Article April 24, 1926 Issue

Our attention has been called to the article, "Meditations...

Arthur P. De Camp, Committee on Publication for the State of Missouri,

Glasgow Missourian

Our attention has been called to the article, "Meditations of a Modern Philosopher, Meditations on Creation," appearing in your recent issue, and particularly to the following sentence: "The Christian Scientist, then, may say as he does, in denying the second chapter of Genesis in its recapitulation of the account of creation, everything is spiritual, there is no material." We feel sure your readers would be interested to know what the Christian Science teaching is on this point. On pages 263 and 264 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," written by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, we read: "The fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth, are the fleeting concepts of the human mind. They have their day before the permanent facts and their perfection in Spirit appear. The crude creations of mortal thought must finally give place to the glorious forms which we sometimes behold in the camera of divine Mind, when the mental picture is spiritual and eternal. Mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms, if they would gain the true sense of things. Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind?" In Christian Science the words "Spirit" and "Mind" are used as synonyms for God. This is therefore in full accord with Jesus' declarations, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth;" and, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing;" also with Paul's statement, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." Biblical scholars discriminate between the account of creation as given in the first chapter of Genesis and the first three verses in the second chapter, which sets forth the spiritual and enduring creations of the divine Mind, and the account in the second chapter of Genesis. This second account the Christian Scientist does not accept as a "recapitualtion" of the first. It has the great value, however, of indicating the falsity and futility of the material viewpoint. The experiences of the garden of Eden should turn mortals from matter to Spirit, in order to learn how to "put on immortality." Salvation is not to be gained through Adam, the material sense of things, but through Christ or the spiritual idea of Life.

In her work, "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 86), Mrs. Eddy writes: "Even the human conception of beauty, grandeur, and utility is something that defies a sneer. It is more than imagination. It is next to divine beauty and the grandeur of Spirit. It lives with our earth-life, and is the subjective state of high thoughts. The atmosphere of mortal mind constitutes our mortal environment. What mortals hear, see, feel, taste, smell, constitutes their present earth and heaven: but we must grow out of even this pleasing thraldom, and find wings to reach the glory of supersensible Life; then we shall soar above, as the bird in the clear ether of the blue temporal sky."

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