Spirit's Supremacy

Ella W. Hoag

The Christian world for centuries has talked of God's supremacy. It has again and again proclaimed Him to be omnipotent. In the very next breath, however, it has spoken as loudly of another power called evil, even questioning of the two powers which was the greater. Because of appearances it has imagined itself obliged to concede preeminence to evil, although it has still hoped that in a future heaven God might be proved to be superior. Not understanding the nature of God as all good, it has failed to comprehend evil's opposite supposititious nature, and so its conclusions have all been correspondingly ignorant.

Now the very word "supremacy" indicates neither a superior nor an equal; and to whom can this term be properly applied except to the one only God whom Jesus named "Spirit," and of whom he further said, "They that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth"? When Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 138) that "the supremacy of Spirit was the foundation on which Jesus built. His sublime summary points to the religion of Love," she opens wide the door to the possibility of proving, not only the all-power and reality of God, who is Spirit and is good, but also the powerlessness and unreality of Spirit's suppositional opposite, matter or evil.

Jesus' entire teaching accentuated the all-power and allpresence of Spirit as well as the nothingness of matter; and there is no statement of his more familiar to the Christian Scientist than the one he made to his disciples when he told them, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." For the adherents of Christian Science to meet the demands this statement makes,—that they shall prove this true,—is the problem with which every Christian Scientist is faced.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 179) Mrs. Eddy tells us, "We must lay aside material consciousness, and then we can perceive Truth;" and she further says, "When God revealed to me this risen Christ, this Life that knows no death, that saith, 'Because he lives, I live,' I awoke from the dream of Spirit in the flesh so far as to take the side of Spirit, and strive to cease my warfare." Ah, here is the way to prove Spirit's supremacy and the nothingness of matter!—to take the side of Spirit and to cease our warfare, to cease resistance to Spirit and its holy laws! But how great the demand! And still every Christian Scientist has pledged himself to do this.

We need not imagine it can be accomplished completely in an instant. And still the effort belongs to every instant. Always there must be the consciousness that we are on the side of Spirit; always there must be the willingness to deny and renounce the desires of the flesh. Too often we are tempted to yield to human ways and means, to human policies and methods. We think we have not yet grown beyond their ability to do something for us, that they can in some way still aid the individual or the Cause.

We may as well, however, understand first as last that Spirit alone can bring spiritual results. The human method of trying to overcome matter with matter only claims to exalt matter; it never conquers it, never tends to prove it unreal. In the same way, the attempt to triumph over self-will with self-will, to cast out one wrong with another, must always result in greater evil, not in less. On the contrary, "to take the side of Spirit," to stand unmoved before error because we know that Spirit is always supreme,—this is to advance steadily in the path upward; this will enable us to cease our warfare and gain that understanding of good which must eventually triumph over all that is false.

The prophet declared, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord." And how precious the privilege of awakening to the opportunity and possibility of proving this supremacy of Spirit! In "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 28) our beloved Leader again points the way, when she says: "Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of and dependence on spiritual things. For Spirit to be supreme in demonstration, it must be supreme in our affections, and we must be clad with divine power." Herein is to be found the "religion of Love" which Jesus lived.

Then let us remember that any spiritual desire, any spiritual thought, is mightier than any claim of evil, however it may try to magnify itself. The former belongs to the God who is All; the latter is the nothingness of nothing! Thus, with Spirit "supreme in our affections" we shall press patiently, perseveringly on, until we, too, shall have proved that "the flesh profiteth nothing," because the words of Christ Jesus will have become to us "spirit" and "life."

Ella W. Hoag.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit