Georgina Tennant, C.S.B., of London, England
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Spiritual enlightenment opens the door to peace, health, and progress for all mankind, Georgina Tennant, C.S.B., of London, England, told an audience Thursday evening in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts.
"If we want to apprehend the nature and essence of all being, we need to be willing to give up our old theories, to learn of the invisible universe of Spirit, and to accept its laws as demonstrable in our human experience," Mrs. Tennant declared.
A member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship, she served as Second Reader of The Mother Church from 1947 to 1950. The subject of her lecture was "Christian Science: A Revolutionary Discovery."
Mrs. Tennant was introduced by Arthur P. Wuth, First Reader of The Mother Church. She spoke substantially as follows:
It is well known that Christian Science is a religion that heals. So I will begin by telling you about a healing a friend of mine had in Christian Science some years ago. She hadn't been interested in Christian Science very long when she had to decide which she would do — go to a medical doctor or a Christian Science practitioner. She had become interested in Christian Science because she liked the way of life it opened to her, but she hadn't proved its healing power, and she didn't think of it seriously as a means of healing. For a long time a bone in her foot had been out of place. This resulted in displacement of ligaments and muscles, with great pain. It was hard for her to walk. She had been to a doctor, who had said he couldn't do anything for her, and also to a chiropractor, who had put the bone back into place and helped her for a while. But after about a year or so it slipped out of place again, and the condition, which affected her whole body, became worse than ever.
When my friend told me about her experience, she said it was as though two voices were arguing. One said, "You had better try Christian Science." The other said, "Christian Science may be all right for mental diseases, but it couldn't possibly heal muscles, bones or ligaments." Then the first voice came back: "What do you mean? You say that God is all power and immediately you limit Him to the ability to heal mental diseases. Either He is all-power, or He is not all-power." You see she was honest and she thought out the position. She went to see a Christian Science practitioner. The practitioner talked to her. She showed her the falsity of her belief in matter, its structure, and her dependence on it. My friend said that the practitioner showed her that Life is not made up of bits and pieces; it is one all-inclusive whole. She pointed out that the Bible says that God is our Life. She said that together they would stand aside and see how God would bring her through the experience. By this the practitioner meant that my friend was to lay aside her doubts and fears and trust God to manifest His presence in healing, while the practitioner would apply her understanding of Christian Science in prayer. In three days the ligaments were in their right place, all the swelling was gone, and my friend was healed. Since that time she has naturally placed full reliance on Spirit, on God and His laws, as they are explained in Christian Science.
Perhaps there's somebody here today who is not yet acquainted with Christian Science, and these statements about the unreality of matter may seem strange to you. Even if you do not agree with them now, I hope they will be clearer by the end of the evening. And I'd like to say that you have a very special welcome. As for those of us who already know something about Christian Science and may be tempted to feel that the simple truths of Christian Science are already fully familiar to us, I would remind you of the story of the French painter Monet. Monet was walking past a haystack one day when the sunlight caught it and it became a glowing jewel of beauty and color. He ran for his paints to paint it, but he found it was always changing as the light changed till in the twilight it became a gentle poem of mystery and peace. The farmer kept the haystack for many years and Monet painted it constantly but it was always fresh to him because the light was always changing. That is how it is with the immortal truths of Christian Science. They are always fresh to us because the light of our spiritual understanding is always changing.
Mary Baker Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. She wrote the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In the preface to this book, on the very first page, she makes this statement, "The time for thinkers has come." Mrs. Eddy was an unusually well-educated woman; she had read the philosophies of all ages. So this statement — "The time for thinkers has come" — must apply to a kind of thinking that is quite different from mere intellectual contemplation.
Surely this spiritual thinking is the kind of thinking that Christ Jesus was speaking of when he told his followers that to know God is life eternal. And you remember he also told them that through enlightened thought they should know the truth and that the truth would make them free. Through a spiritually mental process liberty is to be found. Life eternal and liberty are precious accompaniments of spiritual thinking.
Now you may say, "What is spiritual thinking?" Spiritual thinking is thinking based on the understanding of God. It acknowledges that God can be known and understood. It finds that God Himself is Mind, so all true thinking is the expression of His intelligence. Spiritual thinking holds that the evidence of the material senses is invalid. It accepts the evidence of spiritual sense as conclusive. It learns that matter is neither intelligence nor substance. The student of Christian Science cultivates spiritual thinking. It is one way in which he prays and through which he heals the sick. Christ Jesus brought a revolution to the world's thinking. His teaching, though it was darkened for so many centuries in the Middle Ages, is the foundation of our society today. And no matter what the difficulties we may be going through, it is a society where the sanctity of individual conscience is in a very large measure respected and protected.
