The Observer 9

              4
Let There Be Light/ C. S. Topic
By Edward C. Wi
Delivered Saturday, at the Pequa Theatre, Sunrise Highway, Massa-pequa,
under the auspices of F i r s t Church of Christ Scientist, Massa-pequa
- C. B. S. of Indianapolis, Indiana, Member of the Board of
hams
Lectureship of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ
Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts.
( Continued from page 8)
1 truth are obscured by his content­ment
with matter. But the light of
spiritual reality is clear and bright
to those whose thought is attuned
to it. This adjustment comes
through prayer, the prayer of con­scious
alignment with divine Truth.
Let's take a look at three mental'
qualities in particular that are a
part of true prayer, this conscious
alignment with the divine. One is
receptivity. Receptivity is willing­ness
to accept a new idea, even if
we have to let go of an old belief.
Another part of true prayer is per­severance.
This quality of thought
persists in relying upon God alone,
even in the face of the most dis­couraging
appearances. You may
recall the story of the Shunammite
woman in the Bible who, when her
little son had died, insisted that all
was well with the child. Her
prayer of persistence must greatly
have helped Elisha in restoring the
child to life.
A third part of true prayer is
gratitude, for gratitude is our inner­most
acceptance of ever- present
good.
Healing Through Enlightened
Consciousness
Let me illustrate how this kind
of prayer brings spiritual enlighten­ment
and healing.
Years ago I received a telephone
call late one evening from a woman
who said she needed help and asked
me to come to her office. I found it
located in a second- rate downtown
office building, just a cubicle at the
end of a dim hallway. When I
knocked she called for me to come
in — and there was a lovely young
woman sitting alone on the floor,
listening to a Beethoven symphony
on a little record player. She had
a cigarette in one hand and a text­book
on psychology in the other.
She was in such pain and tension
that it was difficult for her to speak,
but her story was that she was des­perately
ill and afraid. Her father
had put her out of her home, she
had only her car and a rented room,
and she was in a severe state of
tuberculosis. Clinical examinations
had confirmed this. Her regular
physician had cautioned her that
unless she stayed in bed under a
strict medical regimen and avoided
the slightest physical exertion, she
couldn't last more than a year. But
she had to earn a living. In dis­couragement
she had tried several
times to destroy herself. Now she
wondered desperately if there was
anything to be found in Christian
Science. So we talked about God.
We talked about the reasonable­ness
of finding courage through
acknowledging God as ever- present
good — not as a personality, but
an all- encompassing Love, intelli­gently
protecting and caring for
each of His dear ones. I explained
that resentment and cynicism, which,
occupied much of her thought,
were like a darkening cloud which
produced pain and disease in her
experience. Now she must reverse
this destructive mental action by
bringing into consciousness the
light of forgiveness, the activity of
love. She was receptive to this and
began to relax. The pain subsided.
We talked for an hour and a half,
and then because the hour was late
she offered to drive me home. When
we got to her car out in the park­ing
lot she offered me a drink of
whiskey; but again she saw the logic
in my reminder that liquor had
given her nothing, whereas turning
to God brings self- control and the
fulfillment of good.
Well, to shorten the story, during
the next few weeks my wife and I
saw this girl at the strangest times.
One morning before daybreak we
were awakened by a faint rap on the
door and found her lying uncon­scious
on the doorstep. Again, very
late on a cold winter night, the
police found her walking along a
deserted street. They brought her
to our house where she spent the
rest of the night on the sofa. She
came often after that when the fear
and pain became too great.
But as the days went by, she
persevered in her study of the Bible
and Science and Health, and she
prayed. This kindled an inner light
which regenerated consciousness and " i
laid the foundation for complete!
healing. In a short time, lovely
qualities of character began to ap­pear
— patience, gratitude, con­sideration
for others, forgiveness.
Then the time came when she was
strong and well. The tuberculosis
with all of its symptoms was gone.
She lost all desire for tobacco and
liquor. A normal companionship
with her father was restored.
