"Spirit the starting-point"

Under the marginal heading, "Spirit the starting-point," on page 275 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes, "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle." In all her reasoning on Christian Science our Leader takes for granted the allness of God as Spirit, Mind, Love, divine Principle; takes for granted His perfection, His infinite goodness, and, faithful to what she understands His nature to be, draws conclusions which are irrefutable.

On the page in Science and Health quoted from above, the following occurs: "Divine metaphysics, as revealed to spiritual understanding, shows clearly that all is Mind, and that Mind is God, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience,—that is, all power, all presence, all Science. Hence all is in reality the manifestation of Mind." This statement emphasizes the truth that God is Mind, declaring Him to be all-powerful, the only real presence, the all-knowing One. It affirms, further, that only that is real which is the expression of Mind.

In these statements of our Leader lie rich treasures, readily accessible to the logical thinker. First, they enable him to understand the nature of reality and to distinguish between the real and the unreal. Thus, because "all is in reality the manifestation of Mind," and Mind expresses itself in ideas, reality must consist of ideas. As this is seen by him he concludes that matter, so called, is unreal; that the so-called material universe is unreal, since it is not idea and cannot therefore be the creation of Mind. How frequently human beings are deceived by the material senses; how liable they are to believe that to be true which is false! A child, for example, may believe to be true such a fallacy as that twice two is five, until corrected. And everyone is familiar with the deception which the material sense of sight would practice upon us; how if we look along a railroad track, the rails seem to converge in the distance, whereas being parallel they never meet.

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Editorial
Widening Our Horizons
December 30, 1933
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