Christ Jesus' teachings revealed God as a loving Father and so they revealed the brotherhood of man. His life work proved, or demonstrated, that a loving Father doesn't send evil to His children, but that the understanding of His nature heals sickness and provides boundless good. He told the woman of Samaria — a religious outcast in the eyes of the Jews — that God is Spirit and is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, not just by one people in one place. This teaching, in addition to the fact that he had discerned her past history, was so startling that she called her friends and told them that she had found the Christ or Saviour. This meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, where he declared that God is for all men, was a landmark in human history. Many centuries later there was another landmark when Mary Baker Eddy was instantaneously healed of a serious injury. She had been given up to die. This healing was the outcome of the revelation that true being is spiritual; and this revelation was followed by the discovery of Christian Science, a discovery that has deep importance in human history. It puts Mary Baker Eddy into the leading rank of religious reformers: it also puts her into the leading rank of scientific discoverers. The well-known physical scientist, Professor Andrade, wrote in the Sunday Times of London: "Science has proof but no certainty; religion has certainty but no proof." But the point about Christian Science is that it is both certain and provable. It is both religion and science.
Mrs. Eddy's healing was instantaneous. The spiritual illumination of that moment was vivid, but the revelation of true being came to her gradually, as she studied her Bible. For three years she read little else. She prayed, and she proved the law she had discovered. Her discovery has brought as great a revolution to our times as Jesus did to his time. He taught that God is universal. In his day that was a revolutionary idea. Christian Science teaches that the real universe including man is spiritual, created by Spirit, God, and governed and controlled by spiritual laws. It teaches that this true understanding of being redeems mankind from sin, sickness, and death. What kind of woman was it who nearly 100 years ago, was able to present such a revolutionary discovery to the world? She was alone, without worldly wealth or influence. We have already seen that she was a woman of wide education and deep spirituality, of great moral courage, of integrity. She loved God, and she expressed her love for Him in her love for all humanity. She had grown up on a New Hampshire farm where religion was a matter of every day interest and discussion. A biographer tells us how she would lie awake when she was a child listening to her father and his friends talking about religious matters. So you see, she was accustomed to think deeply about religion. Her healing had proved to her that there is an ever available spiritual law, and that this law heals. Her qualities of moral courage, integrity, and thoughtfulness enabled her to see that God, who is Love, is also Principle, governing all that He has made, and that man really is His beloved child subject only to His will.
Now without the demonstration of spiritual healing, as practiced in Christian Science, it might seem transcendental to say that the universe including man is spiritual. But when we prove — through the healing of sin, sickness, lack and unhappiness by spiritual means alone — that God is divine Principle governing all reality then we see that the fact that creation is spiritual is worthy of respect and research.
Mrs. Eddy searched the Bible for three years to discover the Principle of her healing. It was the only textbook she had. She prayed and searched, and she listened. The whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation was illumined. It revealed inspired truths of God, man, and the universe. This pure light showed her that the first chapter of Genesis is a spiritually scientific account of creation, and that Spirit, the creator, creates a spiritual universe, including man. This proved that the theory of a material universe is delusive. In fact it is fading every day.
Christian Scientists love the Bible. They study the King James Version every day in conjunction with the Christian Science textbook. Science and Health tells us (p. 406), "The Bible contains the recipe for all healing." Surely the ingredients for the healing are the spiritual facts revealed in our textbook and Mrs. Eddy's other writings. This explains how it is that mankind has loved the Bible for centuries but has not been able to practice the art of healing as Jesus taught it.
To help us in our study and to provide accurate sermons, Mrs. Eddy instituted the weekly Bible Lessons. These lessons are compiled by a committee of Christian Scientists and are published in the Christian Science Quarterly. The Bible Lesson for the week is comprised of correlative selections from the Bible and Science and Health. It serves as a Lesson-Sermon. The student studies it every day and then it is read the following Sunday as the sermon in all Churches of Christ, Scientist. This study during the week is inspiring, and educational. It brings a prepared thought on the sermon to the services which sheds fresh light to everybody, and this light evinces healing power. The same words are read all over the world. It is even read over again where there are two services on Sunday. But each reading is individual and inspirational. The light is always changing.
