James Watt, C.S., of
Washington, D.C.
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Certainty of lasting peace, health, and abundance depends upon spiritual perception of God's goodness, James Watt, C.S., of Washington, said last night in a Christian Science lecture in Boston.
The needs of the world would have been met long ago if those endeavoring to supply them had not believed that war, disease, and lack were inevitable, Mr. Watt stated.
Tremendous progress will be made, he said, as mankind awakens progressively to the allness of good and to man's God-given dominion over discord of every kind.
A member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship, he spoke in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, on the subject "Christian Science: The Science of Demonstrable Good."
Mr. Watt was introduced by Miss Leslie Harris, C.S.B., Second Reader of The Mother Church.
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
Practically everyone is willing, yes, eager, to be good and to do good as he understands it. Almost everyone whom the world would call normal is innately kind, ready to lend a helping hand, glad to stand by his neighbor in time of need. It is fair to say that everyone wants to live, to be free and happy, to have his family well supplied, healthy, and safe.
This basically good desire, found generally in individual consciousness, compounds itself into a universal longing for a good world. Actually, it sums up into a great desire of mankind to participate in some way in bringing about the realization of the angel benediction given at the time of the birth of Christ Jesus (Luke 2:14), "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
And underlying it all is a yearning to know how to accomplish this; how to glorify God and to entertain good will toward men in a way that will bring healing and peace. This innate desire for good, together with the aggregate philanthropy of individuals, organizations, and nations, undoubtedly has brought untold comfort and temporary relief. Unquestionably, unselfed humanitarian effort has frequently prevented the open conflict of war. But the question, recognized or unconsciously entertained in the hearts of men, is how to heal the sick, supply the needy, and end war with certainty and finality.
Now, Christian Science, the Science of demonstrable good, teaches that God will truly be glorified and that peace and healing will come to the world, in the measure that mankind learns to put good will toward men into practice from the basis of spiritual understanding. It reveals to us how to obey what Jesus spoke of as the second commandment (Mark 12:31), "Love thy neighbour as thyself," in such a way that our love will show forth the availability of God's infinite goodness in human affairs. And Christian Science does this by teaching us to know ourselves and therefore our neighbor, not as mankind knows us but as God knows us.
The study of Christian Science brings the understanding of our perfect and eternal identity as the likeness of God. Its teaching reveals to us that a relinquishment of a false mortal sense of self, and consequently of our neighbor, is the essential step toward having the allness of good operative as our thought and in the experience of those upon whom our thought rests. This true appreciation of man's real being at once removes limits from thought and activity.
All Christendom knows that nearly twenty centuries ago there was a man who mastered every situation that confronted him. He healed all manner of disease. He saved the sinner. He restored life to the dead and dying. He proved in his own experience the eternality of Life. He set aside all material laws and walked on the water, stilled the tempest, fed the multitude. His name was Jesus of Nazareth, known to the world as Christ Jesus.
It is an indisputable fact that Jesus, individually, accomplished more unfailing and lasting good for his fellow men than has been known in the entire history of mankind. His fidelity to Truth enabled him to heal unfailingly and to be identified as the Christ. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes of Jesus in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 332), "he proved that Christ is the divine idea of God — the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth."
Now, the great question of mankind should well be, how did Jesus accomplish his works? What is it that he did and taught which would enable us to follow his command to do likewise? First of all, it is quite apparent that what he knew of God was evidenced as unfailing good and that this knowledge constituted healing prayer. Obviously his prayer was not one of vain repetition, or pleading, or of blind faith. He perceived the nature of existence. Through his appreciation of God's allness he recognized the spiritual universe to be the only reality of being. He saw that it was impossible for God to conceive matter or to create anything that is not perfect and eternal. He understood this even more fully than did the prophet Habakkuk, who said (Hab. 1:13), "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity."
Jesus' feeding of the multitudes shows clearly that he did not accept as real the material presentation of a hungry crowd with only a few loaves and fishes available. Rejecting the physical sense testimony which baffled his disciples, he perceived instead the omnipotent, inexhaustible presence of God, good. Jesus' prayer, his clear spiritual thinking, acknowledged spiritual being alone to be real and existent, and rejected every claim to reality of matter or material sense. Then he had the joy of seeing his spiritual perception evidenced as abundant, tangible supply. The multitudes were fed, with basketsful left over.
