WHAT may be termed "spiritual chemistry" is radical, going to the basis of thought. While material chemistry deals with elemental material substances, their combinations and their action on one another, spiritual chemistry has to do entirely with Truth acting on human thought through the Science of divine Mind.
In Christian Science we learn that divine Mind is the only cause and creator, the one God. Spiritual healing through the action of the one divine Mind results from Christian Science treatment; and although spiritually mental, as to-day it is well recognized to be, this treatment overcomes both functional and organic disease, producing to material sense a decided and often an immediate change in the body. The question is sometimes asked, How does Christian Science heal? Or, more particularly, Just what happens when sickness is overcome through Christian Science treatment? Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 422): "As when an acid and alkali meet and bring out a third quality, so mental and moral chemistry changes the material base of thought, giving more spirituality to consciousness and causing it to depend less on material evidence. These changes which go on in mortal mind serve to reconstruct the body."
Now, "the material base of thought" is the sum and substance of the five physical senses. What the senses see, hear, feel, smell, and taste is all there is to the material sense world. These senses are inherently mortal and temporal; so, if there are any immortal and indestructible faculties, they must be quite apart from the material senses, must, indeed, exist in Mind or Spirit. As the realm of so-called matter lies entirely within the mortal, temporal sense of things, it is apparent that true substance cannot be material, but is matter's opposite, Spirit, and that man's substance is spiritual; and because all action has a mental inception, Truth, acting on thought alloyed with material beliefs, produces the change which to material sense appears as chemicalization.