The Christian Scientist really loves his Lesson-Sermon. He goes to it every day. He finds messages from the Bible and Science and Health there to meet his need for that day and help him to know God and man better.
Mrs. Eddy herself chose the subjects for the Lesson-Sermon — there are twenty-six of them. For instance there is a lesson on God, man, Christ Jesus, Christian Science, substance, matter, reality, unreality, various religious doctrines, and other subjects. There is one on atomic force.
The Lesson-Sermon explains God in the way Mrs. Eddy basically defines Him on page 587 of the Christian Science textbook: "God. The great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence."
Now what about man? Well, it explains man in accordance with the first chapter of Genesis as made in the image and likeness of God. So man is spiritual and perfect: he is loving and intelligent, wise, active, immortal. He is the man God gave dominion to, the only man God made. He is your true being and my true being. The Lesson-Sermon teaches that when we have a right understanding of God and man, we have the power to heal the sick, to destroy fear, and to become aware of the kingdom of Spirit.
We learn that God is good. As Mind He expresses Himself through law in all His creation, where an honest heart loves good there we see the law of God operate, revealing His Creation, so that spiritual understanding is expressed in the healing of physical ills. You remember the Psalmist said, "God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God." Power, in other words, belongs to divine Mind. So we can see that power is established in human experience through right thinking. As God is infinite Spirit, we learn that He is All, is everywhere. He cannot really have an opposite. The Psalmist said again (Ps.139): "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
So you see, we just can't get away from God. As God is Love, this means that we can't be anywhere where His care doesn't reach us, where His comfort cannot be felt, where His wisdom is not right at hand to guide us. As God is Truth we need never fear the truth, but we can love it and seek it. Fear is just a mistaken sense of power, presence, and fact. We don't need to admit it, fear it, or obey it. Many people just fear fear. The prophets in the Old Testament through their understanding of God — of true presence, power, and fact — knew that fear hasn't any basis. They knew it because they understood God. It was to Isaiah that divine Mind said, "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness" (Isa. 41:10). The truth of any situation is always compassionate. It is always a spiritual fact.
Because God is Life, life cannot be dependent on matter, on physical organs, food or atmosphere. Jesus taught that to know God is life eternal. The understanding that God is Life destroys the belief in death and, as has been proved many times in Christian Science, it restores physical well-being to people who have been given up to die under medical verdict. When we know God as Soul, we get glimpses of the enduring beauty and grandeur which nature symbolizes. God is not in matter. He is not in hills or clouds or trees or flowers; but the spiritual ideas which they represent originate in Mind, in God. The Christian Science textbook says (p. 60), "Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul." If we are faced by discouragement, drabness, discord, we can become conscious of the presence and allness of God, Soul; we can become aware, as Soul is aware, of the glory of Spirit's creation, of its tenderness and perfection. As we do this, we identify our thinking with God: we accept only thoughts that come from the divine Mind, and we shall find the human experience transformed through this spiritual thinking.
This effort to think in line with divine Mind is called prayer, or treatment, in Christian Science. The resulting transformation of the human experience — whether from disease to health, unhappiness to happiness, frustration to achievement — is called demonstration. It is the proof that the divine Principle, Love, is operating now in human thinking, or human consciousness.
Christ Jesus was the most effective demonstrator of the presence of God who ever lived. He said, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30); and he said, too, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise" (John 5:19). His thoughts were spiritual. The divine Mind led him; and he listened for its spiritual ideas and spoke with the authority of Principle. He spoke of himself as "a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God" (John 8:40), He did not say that he was God, but he taught and demonstrated man's unity with God as Father and son, or, as explained in Christian Science, as Mind and idea, Principle and reflection, cause and effect. Jesus' birth was contrary to all so-called laws of matter; his whole experience silenced material law. He walked on the water, he fed the multitude, healed the sick, and he raised the dead through the power of Spirit. He was always conscious of the universe of Spirit, the kingdom of God; and he proved that the law governing Spirit's creation has dominion in human experience over all appearance of material so-called law.
In Science and Health we read (p. 316) "Jesus represented Christ, the true idea of God," and further on in the same paragraph, "Christ presents the indestructible man, whom Spirit creates, constitutes, and governs. Christ illustrates that blending with God, his divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth." The Christ, the immortal idea of Truth, is always active in human consciousness, to redeem it from the error of material thinking, and to reveal true selfhood to be the man Spirit creates, constitutes, and governs. The Christ message comes to the human heart and the sufferer responds, "I am well," "I am beloved," "I am secure." Then the peace is established which Jesus promised should never be taken away. There is no hopeless situation. For in the Bible we read that "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved" (John 3:17).
