There are few religious thinkers who would not readily admit that the sense of materiality militates against spirituality, but they are by no means clear to what extent this material sense should be resisted. Here Christian Science declares, in no uncertain terms, that all reality is spiritual, and that any reliance upon materiality is sure to result in disappointment, if not disaster. Like the Master, Christian Scientists vindicate this teaching by applying it to the discords of mortal experience, especially to the healing of disease and sin. In their efforts to heal the sick as Christ commanded, they are often criticised by those who do not understand their reason for dispensing with material remedies, and their critics frequently attempt to buttress the plea for these remedies by referring to the case of the blind man to whose eyes Jesus applied some clay.
This subject has been discussed in our periodicals a number of times, but, like all that relates to the truth it is inexhaustible in its suggestiveness. In order to apprehend it adequately, we need to study it in its relation to the events which precede it, as recorded in the eighth chapter of John's gospel, from which we learn that the great Teacher had made public statements of truth that challenged the whole foundation and superstructure of material belief. He even went so far as to say, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," and he followed it by one equally startling; viz., "Before Abraham was, I am." These declarations of spiritual reality roused the hidden depths of mortal malice,— the flesh which wars against Spirit,—with the result that the people took up stones to cast at him, but he passed unharmed through their midst. According to the record, he almost immediately met a man who had been blind from his birth, and who was, therefore, a marked illustration of the thought conditions with which Jesus had been contending. On beholding the man, even the disciples appeared to be in the dark respecting the questions of cause and effect involved in his case; but with one masterly stroke Jesus swept aside the superstition which would have narrowed down the sufferer's possibilities to the sad outcome of defective human parentage, and at the same time he defined his own mission in words which have such a vital meaning in Christian Science. Said he, "I must work the works of him that sent me," and he further declared that "the works of God should be made manifest" in this afflicted man.
And now comes his symbolic teaching. In the preceding chapter we are told that when he was questioned concerning the woman charged with a grave moral offence he stooped down and wrote on the sand,—the fitting emblem of mortal consciousness whereon the moral law may be written only to be swept away by every wind of passion And now we see before him the man who was blind because the whole Adamic race believed sight to be material rather than spiritual. The keen, metaphysical insight of the oriental mind was appealed to when the great Teacher took clay and put it on the man's eyes. The picture was now complete: the sense of matter in manifestation shut out all sense of sight; and the man was a helpless representative of that mortal ignorance which could stone the one who offered it the light of life. When this lesson had been made at least measurably clear to the disciples, Jesus told the man to go and wash off the clay,—to remove what had served to symbolize all that blinds mortals to the Truth of being. This he did, and thus found his sight; not merely the outward sense, but a mental illumination which enabled him to defend his deliverer in the telling words, "If any man be a worshiper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. ... If this man were not of God, he could do nothing." How many are there who see the light of the world to-day as clearly as did this erstwhile blind man? How many are ready as was he to challenge human opinions and prejudices, by resolutely declaring the truth so newly born in consciousness? Do we not often hear a foolish contention for the "clay," and the denial that the Christ can heal without it?
