The world echoes with praise for the wonders which show mankind's increasing dominion over material limitations. But nothing which is being accomplished through matter approaches the wonder of spiritual healing which is brought about through Christian Science. The profound significance of this spiritual method of healing lies in the fact that the very basis of material ills is being thus overthrown. Material sense, in which all disease and limitation and sin originate, is being dispelled by the understanding that God, Spirit, is the only Mind and that man, God's likeness, dwells eternally in the spiritual sense of life.

The material sense of being, which seems so convincingly to be part of one's identity, is proved by Science to be false, an imposition. And the flesh and its suffering, which originate in that deluding sense, yield to this Science, which denies matter and asserts that man's consciousness is altogether spiritual. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Unity of Good" (pp. 42,43), "Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling a false sense and leading man into the true sense of selfhood and Godhood; wherein the mortal does not develop the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance of eternal being and its perfections, unchanged and unchangeable."

Truth, or Science, acquaints one with his spiritually radiant self and with the health and peace that are inseparable from it. The appearing of this true self rebukes the insubordinate, godless, false sense and stops the seeming evil action by which it claims to produce the problems of mankind. God's mandate for the perfection of man then overcomes the false sense, and problems disappear.

To heal sickness, one needs to know that flesh is merely a substratum of so-called mortal mind and that consequently thought alone is involved in any physical discord. It is always the material sense and not the body which needs attention, thought and not matter which calls for healing.

Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 411): "Disease is always induced by a false sense mentally entertained, not destroyed. Disease is an image of thought externalized. The mental state is called a material state." Science thus exposes the great subtlety of the carnal mind, which puts forth the evil suggestions that the flesh rather than the mind is sick and that one is helpless because the body acts independently of the mind.

The moment one sees that he is dealing wholly with a sick sense instead of a sick body, he begins to dispel the false sense which is causing the trouble. The concepts of material sense unfailingly respond to a quieted, corrected mental state. Health invariably appears in the consciousness which yields to Mind's mandate for harmonious action. The false sense disappears in the presence of demonstrated spiritual sense.

Christ Jesus proved the mental nature of disease when he healed the man with the withered hand. He said to him (Luke 6:10), "Stretch forth thy hand." The man's thought of himself must have changed at once, for his hand was immediately "restored whole as the other." The body followed the direction of spiritual sense, for it could not resist Christly authority.

The Master used no material remedies in his healings, but brought his knowledge of the true sense of being to bear upon the false sense. By this simple yet powerful means sin was silenced, injustices were overcome, the suffering were comforted and healed, and death was proved powerless.

What a record of compassion the great Metaphysician left! With him compassion was not a self-satisfying emotion, a fruitless pity, but a power that rebuked falsity and destroyed its presumptions. On some occasions Jesus even healed multitudes by masterfully ruling out the false sense and admitting only the true. If he had attempted to reach sickness and to control it by the application of matter, he could not have succeeded. His direct method of dealing with sickness by dispelling the false sense which produced the sickness is the method which the whole world must learn through Science.

Divine Mind controls the body in the measure that one understands that God is the only Mind, for this truth obliterates one's belief in a spurious sense and reveals the universal control of the creator.

If we would express spiritual dominion, we must claim the goodness and truthfulness and sinlessness of Mind. In this way we utilize the power of divinity to rule out the false sense and its delusions. Our basic lesson in the demonstration of divine power is to learn to express the spiritual qualities, which were native to the Master's character. His life illustrated the divine nature of Mind as it is manifested through Mind's ideas. He lived with simple integrity the unselfed love, the purity, and the intelligence which mark God's man.

Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 187), "The great Metaphysician wrought, over and above every sense of matter, into the proper sense of the possibilities of Spirit." We too can dispel the sick and sinful and dying sense and establish the perfect consciousness of existence. We can replace a sick sense with a spiritual and healthy sense of life, leaving the physical body out of thought as we rise into the full consciousness of God's kingdom.

Today's great wonder is the ability of Christian Science to bring the comfort of divinity to humanity. This ability is what needs to be developed by mankind in order that God's supremacy over all may be revealed as an ever-present fact.

Helen Wood Bauman