Let me tell you about a girl I know who was in a hopeless situation — at least she thought it was hopeless. This is a healing of a foot condition, by the way, but the background is quite different from the healing I told you about at the beginning of this lecture. My friend who had that first healing had just become interested in Christian Science. All of her physical functions were affected by the displacement in her foot. Her healing took three days. This second friend had been interested in Christian Science many years, but her healing took some time.
She had a deformed foot which had been that way ever since she was a child. A doctor had said surgery would be the only possible remedy. This she refused. She had treatment in Christian Science from time to time, but the condition grew worse. It caused her a great deal of pain. She had to wear a special shoe, and this made her self-conscious and unhappy. She came to accept this condition as part of herself and gave up having treatment. It wasn't until her business affairs became discordant that she went back to see a Christian Science practitioner. She felt she was up against a brick wall on every side. Well, the practitioner knew that she was dealing with a condition of thought, not with a malformation of matter. She discerned that although my friend was an earnest student of Christian Science — she was even an active church worker — she had a mistaken belief that there was power in matter to resist Christian Science treatment. She felt that she had proof of this in her own foot. This conviction set up a resistance to God's healing power in her thought. The practitioner gave her references from Mrs. Eddy's writings about resistance. She told her to study them because she said they would help to break down this seeming resistance.
The practitioner took as the basis of her own work verses in the Lesson-Sermon for that week from Isaiah 43: "This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise" . . . "I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him." From these verses further truths unfolded from the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings, truths of Spirit's formations and of man made for God's glory. The practitioner adhered to Truth, to the fact that it governs the body, and this work enabled my friend to break down her adherence to erroneous conviction and so break down the adhesions in her foot. This physical breaking down was gradual. At times it was even audible. One day the girl next to her in her office asked her what that crackling was in her foot. As the patient's thinking was reformed, so her experience was transformed. She found she was able to accept all the good that God's love provided for her.
After about a year's treatment she was completely healed. Now she has such pretty feet and wears dainty shoes. She has lots of friends, a happy marriage, and a harmonious business experience, too. She really is a radiant representative of man made for God's glory. Her great desire is to help others with the truth she has proved.
Christian Science teaches that evil is an impostor, but it has to be discerned, then faced and overcome, and so proved unreal — that is, without origin or authority from God. To believe that God, good, created evil so we might learn to be strong in the right, is like believing that the principle of mathematics created mistakes so we could learn to be better mathematicians. We are not given a problem in mathematics so that we can make mistakes and learn, but so that we can increase our understanding of the laws of mathematics by applying them to the problem and solving it. We make mistakes in human experience through ignorance or willfulness. Mistakes can't discourage us or bind us as we turn from the false material sense of self and gratefully and gladly acknowledge our true identity as the likeness of divine Mind which never makes mistakes. As we do this we find the comfort, power, and intelligence of divine Love right where we are to meet our needs.
The Christ qualities, spiritually understood, expressed, and respected, confer power in human affairs. This government cannot be delegated. As each citizen of the world recognizes his own Christliness as the child of God, so his experience, his universe, will conform to the law of Spirit, the law of Love, to justice and individual freedom. Neither lawless license nor tyranny of human will constitutes true government. To bring peace and progress to humanity, it is necessary for each individual to desire peace and progress in his own affairs and to work for them through true self-government. National governments are truly governments of the people; they are the result of the nation's thinking.
From time to time through the centuries, the philosophers have presented the theories that the universe is a mental concept. Physicists and biologists now say that it is a development of the brain, which they consider the source of intelligence. Mrs. Eddy says, "The physical universe expresses the conscious and unconscious thoughts of mortals" (p. 484). True existence is in spiritual consciousness. So you see matter is not substance — it is material thinking.
Christian Science teaches, as we have seen, that the first chapter of Genesis is a spiritually scientific account of creation; that God, Spirit, could create nothing unlike Himself. So His creation is spiritual. It teaches that God is Mind, divine Mind, that knows nothing unlike Himself. Matter is unlike Spirit so it is unknown to Spirit, to Mind. Spiritual understanding divides between the true creation of Spirit and the false belief of a material creation. This understanding reveals that the spiritual universe is the realm of the real. This realm of the real is admitted, but it is not understood by philosophers and physicists. It isn't something intangible or unattainable; it is the kingdom of God. It is understood and attained through spiritual thinking. The realm of the real is governed by God, and His law is a law of blessing to everybody. This law of harmony becomes perfectly natural and operative in our experience as our thinking changes from a material basis to a spiritual basis.
Throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, the choice between Spirit and matter has been put before humanity. You remember Moses put it like this (Deut. 30) "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."
Jesus said (Matt. 16:25), "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
This same choice came to a student of Christian Science that I know. One day during the Second World War she was walking down the street pondering the situation. The city she was living in was under air attack and she was wondering what was going to happen. The choice came to her in this way: "This war will be the destruction of matter, of what appears real to material sense. This war will be the destruction of matter or the destruction of the belief in matter. Which shall it be for you?" My friend made her decision then and there that she would try more earnestly to destroy her belief in matter — with the result that nothing that belonged to her was destroyed.
This choice is before each of us today as to which is going to be determinate in our experience: the universe of Spirit or the evidence of our senses — a universe made of matter. In accordance with our choice, our health, our happiness, and our security are established. Our release from discord comes in proportion as we choose rightly and then set to work to bring our thinking into conformity with what we know of the universe of Spirit. In other words, our experience is the outcome of our thinking.
For instance, let me ask you to make a specific choice. Where do you look for your supply? To the kingdom of Spirit, of unlimited spiritual qualities, or the kingdom of matter, of pounds, shillings, and pence? The kingdom of matter is finite, limited. It is like a balloon; it can be inflated or deflated. The kingdom of Spirit is without bounds or limitations: we might liken it to the open air; it is everywhere; it is incapable of inflation or deflation.
We all know that spiritual qualities are unlimited. In Christian Science we learn that they are God's attributes and that man expresses them. So we can avail ourselves of just as much patience and energy as we can use. Just as much wisdom, and just as much love. What is commonly called God's patience, we find in Christian Science, is His steadfast love. You know the expression, "So-and-so taxes my patience." Well, this doesn't mean your patience came to an end; it just means that you found you could use more patience than you thought you could.
Now that we've chosen the kingdom of Spirit as the source of our supply, let's see how this choice affects our approach to everyday things such as our tax bill, our wage packet, our household shopping. How does it? Well, we know that we meet our obligations by using spiritual qualities. What qualities do we need to meet our income tax liabilities? The first is integrity — we need to use that in all our transactions — then gratitude. We can pour out gratitude for our country's efforts for defense, for education, police activities, and so on. We have so much that we take for granted.
Then how do you look at your wage packet — as matter, as pounds, shillings and pence? Do you feel perhaps that you should have more of it? Or do you see it as an expression of achievement, skill, faithfulness, energy, justice, gratitude? When we see how unlimited these qualities are because they come from God, then we will begin to understand how our income can be only as limited as our thinking is limited, as our expression of spiritual qualities is limited.
When the housewife goes shopping, what does she take with her to use? Why spiritual qualities — such as appreciation for the service offered, gratitude that she has freedom of choice of what is before her, intelligence and wisdom in making her choice, and the spiritual understanding that God supplies all His children with everything they need.
Now, if there is anybody here whose income is in the form of an annuity or pension, may I say just a word for you? You have probably looked forward to well-earned comfort in retirement. Well, when you begin to look to the kingdom of Spirit for your supply, you'll find activity, freshness, unfoldment, spontaneity. You will find them in such abundance that the limited sense of supply is just swallowed up in the consciousness of abundance.
Jesus gave us the spiritual law of economics. "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom" (Luke 6:38). Man reflects God's qualities in unlimited supply. As we give unstintingly of spiritual qualities we find we can give to meet the human need, and it shall be given unto us.
This humble, thoughtful decision to trust Spirit, and not matter, linked with a careful watch that our thinking is consistent, constitutes effective prayer. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health p. 12), "In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as a very present help in trouble."
In a universe made of matter — that is, the kingdom of material belief — we find ourselves faced with the challenge of age. It claims to affect health, activity and happiness. Christian Science shows that old age is an imposition — and so is youth. Man is not material. He is a spiritual idea, as immortal as the Mind conceiving him.
