Editorial January 11, 1958 Issue

THE AGE OF ESSENCES

Helen Wood Bauman

Those who watch, sometimes with a mixture of approval and fear, the wonders of our advancing age may not gather the true significance of what is happening in the world. Not so Mary Baker Eddy, who saw that something more meaningful than released material power and increased speed was taking place and would continue to do so. Mrs. Eddy foresaw the transformation that must occur before matter is reduced to its elemental energies and disappears in the presence of revealed Spirit.

In 1901, Mrs. Eddy was interviewed by a reporter for a New York paper. When she was asked about the pursuit of modern inventions, she replied (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 345): "Oh, we cannot oppose them. They all tend to newer, finer, more etherealized ways of living. They seek the finer essences. They light the way to the Church of Christ. We use them, we make them our figures of speech. They are preparing the way for us."

According to a dictionary, "essence" means, among other things, "prime character; ultimate or intrinsic nature." We get at the heart of anything when we discover its essence, its ultimate nature. Mrs. Eddy got at the heart of the meaning of matter when she discovered that the essence of matter is mortal mind, that matter can be resolved into elemental human will, and that it is made up of such qualities as illusiveness, mortality, nonintelligence, limitation, destruction, and destructibility.

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