"The City Foursquare and Healing"
By: Harold Shrewsbury
Mary Baker Eddy's discovery of Christian Science is as revolutionary today as it was when she discovered it in 1866 because it is based on a spiritual understanding of God which heals the sick and the sinning, rather than on the faith of most Christian churches. She describes how to reach this spiritual understanding in her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in which she writes: Divine metaphysics is now reduced to a system, to a form comprehensibvle by and adapted to the thought of the ae in which we live." (146:31) In the preface she explains healing in Christian Science as the "the operation of divine Principle (a term she uses to describe God) before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light." (xi:9-14) This phenomena is similar to mathematics where a mistake such as 2 plus 2 equals 10 is corrected by the understanding of the fact that 2 plus 2 equals 4. As any mathematical error can be corrected by "mathematizing" consciousness, so the errors of material sense can be corrected or healed by spiritualizing consciousness in which all unlike God or good disappears much like all the wrong answers disappear to someone who understands mathematics.
Her discovery was based on her lifelong study of the Bible and Jesus' healings. Genesis 1:31 tells us of a creation where evil can exist only as a lie or mistake. "God saw everything he had made and behold, it was very good:" So the devil, a name for evil, is described by Jesus as a "liar and the father of it." (John 8:44) The remedy for any lie is the truth, and Jesus tells us to "know the truth and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32) Christian Science heals by knowing (understanding) the truth about un-Godlike errors in human experience which in turn transforms material consciousness, where sin, disease and death appear, to spiritual consciounsess, where they disappear.
Science and Health gives a step by step explanation of how to achieve this transformation in consciousness and the last chapter, "The Apocalypse", gives us the summary of this process in its unique and profound interpretation of the sacred city descending out of heaven from God in John's Revelation whose four sides are the Word, Christ, Christianity, and divine Science (575:17-20). She says "the four equal sides of (the city) are heaven-bestowed and heaven-bestowing." (574:22-24) The city, New Jerusalem is heaven-bestowed because it comes "down from heaven, God" and it is heaven-bestowing because it explains how the Word of God transforms human consciousness from a human basis, where both good and evil exist, to the spiritual or Godlike base in which only good exists,and all that is un-Godlike such as sin and disease disappear.
This process is similar to the way we learn any subject: we learn addition (Word or statement of addition); adopt or become one with this principle (Christ); use it to solve a problem (Christianity); and achieve an understanding of addition (Science). So to heal in Christian Science we acknowledge the Truth (Word); identify ourselves with it. (Christ..."I and my Father are one." John 10:30); express it in our human experience (Christianity); and the Truth becomes a self-evident fact to our now spiritualized consciousness in which all unlike this Truth disappears (Christian Science or spiritual understanding).
The following instantaneous healing is an illustration of this: As a student of Christian Science, my needs had been met through my understanding of the statement from Science and Health, "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." (494:10). During flight training in the Navy I found myself lonely and depressed at a new base where I knew no one. Turning again to that statement for healing, I felt I was going back to "square one" but instead I found myself at "square two" when it suddenly dawned on me that since I was God's image and likeness, I was the expression of that Love that meets the human need, rather than the human in need of this Love. Instantly the loneliness and depression left me and I felt a sense of peace and well being as if a light was turned on in my lonely BOQ room. As the expression of Love I felt I should be meeting a human need and busied myself at the base swimming pool that afternoon teaching youngsters how to dive as I had done at summer camp as a boy. Attending a Christian Science church in town the next Sunday, a lady introduced herself and her daughter to me and for the rest of my stay at that base I had the wonderful companionship of this daughter and her family. My experience changed as my consciousness changed and my human need was met. As I accepted Love (Word) as my identity (Christ) and expressed it in my experience (Christianity), I gained the consciousness of Love, and all unlike Love disappeared (Science). In the above illustration I do not imply that all one has to do to demonstrate the healing power of Christian Science is to read the preface and last chapter of its textbook.
On the contrary, each chapter prepares the reader to understand the next chapter. Furthermore, each spiritual concept must not only be read, but applied and lived, before it is truly understood just as addition isn't really understood until the student can demonstrate it. In her last chapter of her book Mrs. Eddy tells us to read this book from beginning to end (again since we've already read it thus far), study it, ponder it. (559:21) Students of Christian Science should continuously be reading Science and Health from beginning to end because consciousness is constantly evolving as one reads and gains new views of divine reality. Each time I read this book and the Bible, I feel I am reading it from a new, more spiritual viewpoint. I feel I am constantly putting on the "new man" Paul describes in Ephesians and Mrs. Eddy describes as God's idea "forever developing itself and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis." (258:13-15) Understanding an infinite God is an infinitely ongoing experience.
In my healing I moved from identifying myself as a needy human to the expression of the Love that meets the human need, and my experience reflected that new understanding. You can measure your progress in your prayerful study by noting the change in consciousness from "sense to Soul" as Hymn 64 goes, rather than watching for a change in your material situation. I was healed while still in the lonely room and John saw his vision of the city foursqure while still in prison on the island of Patmos. As we spiritually digest the truths of the Bible through our understanding of Christian Science, we become the expression of those truth wherever we are. The city foursquare is an infinite, on-going, eternal journey of new views and healing.
