"Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind as the cause of every effect," Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 268 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

Here is a statement which awakened a Christian Scientist out of a sense of bad business and the seeming evidence of it in insecurity and indecision. "Since God, Mind, is perfect cause," he asked himself, "how can Mind's creation—man and the universe—be anything but unerringly mental? What is it that would obscure this fact?" Is it not the mesmeric presence of a horde of false beliefs, based on the testimony of the unreliable senses, which Mrs. Eddy has called mortal mind? Surely what mortal mind is purportedly thinking cannot touch the true individual consciousness, which is aware of its source in and identity with the one universal and perfect divine Mind. No matter how numerous seem the beliefs which constitute mortal mind, the individual who consciously and consistently acknowledges his inseparable relationship with divine Mind as the cause of his existence is never eclipsed, and his activity can never slacken.

A Christian Scientist knows that if he assumes he can be deprived even temporarily of his proper sense of supply, he is making deductions from a material basis. He is entertaining a belief in the reality of matter and many minds. He is attempting to rationalize from that unsound basis, too, if he assumes he can be a victim of injustice. The faithful Christian Scientist knows that human law is effective and enduring only so long as it patterns the divine. While completely obedient to the law of the land, he knows that apparent injustices will be corrected in his experience in proportion to his certainty that God governs. He knows that obedience to God's law brings him into consonance with all the law he can be required to obey, even in human relationships. He is in accord with Paul, who declared (Rom. 7:22), "I delight in the law of God after the inward man."

The student of Christian Science is certain that God governs because God is Principle, primal cause, and all effect partakes of the spiritually perfect nature of that cause. Wise and fruitful activity flows from such certainty.

In every human consciousness there is the good that God bestows. Consequently, to every human consciousness is available the law which governs that good and which destroys its opposite. No one can be so misled by false education, so satisfied with ignorance, so mesmerized by false appearances, as not to express some of God's qualities. While one may not have arrived at the place where he is completely aware of his dependence upon God and of his conscious ability to reflect Him, he cannot in truth fail to express God, for man exists as expression. Mrs. Eddy's positive and unqualified statement is (Science and Health, p. 470), "Man is the expression of God's being."

God, the one cause, is then constantly expressing Himself. That expression, or effect, of God is comprised of spiritual ideas individualized in man, the embodiment of immortal good. Sincerely to desire to identify oneself with and express that good and to look for it and recognize it in others is the Christian Scientist's vocation. As he devotedly pursues it, he progressively discerns in himself and in others the perfect man of God's creating. And as such discernment becomes natural and habitual to him, he heals as Jesus healed and commanded his followers to heal: he understands that in reality nothing exists but good. What appears to human consciousness as evil is mortal mind's ignorance of good or denial of it. It is what that fictitious mind seems to see when looking at its own limitations.

Christian Scientists, eager to prove the nothingness of evil and the substantiality of good, apply themselves with gratitude and rewarding expectancy to the study and utilization of Mrs. Eddy's revelation of God and His Christ, or Truth, to this age. So occupied, they progressively dispel all ignorance of good. They know that good is ever available. They consecratedly put into practice what they understand of Truth. They utilize the spiritual law that all effect must be in the nature of the one perfect cause. In this business they cannot fail. It was the Master's business— the business of bearing witness to, or expressing, Truth. It was the business in which Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, was triumphantly engaged. It is the business of her professed followers, made manifest by each in his own way.

When a Christian Scientist asks himself, as he frequently does, "What am I?" he must respond in consonance with Mrs. Eddy's words (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 165), "I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing." As he so sees himself, his individual activity, or business, will take on larger and larger significance, a wider serviceableness. And it is sure to bring to him naturally, and with unlabored effort, all that he needs today and forever.