MANKIND in general has regarded Soul as chiefly pertaining to salvation in some future state, but Christian Science shows one how to utilize its capacities here and now. The disciple John shows the relation between Soul and the gifts of health and prosperity when he writes, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." Sight, hearing, action, intelligence, which mankind has been wont to locate in materiality, are in fact imperishable faculties of Soul: they are true mental states, exempt from limitation, diminution, and extinction.
"He restoreth my soul." The true sense of God and man restores to one the understanding of every faculty as wholly spiritual and functioning in everlasting harmony. It reveals these faculties as independent of materiality and exempt from the depredations of the belief in time.
Generally speaking, however, material sense, the counterfeit of Soul, has been accepted by mortals as the frail custodian of the faculties of sight, hearing, and general health; and that of which one has seemed to be deprived through corporeal sense can be restored only through spiritual sense. So-called evil is cognized only through the supposed medium of material sense, and the remedy for it lies in understanding God, good, in all His ways, and man in all his Godlikeness. Christian Science imparts this understanding and the capacity to demonstrate it in overcoming discord. As mankind looks to Spirit, Soul, for all good, the veil of fleshly beliefs is lifted, the imperishable substance of Truth and Love is glimpsed, and one becomes the master, rather than the involuntary slave, of circumstances.