Shortly afterwards she was married,
and for years has enjoyed a home
and her profession with satisfaction
and security. Incidentally, when I
called her to ask if I might tell
about her healing in my lecture, she
agreed and then added with a good-natured
laugh, " You can tell them
that now I work hard every day!"
Now if such restoration can come
to one, it can come to all. This
healing was an illumination of con­sciousness,
the activity of God's
Word, or the Christ. The power of
divine Love to care for its own —
to care for all of us — was brought
to light.
The Light of Christ Brings
Freedom
Now up to this point we've con­sidered
our first two basic questions.
First, we concluded that spiritual
illumination is the true light. Sec­ond,
we saw that one way to find
this light is through prayer. This
brings us to the third basic question,
What is the effect of this light, of
this Christ, Truth? Well, we've just
seen that the effect of spiritual il­lumination
is to regenerate and
heal. Let's take another look at
how this is done.
Actually it's a matter of the
Christ, Truth, cutting right through
mortality. What do we mean by
mortality? We mean all that's ma­terial
and subject to discord and
death.
Mortals believe that they live in­side
a physical body; but actually
the body is in them. The body is one
of many concepts which they em­brace
in consciousness. Someone
once said that if we actually lived
inside our body, we wouldn't be able
to see beyond the end of our nose.
It's all dark in there! What appears
to be a material body is subjective
thought. Like a dream- body, it
walks, stands up, sits down, gets
sick or well, in obedience to its
owner's thinking.
You see, we're dealing always
with thoughts. The great message of
the Bible is instruction in right
thinking. Jesus referred to evil
thoughts as the tares and good
thoughts as the wheat. He said the
former should be destroyed, the
latter stored. Ignorance of God as
infinite Love, the divine Principle
of all things, is the mental darkness
which spiritual illumination dis­solves.
As this light brightens in­dividual
consciousness with its as­surance
of ever- present Love, its
effect is to transform thought and
bring healing.
Disease, crime, tragedy, are ex­ternalized
thoughts. What would
make a man commit a crime? Law­less
thoughts. Crime begins with
thought before it's acted out. What
spreads social diseases? Immoral
thoughts, resulting in immoral con­duct.
Drugs and alcohol can't hold
their victims unless, in thought,
they give consent. Society attempts
to battle the social delinquent in-
• stead of the thoughts which cause
delinquency. We need to screen our
thinking and not leave consciousness
like a room with many open win­dows
letting in the wind and dust
and rain. We should be as selective
about what we put into our minds
as what we put into our mouths,
or even more so. No one would
think of eating contaminated food;
but sugarcoated contaminated
thoughts are urged upon us from
every side. They seem harmless
only because their poison is less
evident.
Mass world belief in the pleasure
of sin and the fearfulness of disease
is hypnotic. Too often sin and
suffering take shape in one's experi­ence
if he leaves his thought open
to their mental contagion. Belief
in sin and disease denies God's all-presence
and all- power and exalts
suppositional evil. It may seem
tempting, or terrifying, until the
light of spiritual truth melts it
away. Evil can't project its tragedy
into our lives when we reject its
arguments and hold steadfastly to
the all- power of the one God, the
Truth which makes free.
With even a little spiritual en­lightenment,
the contrast between
good thoughts and deceptive beliefs
stands out in sharp profile. We
begin to rule out of consciousness
discordant, worthless thoughts just
as a cashier in a bank detects and
rejects counterfeit money. Loyalty
to good, courage to stand for the
right, faith in God's presence and
power to heal gain predominance
in our thought and align us with
divine power. These are the effects
of the Christ, Truth, as it illumi­nates
our consciousness through
prayer.
The Light That Heals Sickness
One of the errors of mortality
which spiritual illumination pierces
is the belief that disease is real,
actually part of God's creation.
Why, if disease were the work of
God, Christ Jesus would have agreed
with it, he wouldn't have healed it.
His consistent negation of disease
leaves no doubt that he regarded it
as contrary to God's purpose.
Spiritual awakening aligns us
with God's power and speeds us in
a straight line out of sickness into
health. I read an interesting thing
about the honeybee which illustrates
the value of correct spiritual align­ment.
