Everything is known by its qualities. They determine what a thing is. One speaks of spiritual and material qualities. Spirit and matter are opposites. Physicists define matter as that which occupies space and is subject to gravitation. This double restriction does not apply to Spirit. Justice, wisdom, and intelligence are qualities of Spirit and cannot be found in matter and material things; whereas weight, size, limitation, decay, are qualities of matter and cannot be found in Spirit. Matter and its qualities are temporal, changeable, destructible; Spirit and its qualities are immortal, good, and perfect.

Mortal mind, so called, claims that every good quality has an opposite quality. For instance, weakness is the opposite of strength; ugliness of beauty; sickness of health; injustice of justice; depravity of purity, and so on. From the standpoint of Spirit, these negative qualities are not real qualities at all. Yet mortal mind believes in them and asserts that not only they but also spiritual qualities, like happiness, life, harmony, health, belong to matter. The five corporeal senses, which witness to matter, are themselves temporal and mortal; therefore their testimony is not reliable. The carnal or mortal mind is an illusion, a dream; its qualities are false beliefs, not realities.

A dream can be real only as long as it lasts. It even sometimes shows a will to exist and to oppose Spirit. Mary Baker Eddy in her "Miscellaneous Writings" speaks of the Apostle's declaration (II Cor. 12: 10), "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake." She says (p. 201), "The Science of Paul's declaration resolves the element misnamed matter into its original sin, or human will; that will which would oppose bringing the qualities of Spirit into subjection to Spirit." Spirit, God, made man spiritual. Therefore all of man's qualities are spiritual and forever subject to Spirit.

Error and evil would oppose this fact and make mankind believe that man is a miserable sinner, subject to disease and death. Christ Jesus came to save men from this belief by showing them that man is in reality God's beloved child, whole and perfect, and he proved this truth through his healing of sin and suffering. When he saw in the synagogue a man with a withered hand, Jesus said (Matt. 12:13), "Stretch forth thine hand." And we are told that when the man stretched it forth, "it was restored whole, like as the other." The Christ awakened consciousness out of its mortal dream, reversing and overcoming the testimony of the material sense with Spirit's evidence of man's perfection. Thus the true qualities of man were revealed as spiritual.

Christian Science teaches that these perfect qualities are still man's real qualities and will be so forever, not as a private possession but as the reflection of the divine Mind. Late one evening the writer had to attend to the central heating of his house. He dropped the hot poker on the floor in order to pick up another tool. Then he inadvertently grasped the poker by the almost red-hot part. The pain was intense, but quick as a flash he realized that divine Love, Spirit, and its perfect ideas and qualities constitute the only presence. He saw that mortal sense testifying to a destructive quality is false, a dream. He recognized that divine Love and Love's will are the law of any situation.

The writer acknowledged that matter or human will cannot oppose the manifestation of harmonious spiritual qualities, for, as Mrs. Eddy says in "the scientific statement of being" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468), "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." The pain ceased, and the next morning it was not even remembered. The writer had not looked at the hand. When later some skin peeled off, there was not a trace of the burn.

Mrs. Eddy writes (ibid., p. 475): "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image and likeness." A few lines farther on, she describes man as "that which has not a single quality underived from Deity." Let us then watch and pray to distinguish between those qualities which are really ours and our neighbors' and those which are false beliefs, not belonging to man at all. In all our being and doing, let us rejoice that we are the reflection of divine Spirit. Then we can rejoice in Paul's promise (Rom. 8:1), "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."