What had he done? Must it not have been that he resolutely turned his thought away from the contemplation of personal sense as a basis for conclusion? He knew the reality of being to be perfect spiritual consciousness and that there could be nothing unlike it, outside of it, or inimical to its perfection. This steadfast abiding of thought in Truth constituted Mind with him, present to evidence its allness in place of what appeared to be the illusion of lack. Jesus claimed for himself no power which could not be fully understood and utilized by all. In fact, by parable, precept, and example, he was constantly occupied with teaching others to do the works he did. His entire career indicates the progressive usefulness and healing ability which can come in our daily experience by adhering to spiritual Truth — by steadfastly reflecting the divine Love which is God.
This man, the outstanding demonstrator of God's power and allness, understood God to be ever-present, eternal Spirit. So fully did he perceive the spiritual nature of being that he claimed for himself no selfhood apart from the divine reality which is God. He said (Matt. 19:17). "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." His awareness that all existence emanates from divinity naturally applied to all mankind, and so, in the language of the commandments, he loved his neighbor as himself. For since the Scriptures tell us that God is Love as well as Spirit it is clear that spiritual knowing, the Christ-consciousness, alone constitutes the sense of Love that frees from all bondage.
Nearly nineteen centuries later Mary Baker Eddy discovered what Jesus saw. Discerning his scientific viewpoint she has written in her book "Unity of Good," page 59, "To mortal thought Jesus appeared as a child, and grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, because he could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal conditions; . . ." And she has written on the same page: "Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid, needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such thoughts — mortal inventions, one and all — Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present and eternal good." And in Science and Health (p. 313) she has written, "He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause."
When she discovered Jesus' true concept of existence, Mrs. Eddy, too, "plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." She sought earnestly for many years for a satisfying and demonstrable understanding of God, and for a solution to the problem of Mind-healing. She awakened to the spiritual import of Jesus' healing of the palsied man and found herself instantly healed of an injury caused by an accident, which had been pronounced fatal by the physicians. Let me read her own words regarding the accident and her awakening (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 24): "On the third day thereafter, I called for my Bible, and opened it at Matthew ix. 2. As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before enjoyed. That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact that I have since tried to make plain to others, namely, Life in and of Spirit; this Life being the sole reality of existence."
Mrs. Eddy tells us that for three years after her discovery she continued the search; withdrew from society; that the Bible was her only textbook; that she read little else but the Scriptures; that they were illumined; and the truth of Christian Science was demonstrated. In 1875 she wrote the Christian Science textbook and later founded the Church of Christ, Scientist. Christian Scientists recognize that in so doing she revealed to the world the Comforter promised by Christ Jesus. The unselfed fidelity of Mrs. Eddy's thinking to what she perceived of the nature of God manifested itself in her apprehension of Jesus' scientific thought and in the establishment of the Christian Science movement. Christian Scientists perceive that Mrs. Eddy has set forth as fully and exactly as can be done by means of human language the demonstrable knowledge that God is the only Mind and the inevitable consequence of this divine fact — the unreality of matter. And unquestionably a divine fact is based on indivisible Truth, to be accepted in its entirety and progressively demonstrated.
The closing line of a little poem published some time ago in The Christian Science Monitor sums it up well: "On a point as needle small, trembles all." Is not this point, "needle small," the total conviction of God's allness and the complete acceptance of the correlative fact that matter is a wholly erroneous sense of reality? It is, indeed, for in considering whether anything is true or untrue, the point must be reached where one's thought is neither tentative, speculative, nor shadowed by the slightest doubt.
There are no two more important statements in use in the world today than the First Commandment in the Bible (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and the amplification of this commandment in the Christian Science textbook in what is termed "the scientific statement of being" (p. 468); "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material: he is spiritual." "The scientific statement of being" literally represents the First Commandment to this age with profound thoroughness, yet in simple, understandable language. The import of this great statement given to the world nearly a century ago continues to be stupendous.
