CHRISTIAN SCIENCE teaches that the only real universe is spiritual and consists of ideas and not of material things. The belief that the universe is material and that it has been evolved materially is seen, in the light of Christian Science, to be a fallacy. Christian Science explains that Spirit, divine Mind, is the only creator, and that Mind's creation is therefore spiritual. Of the so-called material universe, Mary Baker Eddy has said, on page 337 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. Eternal things (verities) are God's thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the real or the spiritual and eternal."
Thus it will be seen that the so-called objective universe is not made up of things that are real. The material objects which appear to occupy space are not ideas of divine Mind. They are, when resolved into thought, their primitive condition, seen as false human concepts which must be replaced by the divine ideas which they misrepresent. Therefore, Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 531), "The human mind will sometime rise above all material and physical sense, exchanging it for spiritual perception, and exchanging human concepts for the divine consciousness."
Christian Science does not, however, do away with the so-called material universe and leave nothing in its place, for on page 87 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says, "In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: 'I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied.' " That which appears to the material senses as creation is but the externalization of mortal concepts which counterfeit divine ideas. However, these mortal concepts hint the existence of something vastly more beautiful, satisfying, and enduring than anything the human mind could conceive or the material senses behold.
