Article October 9, 1920 Issue

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MINNIE CRUDUP VESEY

To see the universe as spiritual is to see infinite good. It is to see the fullness of God. On page 361 of "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says, "God is the only Mind, and His manifestation is the spiritual universe, including man and all eternal individuality." From his very first introduction to the Principle and rules of Christian Science, the student understands in a measure that man—individual man—is the image and likeness of God. But it is after he has seemingly experienced many discordant conditions that he begins to realize that his apparent difficulty has arisen through his having attempted the impossible, namely, an effort to fit a spiritual man into a material environment. This realization causes him, if he is an earnest student, to cast about to find where the seeming trouble lies, and then he gets a glimpse of the fact that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all" (Science and Health, p. 468). The quest to prove this is a quest of the Christ.

As the spiritual universe is the manifestation of the immortal divine Mind, expressing infinite ideas, so the material universe is but its supposititious opposite, presenting the phenomena which are the outcome of the mortal human mind's false pattern of divinity. On page 337 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" we read: "The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. Eternal things (verities) are God's thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the real or the spiritual and eternal." Thus it follows that the material universe is a lie about the truth. Every material object in it is a wrong presentation of the right idea. Christian Science teaches that to reverse the material falsity is to find the spiritual actuality. By this process the whole phenomenon of this matter world will give place to the spiritual reality; then will appear that which has always existed in the divine Mind—the new heaven and the new earth.

To bring about this reversal in daily and hourly experience, through persistent right seeing and knowing, is true unfoldment and will unravel the seeming mystery surrounding human existence. When it is realized that each seeming mortal experience with things is merely a state of so-called mortal consciousness, one awakens to the importance of recognizing every moment the real in place of the seeming. As this process of replacement is realized and practiced, whereby each false semblance gives place to the true idea, every earthly experience becomes a joyous reality, and one, instead of believing himself to be in a discordant world, finds that he is surrounded with beauty and light and love.

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