Article February 23, 1957 Issue

WHICH QUALITIES SHALL WE CHOOSE?

MEINRAD SCHNEWLIN

Everything is known by its qualities. They determine what a thing is. One speaks of spiritual and material qualities. Spirit and matter are opposites. Physicists define matter as that which occupies space and is subject to gravitation. This double restriction does not apply to Spirit. Justice, wisdom, and intelligence are qualities of Spirit and cannot be found in matter and material things; whereas weight, size, limitation, decay, are qualities of matter and cannot be found in Spirit. Matter and its qualities are temporal, changeable, destructible; Spirit and its qualities are immortal, good, and perfect.

Mortal mind, so called, claims that every good quality has an opposite quality. For instance, weakness is the opposite of strength; ugliness of beauty; sickness of health; injustice of justice; depravity of purity, and so on. From the standpoint of Spirit, these negative qualities are not real qualities at all. Yet mortal mind believes in them and asserts that not only they but also spiritual qualities, like happiness, life, harmony, health, belong to matter. The five corporeal senses, which witness to matter, are themselves temporal and mortal; therefore their testimony is not reliable. The carnal or mortal mind is an illusion, a dream; its qualities are false beliefs, not realities.

A dream can be real only as long as it lasts. It even sometimes shows a will to exist and to oppose Spirit. Mary Baker Eddy in her "Miscellaneous Writings" speaks of the Apostle's declaration (II Cor. 12: 10), "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake." She says (p. 201), "The Science of Paul's declaration resolves the element misnamed matter into its original sin, or human will; that will which would oppose bringing the qualities of Spirit into subjection to Spirit." Spirit, God, made man spiritual. Therefore all of man's qualities are spiritual and forever subject to Spirit.

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