After gathering nectar from
a flower, the honeybee will take a
bearing on the sun and fly directly
to her home perhaps a quarter of a
mile away. She makes a " beeline"
for home.
The term " beeline" has come
to mean to go djrectly without
delay, without deviation; and we'll
do well to take frequent bearings
on the source of true spiritual light
to determine the direction in which
to think and act. Then we won't
get lost in the woods. We can make
a " beeline" to where health and
well- being are found.
How does God's law of Truth
control the human body to bring
about a physical healing? To an­swer
this, we must remember that
i the physical body is a formation of
thought and it exists in thought.
What thought? Not our own, but
whatever thoughts we have igno-rantly
accepted as our own. The
body expresses our thoughts, as
illustrated in the movement of our
hands and the tone of our voice.
Joy, exhilaration, age, or even death,
are mental states which the body
obeys. Mental discord causes phys­ical
discord. Enlightened, spiritual
consciousness promotes health and
peace. The material body is the
blackboard on which discordant
mortal thought draws its disease-pictures.
Spiritual enlightenment
wipes the slate clean.
Now as spiritual truth enlightens
human thought, it governs all the
thought- formations of the body.
The Christ, Truth, demonstrates
that man is spiritual, not material;
and that his real body, or identity,
is his conscious embodiment of di­vine
qualities. The true light illu­mines
individual consciousness and
its concept of body, uplifting it
from a sense of insubordinate matter
to a higher understanding of sub­stance
that is spiritual. The effect
is a better sense of body whose
members now function in obedience
to God's perfect law, because
thought is obedient to God's law.
Christian Science is here to show
us how to root out the evil and
cultivate the good. It teaches us
to distinguish disease- producing
thoughts from the true — how to
understand the reality of good in­stead
of living in a false conscious­ness
of discord and evil. Spiritual
enlightenment brings to our individ-
FARMINGDALE OBSERVER - Thursday, November 21, 1968
ual consciousness an awakening
realization that we are not mortals.
We're the spiritual and perfect
likeness of God, as the Bible tells
us. This illumination pervades con­sciousness
with increasing harmony
and peace, extending to all of the
concepts in consciousness. The
body responds in becoming strong
and healthy.
Christ Enlightens World
Consciousness
Now the influence of this spiri­tual
enlightenment extends far
beyond the individual. Truth illu­minates
individual consciousness,
and through individuals it illumi­nates
the world. For example, Sci­ence
and Health says, " The rays
of infinite Truth, when gathered
into the focus of ideas, bring light
instantaneously, whereas a thou­sand
years of human doctrines,
hypotheses, and vague conjectures
emit no such effulgence" ( p. 504).
Just as rays of sunlight produce
intense heat and brilliance when
they are focused, so the rays of
infinite Truth, when gathered into
the focus of ideas, bring light and
penetration to the clouds of human
woe. Just think how the vital ideas
of justice, love of liberty and free­dom,
focused at one point of human
history, brought forth the Magna
Charta or the Declaration of In­dependence!
A discordant, material
belief is simply a mistake made up
of false thoughts which have no
focus and give no light. But a
spiritual idea is a focal point of
infinite Truth whose rays bring
inevitable light.
History shows repeatedy how
such illumination has brought prog­ress
and freedom to humanity.
Inspired by God, Moses brought
the Ten Commandments to Israel.
These focal points of divine Truth
highlighted the character of God
as the one supreme good, and when
the Israelites obeyed them, they
rose from slavery to national inde­pendence
and prosperity.
Jesus was born a babe in a
manger. But later as a teacher
voicing the Christ message he de­clared,
" I am the light of the
world" ( John 8: 12). His followers,
mentally transformed by this light, ,
founded the early Christian church.
Again, centuries later, spiritual
light was made available to the
masses by translation of the Bible
into the language of the common
people. Gradually, like the coming
of spring, humanity awoke from the
winter of the Dark Ages. Literature,
art, and music blossomed. Within
a brief five hundred years education
increased a thousandfold. Breath­taking
forms of laborsaving power
were discovered as mankind stepped
into the mechanical age. In wide
areas of the world, government by
the people and for the people was
established in the place of autoc­racies.
