In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," on page 269, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and the revelator of Truth to this age, has written: "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul. These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual consciousness, and they have this advantage over the objects and thoughts of material sense,—they are good and eternal." How to exchange the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul is the problem confronting mankind.
When Christ Jesus stood at the grave of Lazarus after he had called him back to life, and had commanded the onlookers to "loose him, and let him go," he was commanding them to look away from the false material concept of man and to see man as God's spiritual idea. It was because he did this so persistently and consistently that he was able to do such marvelous healing work. Mankind can never find the way of salvation from its many woes until it gains the spiritual meaning of Jesus' command to "loose him, and let him go;" and nothing but Christian Science can supply this spiritually metaphysical sense.
When the newcomer begins the study of Christian Science, he is apt to ponder over the term "ideas" as used to express the true identity of man and the universe and their relation to Deity. So accustomed is he to regard the material as the real and tangible that he wonders whether the term "idea," or "ideas," is not a bit illusive. He may even hesitate, and wonder if it is right for him to exchange his old concept of man and the universe as material and finite for the new, spiritual concept as understood in Christian Science. If, however, he persists in his study of Christian Science, he will soon learn that the term "spiritual idea," or "ideas," as used in Christian Science, is not ambiguous or chimerical. He will learn that spiritual ideas cannot be separated from their divine Principle, the one eternal Mind, because this Mind or Principle of all existence includes within itself all the real substance there is or can be. Therefore, he will learn that he is actually finding the true and real.
