Editorial August 20, 1921 Issue

"Spiritual tangibility"

Gustavus S. Paine

Whoever thinks of Christian Science as presenting to the world intangible ideals does not understand what tangibility consists of, for to think in terms of material things is not to know reality. It is easy enough to show conclusively that matter or any material thing is but a concept of an utterly hypothetical mortal mind. The physicists have long since done this by resolving matter into atoms and electrons, and electrons into positive and negative activity in the ether, which is itself a hypothesis of a logical impossibility. The ether, like electrons and atoms, is merely a concept in a hypothetical mortal mind, and is being accepted as such by thinkers more and more generally nowadays. Of course the supposition that there is a mortal mind is impossible in the realm of reality, where the divine Mind with its idea is provably all that exists. The whole belief in matter thus is resolved into sheer illusion.

All that a man has of anything, shelter, food, clothing, health, pleasure, or anything else, is his concept of it. It in no way diminishes the tangibility of real experience to resolve it into thought and replace the human thought with the spiritual idea, for all through earthly history mortals have been in a world of thought where every incident, every sense impression, has been a registering of thought in mortal mind. The supposed tangibility of mortal concepts has always been a fictitious tangibility of mortal concepts. Christian Science replaces the mirage with the absolute reality of the divine Mind and its idea, thus taking away from a man nothing of shelter, food, pleasure, and so on, but giving the true idea in Mind in place of illusory mortal concepts.

The feeling of health, vigor, and control which a man proves for himself through the understanding of Christian Science is neither animal nor vague and indistinct. It is perfectly real because it is spiritual, existing indestructibly in the one true Mind of which the genuine man is the idea or activity. Just so, the experience of true spiritual abundance, of right work or service, of infinite variety of satisfaction, is not imaginary and nebulous. The conscious expression of the divine Mind which is demonstrated through the practice of Christian Science is the living which satisfies because it is actual as no mortal dream of wealth or enjoyment could ever be actual. The idea, the spiritual order of which infinite Mind is conscious, is indeed tangible in the true sense.

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