"Because God exists"
"Matter cannot change the eternal fact that man exists because God exists," writes Mrs. Eddy on page 544 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." All there is to matter is the supposition that it can do what, as Mrs. Eddy here declares, it cannot, and that is, change a fact. This supposition that there can be a sustainer of existence other than God, Spirit, is manifest to itself as money, food, sleep, shelter, which can never become substantial, but are only the way sustaining cause seems to the supposed mind which is not God. Just as God is thus counterfeited, so His oneness with effect, man, is counterfeited, and we behold the universal belief that there is a kind of man who continues to exist,—be he saint or sinner, gross materialist or ascetic intellectual,—because money is, because sleep and food and shelter are. An individual can, such is the belief, only preach a sermon, write a poem, or invent an aeroplane,—engage in those activities which the human mind classifies as primarily mental or even spiritual,—only as he refreshes his brain with sleep, builds up his tissues with food, and fills his purse with earned or inherited money; and a nation must depend upon coal and climate and grain products if it is to survive.
What a man calls consciousness is often a network of preoccupations with that which he is one with, matter. It reverts with wearisome repetition to a round of trivial plans and anxieties, counts the days until the next pay envelope, figures the interest on an investment, already many times figured, prospects on the probabilities of a rise in rent, debates on what it shall have for lunch, struggles to get itself up in the morning and to bed at night, and snatches eagerly and wistfully at the possibilities of prolonging this sort of existence by diet, exercise, or even by the transference of glands from monkeys to men. In the national consciousness, so called, is a similar reversion to supposed cause, matter, a similar anxiety over the nation's lunch and its investments, and fearful speculation on what would happen should the "natural resources" of the country become exhausted.
What appears to-day as distressing shortages of individual and national resources is only the compulsion in thought of the truth about the infinite source of existence revealing the inevitable finity of the false supposition about it.
How is the student of Christian Science to think when confronted by this discovery and the efforts of the adversary to postpone or thwart it? Obviously he cannot join in the seemingly increased absorption with the human sense of food, clothing, and housing which he finds in what he reads and hears, and, if he is not watchful, in what the human mind claims he thinks. He cannot share in but must assume the responsibility for healing the fear that the apparent diminishment of "things" in the world threatens existence itself. To the degree that he has accepted Christian Science he must be "dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world;" but what does this mean? He may think he sees clearly that matter is not the essential condition of living, he may conscientiously declare that God is the source of supply, of life, and yet find his "Lord, I believe," quickly followed by the human cry, "Help thou mine unbelief;" that is: Man exists because God does; yet I must be fed and warmed, I grow old, nations decline and nations fall. How are these things to be remedied by spiritual understanding? Closer reasoning may reveal that this question is due to the fact that he has not really seen the nothingness of matter's claim to be the sustainer of existence, so long as he continues to cherish a man with needs which presuppose this claim. The man who exists because God does, is not the bundle of appetites, monotonies, and anxieties which the human mind calls man, and this sense of man can find no support in Principle, Love. Only confusion can result from the effort to base demonstration on the supposition that God, Spirit, creates a man with material needs.
Obviously, then, it is the duty of the student of Christian Science to discover the man who is sustained by God. Mrs. Eddy gives us the following definition on page 591 of Science and Health: "Man. The compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind." Since, then, this "man" is the "full representation of Mind" which fills all space, it is with his needs only that we can be concerned. It is impossible to conceive of the "full representation of Mind" being conscious of shortage. He does not know matter, and that is all that can be scant. There is as much Mind as there always has been, and no condition can possibly arise which can lessen infinity or man in His image.
As absurd as the supposition that the human sense of man has God as its source, is the supposition that God's real man is dependent in any degree upon material conditions, so called, for life and activity. A beginner in the study of Christian Science knows that his ability to give a treatment is not due to how much money he has in the bank, or how much he has slept the previous night, or what he has had for dinner, or how old he is. One would never think of saying, My thought of God is six years old, or sixty. Yet the consciousness of God is all there really is of man. The consciousness of God is neither immature nor decrepit, and therefore knows no fear of these supposed conditions. Neither ennui nor repetition enters into the activity and experience of man, for they imply a limitation of resources which he, because of his relation to God, can never know. The "compound idea" of God does not go to sleep or wake up, as mortal sense knows these conditions. At the very moment when this sense argues that man must sleep, man continues to represent Mind fully, and Mind does not sleep. The growing recognition of this fact will lessen the seeming need of sleep and free one from the bondage which comes of accepting the discouraging suggestion that at times one must compromise with matter. The same is true of food. We can never forget that, even while we seem to be conceding to the belief that food sustains life, nothing but belief concedes,—man never does, and if we return constantly to our definition of man we understand why.
Though nations have sprung up and disappeared, the truth that nation as idea exists because God does has never been changed. It is complete and unimpaired and in proportion to its cognizance of this fact will a nation survive, for the knowledge of Principle constitutes the only inexhaustible "natural resource" of a nation. As the Christ, or the truth about man and nation displaces the supposed consciousness of something other than God, the so-called needs of this "something other" will disappear in nation and individual, because man does not have these needs. When we speak, then, as we often do, of our human needs being met or supplied, we really mean that the belief that there is a man who has such needs has been to a degree forever destroyed by a better understanding of the nature of God's idea. A demonstration of supply, then, means not the possession of matter where it has been lacking before, since there can be neither more nor less of that which is always nothing; but it means more understanding of the truth that man exists because God does and less belief that he exists for any other reason. With some understanding of this the student of Christian Science can answer with joy and certainty the old questions, now asked more insistently than ever before, What is man? and what does he live for? as Mrs. Eddy does on page 165 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," where she says: "As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing."
