Editorial July 20, 1935 Issue

Acknowledging Spirit's Supremacy

Duncan Sinclair

The great truth on which the teaching of Christian Science is based is the allness of God. God is infinite good, omnipotent, omnipresent Spirit, omniscient Mind; and nothing real exists outside of Himself. Whoever would learn of real being and be able to distinguish between reality and unreality must be convinced of God's allness and supremacy. "God is a Spirit," said Jesus, "and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

The truth that God is infinite good, infinite Spirit, that He exists without an opposite, strikes at the very root of the fallacy which holds mankind in bondage, namely, that evil and matter are real. What is it that would cause us to believe that matter and evil are real? Material sense. This sense appears to argue, through sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, that matter, the opposite of Spirit, has real being; and this same sense appears to argue as forcibly that evil, the opposite of good, likewise has real being. But when we are convinced of the allness of Spirit, when we are convinced that Spirit is good, the suggestions of material sense cannot longer deceive us concerning matter and evil; we understand that they are unreal.

Now, although through his understanding of God's allness and supremacy the student of Christian Science is certain that matter and evil are unreal, he still has to contend with the arguments of material sense. The clearer, however, is his understanding of the nature of God, the more readily does he refute these arguments and master them. When we consider that mortals believe they are living in a material universe, apparently in a material body, and subject to so-called material laws, the overcoming of the arguments of material sense may sometimes seem to be no small task. We should be on guard here lest we lose the true perspective which spiritual vision gives. God's allness and supremacy should be uppermost in our thought, should constantly be declared and realized by us; for then we are not deceived into regarding material sense and its apparent phenomena as real and formidable to overcome, but as altogether illusory. Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 491), "It is only by acknowledging the supremacy of Spirit, which annuls the claims of matter, that mortals can lay off mortality and find the indissoluble spiritual link which establishes man forever in the divine likeness, inseparable from his creator."

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