ONE of the cardinal points which Christian Science demands we accept is the unreality of matter. This, as any one may readily perceive, is tantamount to saying that the evidence before the physical senses is unreal, and therefore should not be accepted as a basis for right reasoning. But the denial of the evidence of these senses did not begin with the discovery of Christian Science: for instance, the virtual denial of such evidence has gone on ever since the application of the law of numbers; for this law is free from any domination of matter. When we notice a mistake in a numerical problem we reject the material sense evidence and correct the mistake by applying the law of numbers. Now Christian Science acts similarly, and denies matter or the evidence before the physical senses. Moreover, Christian Science denies matter in a scientific way. This must not be forgotten by the student, lest he be made to believe that any kind of a denial of matter will do, and thus be led into the bypaths of confusion.
The Bible is replete with precept and example that matter is not to be accepted as reality. It clearly pictures the struggle the ancient worthies had with false material concepts which again and again seemed to overwhelm their faint perception of Spirit. Nevertheless, this struggle prepared the thought of humanity to receive the final, complete, and scientific denial of matter. Without a shadow of doubt this denial reached its culmination in the life and works of Christ Jesus, by whom a new order of things was initiated, a new way of thinking was begun, a way which the world did not apprehend because Jesus denied and set aside matter so completely that not a single so-called material law remained unbroken. This means that Christ Jesus actually proved matter to be a nonentity, purely supposititious, dreamlike, lawless, and unreal.
Now a strange thing about the thorough denial of matter from the standpoint of Spirit's allness, which Christ Jesus made, is that from the days of the early Christians to the time of Mrs. Eddy few, if any, understood this. Esteemed philosophers have never noticed the Master's complete denial of the reality of matter. Even eminent theologians have failed to catch the great import of his demonstrations, in which material so-called law is completely overruled. It remained for Mrs. Eddy to state the Science that based Christ Jesus' denial of matter, and in this way to point out the radical difference between the denial of the reality of matter assumed by intellectualism and that made by Christian Science, as fully demonstrated by Christ Jesus. Through Christian Science, our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, taught and demonstrated that a denial of selfhood in matter brings the same results to-day that it brought in the time of Christ Jesus. If we are ready to deny matter on the same basis as Jesus denied it, then we are prepared to receive the "pearl of great price," even a demonstrable understanding of Christian Science.