Willingness to maintain the exactness of our viewpoint, with complete fidelity, in other words, as flawlessly true; steadfastness not only in believing, but in understanding that God, divine consciousness, alone is good and real and all; and the logical acceptance of the fact that there can be nothing apart from or more than all, enable us to follow the footsteps of the Way-shower, Christ Jesus. This spiritual, and therefore correct, standpoint of thought makes it possible for us to utilize for mankind the living power of the Master's teaching, here and now. The intent of the man whose consummate example continues to base the religious thought of all Christendom was not alone to heal and save those of his own time. From out his ministry there shines forth the one great purpose to impress upon all, in all times, the innate and ever-present ability of every man, woman, and child to emulate his deeds. Could he have stated this more clearly than in his words (John 14:l2), "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father"?
How encouraging and reassuring it is to know that the Science of Jesus' teaching, the promised Comforter, is here, available to all, to show us how to take command of every situation, to teach us actually how to demonstrate man's, our, dominion over the whole earth.
Willingness to accept Spirit and Spirit's universe as the reality of being, and an equal willingness to recognize that, because of this, matter must be misconception, unreal, nothing, give an unfailing basis for action. Jesus, nearly two thousand years ago, knew that matter is illusion and that material law is false and powerless. Knowing this, he was instantly where he needed to be. Mrs. Eddy perceived this fact and proclaimed the unreality of matter to this age nearly one hundred years ago. Today physical scientists are radically changing their concepts of matter. For example, Dr. Donald Andrews, a leading chemist at Johns Hopkins University, has said (National Association of Principals of Girls' Schools — Annual Report, 1948): "The so-called material atom can more scientifically be regarded as made up of musical vibrations rather than that of a material mass. The atom is almost nothing but empty space. Therefore," Dr. Andrews continued, "you could take every man, woman and child in the entire world, put them in an atomic press, squeeze the holes out, and you could slip the whole human race into a bottle which could be put in your pocket."
With proper respect and gratitude for the progressively clear deductions of physical research, may we not rather accept the spiritual perception of God's absolute allness with confidence and certainty? Jesus perceived this fact, and Christian Science enables us to prove it beyond question in what appears to be our own human experience. Today, students of Christian Science are following Jesus' teaching in placing their reliance wholly upon God by means of their understanding of the perfect nature of true being, in which no matter, no imperfection nor lack exists.
Christian Science fully accepts the teaching of Jesus, and Christian Science never fails when it is correctly understood and utilized. The encouragement and glory of its proof is healing and heartening mankind today in the measure that its students comprehend and follow the Master's teaching and demonstrate its scientific vitality.
The experience of an American couple in Soviet Russia serves to illustrate the potent practicality of maintaining consistently the divine fact of good's allness and consequent supremacy, in a land where matter and material thinking have literally tried to eliminate from thought all belief in God, Spirit.
Some years ago, at a time when little was known about the Bolshevik regime and before the United States had extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union, the husband, a structural engineer had accepted a contract there. He and his wife were rather new students of Christian Science and were not experienced in its practice. What these two did accept with earnest simplicity was God's allness and matter's nothingness. What they were seeing and hearing in Russia continually belied this conviction. God was scorned with raucous voices and on huge posters; the dignity and individuality of man were denied; fear, poverty, lack of every kind were rampant. With childlike simplicity these two held to their Christianly scientific viewpoint. They rejoiced that the reverse of the material picture was true. They knew that right where God was being rejected, the omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience of divine Spirit constituted the only reality, the only power, the only presence. They saw clear proof throughout their experience of the presence and power of God, and it became possible, sooner than they had expected, to leave the country without complication or difficulty.
While they were there, this couple employed a young Russian servant named Tatyana to do the cooking and housework. Although her parents were peasants and very religious, Tatyana had been educated in the communistic schools to have an utter disbelief in the existence of God. Consequently she had nothing but contempt for the Bible and for religion in general. One morning this little maid was stricken with what appeared to be acute appendicitis. The engineer's wife, alone in the apartment with Tatyana, and aware of her atheistic attitude and her trust in all the medical services which were promised her by the communistic regime, tried to call a doctor to care for her, and an ambulance to take her to the hospital. No ambulance was available, nor could the doctor come before evening. Furthermore, the apartment stairs were too steep, the snow too deep, and the pain too severe to use such transportation as was available or to attempt to walk the patient the mile or more to the hospital.
