Article April 22, 1916 Issue

God's Manifestation

ELEANOR B. CONGDON

A short time ago I was deeply impressed by this statement in Science and Health (p. 117): "Christian Science attaches no physical nature and significance to the Supreme Being or His manifestation." If we emphasize the last word in the sentence, we see that Christian Science attaches no physical nature or significance to God's manifestation, and we thus find much food for thought. When a man is healed in Christian Science and his condition changes from sickness to health, one naturally asks, Is there not then some physical nature or significance attached to God's manifestation?

In my own experience I have always found danger in any line of thought, however plausible, which tends to make a bridge between matter and Spirit, and I have found the utmost consolation in the perception that there really is no physical nature whatsoever attached to God's manifestation. What really takes place when one is healed in Christian Science is a mental and spiritual change. Something of materiality, some material belief, has been put off, and a more spiritual concept, or enlarged mentality, put on, or let in; some of the old man put off and some of the new man put on; material sense has grown "beautifully less" and spiritual sense has been beautifully unfolded.

Is not this mental change God's manifestation? God could not possibly be reflected in changing forms of matter, however good they might seem, for matter, though "sometimes beautiful," is "always erroneous" (Science and Health, p. 277). Spiritual healing, then, is not the improvement of matter, but it is knowing the allness of that which has nothing to do with matter. The reason matter seems to improve is that we have lost something of it, and the less we have of it the less error we are burdened with, for it can never be good, because it is not of God.

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