WHILE much speculation on the part of men is going on concerning the nature of reality, the Christian Scientist is assured that Christian Science tells him the truth about this tremendously important subject. Physicists have ceased to regard matter as they formerly did, as though it were constituted of extremely small particles. They now maintain that, fundamentally, it is electrical in its nature; but none of them will say that the point has been reached where speculation has ceased as regards its ultimate structure: they are still in the region of theory.
In some ways it is a relief to find the discerning and cultured natural scientist arriving at the conclusions he has today; for his theories have tended to allow the general thinker— one not specially trained in the methods of the physicist—a certain freedom of thought which earlier theories concerning matter did not afford him. Thus, he now sees that matter is not the stable thing he formerly believed it to be; that it is not the indestructible thing the material senses suggest to him it is; that sense appreciation of it is not at all reliable, since it has been shown by experiment to be vastly different from what it appears on the surface to be. It would seem, therefore, as if the conclusions reached by the natural scientist have been preparing the way of approach to absolute Truth on the part of the earnest seeker, actually paving the way for him to Christian Science, which reveals the nature of real being, or reality, and makes clear the illusory nature of matter.
What, then, does Christian Science tell of reality? It informs us that reality is Spirit, not matter. Mrs. Eddy puts it forcibly when she writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 277): "The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine,—it is a human concept. Matter is an error of statement." There is no ambiguity in her words. And that they are entirely logical one admits when one perceives that God, Spirit, is infinite. Being infinite, Spirit exists without an opposite; hence, matter, which appears to be Spirit's opposite, has no real existence, no reality.
