'.  . .drink with me the living waters of the spirit of my life—purpose,—to impress humanity with the genuine recognition of practical, operative Christian Science.'

—Mary Baker Eddy
Miscellaneous Writings, p. 207

PERHAPS NOTHING about Christian Science is more incomprehensible to the world than its maxim that there is no matter, and that man and the universe are not material. In her book Unity of Good, Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, reasoned out matter's nothingness in a chapter titled "There is no matter." This premise is reiterated throughout the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

In the last year of her life, Mrs. Eddy wrote: "'There is no matter' is not only the axiom of true Christian Science, but it is the only basis upon which this Science can be demonstrated" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 357). Consequently, this axiom is fundamental to Christian Science healing.

All Christian Science Sunday services conclude with a statement identifying matter as "mortal error" and "the unreal," without life, truth, intelligence, or substance. This "scientific statement of being" affirms that "all is infinite Mind [God] and its infinite manifestation," concluding that this manifestation is not material, but spiritual (Science and Health, p. 468). Elsewhere in her writings, Mary Baker Eddy identified Mind's infinite manifestation as man and the universe, "from the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a potato-patch" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, pp. 361, 26).

In its Glossary, Science and Health defines matter as "mythology" and "illusion" (p. 591). But what are we talking about when we speak of matter? In my own experience, I have had to correct a misconception as to what this matter is, that isn't real.

My first healing in Christian Science through my own prayers occurred when I was 12 years old. In a baseball game, I caught the ball between my thumb and forefinger in a way that split my hand open at that juncture. Praying on my way home after the game, I audibly heard the words "There is no matter," accompanied by a sense of light, and found my hand instantly healed without a trace of the wound. (A testimony of this healing was published in the August 2005 issue of The Christian Science Journal, page 35.) A year later, when I was 13 and already earnestly studying the Bible and Christian Science, I was instantly healed of intense abdominal pain when I discerned with inspiration that this matter-pain had no more reality than a night dream.

Six years later, while in college during World War II, I enlisted in the Navy. Eighteen months later, when I was immobilized by severe back pain, Navy medical authorities diagnosed me as having spinal tuberculosis. I was sent to a Navy tuberculosis hospital in Corona, California, where they decided I was inoperable, would never walk again, and that my condition was terminal. I was discharged in a body cast, and sent to my parents' home to die.

Ever since I had begun experiencing back pain, I had sought help from seasoned Christian Science practitioners, but found no relief. I desperately wanted to understand how Christian Science could heal this very physical difficulty.

Shortly after arriving at my parents' home, I slipped into a fever and the body cast was cut away to make me as comfortable as possible. The fever gradually worsened until I was unable to take food or water. The symptoms became more violent, and it seemed clear that the end was at hand. Suddenly, an anguished cry of guilt poured out of my mouth: "Why can't I love my mother?"

My mother was a remarkable, outstanding woman, but I had held within me a deep-seated resentment of her overpowering domination in my upbringing. The practitioner, who had been pacing the floor at my bedside, was fully aware of my mother's strong sense of responsibility for her children. Her response to my outburst was firm and immediate. She said, "You don't have to love a person. All you have to do is express Love."

It was as though a tremendous weight had fallen from my shoulders. I knew I could express Love, which is another name for God. A personal sense of love, with all its resentment, possessiveness, and personal control vanished. Instantly—and I mean instantly—the near-death symptoms ended, and the fever, which a moment before had been intense, was completely gone.

And something else significant happened. I got out of bed and walked, even though the medical prediction was that my back would collapse if I did this. In a moment the shadow of death had been totally dispelled. I took water and food naturally and easily.

But the underlying spinal disease, with some of its symptoms, continued unhealed. Over the next year and a half, I sought healing from dedicated Christian Science practitioners at different times, and I turned to God in constant prayer and study.

Then, in an unusual way, I was led to call on another practitioner in Los Angeles. After listening to my story, this practitioner challenged my understanding of how the Divine operates in human experience, challenging my concepts of Spirit, body, and matter.

