Article June 19, 2006 Issue

Spirit versus matter in healing

What makes a body of ideas practical and operative—"capable of practice and active use," and "active in producing effects"—is the practitioner's grasp of basic axioms or truths.

BART R. VAN ECK

'.  . .drink with me the living waters of the spirit of my life—purpose,—to impress humanity with the genuine recognition of practical, operative Christian Science.'

—Mary Baker Eddy
Miscellaneous Writings, p. 207

PERHAPS NOTHING about Christian Science is more incomprehensible to the world than its maxim that there is no matter, and that man and the universe are not material. In her book Unity of Good, Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, reasoned out matter's nothingness in a chapter titled "There is no matter." This premise is reiterated throughout the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.