One of the important steps in Christian Science healing is to separate the true selfhood of man from the belief or dream of material existence. As one makes this reparation and maintains the position that man is spiritual and perfect, he is indeed treading "in Christly paths apart" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 382).

We read in II Corinthians (6: 17), "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord." Does this mean that we are to be separate from our loved ones? From our friends? From mankind? Indeed not. We must come out— separate ourselves mentally—from the belief of a material creation and all that this belief includes. Our Master, Christ Jesus, gave us this injunction (Matt. 6:24): "Ye cannot serve God and mammon"; so we must choose. If our choice be to serve God, then our spiritual progress is assured, because it is impossible for one to hold to a false material concept of creation while acknowledging and accepting the true idea of existence as spiritual, complete, and wholly good.

Each day brings added opportunities to choose the good, the real, and the eternal and to reject the evil, the false, and the temporal. We are separating the real from the unreal each time we reject mortal mind's suggestions of sickness, death, and limitation and accept divine Mind's truths of health, life, and abundance. It is through the rejection of evil and the acceptance of good that we leave the road of material thinking, with its pain, sickness, and sorrow, and enter the Christly path, wherein is found peace, health, happiness, and joy.

We learn how to make this separation between the real and the unreal more effectively through the devoted study of our textbooks, the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Reading and applying the truths revealed in these books, praying with clear conviction, we are able to discern the great gulf existing between the true or spiritual creation and the false, discordant sense of things. Dwelling on the things of the Spirit, we find a depth of satisfaction in our Leader's statement on page 14 of Science and Health, "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth."

It is well to pause here a moment and note the word "entirely." Our Leader does not say partially separate but entirely separate. The real and only creation has no point of contact with the belief or false concept of creation. Man, as the unchanging reflection of an unchanging God, is not only immune to but entirely removed from all the shadows of human existence. These shadowy beliefs, having no reality, hence no substance, no power, can no more touch man or enter his experience than a shadow cast upon one from a tree as he passes it can become a part of his being.

When one accepts the basic truths of Christian Science and endeavors to put them into practice in his daily living, he is starting on the right path, illumed by divine Love. And as he continues in this path his steps are steadier, and he is less and less disturbed by the false shadows of haunting fears and limitations. At the end of the path he finds himself in the secret place which God has prepared for him, and his consciousness becomes flooded with the spiritual realization that he has never left there.

Finding it necessary to give up her position because of a nervous breakdown and a heart condition, a student of Science asked for help from a Christian Science practitioner. After passing through a period of great discouragement, the patient awakened to the fact that she must keep her thought focused, not on the unreal, but on the real —that which she knew to be true. Striving to do this, she left the road that led to the dark pictures of a weak, sick body and entered the path which "is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Prov. 4:18).

Many times when she awakened during the night the suggestions of death were quieted by the light which came to her in the comforting words of the ninety-first Psalm. When she was filled with gratitude for this light and with the desire for spiritual understanding, the illusion, or dream of sickness, ceased to be, and she was healed. She had learned that man is indeed "entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living," that in reality she had not even been on a journey from sense to Soul, for man has never been away from God, Soul, his eternal abiding place.

Like this student of Christian Science, each one of us will find as he walks in this lighted path that the mortal dream is not the experience of man. In a night dream, one may seem to be ill, unhappy, or tired, or he may believe that he is in a foreign country. But the dream remains a dream. It never becomes an actuality. As seekers of the light, we need to remind ourselves often of the simple truth that a dream never becomes reality, not even for an instant.

Man created in the image and likeness of God and given dominion over all the earth, as presented in the first chapter of Genesis, never became the mortal made of dust, as related in the second chapter. The belief that man could become dust is utterly false. God creates man and maintains him as His reflection, the same yesterday, today, and forever. A mortal's seeming existence is a material dream. The real man, the image and likeness of God. does not dream. What a clear line of distinction our Leader draws between the dream and the reality when she states on page 300 of Science and Health: "The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the immutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existent."

As we walk on the Christly path and as we continue on this way of holiness, we become more and more conscious of the all-inclusiveness of God and the utter nothingness of evil. Love is always present, and Love is no respecter of persons. Each one is precious to God. Each one is enfolded in His care. We need only trust in the Father's care, and He will show us the way out of error just as He does all the followers of Truth.