Christian Science reveals Christ to humanity. The enlightenment one needs is always with him. The Christ, the ideal Truth, which confers perfect enlightenment, is in a degree present in the consciousness of each one of us. Because it confers perfect enlightenment, the Christ must always be victorious. No darkness or materiality can withstand the light of Truth. In God-illumined consciousness there is no resistance to the recognition of man's present spiritual perfection and its immediate evidence. While to human apprehension the Christ continues to appear, it can never actually be absent. In the immortal words of Mary Baker Eddy (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 180), "Christ is Truth, and Truth is always here,—the impersonal Saviour."

It is the mission of the Christ to cast out error and disease, and it does so today just as it did in Jesus' time. Since a human difficulty is only wrong thought externalized, the true, spiritual idea entertained brings freedom by destroying the incorrect concept. In any situation the Christ, the true idea of God, is present to heal and save.

More than twenty-five years ago a party of seven were out on a large lake late one afternoon in an old-type motorboat. This craft had a disappearing propeller which could be pulled into the boat, thus permitting it to be drawn up on the shore. Such a dense fog settled on the lake that the occupants of the boat, being unable to see, had to stop the engine and drift. Soon after darkness had set in they felt water rushing into the boat. The propeller shaft had fallen out, leaving a hole in the bottom of the boat. All were panic-stricken except a little girl who was present. "Why, Mother," she said with great assurance, "we know that nothing can deprive us of divine protection." This truth had been taught the child by her mother, and the child had committed it to memory.

This message indeed evidenced the presence of the Christ. The angel thought voiced by the little girl dispelled the aggressive fear and brought unfoldment and fruition. Now thinking clearly, the child's father located his trolling pole, which had a piece of rubber attached to one end. He inserted this into the hole just in time. It fitted securely enough to stop the inrushing water. The group then bailed out the boat with their hats. Although they were on the lake all night until after daybreak, no one suffered from the experience. On the contrary, they were heartened by this added proof that nothing can harm those who recognize the fact of ever-present divine protection.

Man's real nature in the likeness of God is unassailable, yes, impervious to evil. This enables one to reject the unreal concept of man as an endangered or sick material personality. Understandingly to accept one's true selfhood in God's own likeness is to lose the misery that a false concept of oneself entails. Man, the image and likeness of God, includes only right ideas; therefore he does not include the false sense of burden, weakness, or disease. These lies cannot enter the consciousness illumined by Truth any more than darkness can enter the blazing sunlight. How perfectly this was demonstrated in the experience of one whose testimony appears in the closing chapter, entitled "Fruitage," in our Leader's textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 603, 604). For many years this woman had a large tumor which was attended by a continuous hemorrhage.

She writes in part: "My gratitude for Christian Science is boundless. ... Changing my boarding-place, I met a lady who owned a copy of Science and Health, ... and she got it and told me I could read it. The revelation was marvellous and brought a great spiritual awakening. This awakened sense never left me, and one day when walking alone it came to me very suddenly that I was healed, and I walked the faster declaring every step that I was healed. When I reached my boarding-place, I found my hostess and told her I was healed. She looked the picture of amazement. The tumor began to disappear at once, the hemorrhage ceased, and perfect strength was manifest."

Two statements in this testimony are significant: that her gratitude for Christian Science was boundless and that her awakened sense never left her. She did not heed sense testimony and say: "I am not healed. The tumor is still here," but she listened to the angel thought from God that she was healed, and held fast to it. Could a consciousness so illumined have a tumor? Where the awakened sense was, the darkened sense termed disease could not be, and healing followed. This awakened sense evidences the healing Christ, whereof Jesus says (John 12:46), "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness." The basis of the woman's healing was her change in consciousness, the awakened sense which revelation brought.

Have not we all heard remarks like these: "I don't make my demonstrations as quickly as formerly." "I haven't the enthusiasm I had when I became interested in Christian Science." "I've lost my inspiration." The woman who was healed wrote, "This awakened sense never left me." The Christ-consciousness never left anyone. It could not. What suggests that the Christ has left? Animal magnetism, the carnal mind, says so, not God, and it always lies about or attempts to hide a present spiritual truth.

It is axiomatic that one cannot at the same moment accept both the truth and a lie about anything. One cannot believe that five and five are nine or eleven if he intelligently understands the correct sum to be ten. When the enlightenment of the Christ destroys an error of belief termed a sorrow, an illness, or a shortcoming, that belief is destroyed forever. It can never assert itself to consciousness again. The belief is all that can be lost. Indeed, the Christ so illumines thought that it wipes out every vestige or remembrance of the problem. Through our recognition of this we progressively prove our real selfhood as God's spiritual idea, untouched by evil, forever in heaven.

In speaking of the Christ-consciousness which wrought her own healing, our Leader tells us in the passage already quoted from "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 180): "When, through this consciousness, I was delivered from the dark shadow and portal of death, my friends were frightened at beholding me restored to health. A dear old lady asked me, 'How is it that you are restored to us? Has Christ come again on earth?' 'Christ never left,' I replied; 'Christ is Truth, and Truth is always here,—the impersonal Saviour.'"

At the very portal of death, the Christ revealed to our Leader the intactness of her spiritual selfhood. She saw that the difficulty through which she seemed to be passing was no more real than a dream. She perceived that the whole experience had nothing to do with her as God's idea, and that it had nothing to do with matter or with body. Its only seeming existence was in the realm of belief. She awoke from this belief to entertain the ever-present Christ, Truth, and found herself well. Her experience certainly shows how quickly the Christ, the true idea, may come—become apparent—to human consciousness. And her life assuredly exemplifies the glorious truth that the Christ "is always here."

The argument of animal magnetism may be that one has retrogressed, or that some others who have known the truth have turned from it or forsaken its healing power. These mesmeric lies have not altered spiritual facts. Animal magnetism would attempt to, but cannot, hide truth. Divine Love alone is working. And it is working its purpose out in the way each one can understand. Although trials may appear to precede one's demonstration of Truth, God's care of His own is perpetual and uninterrupted.

Encouragingly Mrs. Eddy writes in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 7): "There is but one Christ. And from ever-lasting to everlasting this Christ is never absent. In doubt and darkness we say as did Mary of old: 'I know not where they have laid him.' But when we behold the Christ walking the wave of earth's troubled sea, like Peter we believe in the second coming, and would walk more closely with Christ; but find ourselves so far from the embodiment of Truth that ofttimes this attempt measurably fails, and we cry, 'Save, or I perish!' Then the tender, loving Christ is found near, affords help, and we are saved from our fears."

The Christ appears to human thought when we most need aid. An individual cannot be so weighed down with sorrow, so ridden with disease, that he cannot begin to accept and comprehend God's presence and unfailing love. As he does so, Christ, Truth, illumines His consciousness with the understanding of what he already is and possesses as God's perfect spiritual child. To one in the depths of despair the Christ comes to uplift and exalt. To one on the mount of revelation it continues to lead to greater heights of spirituality. But it never leaves anyone.

It is impossible for us who have felt the touch of the healing Christ to revert to our former beliefs. Indeed, each one can say in a measure, "'I know that my redeemer liveth' and that, reflecting Him, I live harmoniously." We know, too, that the Christ, Truth, as revealed in Christian Science can never leave our loved ones, friends, and all humanity and that it will continue to enlighten, protect, and heal them. Indeed the Christ, which Jesus so perfectly exemplified, certainly impelled him when he said (John 10:27, 28), "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."