of immortal Truth. Innocence is a pure attribute of immortal Spirit, which knows nothing of false belief.

We cannot resignedly say, "I have a claim," and still expect to be freed from it. We need first to understand that error is nothing claiming to be something, and then prove that error, or nothing, as a dictionary defines "nothing," is "the absence of all magnitude or quantity."

Let us consider three individuals, each of whom is troubled with a headache. The first one knows nothing of Christian Science. The second one, while knowing something of the truths of Christian Science, goes only part way in proving them. The third one demonstrates them. The first person says, "I have a headache." He believes this, and suffers the effects of his belief. The second person declares that there is no reality in a belief of headache, but that it seems real. The claim is still present to his thought, and thus he suffers the same effects as the first person.

The third individual is radically different from the other two in his approach to the problem and his handling of it. He understands that error is not real because it is not of God, infinite good; that it does not exist as a true claim or as a false claim; thus it has no claim on man, and man cannot claim it for himself. He holds to this line of thought until every vestige of the error has disappeared.

In prospecting days, when a miner found a promising piece of ground he staked out a claim on it. That is, he put stakes or a pile of rocks at each corner of the plot and left a dated description of the property, stating that he had found that piece of ground first and was claiming it as his property. He then rushed to the recorder's office to file his claim, after which the claim was his to operate.

If we stake out a claim on some particular discord, we shall mentally possess it (and be possessed by it) just as long as we claim it as our own, but no longer! Discord exists in human consciousness only as illusion, and only as long as human consciousness accepts the illusion. In divine consciousness, discord does not exist at all, not even as illusion. There are no lying claims in Truth. To Truth there is a claim, but the claim is harmonious and preserving, because it is divine. This divine claim on man secures him from the false claims of mortal mind. Error seems to freeze us with fear, but Truth liberates us with love. Then we possess no false claim, but know only Truth's claims, which produce harmony and spiritual perfection.

In his parable of the prodigal son, Christ Jesus portrays the elder brother as resentful because no feast had been prepared for him. Whereupon the father said (Luke 15:31), "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." What a beautiful picture of eternal at-one-ment of Father and son and of man's claim upon the perfect gifts of his loving Father-Mother! Man is not halfway home to heaven, harmony, ashamed and in pain, having to be forgiven and restored to the kingdom. Christian Science reveals man's completeness and contentment in the realm of the real, replete with every spiritual talent, capacity, and blessing.

There is no power at work through any human claim to take our joy from us. God eternally claims man as His own, and He forever holds him in Himself. This is the divine claim.