Making Tatyana as comfortable as she could, the American wife closed the door, hoping to shut out the sounds of distress, and sat down in the living room to take stock of the situation. She was so inexperienced in her study of Christian Science that she didn't know just how to give a Christian Science treatment even for herself in this extremity. What should she do? With all her heart she acknowledged that God is good and that God is all. She held steadfastly to the divine fact that right where she was God's goodness was the only real presence. She realized that God is perfect Mind and that perfect Mind knows nothing but perfection. She saw that the picture or misconception of herself in that place with a suffering girl was an illusion. She rejoiced that the truth about it all was the presence of God, divine Mind, and that man lives forever as the expression of this perfect Mind. And she perceived that the Mind knowing this divine Mind was her Mind, the Mind of every individual, the only Mind that exists. She held to these spiritual facts resolutely, repeating the words aloud when her thought would depart from the truth she was affirming. Before long the sound of suffering grew less and then ceased altogether, and the little Russian maid slept peacefully through the day. That evening, when the doctor came, she was perfectly well and was happily preparing the dinner. Truly, God's goodness was found to be available right there in the heart of Soviet Russia, and His perfect presence was manifested in the healing of one whose thought had been trained in disbelief in divine power.
As one consciously begins to work out his own salvation in the light of Christian Science he sees more and more clearly that good appears in his own experience in the measure that he understands that fear and doubt do not come from the allness of God and therefore have no source, no valid claim to reality. He awakens to what constitutes aggressive suggestion. And he begins to perceive what Jesus knew that enabled him to do such untold good. It becomes progressively clear how Jesus, awakened by his disciples one night, when a storm of wind threatened their ship, was able to arise calmly, without fear or doubt as to God's presence and good's supremacy, and to rebuke the wind and say to the sea, "Peace, be still." One begins to understand why the wind ceased and why there was a great calm and why he said to those with him (Mark 4:40), "Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?" How fully Jesus understood Spirit's allness and the nothingness of mortal mind and its phenomenon called matter! Now have we not been commanded to go and do the things that he did, and greater things? What tremendous good will ensue, what unbounded progress the world will show forth, as we awaken more and more to our responsibility, our capability, and our heritage.
We must profit by Jesus' words to his disciples when he healed a man's lunatic son after his disciples had failed to do so. Most of us will recall the incident. The man pleaded with Jesus to have mercy on his lunatic son, after he had first taken him to Jesus' disciples and had found they could not cure him. We are told that (Matt. 17:18) "Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour." Then the disciples came and said to Jesus, "Why could not we cast him out?" Whereupon Jesus said: "Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."
Perhaps students of Christian Science have had times of wondering, as did the disciples, why they could not cast out some devilish suggestion which seemed to defy their understanding of divine Spirit. Let us be mindful that in the case of the lunatic boy, as with the Magdalen and in other healings, Jesus was besought to have, and had, mercy on those afflicted. The Bible narratives show clearly that compassion and mercy always accompany a correct sense of reality which, steadfastly adhered to, rends asunder the veil — the blurred vision of mortal sense — and brings to light man's perfect being.
May not the fear that we lack healing ability be based in a personal rather than a divine sense of mercy, a sense which binds through sympathy rather than releases oneself and others with pure love? The quality of our mercy determines our ability to demonstrate ever-present good. The compassion and mercy which Jesus entertained were such that he was not moved by personal sense. He was never self-righteous, never shocked, never astonished.
Why should we be astonished at the thought of good's allness and the nothingness of matter? Why should we be willing to accept the divine fact that God is Spirit, and yet doubt that nothing material is in any way real? We have no choice but to follow Paul's admonition to put off the old man and put on the new and to heed Jesus' declaration (John 6:63), "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." Well may we ponder Mary Baker Eddy's wise words (Science and Health, p. 563), "But why should we stand aghast at nothingness?"
Christian Science teaches us how truly to love our neighbor. It teaches us how our love will heal as we learn to love divinely, as we learn how to be good and to do good efficaciously through spiritual understanding. From this Christianly scientific standpoint, our thinking, our knowing, in other words, our prayers, begin to heal and bless us individually and in ever-increasing degree bless our community and all mankind. Christian Science teaches us not to accept sin, disease, death — disaster of any sort — as real, as inevitable.
