Nothing is more frequently misunderstood regarding Christian Science than its attitude towards the phenomena of what is called material creation. The bald statement of the unreality of matter might cause a state of consternation in the thought of some people who are inquiring into Christian Science, though the premise from which this conclusion is logically drawn; viz., that God, Spirit, is infinite, is generally accepted by them. Not having thought out the logic of this deduction, they jump to wild conclusions which have no relation to Christian Science teaching at all. Admitting the premise with which Christian Science starts, they could well afford to thoughtfully analyze what may logically be deduced therefrom. The conclusion of Christian Science being properly drawn, the fault, if fault there is, must be with the premise,—a premise, be it remembered, that is not peculiar to Christian Science, but which is commonly accepted by other Christian denominations, and before their time by the Jewish nation.
To assume because, scientifically speaking, there is no matter, that therefore man has no body, or that there are no trees, flowers, stars, sea, or sky, or any of the other things that make up the phenomena of the universe, is to assume regarding Christian Science teaching what is altogether foreign to it, and what no Christian Scientist believes. When Christian Science declares the nonentity of matter it does not figuratively take a sponge and wipe the slate of the universe clean, leaving only a blank where before had been the lovely forms of nature, and the difficulty in perceiving this point pertains to one's mental education or process of reasoning. To the thought that conceives of nothing as substantial except as it is material, the suggestion that there is no matter at all seems to take away the very foundations of the universe and plunge creation into chaos, while in fact the teaching of Christian Science reveals the harmony, consistency, and permanence of real being, the knowledge of which has ever eluded the search of the materialist.
The statement that matter is unreal because God is Spirit and constitutes the all of being, is a correlative of the statement that darkness is unreal because God is light. And yet darkness is generally accepted as intrinsically unreal, as representing a lack of something rather than its presence, as a shadowy appearance, without solidity or tangibility, which interferes more or less with the normal perception of things, according to its density. To the material sense of sight darkness is just as real as are other manifestations of matter to the material sense of touch, hence if these senses are equally reliable and trustworthy the conditions cognized by them are equally true or untrue.
