In the Christian Science Bible Lesson September 8, 2014 Issue

Beholding the glories of substance

For the Lesson titled "Substance" from September 8 – 14, 2014

Kathleen Collins

“Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?” asks Proverbs 23:5 in the Responsive Reading of this week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson, titled “Substance.” Wouldn’t you rather take in the glories of the spiritual sense of substance than cling to a limited material sense? Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Truth, Life, and Love are substance …. Spirit, the synonym of Mind, Soul, or God, is the only real substance” (p. 468, citation 1).

The spiritual nature of substance is taught over and over again in the Bible, a lesson the children of Israel needed to learn when they feared dying of thirst and starvation in the desert (see Exodus, chaps. 16–17, cits. 5, 9). Their selective memory blotted out the miseries of slavery in Egypt and suggested that as long as they had plentiful food and drink, they didn’t need God! But divine Mind revealed to them, as is expressed in Science and Health, that “… man should wish for, and in reality has, only the substance of good, the substance of Spirit, not matter” (p. 301, cit. 14). Accepting the substance of good didn’t mean they had to go without—their human need was met abundantly with quails, manna, and fresh water.

Centuries after the Exodus, writers of the Old Testament continued to recall Moses’ words to “Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 13:3, cit. 4). They presented the experience as a way of instructing new generations to trust in and glorify God. Psalm 78 (cit. 6) and Nehemiah 9 (cit. 11) are examples of this instructive remembrance.

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