Article March 16, 1918 Issue

"Without material accompaniments"

NELLIE B. MACE

The human mind assents readily to the scientific denial of the evidence of the senses, if expecting that its suffering may thereby cease. It feels its need on the specific point of suffering sooner than it sees its greater need of redemption from the entire material sense of being. This accounts for the inconsistent complaint, sometimes expressed, that the light of Truth which penetrated material sense in the healing of disease, unexpectedly disturbed sensuous pleasure in the beauties of the material world. All that the human mind knows of its so-called material world is the picture it forms of phenomena which are themselves subjective states of the human mind. This is surely what Mrs. Eddy means when she says (Science and Health, p. 310): "Thought will finally be understood and seen in all form, substance, and color, but without material accompaniments."

The Bible has all along contained the statement, for those who would heed, that the substance of all reality, of all that is good and beautiful and therefore enjoyable, is not to be perceived through the material senses. "Eye hath not seen," Paul declared, quoting the words of Isaiah, "nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." The apostle's words certainly imply that the human heart which yearns for happiness, for freedom to enjoy the beauties and harmonies which it mistakenly supposes Christian Science takes away, can find the substance and reality of all these things through, and only through, the love of God, the spiritual understanding of Principle. This as surely shows that what the human mind believed to be enjoyment, before the truths of spiritual being penetrated and began to dissolve material belief, was at its best only a promise of something real, and in its lower forms was but the sensuous appeal of a material counterfeit.

The substance of all beauty and goodness has always existed everywhere. The human mind's vision of beauty and truth has been limited because of its belief in the substance of matter, and that matter could produce and experience pleasurable sensations. Mrs. Eddy says on page 247 of Science and Health: "Being possesses its qualities before they are perceived humanly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color."

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