Let me illustrate with the experience of a mother, an earnest student of Christian Science, who writes: "At one time our children and all others in their schoolroom were sent home to be placed under quarantine, for they had been exposed to a contagious disease. Through the work of a loving practitioner . . . not only were our children protected, but no other case of the disease broke out among the children in that schoolroom." She adds that at another time their youngest child awakened them in the night and they found that he had broken out with measles. The subject of the Lesson-Sermon for that week in all Christian Science churches was "God the Only Cause and Creator." She read this lesson aloud to the child. Before she had finished it he had gone to sleep. The truth read in that lesson lifted her so far above anxious parental fear that she was not surprised to find the child completely free from all symptoms when he awakened next morning. The argument came that their other children and several neighbor children as well had been exposed to contagion. As she recalled the beautiful healing she had just witnessed, it did not take long to reverse this argument. She realized that not only her child but every child exists as the perfect idea of divine Mind and that whatever blesses one must bless all. "That was the end of the measles in our neighborhood," she concluded. (Christian Science Sentinel, December 10, 1955, pages 2200 and 2201.)
Isn't it clear that to discern what good really is, we must learn to utilize the activity of good through our awareness of its presence? Is not this the presence of good, of Love? If we think as God knows, we have the Mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus. We have Immanuel, or God with us. And while divine Mind, Spirit, can know nothing of matter because of its perfect spiritual nature, it always operates as unerring intelligence even in what appears to be the belief and dream of human experience. Therefore from this standpoint of ever-present intelligence how intuitive and how unfailingly helpful will be our human efforts to help mankind. Would not the needs of the world have been met long ago if those endeavoring to supply them had not believed that the discordant situations, sickness, sin, war, disaster, lack, death were realities? The wonderful words of Mrs. Eddy from her book "No and Yes" say it so well (p. 39): "True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer is the utilization of the love wherewith He loves us. Prayer begets an awakened desire to be and do good."
In the chapter titled "Christian Science Practice," in the Christian Science textbook, Mrs. Eddy explains how to apply Christian Science in the healing work which Christ Jesus admonished all those who accept his teachings to do. She states that hopeless organic disease has been healed and that the dying have been restored to life and health. But she says (Science and Health, p. 429), "We must begin, however, with the more simple demonstrations of control, and the sooner we begin the better." And she says (Science and Health, p. 329): Because you cannot walk on the water and raise the dead, you have no right to question the great might of divine Science in these directions. Be thankful that Jesus, who was the true demonstrator of Science, did these things, and left his example for us. In Science we can use only what we understand. We must prove our faith by demonstration."
When storms seem to arise within us, let us awake to the truth of being and begin to demonstrate control over these mental storms and rule them out as no part of our true consciousness. Things of a serious nature can be healed today through Christian Science just as they were in Jesus' time.
How practical the prayer of enlightened faith, based on the spiritual understanding of God's allness, good's allness, and the consequent unreality of matter or material power, can be, is illustrated in the experience of a group of Christian Scientists in an American city. A destructive storm threatened the city on the very evening they were to hold their annual lecture. The main headline of the morning paper sounded the alarm that the hurricane was to strike the city with full force about five o'clock that afternoon. Throughout the morning and early afternoon hours the radio and television stations continued to warn the people of the impending winds and torrential rains that were to be expected shortly. People were urged to remain in their homes, to stay off the highways, and to cancel public meetings. The Christian Scientists concerned with the lecture spent the day confidently acknowledging God's allness, the omnipotence of His law, and the utter powerlessness of any supposititious law, called material law, to precipitate destructive tempest and flood upon the community.
At five o'clock that afternoon the sun was shining, and all other weather conditions were normal. The report then came through that the storm would strike between eight and twelve o'clock that night. The townspeople held a preparatory meeting with the police, fire department, civil defense, Red Cross, and others in attendance. Disaster was accepted as inevitable and imminent. Every thing materially possible was readied to relieve distress and suffering. At eight o'clock weather conditions were normal, the Christian Science lecture was successfully held with a large audience in attendance. The hurricane never touched that city nor any other town or city supposed to be in its path that night. Later the newspapers and radio broadcasts announced that the hurricane had been unexpectedly dissipated and disappeared at sea.
