"What is the matter?"

A Phrase frequently used by the average man when some seeming discord comes within the range of his physical senses, is the question, "What is the matter?" What, of course, the finite human mind means to ask is, "What is the trouble?" or rather, "What is the nature of the discord so evident to my sense of sight?" In using the above phrase the average man associates his troubles with matter, and he is right in so doing, even though perhaps unthinkingly; for it is impossible to imagine any form of evil, whether of sin, sickness, or death, without linking it with matter. Poverty is a belief in a lack of matter; sin a belief of pleasure in matter; sickness a belief of pain in matter; and death is, in one sense, a belief in the disintegration of matter. Humanity could with much profit to itself, and should out of duty to God and man, look beyond the frail evidences of the personal senses and discern the true nature of its enemy, the belief in the reality of matter with its attendant discords. It would then be seen that matter is only a belief.

Absolutely, the only evidence a mortal has of matter is through the avenues of the material senses, which are supposed to be material organizations. The unsubstantial nature of not only the evidence of the physical senses but also the possibility of their presenting such, may be shown by several lines of reasoning, of which the following is one. Take the sense of sight, which, perhaps more than any other, with the possible exception of the sense of touch or feeling, supposedly presents the evidence which makes material objects and discord seem so real. According to the latest theories, the light passing through the lenses of the eye forms on the retina an image of the specific object seen. The optic nerve, through excitation or some other unexplained process, is said to transmit the image-message to the brain, the so-called seat of human consciousness. Then from this assumed information there is formed in the human mind that which is commonly called an impression, which is merely a concept of the object in question, whether it be a molehill or a mountain. It is extremely difficult, however, to see how a nerve, a thread of flesh, possessing no more intelligence than a linen thread and acting in the supposed capacity of a messenger boy, can transmit a message to an equally nonintelligent brain. Certainly, if a linen thread or a nerve were attached to a piece of paper or any material organization of matter, arranged in any manner whatsoever at the base of a telescope so that an image were thrown upon it, neither the thread nor the nerve could transmit the image to the brain of a mortal. Indeed, the only reasonable view to take is that the material object, eye, nerve, and brain exist solely in human thought, of which the material senses are the instruments and products. Thus matter is seen to be no more than a mental picture or an image of human thought.

Human thought, the sum of which comprises the whole of mortal existence, possesses nearly all the characteristics of the so-called sleeping dream. Mortal existence, like a dream, is purely a mental state. It is concerned wholly with finite images, products of its own formation, which flit across the stage of mortal mind to-day and are gone to-morrow, and all this in crude counterfeit of the divinely real and wholly harmonious experiences of the ideal man. The dream has a beginning and an ending and thus is not eternal. Neither a dream nor the experiences one seems to have while under its influence are real or actual. Furthermore, the images one sees are not presented by the material eye, even though they may seem to be so. As Mrs. Eddy writes on page 250 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Now I ask, Is there anymore reality in the waking dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream? There cannot be, since whatever appears to be a mortal man is a mortal dream." Thus in order to cure any discordant condition which the dream seemingly causes one to be conscious of, it is seen that one must deal wholly with thought and not with its imaginary objectifications. The instant one awakes from a dream it ceases to be, and it then no longer even appears real. It certainly is true that dream and dreamer are one, for without the dream the dreamer could not be, and without the dreamer the dream could not even seem to exist. Thus the tempter and tempted are one, and the real man pursues the even tenor of his way unyielding to and untempted by the physical senses.