A Phrase frequently heard and quite as frequently accepted without careful analysis is: Self-preservation is the first law of nature. Like every other statement in human language this one is true only when words are given their correct signification. Otherwise the statement is inaccurate and misleading.
Words may be said to be simply cues to ideas. Mortals learn to associate certain sounds with certain ideas. Now, a limited or finite grasp of an idea is all that the finite mind, so called, is capable of, whereas infinite Mind comprehends infinity, and in this Mind, idea is always infinite, spiritual. The gradual purification through which the false sense is abandoned for the real, for the right idea, is what Mrs. Eddy on page 566 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" calls the "passage from sense to Soul." The entire passage reads, "As the children of Israel were guided triumphantly through the Red Sea, the dark ebbing and flowing tides of human fear,—as they were led through the wilderness, walking wearily through the great desert of human hopes, and anticipating the promised joy,—so shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God."
A study of the true meaning of words in the light of Christian Science is a study of the unfolding of the divine idea before which the so-called human consciousness loses its limited or finite vision, and thereafter ceases to claim entity as a finite mind at all, having been replaced by the infinite vision, or divine Mind. It is readily seen that in this progression no thing or idea ceases to exist, but rather that it is ignorance and limitation which cease to claim existence, and in so doing the true idea or concept is revealed as spiritual and not material, infinite and not finite.