Doesn't this experience indicate clearly God's omnipresence and the immediate availability of His divine law of harmony, of good? It indicates how incorrect it is to ascribe destructive storms to God or to nature. It shows how needless it is to accept destruction as inevitable. Are we not derelict in our duty to God, to ourselves, and to our neighbor, if we do not exercise our God-given dominion? We must not shrink from the picture or evade it, whether it be one of a destructive storm, a dread disease, or any other discordant presentation of mortal mind. But, rather, must we see through it and replace it with the reality of Spirit, the reality of good's allness.
Healing is evidenced only as human consciousness changes from an acceptance of a false picture as real to the recognition of its unreality in the eternal light of ever-present Spirit.
Now, although salvation must take place in individual consciousness, the church organization will be needed until the oneness of Mind is fully demonstrated. Because we can help one another, church organization and activity are necessary for the proving of the one Mind, infinite good. Christian Science teaches that church activity and the true practice of one's religion must be based on the inspired Word of the Bible in order that Christian Scientists may learn to emulate the works of Christ Jesus. The usefulness of the Christian Science church to mankind is commensurate with the spiritual-mindedness of its members, in other words, in proportion to the fidelity of Christian Scientists to the allness of divine good in all the minutiae of daily experience.
The Christian Science Reading Rooms afford quiet havens from the mesmeric beliefs of the material world. They are sanctuaries where one, for a few moments or hours in a busy day, may abide in the consciousness of good's allness and gain the spiritual unfoldment which will make the whole material picture seem less real when he again goes forth. Biblical record and the Christian Science movement both give proof that the availability of God's power does not belong to any special age or individual; and so the nature of good, that which is infinite, is established as being invariable. And invariableness of spiritual outlook is what has enabled those past and present thinkers who have perceived something of God's ever-present, omnipotent goodness to heal and truly to help their fellow men. Far more than being merely an admirable personal characteristic, fidelity in keeping one's viewpoint spiritual is requisite if God's goodness is to appear progressively in one's experience and in the experience of mankind. And the Christian Science Reading Rooms, where the inspired Word of the Bible, Mrs. Eddy's writings, and all authorized Christian Science literature are available, are open to all, to help everyone who will come in maintaining true fidelity to God, to good's allness.
Let us learn to reject all claim to reality of every false, lying suggestion of material sense through the wholehearted acceptance of good as eternal Truth, and thereby learn to live ever more joyously, abundantly, and usefully. This understanding fidelity of thought to the Love which is God, alone constitutes effectual love for ourselves and for our neighbor. In the words of Solomon from the book of Proverbs (4:26,27): "Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil." The invariableness of Truth must characterize our standpoint of being if we would benefit ourselves and others.
Before the close of this hour, let us ask ourselves this question: Is not the power to think the only power we have? Unquestionably it is! Thought precedes everything we do. Then the primary consideration of our experience and of all our efforts should be our thought. The thinking each one of us entertains moment by moment determines our usefulness to mankind. The ability to demonstrate good is not the comprehension of something external, but it is the unfoldment of the perfect nature of existence as our conscious knowing. To heal, thought must approximate and demonstrate progressively the all-inclusive activity of pure intelligence, divine Love.
Christian Science, the Science of demonstrable good, enables us rightly to revere Christ Jesus through wholehearted obedience to his teaching. In this way alone can we contribute effectively and consistently and with divinely guided intelligence to the fulfillment of the angel benediction, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
That the founder of Christian Science expected us to awaken to our heritage and to claim the divine good will for ourselves and for our neighbor, thus loving our neighbors as ourselves, is clearly stated in her words (Science and Health, p. 98): "Beyond the frail premises of human beliefs, above the loosening grasp of creeds, the demonstration of Christian Mind-healing stands a revealed and practical Science. It is imperious throughout all ages as Christ's revelation of Truth, of Life, and of Love, which remains inviolate for every man to understand and to practice."
[Delivered March 28, 1957, in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and published in The Christian Science Monitor, March 29, 1957, under the headline "Spiritual Perception of God's Goodness Found Key to Peace". Breaks were added to some overly long paragraphs.]