Article April 22, 1916 Issue

The Rainbow Promise

ROBERT RAMSEY, M.B.

That "there is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter" (Science and Health, p. 468), is the teaching of Christian Science. Taken broadly, matter means a finite objective universe derived from mental force or material energy. Christian Science teaches that as there can be only one real universe, the result of the one real cause named God, Spirit, matter is simply the expression of a false material sense of this cause and its creation.

God's man, existing in the real spiritual universe, can only express himself by manifesting or objectifying the ideas which come to him directly from God. The false sense of reality, mortal man, projects its own lie about the real in order to account for itself with its supposititious material universe and intelligent mortals. This counterfeit, however, can only seem real to false belief; of itself it has neither fixity nor continuity as material fact or mental impression.

The Bible defines God as infinite Spirit, unchanging Mind, whose idea or expression must be infinite, omnipresent, and constructive, qualities exactly opposite to those ascribed to matter by natural science. Intelligence and life cannot be qualities of God and at the same time qualities of God's opposite. Let us suppose, however, that this opposite of God could exist, could express intelligence, that there could be a real mortal or material mind and universe; then by applying the unvarying law of like producing like, the thought-forces of this universe would be the opposite of God, good, that is, evil. A mind whose every imagination is "only evil continually," is incapable of life. This is the lesson of the Biblical flood, the overwhelming waters with their instability typifying the self-destruction of such a mentality.

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