Genuine substance—exclusively spiritual
Readers of the Sentinel can’t help but love how this publication watches trends in world thought, good and bad, assisting people in holding guard in their hearts over a clear sense of what God truly is and what God truly is doing. There are some trends in the world that arrive and burn out as quickly as a falling star. Others are around significantly longer.
One such trend to watch—one that has been around so long that it’s easy to be numb to it—is the traditional concept of substance as matter, including all the severe limitations that come with it. No doubt, whether 5,000 years ago, ten years ago, or today, this is one great imposition that would restrict whatever any person may want to do or experience. But is there really anything we can do about it? The basic ingredients of life simply appear to be matter, whether we like it or not.
Right smack in the face of every single limitation of physicality, Jesus gave the world practical proof that genuine substance is not matter, but is exclusively spiritual. Go back to biblical times, and picture yourself there in the crowd on the day that Jesus fed several thousand. Perhaps, as you sat there eating away along with so many other people, and because you’d observed how he’d begun with only two fish and a few loaves of bread, you’d start to suspect the substantiality of matter itself. Could this piece of bread that you originally thought was a physical substance turn out to be something altogether different—maybe a sort of symbol of the divine and ever-present goodness that is without limit?
In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes: “In Christian Science, substance is understood to be Spirit, while the opponents of Christian Science believe substance to be matter. They think of matter as something and almost the only thing, and of the things which pertain to Spirit as next to nothing, or as very far removed from daily experience. Christian Science takes exactly the opposite view” (pp. 349–350 ).
What is this view? To discern prayerfully, even in a small degree, that substance is actually spiritual—that real substance is actually a result of the nature and essence of God—causes those material limitations named lack, illness, and injury to be seen, not for what they are, but for what they aren’t!
So, which is real to us—the material or the spiritual? Christian Science makes clear that primary cause is God, who is always-present Mind. Could it be possible to have two primary causes, Mind and matter? The First Commandment sets forth early in the Bible that there is only a single cause, a single God. With divine Mind being the single and unique cause, Mind must be the dynamic force behind all true generation and existence.
To the degree we acknowledge and embrace the reign of God over all being, the authority of Mind operates to cure our thoughts—to wash them clean of fear, ignorance, and infidelity. Spontaneously, we then feel and experience the ever-present, divine harmony that always is fruitfully asserting itself.
When you stop to think about it, what you identify as sin, disease, and death can only appear to occur materially. They are not the experiences of the infinite Spirit that is Mind. Mankind does not originate these limitations of materiality any more than it originates God. Instead of being initiators, we are simply witnesses—witnesses to what the divine cause that is God has already made real. The converse of what is real is not matter; it is nothing.
Those we love at first appear to us as physical presences. Then our love is exalted to where we sense they really are the unique evidence of Spirit’s presence. They are more clearly beautiful and spiritual because we discern the detail of divinity constantly being reflected in them. “Man is the idea of Spirit; he reflects the beatific presence, illuming the universe with light,” explains Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health (p. 266 ).
Mind must be the dynamic force behind all true generation and existence.
The Bible predicts the world’s overall victory over materiality in a striking, poetic way: “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14 ). In an article first published in the Sentinel’s sister magazine, The Christian Science Journal, Mary Baker Eddy foresees a beautiful future: “With the spiritual birth, man’s primitive, sinless, spiritual existence dawns on human thought,—through the travail of mortal mind, hope deferred, the perishing pleasure and accumulating pains of sense,—by which one loses himself as matter, and gains a truer sense of Spirit and spiritual man” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 17 ).
To the five physical senses, matter is the substance of reality. If one trusts only the information those senses provide, how can Spirit be realized? Here in God’s allness, genuine substance is, gratefully, exclusively spiritual. Beholding divine Mind and its effects as reality is insightful, life-changing prayer. It becomes clear that there is nothing in divine Mind from which to initiate matter. Yet, there is everything in Mind necessary to initiate its spiritual offspring.
Those trends and tendencies in the world to rely on or fear physicality melt, one inspired, uplifted thought, one prayer at a time. You and everyone you ever will meet are the children of the majestic action of Mind, and because of God, for eternity you remain tangibly spiritual, beautiful, substantial, and intact.
