Editorial January 10, 1931 Issue

Spiritual Reflection is Substance

Violet Ker Seymer

On page 57 of "Retrospection and Introspection" Mrs. Eddy writes: "Man shines by borrowed light. He reflects God as his Mind, and this reflection is substance,—the substance of good." Since God, Spirit, is infinite, His substance or reflection is likewise infinite; and this scientific fact of omnipresence leaves no room for false belief or its supposed objectification. Evil has no substance, and cannot touch man any more than it can touch God.

Does this exposure of the non-presence of matter suggest a vacuum? No, it reveals the infinitude of the substance of Spirit and clears the way for the vision of infinite Mind, and the universe of ideas, wherein is no friction or distress, no time or decay, no enmity and no fear. Between Mind and all its ideas there is unity, cohesion, and cooperation.

Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468), "The spiritual universe, including individual man, is a compound idea, reflecting the divine substance of Spirit." In the very space and moment, so to speak, where, to material sense, a diseased body or sinful thought presumes to be present and active, there only the substance and action of Spirit actually are present. In the very moment when pain or other mental distress seems to be experienced, there only the eternality of joy and harmony is actually being manifested. Were this not so, there would be no escape from misery, no health or hope of redemption for the human race. But as the wonderful fact that Spirit is the only substance is even approximately realized, matter and all its conditions are seen as mental phenomena, as ghosts, rather than as substantial, space-occupying embodiments of mortal thought.

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