Article April 24, 1915 Issue

Spiritual Being

JANE L. VILAS

The common credence given to corporeality, belief that a physical body expresses the real identity of man, has become so tenacious in its continued acceptance that it constitutes a reason why it should seem to offer a strong resistance to spiritual facts and take a stand against every advance of the truth. Mortal belief entirely ignores the spiritual priority of man as stated in the first chapter of Genesis, when "the earth [matter] was without form, and void." Having entrenched itself behind all kinds of false barriers, it would defy the testimony of Spirit and cry out, "Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?" The accepted theory of creation would have God, the all-pure, the all-powerful, stoop to express Himself, to bring forth His own perfect image and likeness, through the lowest impulses and propensities of mortals. In order to strengthen its position, mortal mind fancies itself the partner of divinity and, supposedly with divine sanction, multiplies its own concepts of being and reality.

Working wholly on the material plane, all the resources of "the carnal mind," which is "enmity against God," are brought to bear upon the subject in our schools and other places of learning. The product of this false theory is akin to a vacillating weather-vane, influenced by the veering winds of human opinion and subject to its ever shifting rules. It is a conglomerate mass of human beliefs, a wretched arena for conflicting emotions. At one time it is buoyed up by the false hope of relief in matter, and at another dashed to the abyss of despair by pain, or it may be by sin. Is it any wonder that the psalmist cried, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." "Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me. ... Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." Later, however, "wings like a dove" were vouchsafed him in a glimpse of the pure spiritual creation. Then it was that the heavenly vision gave him rest, and he uttered the song of exultation so beautifully embodied by Mrs. Eddy in one of her hymns, "Only with mine eye can I behold the snare, the pit, the fall" (Hymnal, p. 240).

In that wonderfully lucid and elucidating book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," we find that matter is nothing more than a name given by mortals to the supposititious qualities opposed to Spirit. Since it is true that there can be no reality in whatever seems to oppose Truth, because Truth and reality are one, then there can be no truth in matter; neither can there be any life in it. Without life or truth, it is plain that matter can have neither intelligence nor power to propagate itself. Life is neither corporeal nor structural, and growth is not the heaping of nothing upon nothing, but is spiritual unfoldment. On page 186 of Science and Health it is declared that "mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it would be better." Mrs. Eddy's pure consciousness leads distraught humanity out of this maze of false concepts, into a truer perception of the loving all-Father and a higher sense of human relationships.

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