Article September 4, 1926 Issue

Awakening from Self-Deception

OTIS D. REED

Humanity seems most of the time to be face to face with the belief that there is life and intelligence in matter. The carnal mind makes matter its god, to whom it accords complete authority. It looks to matter for the fulfillment of its every wish and the consummation of all its hopes.

Christian Scientists, having found matter unable to produce or maintain harmony, have turned away from this false god to the true God, Spirit. The Christian Scientist has also to cope with and overcome the apparently universal belief in the life and intelligence of matter from which he has turned away, in order to work out his complete salvation. He is equipped to do this because, mentally, he has reversed his position with reference to the belief that man lives in a material body. Through the revelations of Christian Science he is assured that man lives in God, and he proceeds to prove it. The belief that matter is man becomes objective rather than subjective, and thus it is analyzed and reduced to its proper state. In this way he learns that in a self-deceived state the only progress possible is towards the point of awakening from such a state.

On page 115 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy gives the "Scientific Translation of Mortal Mind." This translation comprises three degrees, the first of which is "Depravity," which is further characterized as "Physical." One's education at school would lead him to translate this term "Physical" as matter or body; yet in her amplification of the term, the author names only mental qualities which are wholly unlike God and man in His image. Every mortal, however, recognizes them at one as very familiar types of thought. It is further pointed out that these un-Godlike qualities must be put off through the substitution of moral and spiritual qualities of thought, which are likewise enumerated in this translation. The accomplishment of this purifying process results in the elimination of false material sense, and man as God's idea is discerned by spiritual sense.

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