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An example of this is the healing in the
Gospel of the centurion's servant. The Roman centurion says to Jesus, You do
not need to bother to come to my house to heal my servant, you only need to say
the word. I, too, am a man under authority, so I recognize that you Jesus, also
are under authority. The word of authority is carried down the line of command.
So the servant was healed. It requires us to acknowledge that everything right
is God doing it: honesty, integrity, harmony, goodness, unselfed love, anything
right. It is not we who are doing it, we did not originate such concepts but as
we get ourselves out of the way we find God expressing that quality as us.
Everything right is God doing it, but when it is God doing it as you and me;
that is the marvel. When you make three threes nine it not you making them
nine; the principle is that they are nine and you are allowing that principle
to operate as you.
So it is marvellous to feel this sense
that we are God- empowered, God-authorized. What a relief from the burden of
personal responsibility! I knew a man who had a good engineering business in
England, but there was labour trouble that so poisoned the relationships that
everything was going wrong. His wife, who was a Christian Scientist, asked him
to come and have a talk with us to see if he could find help. As he talked, one
became aware of an intensely personal sense of him being the manager and that
his wishes were being thwarted by the troublesome trades union shop stewards. I
said to him, 'Supposing you weren't there, the principle of management would
find someone else through whom to operate. Why don't you stop thinking of
yourself as the manager, and instead start thinking of the management - the
management requires this and this for the harmonious working of the firm?' He
saw that this suggestion made sense, that it was a matter of getting person an
personal responsibility and personal confrontation out of the picture. He did,
and the beautiful thing was that the trouble just simmered down and harmony
prevailed. The people who wanted to confront him as the manager just stopped
because he knew that the management was no longer there as a personal target to
be confronted. So in place of a person he had the principle of good management
and good works relations. That is how it worked out.
I have sometimes observed that ruptures
represent carrying a burden of responsibility. It can sometimes be a ruptured
personal relationship where man is torn apart from his brother over some
quarrel, but more often it is just a burdened sense of carrying more than we
think we can bear. I remember once I was reading a Christian Science book and
was very moved by a wonderfully inspired statement. At that very moment a
friend came into the room and said, 'Oh, my rupture, it has all popped out
again.' I did not know that this individual had ever had a rupture. I said,
'Just listen to this,' and I read her what I had been looking at. The words
were, "We need to know that the divine Mind uplifts, and holds together, and
unifies, and prospers." 'Oh,' she said, 'it is back in place.' Just like that!
It was the first instantaneous healing I had ever seen. But how appropriate.
Those inspired words were the exact healing truth for that condition: that the
divine Mind uplifts, and holds together, and unifies, and prospers. That
rupture popped back into place and the muscles regained their integrity and
that was the end of the story. That is all because, as Christian Science
teaches, God is the divine Principle of being, and this divine Principle
operates as system, as harmony, as government, as authority. Under divine
Principle man is in accord with the laws of God and therefore nothing goes
wrong with him.
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