Article May 4, 1957 Issue

"WHICH OUGHT TO BE SUBSTANCE TO US"?

VERMILIA E. BUZBEE

Numerous experiences related in the Scriptures afford proofs of God's adequate provision for mankind. The opportunity to enjoy prosperity extends to peoples of all times as they gain a better understanding of God as Spirit, the source of all substance.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 278), "Matter, with its mortality, cannot be substantial if Spirit is substantial and eternal." Mrs. Eddy must have considered the above statement of inestimable importance, for she continues with a direct question in an effort to awaken the thought of each one of us to a greater sense of spiritual reality: "Which ought to be substance to us,—the erring, changing, and dying, the mutable and mortal, or the unerring, immutable, and immortal?"

Intelligence, substance, and life are not in mortality or matter. Our basic need is not for material things, but for the substantial things of Spirit. We lose the false sense of substance when we learn of God as Spirit, Mind, intelligence. The more we comprehend God as Spirit, Mind, intelligence. The more we comprehend God as ever-present intelligence, the more we shall grasp the fact of man as the idea of God. This understanding will bring into manifestation unerring, immutable, and immortal divine substance and its attributes. Mrs. Eddy states (ibid., p. 468): "Spirit, the synonym of Mind, Soul, or God, is the only real substance. The spiritual universe, including individual man, is a compound idea, reflecting the divine substance of Spirit."

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