My healing of the split hand had left me with a firm conviction that there was no matter. But again, what was this matter that wasn't? To my thought, matter was anything and everything I could physically see or touch. On the other hand, Spirit was abstract omnipresence without visible manifestation, as it seemed to me. So when I denied matter, I was actually denying man and the universe—all outward manifestation of Spirit. The practitioner saw this misconception and pointed out references in Science and Health explaining that spiritual ideas are "real and tangible" (p. 269); that God "supplies all form and comeliness" (p. 281); that "man is God's image" (p. 120)—an image being something you can see; that "Mind [God] governs the body, not partially but wholly" (p. 111); and that our job is "to work out the spiritual" and have the understanding of it determine "the outward and actual" (p. 254).

I thought I knew Science and Health backward and forward, but following this visit I reread this textbook from cover to cover. It was like reading a new book. Passages I had glossed over were illumined. I saw that our consciousness of Spirit determines all true outward manifestation, and that matter is just the objectification of false belief. I saw how man, God's image and likeness, is visible, tangible, and real, but is spiritual and not material. On completion of this reading, I found myself completely healed. The discharge had stopped, and the wound where it drained was gone. My back was painless and strong.

I returned to college the next quarter, able to run freely and fast. My whole concept of matter and body had changed. I saw that matter isn't real—it isn't substance. It isn't God, man, or the universe, but is just a false sense, "a human concept," an "error of statement" (ibid., p. 277) about God, man, and the universe. As Mrs. Eddy also wrote, "Matter is a mis-statement of Mind ... a lie ..." (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 174). It is something which appears to the physical senses to be solid or valid, but, as Einstein declared, is "nothing but a construction of the [human] consciousness" (Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein).

The practitioner who healed me was a devoted student of Cornelia Church, a pioneer Christian Science teacher in Pasadena and Los Angeles. Let me offer a few words about "Miss Church" in tribute to all those early workers who dedicated their lives to the Cause of Christian Science, and whose unselfed love and humility brought forth remarkable healings and the unparalleled growth of the early Church of Christ, Scientist.

Cornelia Church, the daughter of a whaling ship captain, came to Pasadena in 1890 with her mother. In 1893, she was one of the first three women admitted as students to Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore. During her first year there, she became seriously ill with a difficulty the doctors could not diagnose, and returned to Pasadena. Hearing of a friend's healing through Christian Science, she immediately went to Chicago to the practitioner, Edward A. Kimball, who had healed her friend. She herself was soon healed, and while in Chicago, plunged intensely into a study of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings. Mr. Kimball turned cases over to her to heal, one of which was that of a five-year-old child who had been born physically and mentally deformed. She visited that child daily for 30 days, and by the end of that period the child was completely normal.

Miss Church returned to Pasadena, began advertising as a Christian Science practitioner in The Christian Science Journal, was elected First Reader of the Pasadena branch church, and became Pasadena's first Christian Science teacher in 1902.

Openness of thought and impressive healing sparked the extraordinary growth of Christian Science in the Los Angeles area. As you read letters from the early members about the history of the Pasadena church, three things stand out: (1) great unity among church members; (2) numerous healings; and (3) heartfelt dedication.

First Church of Christ, Scientist, Pasadena, was established in 1898. Over the next ten years, it repeatedly outgrew its meeting quarters, and members eventually built a 1,400-seat edifice that was dedicated in 1910. Members from this church went on to form seven other branches of The Mother Church, and still, in 1945 at the end of World War II, Sunday attendance was full.

The one Christian Science practitioner in Pasadena in 1895 grew to 69 in 1945, outpaced only by Los Angeles, where the number of advertising practitioners grew from five in 1895 to 558 in 1945, with branch churches growing from one to 37 during this period. This extraordinary growth rested on healing—on demonstration of the spiritual as the fact that destroys the false and material sense of things in human experience.

Science and Health tells us that Spirit and matter are opposites, and that "when one appears, the other disappears" (p. 281). When Spirit appears, there's no vacuum; instead, "immortal Truth" and "the real and eternal" come to light (p. 468). All healing involves the appearing of spiritual actuality. Science and Health also explains that "under the supremacy of Spirit, it will be seen and acknowledged that matter must disappear," and that "matter disappears under the microscope of Spirit" (pp. 572, 264). The matter that disappears is but illusion, the incarnation of false belief that deceives the world and obscures reality.

Both the Lord's Prayer and the "Daily Prayer" of Christian Science (Church Manual, p. 41) plead, "Thy kingdom come." The kingdom of God—the kingdom of Spirit and Truth—is here. Let it appear! |css