Editorial February 15, 1913 Issue

"SUBJECT UNTO YOU."

John B. Willis

It is no less surprising than true, as one comes to think of it, that the average man finds it much easier to believe in God, of whom physical sense gives him no knowledge whatever, than to disbelieve in matter, for supporting evidence of which he must look to physical sense alone. In the one instance conviction is quite indifferent to sense testimony, and in the other it is entirely dependent upon and wholly satisfied with it, though acknowledging that it is imperfect and often fails to report the facts as they are later on found to be.

Christian believers have always looked upon the material world as temporal. They have been taught that some day the earth is to "be burned up" and that there is to "be no more sea." They thus recognize, at least theoretically, that matter is not a part of the realm of Spirit or essential to it; that it has no place in God's kingdom. Moreover, in declaring for the omnipresence and omniscience of Spirit, every intelligent Christian has conceded that God cannot be subject to the limitations of time and space, so that to Him whatever is to be, is now. At this point the believer, if logical and given to the habit of thinking things out, must see that since the consummation of all things is "at hand" to God, tht material order, all that is to "pass away," does not exist to Him, and hence it can have no real being to us, in so far as we have gained the divine point of view.

To perceive reality, spiritual substance, is to be deceived no longer by appearances. It must be apparent, therefore, that one of the fundamental contentions of Christian Science is true; namely, that matter and all its phenomena are unreal, since they have nothing to do, right now, with the continuity and completeness of the divine manifestation, the universe of Spirit. The possibility of the disappearance of sin, sickness, and death, the various phases of unreality, becomes entirely explicable the moment we admit that they have no place in the divine consciousness, in Truth. One may not yet be able to accept all that is included in this logical imperative, but he can see that matter and its fearsome phenomena must yield to Mind as naturally as darkness yields to light. All who accept the teaching of the Scripture must further concede that the Mind which was in Christ Jesus is in fact our Mind, and may become such in experience; hence, in so far as we are spiritually-minded we may now see things as God sees them, a condition which Christ Jesus made precedent to and explanatory of salvation when he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

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