Taking the Side of Spirit

The essence of Christian Science demonstration is the revelation that Spirit and spiritual existence alone are real. When this great Truth is accepted, whatever is unlike pure Mind or Spirit is recognized as unreal and temporary. When we make the distinction between divine reality and human illusion, every problem can be worked out. Those who understood and accepted the teachings of Christian Science are wonderfully blessed in being able to look upon human existence and face its problems from the standpoint of spiritual understanding and power. When we learn to promptly and willingly surrender the errors of belief, as we detect them, we have entered upon the road of spiritual progress.

Mrs. Eddy, who explored the entire process of exchanging the material for the spiritual sense of existence, learned to take the side of the spiritual and real, and to hold to that realization. She writes of this conflict, “Matter is manifest mortal mind, and it exists only to material sense. Real sensation is not material; it is, and must be, mental: and Mind is not mortal, it is immortal. Being is God, infinite Spirit; therefore it cannot cognize aught material, or outside of infinity.” (Misc. Writ. p. 72).

The genuine willingness and gratitude with which we take the side of Spirit in the affairs of daily living, or in the more difficult human problems, determines the speed of our progress heavenward.

Many a person has reached the limit of his human endurance only to find divine Love waiting to show how to take the side of Spirit and to begin to lose his weakness and sorrow in the newly awakened spiritual sense of eternal strength and living joy.

Divine Love waits to bless, but each one must make a positive, persistent effort, to take the side of Spirit and fit himself to receive the blessing. The Bible promises, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

It is a great forward step to learn the rule of scientific demonstration of spiritual power. It is possible to apply this rule successfully, knowing that, as Paul declares in his epistle to the Corinthians, “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”