Subject: Matter

Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, September 13, 1903

Golden Text: Isaiah 42: 8
I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.

Responsive Reading: Nahum 1: 3-8, 10, 13-15
3. The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

4. He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers; Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth.

5. The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.

6. Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.

7. The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.

8. But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.

10. For while they be folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.

13. For now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder.

14. And the Lord hath given a commandment concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown: out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave; for thou art vile.

15. Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows: for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off.

The Lesson

(I)

Ecclesiastes 1: 4,8,11,13,14 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Ecclesiastes 2: 11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

123: 11-12 The verity of Mind shows conclusively how it is that matter seems to be, but is not.

277: 24 The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine,--it is a human concept. Matter is an error of statement. This error in the premise leads to errors in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters. Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immortal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous.

173: 11 What is termed matter manifests nothing but a material mentality. Neither the substance nor the manifestation of Spirit is obtainable through matter. Spirit is positive. Matter is Spirit's contrary, the absence of Spirit. For positive Spirit to pass through a negative condition would be Spirit's destruction.

300: 1 Human logic is awry when it attempts to draw correct spiritual conclusions regarding life from matter. Finite sense has no true appreciation of infinite Principle, God, or of His infinite image or reflection, man. The mirage, which makes trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image of God.

278: 12-16 That matter is substantial or has life and sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, as we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter.

(II)

Psalm 51: 5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Psalm 58: 3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

Job 20: 4,5,11 Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.

542: 1 The belief of life in matter sins at every step.

311: 9-19 All sin is of the flesh. It cannot be spiritual. Sin exists here or hereafter only so long as the illusion of mind in matter remains. It is a sense of sin, and not a sinful soul, which is lost. Evil is destroyed by the sense of good. Through false estimates of soul as dwelling in sense and of mind as dwelling in matter, belief strays into a sense of temporary loss or absence of soul, spiritual truth. This state of error is the mortal dream of life and substance as existent in matter, and is directly opposite to the immortal reality of being.

307: 31 Above error's awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: "Adam, where art thou? Consciousness, where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou in the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandment?" Until the lesson is learned that God is the only Mind governing man, mortal belief will be afraid as it was in the beginning, and will hide from the demand, "Where art thou?" This awful demand, "Adam, where art thou?" is met by the admission from the head, heart, stomach, blood, nerves, etc.: "Lo, here I am, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion, a blending of false claims, false pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and death."

214: 18 We bow down to matter, and entertain finite thoughts of God like the pagan idolater. Mortals are inclined to fear and to obey what they consider a material body more than they do a spiritual God. All material knowledge, like the original "tree of knowledge," multiplies their pains, for mortal illusions would rob God, slay man, and meanwhile would spread their table with cannibal tidbits and give thanks.

(III)

Exodus 24: 12, 18 And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

Exodus 32: 1-6 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

470: 5 The supposed existence of more than one mind was the basic error of idolatry. This error assumed the loss of spiritual power, the loss of the spiritual presence of Life as infinite Truth without an unlikeness, and the loss of Love as ever present and universal.

187: 3-12 As mortals do not comprehend even mortal existence, how ignorant must they be of the all-knowing Mind and of His creations. Here you may see how so-called material sense creates its own forms of thought, gives them material names, and then worships and fears them. With pagan blindness, it attributes to some material god or medicine an ability beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and enslave it, and then impute this result to another illusive personification, named Satan.

146: 5-9 The first idolatry was faith in matter. The schools have rendered faith in drugs the fashion, rather than faith in Deity. By trusting matter to destroy its own discord, health and harmony have been sacrificed.

173: 30-8 The idols of civilization are far more fatal to health and longevity than are the idols of barbarism. The idols of civilization call into action less faith than Buddhism in a supreme governing intelligence. The Esquimaux restore health by incantations as consciously as do civilized practitioners by their more studied methods. Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air? Nothing save divine power is capable of doing so much for man as he can do for himself.

(IV)

Ezekiel 28: 2,8,9 Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God: They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas. Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.

Galatians 6: 3 For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.

Habakkuk 2: 4 Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.

Proverbs 8: 3 She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors.

252: 16-26 Material sense lifts its voice with the arrogance of reality and says: I am wholly dishonest, and no man knoweth it. I can cheat, lie, commit adultery, rob, murder, and I elude detection by smooth-tongued villainy. Animal in propensity, deceitful in sentiment, fraudulent in purpose, I mean to make my short span of life one gala day. What a nice thing is sin! How sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits! The world is my kingdom. I am enthroned in the gorgeousness of matter.

148: 25-26 Physiology exalts matter, dethrones Mind, and claims to rule man by material law, instead of spiritual.

186: 17-22 Evil is self-assertive. It says: "I am a real entity, over-mastering good." This falsehood should strip evil of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil to destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily punishing the evil-doer.

345: 26 The apostle says: "For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself." This thought of human, material nothingness, which Science inculcates, enrages the carnal mind and is the main cause of the carnal mind's antagonism.

(V)

Jeremiah 17: 5, 6 Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

Hosea 4: 17 Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.

Hosea 5: 12, 13 Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness. When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.

Mark 5: 24-29 And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

78: 24 God is not in the medley where matter cares for matter, where spiritism makes many gods, and hypnotism and electricity are claimed to be the agents of God's government.

312: 23 Our theories are based on finite premises, which cannot penetrate beyond matter. A personal sense of God and of man's capabilities necessarily limits faith and hinders spiritual understanding. It divides faith and understanding between matter and Spirit, the finite and the infinite, and so turns away from the intelligent and divine healing Principle to the inanimate drug.

160: 3 The systems of physics act against metaphysics, and vice versa . When mortals forsake the material for the spiritual basis of action, drugs lose their healing force, for they have no innate power. Unsupported by the faith reposed in it, the inanimate drug becomes powerless.

230: 22-30 According to Holy Writ, the sick are never really healed by drugs, hygiene, or any material method. These merely evade the question. They are soothing syrups to put children to sleep, satisfy mortal belief, and quiet fear. We think that we are healed when a disease disappears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never thoroughly healed until the liability to be ill is removed.

408: 14-22 The supposition that we can correct insanity by the use of purgatives and narcotics is in itself a mild species of insanity. Can drugs go of their own accord to the brain and destroy the so-called inflammation of disordered functions, thus reaching mortal mind through matter? Drugs do not affect a corpse, and Truth does not distribute drugs through the blood, and from them derive a supposed effect on intelligence and sentiment.

(VI)

Isaiah 51: 6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

Mark 13: 31, 32 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

2 Peter 3: 10-13 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

96: 4-5, 12-4 Love will finally mark the hour of harmony, and spiritualization will follow, for Love is Spirit. This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth. Mortal error will vanish in a moral chemicalization. This mental fermentation has begun, and will continue until all errors of belief yield to understanding. Belief is changeable, but spiritual understanding is changeless. As this consummation draws nearer, he who has shaped his course in accordance with divine Science will endure to the end. As material knowledge diminishes and spiritual understanding increases, real objects will be apprehended mentally instead of materially. During this final conflict, wicked minds will endeavor to find means by which to accomplish more evil; but those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection.

572: 12 Love fulfils the law of Christian Science, and nothing short of this divine Principle, understood and demonstrated, can ever furnish the vision of the Apocalypse, open the seven seals of error with Truth, or uncover the myriad illusions of sin, sickness, and death. Under the supremacy of Spirit, it will be seen and acknowledged that matter must disappear.

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