CHRISTIAN SCIENCE teaches that substance, law, causation, and consciousness are forever in and of Spirit, and that the aspect of materiality, imperfection, and evil with which things seem invested, is of logical necessity transient, and foreign to the universe as it actually exists. This being the case, the transformation of earthly conditions, foretold by Jesus and depicted by St. John as the outcome of the redemptive mission of Christianity, does not involve the passing away of aught that ever existed in truth and reality. It simply denotes on humanity's part a growing recognition of an order of things which is "from everlasting to everlasting," and which was perfect and complete "before the world began ;" an apprehension of spiritual verities which causes material shadows to wane and finally disappear.
The radical changes and developments for the better which are steadily being brought out in the complexion of events, and which bid fair to go on freeing mortals in geometrical progression, as it were, from the enthralling conditions of a finite point of view, signify that the mist of material belief is already lifting sufficiently to give at least a hint of creation as the spiritual idea or thought of God. The world at large, to be sure, has not yet discovered that man's individuality and identity are comprised in spiritual reflection, since from the misleading position of mortal sense, diviner, more spiritual qualities seem to evolve from a type of mentality produced on a structural, physical basis. Accordingly the opening up of new vistas of experience is taken to indicate an inherent expansiveness in the human mind, a capacity for self-culture which promises to advance the status of that mind as time goes on.
Now this is just the reverse of the doctrine of Christian Science, which not only avers but proves by object-lessons that man's true, normal environment consists at all times of spiritual ideas ; that it is not man but a supposititious mortal consciousness which seems to be excluded from the harmony and fulness of being, and to dwell in a world of material phenomena in which spirituality is, so to speak, exotic. What is really taking place, then, with respect to the realm of human observation is this,—that men are waking to the spiritual light, their beliefs and ideals are growing less material, and the entire human economy is undergoing a course of reconstruction which must in time result in the complete displacement and effacement of materiality.
