The Eternal Now

There is perhaps no more favorite method whereby the so-called human mind attempts to defeat or to delay a Christian Science healing than that which continually puts it off until tomorrow. All good is ours today, and we have a right to receive it; yet that mind which is ever enmity to God, good, would fain persuade us to overlook the golden possibilities of the eternal now in pursuing that evanescent thing called tomorrow, which, like some frail will-o’-the-wisp, dances ever alluringly just a step ahead of us, but is never reached.

It is not only the so-called patient in Christian Science, but the so-called practitioner as well, who sometimes seems to succumb to this fallacious argument whereby the realization of God’s goodness to His children is indefinitely postponed. Every treatment should be given with the firm conviction that it is the only one which will ever be needed, that the work is completed, then and there. A student of Christian Science who was noted for his instantaneous demonstrations was once asked the reason for his success. “I never take into account the possibility of a tomorrow,” was the reply. “I always work as if today were my first, last, and only chance to heal the case.”

This may partially explain why cases which to human sense seem critical are often healed so quickly that the world would say a miracle had been wrought. Christian Science treatment has been asked for only as a last resort, when the physicians and family have given up all hope and the patient appears to be passing on. The Scientist called in such an emergency instantly recognizes that the work must be done quickly, if at all. There is no chance here to postpone the issue. Seeing the patient again tomorrow will not do. It is a quick, hand-to-hand encounter with the “last enemy,” and everybody knows it. In such instances, spurred on by the exigency of the moment, and realizing as perhaps never before the utter insufficiency of human help to meet the situation, the practitioner often rises to such calm heights of spiritual exaltation that the sick man has been known to rise from his bed, and walk.

Why should we not be just as much in earnest in all cases? The man who lay at the pool of Bethesda, waiting to be healed, was not in imminent danger of passing on. If Jesus had not come by that day the chances are the patient sufferer would have been at his accustomed post again tomorrow, just as he had been for the last thirty and eight years. Although the Master knew that “he had been now a long time in that case,” he saw no reason why he should be a long time getting out of it. There was one quick, simple, unanswerable word of command, and the work was done. That was Jesus’ way. We have no record of any case of healing begun today and finished tomorrow. He lived in the eternal now, wherein his Father’s omnipotence was all sufficient.

But what about similar so-called chronic cases of today? Are we not sometimes like those of old whom Jesus rebuked because they maintained “there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest”? Christian Science reiterates, “Now is the time for so-called material pains and material pleasures to pass away, for both are unreal, because impossible in Science” (Science and Health, p. 39). Yet when a belief of many years’ standing presents itself at the door of our consciousness to be healed, calling itself a man who has it, do we not sometimes become so mesmerized by this belief of “time” that we have even been known to take his case by the week, or possibly by the month, at what we consider to be a generously reduced price? Truly, the ways are many and devious whereby the adversary will seek to nullify a Christian Science treatment, even to the extent of persuading the very practitioner himself to lend a hand!

It is obvious that if we thought the patient would be healed on Monday, we would not arrange to continue the work until Saturday; and if he is not to be healed until Saturday, why begin on Monday? This stupefying belief of time never laid its spell upon the clear consciousness of our Master. When he had need to be at the other side of the lake, he entered the ship, and they were at the other shore “immediately.” The dictionary defines the word immediately as meaning, “Without interval of time; without delay; straightway; instantly; at once.” Why is it that the followers of the Christ today do not reach more quickly the haven where they would be? Why do we not reach the other side of the lake “immediately”? Simply because we do not know that we can.

When one awakens from a dream, how long does it take for the dream to disappear? Although one might have been all night in getting to sleep, he could wake up in an instant. Suppose we were dreaming of a castle perched on beetling crags far above a swiftly rushing river, in which we were held a prisoner: would the castle have to fall into ruins before we could get out? Would long years have to elapse, wherein mortar would disintegrate, and stones crumble, and iron bars rust, and hinges break, in order that we might go free? Yet the whole of mortal existence is but a dream of pain and pleasure in matter, no more real than the dream-castle, did we but know it. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 530) : “The history of error is a dream-narrative. The dream has no reality, no intelligence, no mind; therefore the dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true nor real.” Then what is the quickest, surest, sanest, simplest way to destroy the dream-castle wherein we feel ourselves imprisoned? Is it not just to wake up?

It seems so easy to see this about the fantasies of a dream! Why not try to see it also of those grim prison-houses of disease, sin, sorrow, want, and woe, wherein we fancy in our waking moments that we sometimes dwell? Those whose eyes are shut are not the only ones who dream. In her famous sleep-walking scene, one watcher says of Lady Macbeth, “See, her eyes are open.” “Aye,” replies the other, “but their sense is shut.” Let us arouse ourselves from the belief of any consciousness apart from God. Mortal mind would fain prolong this dream. “You have been sick a good while,” it says. “Your system needs to be built up. You cannot expect to get well in a moment. All this takes time.”

Does it? How long did it take for the dream-castle to go? You once believed yourself a prisoner there. But were you? Your present belief in sickness, or discord of any sort, is no more real than that castle, and can be destroyed by the same simple process. Where does it go? To the same place where the dream-castle goes when you wake up. Where did it come from? From just the same place that the dream-castle came from. There is no use in speculating as to where error comes from. There is no use looking for the origin of evil, for it has none. Do we not sometimes get so busy “uncovering error” that we forget to thank God because there is no reality in error?

What matters the type, length, breadth, thickness, and general appearance of our dream-castle? Who cares who built it, and when ? Will the illusion vanish any more quickly after we once decide whether its style of architecture is Gothic, Renaissance, or early English? Will it help us to wake up to know whether it is built of granite, marble, or only of stones from the river bed below? And if we cannot figure it out for ourselves, will it expedite matters any to call in some one else to look at it and tell us its name?

Who gave the names to everything mortal and material in the first place? Mrs. Eddy says, “Beholding the creations of his own dream and calling them real and God-given, Adam —alias error—gives them names” (Science and Health, p. 528). Why prolong the dream? Since the one object of Adam, or error, is to prevent us from waking up, it would keep us at work indefinitely counting the windows and doors of our castle, if it could. It would keep us forever staring at matter, if it had its way. But why give so much flattering consideration to anything so obviously false? The one point which should interest us is this: How are we to get out?

The important thing then is to wake up. When this is done the dream-castle will disappear of its own accord, because there is nothing else left for it to do. Then let us cease our hopeless contemplation of our prison walls. Have we not already stared at them long enough? Let us know that it never existed in God’s beautiful realm of the real, and that we were consequently never in it. Let us realize that inharmony of any kind is no part of man, that it cannot attach itself to man, nor call itself either the dream or the dreamer. Let us remember, instead, that we are living in God’s eternal now, wherein no laggard element of time can ever enter, where no stone walls crumble, but where all is as perfect and harmonious and complete as in that primal hour when Mind spoke, “and it was so.”