On a crowded city bus recently, I was fascinated by the eager conversation of several people nearby, discussing courses they were pursuing after work. Having spent more than half of my life first as a student, then as an employee on high-school and college campuses, I realized what a wonderfully worthwhile endeavor this can be.

Every real student or scholar wishes to master whatever subject he undertakes in order to broaden his outlook and to prove to himself and others that his subject is useful when put into practice. He wants what he learns to enrich his own experience and that of others.

Students of Christian Science find endless involvement in the pursuit of spiritual truth concerning every phase of their experience. Mrs. Eddy assures the student: "The admission to one's self that man is God's own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea."  ^{Science and Health, p. 90.} This is an unending course of study—one rich in understanding, scientific in unfailing proof, benefiting one's home, career, family, church experience, and every other association.

A basic point of Christian Science is that God's, Spirit's, creation expresses good and nothing else. This creation is spiritual and complete, forever imaging the character of its creator. Man, as God's child, is immortal and perfect. But this spiritual fact needs to be proved.

One way to begin is to obey Paul's injunction to the Romans: "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind."  ^{Rom. 12:2.} He himself had been transformed from a hated and hating persecutor of Christians into a dynamic advocate of Christ, Truth. Through this transformation of consciousness he recognized himself to be—as the Master, Christ Jesus, had taught, and his followers were each beginning to understand and prove themselves to be—the son of God.

With most of us, progress seems to be a bit-by-bit process—striving to turn from the material to the spiritual in every thought, to express always a little more kindness in place of indifference or thoughtlessness, a little more love in place of revenge and hate, a little more expectancy of good in place of doubt, a little more patience in place of impatience, a turning from the material picture to behold what the likeness of God really is and how it eliminates such darkness.

Once Paul understood what true consciousness is—the Christ, Truth, active in individual expression—he never turned back. It was a continual going forward with Truth. Regarding the impact in people's lives of the Christ, as uniquely embodied in the life of Jesus, the Gospel of John declares, "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."  ^{John 1:12, 13.} And in a Bible lesson on these verses Mrs. Eddy writes: "'As many as received him,'—as accept the truth of being,—'to them gave he power to become the sons of God.' The spiritualization of our sense of man opens the gates of paradise that the so-called material senses would close, and reveals man infinitely blessed, upright, pure, and free; having no need of statistics by which to learn his origin and age, or to measure his manhood, or to know how much of a man he ever has been: for, 'as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.'"  ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 185.}

The power is in the truth of being accepted and the abiding with it. This changes the mortal picture, which is fundamentally an objectification of wrong thinking. In individual experience there ceases to be anything to outline the false when thinking is brought into conformity with Christ, Truth. God's real creation then shines forth in place of the darkness. With divine naturalness this brings healing of the physical need, transformation of the human character, and the joy of realizing man's continuing oneness with his source.

It takes a constant watch to let in only the truth of every situation and to deny the error about it, rather than let in the error that would deny truth. But when we hold to truth faithfully, it becomes more and more natural to accept the truth and deny the error. This brings a better understanding of man as God's likeness, or reflection. It is, one might say, the action of the Spirit of God moving upon the waters and declaring the presence of light right where darkness seems to be. Regular reliance on truth increases our ability to discern between good and evil, between man created in God's own image and the material mortal who seems so hopeless.

Education can broaden the outlook and free one from some degree of limitation and confinement. But only an understanding of God, Truth, can free one from mortality and transform one's nature by removing the entanglements of the false knowledge that life is material. We learn from our unending course of spiritual education that all who accept and abide with divine Truth are given the power to become the sons of God. Mrs. Eddy notes: "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness. There is no other way under heaven whereby we can be saved, and man be clothed with might, majesty, and immortality."  ^Ibid.

Of all those seeking the best education they can find to better themselves and their concept of their world, who would not wish to take a course that teaches him with indisputable proofs this eternal truth promised by the Master, Christ Jesus?