Now have you ever thought that the idea that two and two make four is maybe getting a bit old? Suppose your account book was in a muddle: Have you ever considered that fresh idea which comes and sets it right? Have you ever said it was "too young for such responsibility"? Both ideas are mathematical ideas — they are immortal because they are mathematical. In Christian Science we learn Life through spiritual ideas. For instance the idea that God is everywhere present, and all-powerful Love, is as fundamental and useful an idea to the Christian Scientist as the idea that two and two make four is to the mathematician. It is an idea that was fresh in Abraham's day, in Moses' day, in Jesus' day, in our day. It doesn't deteriorate. On the other hand, because someone has just become acquainted with it doesn't mean that the idea is youthful; it doesn't have more vigor, isn't more desirable, hasn't more power, than if we have known it and loved it for years. Youth and age belong to the kingdom of belief in matter. Man's individuality is spiritual and immortal. He is an idea — a spiritual idea. As Truth is always fresh to us, and we know that we live in the kingdom of Spirit, we can see that youth and age are merely concepts of material thinking. If we live in either a material past, or a material future, that is not reality. It is the spiritual present that abounds in vigor, sweetness, and in achievement, too.
Christian Science healing is not faith healing, neither is it hypnotism or suggestion or any other machination of the human mind. It is the operation of the truth that man and the universe are spiritual right now, and that the power of God is always present to destroy the evidence of discord.
I would like to read to you again from Science and Health. Mrs. Eddy sums up her system of Mind healing: "Our system of Mind-healing rests on the apprehension of the nature and essence of all being, — on the divine Mind and Love's essential qualities. Its pharmacy is moral, and its medicine is intellectual and spiritual, though used for physical healing. Yet this most fundamental part of metaphysics is the one most difficult to understand and demonstrate, for to the material thought all is material, till such thought is rectified by Spirit" (p. 460). If we want to apprehend the nature and essence of all being, we need to be willing to give up our old theories, to learn of the invisible universe of Spirit, and to accept its laws as demonstrable in our human experience. This humble mental process wins the revelation of Spirit. This revelation illumines our thought and gives us true knowledge of the realm of the real where there is no sickness. This true knowledge results in the disappearance of any evidence of sickness.
During this process we find that when we learn Love's essential qualities and express them, this gives us a nearer sense of Spirit, a more active proof of Christ's care. Gratitude, joy, and the acknowledgment of God's goodness are potent medicine. Honesty, justice, and mercy adjust conditions and adjust them skillfully. Love gives deep comfort, encouragement, and the gleam of triumph till God's goodness is manifested in the healing of mind and body.
The threat of universal destruction so much in men's minds today is a threat to the kingdom of matter. The thought that came to the Christian Scientist at the beginning of the war is useful to every one of us today. Are we going to live the coming years under threat of destruction to matter — to what appears real to material sense? Or are we going to acknowledge the kingdom of God, the realm of the real, spiritual and indestructible? Are we going to acknowledge it now as actual and substantial, and destroy our belief in matter through the spiritual meaning of the Bible and through Christian Science? The choice is for each one of us to make; it is a challenge to our thinking, and no one else can make the choice for us. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High" — surely that is the realm of the real — "shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty" (Ps. 91). Under this shadow there is nothing to fear.
This is the age of opportunity for everybody. Education is seen to be the need and privilege of all men. A just standard of living for all is the aim of a righteous government. In the past thinking was considered to be the privilege of the scholar and philosopher. Others just accepted what they were told. Mrs. Eddy's declaration that the time for thinkers has come would seem to imply Truth's demand that each one of us should ponder the things of God, become acquainted with Him, and claim the privilege of working out our own salvation and proving our own representation of God's goodness in health, harmony, and prosperity blessing all mankind.
Spiritual thinking opens the door to limitless opportunities for good. It presents indeed a fresh universe, a new heaven and a new earth when the belief in matter — the first heaven and the first earth — is passed away. No one needs to feel that he's at the mercy of circumstances. When we change our thinking, we can experience the dominion that has been given to us by our heavenly Father. We need not fear progress in spiritual understanding; it reveals the immortal, indestructible kingdom of Spirit, and its law maintains harmony as the present fact, the scientific, demonstrable fact.
Mrs. Eddy says, (Science and Health, p. 506), "Through divine Science, Spirit, God, unites understanding to eternal harmony. The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress." She also writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 275), "Father, we thank Thee that Thy light and Thy love reach earth, open the prison to them that are bound, console the innocent, and throw wide the gates of heaven."
[Delivered Jan. 18, 1962, in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and published in The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 19, 1962. A couple of overly long paragraphs were broken up for this transcript. The lecturer borrowed experiences, quotations, and metaphysical concepts throughout this lecture from her previous talk entitled Christian Science: The Science of Spiritual Healing.]