Editorial November 2, 1918 Issue

Opposites

Annie M. Knott

It is very generally admitted by thinking people that Spirit and the flesh are opposites, and that they are exclusive the one of the other. Here it may be said that throughout the Scriptures the flesh represents what we are accustomed to speak of as matter, and this will explain Mrs. Eddy's insistence that good can never be predicated of matter. Did not Paul say in his epistle to the Romans, "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing"? We need not, therefore, wonder when he says, "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." He does not, however, leave us to the despair which might come to us with such a pronouncement, for he immediately adds, "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you."

Those who come to Christian Science for healing soon feel the necessity for a deeper acquaintance with this infinite subject of Spirit and spiritual things. They also find that the fleshly mind, termed in Christian Science mortal mind, objects greatly to being ruled out by the declarations of divine Science, so it contends for the substantiality of matter, failing to see that by this contention it only rivets more firmly upon the victims of material belief the fetters of sin, disease, and death. Christian Science, however, leaves us in no doubt as to the fact that if we would realize and express the freedom which Christ Jesus offered to humanity it must be by knowing the truth, that is, the truth which declares the allness of Spirit and spiritual law and the nothingness of belief in matter and its supposed laws.

It goes without saying that the sick cannot be healed nor sinners reformed on any other basis than that of the allness of Spirit, God, and the understanding of spiritual law, and at this very point it becomes clear that inasmuch as Spirit and matter are opposites the spiritual method of healing practiced and taught by Christ Jesus is the opposite of any and all methods which are based upon the supposition that matter is real and substantial. A careful study of the wonderful works of Christ Jesus, commonly called miracles, shows plainly that they would have been impossible if matter had been real and substantial. A diseased condition of the human body argues for the existence of material law and its slow operation, whereas the many cases of instantaneous healing by the Master, as recorded in the gospels, show unquestionably that when the mistaken belief in matter and material law was swept aside by the understanding of Spirit and spiritual law on the part of Christ Jesus the disease was no longer in evidence. This is specially illustrated in the healing of the lepers, concerning which we read that on one occasion at least Jesus put forth his hand and touched the man who, according to material sense, was leprous, thus disregarding the asserted law of contagion and proving its nothingness (the nothingness of all material law, indeed), when the man's healing immediately resulted.

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