Article July 23, 1955 Issue

ENTER INTO THE GATE OF THE TEMPLE

HELEN H. SPANGLER

Paul expressed his inspiring and illuminating sense of temple, or body, when he wrote in I Corinthians (6:19), "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Paul perceived the spiritual identity of body, which is very different from the mortal concept so universally accepted. He recognized body as the embodiment of spiritual ideas governed by divine Principle.

Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, gives us a clear sense of body and a true sense of healing in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" where she tells us (p. 428): "To divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear,—this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true. Thus we may establish in truth the temple, or body, 'whose builder and maker is God.' "

The need "to divest thought of false trusts and material evidences" clearly shows healing to be an entirely mental process. Disease is not a condition of matter; it is a mortal belief which must be dispelled and replaced by the spiritual fact of man's eternal perfection as God's likeness. God does not possess matter out of which to make man. Matter is nothing but an illusion, and all there is to matter is our erroneous belief that it is real. In other words, matter merely consists of temporary, ever-changing mortal beliefs.

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