Women's rights were ac­knowledged.
Now the leaven of Scriptural
enlightenment has raised world
consciousness to where at last it is
ready for the appearance of the
Science of Christ, the Comforter, or
" Spirit of truth," which Jesus fore­told
( John 15: 26).
Christian Science defines the
universe and man in spiritual, not
material, dimensions. It arouses
rebellion against time- honored, ma­terial
limitations which were never
divinely ordained. Men are ex­ploring
pioneer areas of thought
where the horizon is continually
expanding. During the last century
• material restrictions have crumbled
more rapidly than ever before.
Worldwide communication has be­come
almost instantaneous. Trans­portation
has advanced from a
horse's pace to beyond the speed
jof sound. Our astronauts soar into
j outer space to circle the earth in
a matter of hours. Inveterate dis­eases
are being healed through
spiritual means alone.
Technological developments are
[ no accident. The ideas were always
jhere. Humanity broke through to
them when inherited limitations
were challenged — when the inertia
of materialism began to stir and
churn under the penetrating focus
of spiritual light. This light, di­vinely
demanded from the begin­ning,
has reached its full brilliance
in the Science of Christ, or Chris­tian
Science.
True Progress
Now all of this adds up to the
conclusion that real progress is the
growth of human consciousness out
of mortality into the understanding
of infinite Spirit, God. It will con­tinue
to be illustrated in our pro­gressive
release from discord and
restriction until we fully demon­strate
the spiritual reality that all
of us are made in the image and
likeness of God.
What is it that awakens us so
naturally in the morning when night
is past? Isn't it the coming of day­light?
Even so, the brighter, spiri­tual
light of the Christ can awaken
us from the darkness of mortal be­liefs
into health, harmony and spiri­tual
freedom.
Editors Note:
Editors Note: Edward C. Wil­liams
is a native of Indiana­polis,
Indiana, where he was
- aised as a Christian Scientist.
As a member of Third Church
of Christ, Scientist, of Indiana­polis,
he served his church as
first reader and as chairman of
their executive baord, as well
as in many other capacities.
In 1942 he left an active busi­ness
career in order to devote
his full time to the healing min­i
s t r y of Christian Science, and* is
a listed Christian Science
practitioner.
During World War II he served
as Christian Science Minister for
the armed services.
More recently he served the
cause of Christian Science on the
committee on publication, for the
s t a t e of Indiana which office he
held for a number of years.
In 1961 he became an author­i
z e d teacher of Christian Sci­ence.
Over a period of twenty years
his a r t i c l e s have appeared in the
Christian Science periodicals.
LEGAL NOTICE
( Continued from page 4)
of Oyster Bay by causing this
resolution to be published at
least one time in the Massape-qua
Post and the Massapequa
Observer which is hereby d e s ­ignated
as the official newspaper
of the Town for the purpose of
affecting the. publication h e r e i n ­above
provided for or required
to be made,
BY ORDER OF THE
TOWN BOARD OF THE
TOWN OF OYSTER BAY
Michael N. Petito,
Supervisor
William B. O'Keefe
Town Clerk
Dated: Oyster Bay, New York
November 12, 1968
STATE OF NEW YORK )
COUNTY OF NASSAU ) s s:
TOWN OF OYSTER BAY )
I WILLIAM B. O'KEEFE, Town
Clerk of the Town of Oyster
Bay, and custodian of the Rec­ords
of said Town, DO HEREBY"
CERTIFY that I have compared
the annexed with the original,
notice to qualified voters and
owners of Real Property of the
Town of Oyster Bay of resolu­tion
adopted by the Town Board,
relative to the exchange of P r o p ­e
r t y by Daim Building Corp.,
and Town of Oyster Bay filed in
the Town C l e r k ' s Office and that
die same is a true transcript
thereof, and of the whole of such
original.
In Testimony Whereof, I have
have hereunto signed my
name and affixed the seal
of said Town this 15th day of
November, 1968.
William B. O'Keefe
Town Clerk
SEAL
# 706 IT Observer Nov. 21, 1968
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