Christ Jesus came to awaken those who were mesmerized by dreams of materiality, superstition, and fear. The Bible informs us that the rulers of the Jews plotted against his life. They were willing to extinguish whatever opposed their power and their superstitious beliefs. They were eager to destroy Jesus, whose great desire was to free them from the chains forged by the very superstitions that they clung to and so mercilessly defended. But today, as then, mortal mind holds tenaciously to its ignorant beliefs, including superstition.

In the fullest measure Jesus was aware of his inseparable unity with God; he was ever conscious of his divine Principle, God. His life, manifesting holiness, health, joy, freedom, and gratitude, silenced the false claims of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and fear. The sorrowing were comforted, the sick were healed, the hungry were fed. The light of the Christ brought to the individual human consciousness a brighter hope, a surer faith, a purer love.

Jesus' life proved the dynamic force of these words in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 149): "We need to understand the affirmations of divine Science, dismiss superstition, and demonstrate truth according to Christ."

Christian Science teaches us that the truth which we understandingly affirm must carry with it the confidence of its establishment in consciousness. Such an affirmation constitutes a denial of the physical sense testimony of superstition and fear. What a far-reaching thought! How our trust in the affirmation of truth grows as we put our understanding of it into practice!

The starting point of our affirmation is that God is the only cause; that there is but one divine, supreme intelligence, one ever-operating Principle governing man. The thought awakened to these spiritual truths consciously expresses Godlike qualities and thus closes the door to such superstitions as scholastic theology, medical theories, and fear. No longer need one be mesmerized by the negative suggestions which falsely claim a power to bind men, to burden them with limitation, to darken hope and inspiration, to rob or make afraid. The constant, vigorous winds of affirmation sweep away all such negations.

Christian Science enables us to see that as we rise above the dream mist of ignorance, superstition, suffering, and the like, into the light of reality, falsities and fears are dissolved. In reference to the claim of sin or disease we read on page 390 of Science and Health: "Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate, because you know that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin. You have no law of His to support the necessity either of sin or sickness, but you have divine authority for denying that necessity and healing the sick."

A constant scientific affirmation of Truth brings with it a clearer and clearer realization of Truth. The realization of a spiritual fact is essential to the demonstration of Truth. It is a proof that there is a divine influence active in human thought which comforts the brokenhearted, heals the sinner and the sick, and sets "at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke 4:18).

Now, as in Jesus' time, the dream of materiality, with its concomitants, fear, superstition, disease, and lack, still attempts to find an entity through which to act. But God did not make mortals, nor did He create man to be a channel for evil manipulations. He created man to express His pure, holy ideas.

Out of the struggle to discern the operation of a law that had brought freedom from disease, and even from death itself, there came to the inspired consciousness of Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, a revelation of God as Principle, harmoniously governing all. This Science clearly explains the truth that we are to understand and demonstrate. It should be our sincere desire to "demonstrate truth according to Christ," for in this way we glorify God and share the blessings that have come to us.

Those who have not awakened to their spiritual origin and being, to their tender, loving Father-Mother God—their abiding place "under the shadow of the Almighty" (Ps. 91:1)—place their faith in matter. Such faith is usually attended with superstition and fear. The unfolding of Truth in consciousness through the study of Christian Science awakens one to his God-given faith and understanding. Mankind have outgrown somewhat many old superstitions and beliefs, but is there not still a superstition of precedent— a superstition based upon what has happened before? Does one, perhaps, find himself carrying on a conversation with himself something like this: "I am always confused when..."; "I invariably lose this thing or that"; "I always forget to..."?

Or is one afraid to make a second attempt because once before he did not achieve the happy success he had anticipated? As a Shakespearean character puts it,

We may help to break such superstitious beliefs by cognizing the fact that today we find ourselves at a different standpoint from that which we have ever had before. That standpoint should be a higher one. Today we should find ourselves better armed, more courageous, more steadfast because we have learned how to love more and how to draw nearer to God; therefore we should be surer of Christly mastery.

Let us joyfully anticipate a more continuous demonstration of Truth. Let our paramount purpose be to prove that "the Lord is in his holy temple" and to pray, "Let all the earth keep silence before him" (Hab. 2:20).

It is not necessarily incumbent upon us to move from the place in human experience where we now find ourselves or to change our present activity in order to show our allegiance to God and to serve mankind. Right where we are, we can demonstrate man's divine Principle and its all-pervading presence and power, forever guiding and governing man and the universe. Let us ever remember that "superstition and understanding can never combine" (Science and Health, p. 288). Through divine understanding, we drop earth's burdens of superstition and fear and gain heaven's liberation and blessings.