The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-09-25
ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE Entitled Christian Science: Its Practical Excellence
John c. I.athrop, c. S. B.
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist,
 in Boston, Massachusetts.

All persons desire harmony of mind and body. All desire to escape here and now the seemingly endless trials ing, the fear. sin and death of mor- tai life. All want salvation and de- sire present salvation from the ills and torments of the flesh. Christian the conveyance. It points and pro- v1des the way out of disaster and proves itself to be what Jesus fore told must come when he said, ''I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever" (John xiv: 16).
 Evil and error and matter. fear. sickness and death are outsrown by waking up from a false sense that we believed was true, and this false sense Is changed by discovering the true sense of God, of man and the universe, Isn't it only by discovering the truth in mathematics that you get rid of the error?
 Faith abolishes fear, and entirely changes your point of view. Chris tian Science calls matter error of ma- ter1aI belief, because matter is the very opposite of Spirit, which is Al1- zn-all, and God never made any3hing unlike Himself, Spirit. But whence came this error of belief with all it's sin, sickness and death. to which wei are captives? Whence came the be- lief that you couldn't float? But when you find yourself quietly floating down the stream, gazing happily up into the;3 peaceful blue sky, you never ask your. self what has become of that belief. It will never trouble you again. and3 you know 1t, for it has vanished intoS that imaginary realm of ignoranceS and illusion to join it's comrades-aslJ those other false beliefs, beliefs in5 something unlike Spirit, God. A lie is defined as 8 deception Je- sus healed the sick by knowing theys were deceived by false beliefs, thatS they were captives of darkened captives free physically by his single thinking, that is, his right thinkings about God and man. Jesus spiritual right thoughts reflected the Christ. ly, and thus was freed from the influ- ence of the evil and sick beliefs which were affecting him physically.
 Thomas A. Edison says. ''To start bought going, is the highest mission lberate mans true individuality. and of mankind" Start thought going, the rules of right thinking will soon be revealed to him. These rules, and the been discovered in Christian Sciences x and are available for all mankind to1 understand and to utilize. The act of using this divine Prin- true meaning of prayer. In tact,
 thinking by divine Principle and rule,
 and thinking blindly according to ma
 terial belief, constitutes the exact diff ference between the prayer that
 avatls, and the prayer that gropes in the dark and fails, between the pray
 CT that heals the sick as we'll as the
 sinner, and the prayer that limits Gods power, and doubts His willing ness to destroy all kinds of error.
 Most people believe that prayer to God is good thinking. Why not ex- tend the good thinking, instead of Ifrr3ifjne if nr Stn a1 Extending it is exactly what Chris
 tian Science does. Extend it to the
 point of deciding that your thoughts shall no longer be governed by the false belief that life, substance and intelligence are in matter, with it's sickness, sin and death. Extend it to
 decide that your thoughts shall be governed by the one Mind that was in Christ Jesus, by Life. Truth and Love, the divine Principle of mans being, and when your thoughts are thus governed, you find that then you are really praying for right thoughts
 governed thus will reflect the Truth that heals the sick.
 Spiritual understanding is morej than human knowledge. Human knowledge comprises the things with-i in the limits of the five material senses Christian Science reveals
 mans true sense to be a consciousness
 of infinite Spirit and it's infinite ideas. Ia consciousness of the unreality Of evil and the material senses. This consciousness is spiritual understand ing which casts out error and heals the sick. Thus Christian Science has1 opened the way to eternal harmonys and happiness by supplying mankind with spiritual understandtn. and therein lies it's supreme and practical excellence as the Comforter leading into all Truth.
 When Jesus said to his disciples, "I
 have yet many things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now" (John xvi: 12), undoubtedly he meant that
 they lacked spiritual understanding.
 The many things" he referred to
 were many things about God. and many things about evil and sin. It has taken centuries of human trial and experience to lift faith above a personal and blind trust in God to understand Him as Life, Truth and Love, as the one and only Mind, as
 nipotent and omnipresent. In fact.
 in no other way can God be known as omnipresent and omnipotent. It has taken centuries to understand God as the one infinite Spirit, and to realize
 the sequence of this fact, that man
 must be spiritual and not material
 Most mortals are limited in all their
 ways. They have a limited sense of
 health, of strength, of life, of supply and of love. Their happiness and joy are limited, and they hold a limited sense of God, of Christ. of man and of heaven. Fear accompanies this
 
 are companions, and are logical effects of a limited material consciousness. De- nying the reality of matter, dropping
 the material personal sense of God, and claiming the allnes of Spirit, the spiritual sense of Him as infinite Life,
 Truth and Love gradually dawns upon thought. and a new outlook, new
 existence unfolds to the awakening thought.
 A Christian Scientist is learning
 how to work, how to loose himself from sin, how to awaken from mes-
 merism, how to banish fear, to con quer disease and to destroy death. In short he is learning how to live, and is getting ready to live and is not get ting ready to die. Death to him is an
 enemy, as Paul called it, a false be- lief to be died to daily, that is, to be destroyed daily. Therefore death Is
 nothing to be afraid of. It is mere ly the wages of sin, whose sting is abolished in human consciousness by
 the Christ, Truth, until there shall