According to material belief, man is in bondage to matter. Health is compassed by disease, strength by weakness, thought by the gray matter called brain, and life itself by death. The water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the care bestowed on the physical body, make or mar the man. All things physical are first, and the ability to progress is dependent upon the condition of "flesh and blood." Only when these are normal, which requires on our part careful obedience to so-called physical law, can we associate with others without danger to them or to ourselves.
From such belief it logically follows that everything is material, to be measured in material terms, and its worth computed in dollars and cents, even to human life. By reference to the latest table of averages, a human life, called a man, is valued at five thousand dollars. Continuing this reasoning to its legitimate conclusion, the question of the conservation of human life resolves itself into one of mere money, and its proper expenditure in the enforcement of obedience to material law, to the end that millions of dollars may be saved. In this argument, sentiment is sacrificed to what are called the hard, cold facts of existence. But if this be true, how are we to "distinguish between humanity and the brute, or determine when man is really man and has progressed farther than his animal progenitors"? (Science and Health, p. 173.)
The wisest teacher of all time asked, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul [spiritual sense]?" This question should lift thought out of the rut of materialism, untangle its wings from the meshes of speculative theory, and set it free to grasp the realities of being. Were it not for these encumbrances, thought would advance to a higher viewpoint, from which to see that spiritual sense is the guide out of the underbrush of materiality into the understanding of redeeming truth, and learn that there are not laws many, but one law,—the law of unchanging Love, ever present to heal and to save.
