Arizona republican., 1917-05-07
Cvbe Christian Science Monitor

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 Human life, as we see it with and
 through the material senses, is far
 from being ideal or satisfying or ever true. It is mixture of belief in good
 and evil of matter and mortal or car
 nal, mind; medley of hope and fear, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. And it holds little, in itself, that even ap- proXimates the spiritual. All that is spiritual, in fact, originates in total ly different source than human life, even in divine Mind God himself, and, 1 flowing from divine Mind, through righteous prayer, puts off human belief with it's inconsistencies and it's tangles, 1 and by this process spiritualizes human experience.
 At the root of this question of cor recting human life, lies the question of the unreality of matter. When We learn that divine Mind, God. has ere 1 ated man and universe spiritually and holds them as spiritual idea existent in divine Mind, and when We see at the same time that the whole scheme of matter is just the output of mortal mind, or material belief, counterfeiting the divine creation and unreal in every sense, therefore not divinely true. nor eternal, we see the way to victory over sin, disease and death. Matter is mor- tally expressed. It can dc nothing but pursue it's own course to it's ultimate dissolution, unless the belief in matter be abolished by spiritual understand ing and it's course to elf-destruction arrested by the spiritual protest which annuls it's claim to life or intelligence,
 or power. If, as Christian Science re- veals, matter is the output of false be- lief then as human thought wakes out 1 of false belief. human experience must fs.l1 Ia f,1G from being at the mercy of matter. In other words, belief in matter suffer-, ] the material consequences of it's be- lief, while spiritual understanding re- leases mOPtalS from the consequences , Of such belief because 1t casts out of consciousness the belief. Christian Sci once healing reckons not at all with ! matter. It deals with the false belief that matter has life or substance or intelligence. The belief, or supposi- | ton, so dispersed. can no longer appear
 in or as matter; and the temptations and penalties attached to matter yield. to spiritually as the better understand ing of God and man spritualzes the human outlook.
 So. the whole question of salvation sums itself as the victory of spiritual
 understanding over material beliefs in each individual pI oblem. It is, primar- | fly. a change of consciousness. Instead l Of believing materially about God, man and universe. and believing a lot of er- roneous and painful things, individuals are called to a true understanding a 1 Knowledge of all that is true, about God, man and universe. And just as a knowledge of the basic law of mathe-
 matics, applied will rub mistakes in 1 figures from the blackboard, so the | spiritual knowledge of God as divine | Principle, and of man governed by di- | vine Principle, must rub mistakes if we may so put it, out of our bodies, out | Of our homes, out of our businesses. and yes. as application of it becomes world wide. out of governments and
 nations and countries. It may look a i stupendous task. But the individual
 has only to watch his own thoughts,
 and one by one, moment by moment, | dispace material beliefs with spiritual understanding. Could each one do this | instantly, we would have totally diff ferent world tomorrow. Would each
 one do it constantly, great changes,
 even then, would be here. But in any event, those who see, be they few or | many, can let standardization of thought appear, IS best they can, in i their own lives, by constant surrender 1 of material belief to the higher view point; and this individual work not 1 only delivers him who does it, but
 makes history, eventually, for all man. | kind.
 This being true, we can see that Paul l meant plainly the armor of spiritual
 understanding when he charged the i Ephesian Christians to put on the 1 whole armor of God For" said he
 we wrestle not against flesh and ! blood, but against principalities against powers, against the rulers of i the darkness of this world, against
 spiritual wickedness in high places
 Against all evil, Paul practically said
 and what, save spiritual understanding
 can meet evil as mortal mind? Evil
 Is not entity, nor fact, it must be re-
 membered. At most it is but a ncga-
 tlon-the absence or lack of good. And
 evil reduced by Christian Science to
 evil belief, or in it's first instance men, | tai suggestion, can be totally denlol-
 ished Evil is not a something to be
 destroyed: it is--nothing, not to be be-
 lieved in. Belief in evil is all there is
 of evil. And belief in evil love of evil.
 fear of evil, fade from thought in the 1 proportion that spiritual good is under l stood, valued, loved and lived
 Now the Christian has not known
 that spiritual good exempts him from disease. He has believed that he could
 be good, and at the same time suffer
 And he could, if goodness were but
 human, and faith only blind. Spiritual good, however, really is spiritual un-
 derstanding which repudiates every
 claim and condition of matter And
 this spiritual good taught and demon
 strated by Christ Jests, and eTuci-
 dated clearly in this age by Christian
 Science, is the spiritual armor which is
 itself holinesss and health, and which
 does truly shield him who bears it