Mary Baker Eddy startled human thought when, in the year 1875, she published the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In the Preface to this textbook she says (p. vii), "The time for thinkers has come." When this statement was made, human thought was demanding something more spiritual than is afforded by physical science, doctrinal codes, or material force; and the demand for clear thinking is imperative today.
The present world conditions demand that every individual determine what is the nature or substance of that which is real, as opposed to that which seems to be but is not. Whether they deal with the individual or extend to world affairs, the problems that occupy human thought can be solved only as material concepts are rejected and replaced with the spiritual. To accomplish this, the right idea regarding the conditions in question must be recognized, and accepted in human thought.
A dictionary defines "substance" in part as "that which underlies all outward manifestations; that which is real in distinction from that which is apparent; that which constitutes a thing what it is." We read in the Christian Science textbook (p. 468), "Spirit, the synonym of Mind, Soul, or God, is the only real substance;" and (p. 469), "What is termed matter is unknown to Spirit, which includes in itself all substance and is Life eternal."
