Article June 6, 1914 Issue

Reality versus Unreality

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

Reality and unreality are terms which call for correct definition to be scientifically understood, that is, in their relation to the absolute. Reality, in the sense of eternal permanence, can be defined only in terms that relate to God and His reflection; it can have no proper definition in relation to what God is not. Christian Science acknowledges reality only in the spiritual realm and as discerned spiritually; while in human belief reality is that which is cognized through a physical sense. Turning to the Scriptures, we learn that those things which are materially seen are temporal, while the things which are not materially seen are declared to be eternal. Looking at this question, therefore, in the light of eternity, it should not be difficult to determine which are the real,—the things of Spirit or the things of matter. The inability to see spiritual things with the human eye is no argument against their reality or substantiality, in view of the admittedly transient and unreliable nature of sense-perception.

The difference between what is real and what is not real is naturally the difference between Truth and error. Christian Science covers the whole ground in showing that it is the difference between good and evil. When this fact is accepted, and good is recognized to be the final and only test of reality, it will be seen that the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth means the establishment of the kingdom of Truth, the reign of what is divinely true, and the disestablishment of belief in evil, or the divinely untrue. Jesus plainly declared this when he said, "Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up," and also illustrated it in his parable of the wheat and the tares.

Strictly speaking, there is of course no unreality; there is only the supposition of it. There is no such thing as an unreal man or an unreal creation, any more than there is, in the relative sense, an unreal house or an unreal tree. The term unreal is used to designate that which to an unenlightened sense may bear the semblance of reality, but which in absolute Truth is non-existent. When we speak, therefore, of the real man, it does not imply that there is such a being as an unreal man, which would be as absurd as to say a true untruth, but that there is in human belief a mistaken or ignorant sense of what this real man is. Jesus definitely proved that the mortal concept of man is not true; therefore in Christian Science the term sick, sinful, or dying man is a misnomer, because it does not correspond to man's divine origin or Principle. If it were clearly seen that sin and disease are but wrong statements believed concerning man, even as the error that two and two are five is a wrong statement concerning numbers, their unreality would be recognized and corrected in order that the truth concerning man might appear.

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