Editorial July 19, 1952 Issue

SPIRIT AND MATTER

Helen Wood Bauman

In his interview with Nicodemus, Christ Jesus made a distinct separation between Spirit and matter. He said (John 3:6), "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." He also declared that no one could enter the kingdom of God unless he was reborn—"born of water and of the Spirit." That is, he must attain a new sense of himself as spiritual through a moral and spiritual cleansing.

Nicodemus had evidently come to Jesus to find how he might accomplish such miracles as the Master performed. Jesus' explanation implied profound truths which his followers little understood until Mary Baker Eddy's discovery of Christian Science. Jesus taught, for one thing, that Spirit, or God, is not the creator of flesh. Since the understanding of this fact heals, the opposite belief, that Spirit makes flesh, must be a seeming cause of disease. And Mrs. Eddy, who healed with great authority and whose discovery has taught countless others to heal, in speaking of idolatry, says (The People's Idea of God, p. 4), "Sin, sickness, and death originated in the belief that Spirit materialized into a body, infinity became finity, or man, and the eternal entered the temporal."

Any belief that Spirit becomes matter, or that it condenses into flesh as vapor condenses into water, has no support in Christian Science. Consistently our Leader teaches that Spirit and matter meet at no point, because matter is unreal. The physical body is not the real individuality, but its counterfeit. The real man is individual but incorporeal. He is spiritual and has no consciousness of matter or finity. Having no consciousness of matter, he knows no sin, for sin and matter are inseparable as manifestations of the so-called carnal mind. Not being attached to matter, man is not limited by it in any way.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

SPIRITUAL EXPECTANCY