The ability to heal in Christian Science appears today, this day, to each individual in the degree of his consciousness of absolute, divine Truth. One can be conscious of absolute divine Truth this day, only by repenting this day of the error which appears to be in human consciousness.

The standpoint needed to meet today's problem and to solve it successfully is the same standpoint that was required yesterday—the consciousness of pure reality, God and His idea. But the healing which occurred because of errors conquered yesterday will not repeat itself today merely because of yesterday's victory. This day demands further conquests of error if the spiritual standpoint is to be maintained and the healing power again demonstrated.

Each day is an opportunity to know oneself better. Until we ascend completely above the mortal sense of things, there will always be more of our spiritual selfhood to discern, and it can be discerned only as we renounce more of our supposed material selfhood.

Christian Science reveals the allness of Mind and the nothingness of matter, the real man as the image of Mind and false mortal man as mortal mind's counterfeit of God's image. Our true selfhood is found in the real spiritual man. Our supposed limited mortal selfhood is the illusion of matter, or mortal mind. Insofar as we are accepting the material and mortal illusion as our true selfhood, we must know the nothingness of that selfhood, and we must repent of it. This self-knowledge occurs either through suffering from the confusion and error in the belief that material nothingness is real or through truth, which God's love brings to human consciousness.

In the third chapter of John's Gospel we read, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 259), "The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought-models would allow,—thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying." Christian Science teaches that today the impersonal Christ, the divine ideal, which Jesus represented, is everywhere present, radiating its powerful influence to uplift consciousness and reveal the true selfhood of every individual.

No matter how deep in error one may seem to have sunk, whether the error be sin, or discord, or sickness, or even death, the Christ, Truth, is there giving each one the ability to know himself if he seeks to know himself. Once he has learned the truth of himself as God's image, Truth gives him strength to repent of the error about himself and to demonstrate his true selfhood as the child of God, sinless, harmonious, healthy, alive.

Speaking of the Passover feast prepared by divine Love, Mrs. Eddy says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 15), "The Passover, spiritually discerned, is a wonderful passage over a tear-filled sea of repentance—which of all human experience is the most divine; and after this Passover cometh victory, faith, and good works." And she continues: "When a supercilious consciousness that saith 'there is no sin,' has awakened to see through sin's disguise the claim of sin, and thence to see that sin has no claim, it yields to sharp conviction—it sits in sackcloth—it waits in the desert—and fasts in the wilderness. But all this time divine Love has been preparing a feast for this awakened consciousness."

The awakened consciousness which has so been made ready for the feast is the consciousness which is ready to see the truth needed to solve today's problem. Self-satisfaction is the great barrier to repentance. It keeps us from the Passover. It limits our hunger and thirst after righteousness, and it limits healing.

When we find ourselves saying, "I have done everything I know how to do, but I have not received my healing," it is time to do battle with self-satisfaction. It is time to realize the great gap between our own living and the model for true selfhood which Jesus represented. And it is time to pray earnestly that we may shed more of the material and mortal. It is time to realize that Christian Science is the Science of Truth, which enables us to "see through sin's disguise the claim of sin, and thence to see that sin has no claim."

This is not for the purpose of self-condemnation; it is for the purpose of yielding some of the error, the difference between what we seem to be as mortals and what we really are as ideas of the divine Mind. The difference is sin which self-knowledge exposes and which repentance discards to make room for Truth.

There is never a time or a circumstance when there is not something that can be done. There is always more of true selfhood to discern and always room for repentance—always, that is, until we ascend above all material selfhood. As we grow day by day our honest, humble efforts have the blessing of the Master (Matt. 5:3), "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of heaven."

Carl J. Welz