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.

On page 94 of "Retrospection and Introspection" Mrs. Eddy states that the "purgation of divine mercy,destroying all error, leaves no flesh, no matter, to the mental consciousness." How gladly, then, we should strive for this mental consciousness which extinguishes mortal belief and scatters its attendant ills and delusions!

One may ask himself with bewilderment whether he knows anything about substance, since matter is not substance. But in so far as any individual expresses patience, perseverance in right doing, disinterested loving-kindness, coupled with wisdom, he is expressing substance, for these qualities are spiritual. Through this reflection of the qualities of divine Mind he is related to Spirit and everlasting Life. As Christian Scientists, our aim is to continue uncovering and discarding temporal beliefs, petty thoughts, which are mere shadowy nothingness, obscuring reality, and having no connection with the substance of real being.

Mind is omnipresent, and as there is no absence of reflection, there is therefore no presence of matter. The substance of good is everywhere, never replaced nor displaced. Spiritual man reflects the substance of good and nothing else, for what is not the reflection of God is no part of man. Spiritual man is the token of God's presence, and he is "every whit whole," now and everlastingly. In Proverbs we read of the divine promise in the words, "That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance." Spiritual man naturally loves good and good alone, for that is all that he knows.

Christian Science is a corrective. It bids us drop material beliefs as fast as we admit their insubstantiality and undesirability. From the fallible sense of love it lifts thought to the universality of divine Love. In place of the material sense of life it reveals the reflection of the one immortal Life. From the personal and physical belief of health it calls us to the reflection of the one health, which is spiritual and unalterable.

The spiritual idea of God and man is revealed in Christian Science, and we have but to abide in as close a reflection of God as we can, increasing this reflection through being eager to drop that which is ungodlike and zealous to partake of the divine, immortal nature. This enlightened faith and understanding pierces the veil of matter and is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Violet Ker Seymer

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Meeting Our Obligations

January 10, 1931

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