Editorial September 17, 1927 Issue

Positive or Negative?

Albert F. Gilmore

In common usage the positive is that which is affirmative and constructive; the negative that which is opposed or contrary to the affirmative or positive, and is therefore destructive. It is in consideration of this distinction that Mrs. Eddy writes on page 173 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Spirit is positive. Matter is Spirit's contrary, the absence of Spirit." Clearly to understand this distinction is necessary for the student of Christian Science, for it deals with the very foundations of this Science.

Since Spirit is positive, and Spirit, God, is infinite, there is, in reality, no oppositive, no contrary, no negative. The positive Spirit is All-in-all. Thus the belief of a negative, something opposed to Spirit, is an illusion, a mere figment of the imagination which has no basis in truth. To grasp the import of this fact is to lay the foundation of spiritual understanding and scientific practice.

Mortals are strongly inclined to hold to the negative, to sit, as it were, amid the shadows of material belief instead of basking in the full glory of God's sunshine, spiritual truth. Why? Because all the conditions of material living, the beliefs in a material body and life in matter, connote negation, that is, the opposite to Spirit and its expression, man. This negation, matter, denies the positive, Spirit, and in consequence there is a seeming conflict between these opposites, a conflict, however, which has only a supposititious existence; for, as usually regarded, a conflict to be genuine must be between two entities, and in this seeming struggle there is but one entity, Spirit, while its seeming antagonist is but an illusion, a false belief. Therefore there is no controversy, no conflict between Spirit and its supposititious opposite, matter.

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