In Genesis it is recorded that God gave man dominion over all the earth. This dominion was given to the spiritual consciousness which reflects God, and it has never been withdrawn. It still belongs to God's man and can be claimed and demonstrated by those who are ready to learn that God is the substance of all real being. That mankind is approaching this state of readiness to learn, is shown by the fact that Christian Science has come to this age and is unfolding to human consciousness the real nature of God as infinite Spirit, and of man as His perfect spiritual image or idea. Christian Scientists are proving daily that an understanding of true selfhood as immortal, unfallen, and perfect is freeing them from the belief in discord and imperfection, and from the illusive consequences of this belief.
The dominion to be gained through an understanding of God does not mean the control of matter as a reality. Therefore to improve, increase, restore, or reclaim matter is not the aim of students of Christian Science. They are not working for a better sense of matter, a more harmonious, more beautiful, more satisfying environment in matter. On the contrary, they know that mankind's homage to matter during the centuries has not lessened or solved human woes or problems, but has multiplied them. Realizing the insubstantial and fleeting nature of what is called material existence, Christian Scientists are endeavoring to see man and the universe as they truly are, spiritual, perfect, indestructible, and divinely mental. God, Spirit, is the one creator, and since He made all that was made, and made it good, there exists no necessity for any change in the divine facts of being. God's perfect spiritual universe and man are now what they always have been and always will be, the complete idea of infinite Mind—and there is no other universe or man.
Since no improvement is needed in real being, the conclusion is inevitably reached that what needs changing is the human sense of existence. Humanity's reasoning needs to be wrested from its false base and led to acknowledge Spirit as the only Mind and substance in the present— in the here and now—as well as in the future. Such an acknowledgment will not be honestly and wholeheartedly given while matter is regarded as substance, possessing distinctive and powerful characteristics in and of itself.
The question, then, occurs, Is matter included in infinite Spirit, God? Could the divine Mind include in itself an element so unspiritual, temporal, and contrary to its own perfection? Mary Baker Eddy emphatically declares on page 335 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "There is nothing in Spirit out of which matter could be made." This being the case, matter is without the divine support necessary for real being. Shall mankind then be obliged to consider as substance and power that which God is not, that which He knows not, and which He did not make? God being all-power and all-presence, it should be clear that there is no power forcing mankind to believe an untruth about real existence.
When through the understanding of Christian Science the phenomenon called matter is seen to be but an erroneous mental concept, the individual no longer feels compelled to regard this phenomenon as fundamental or substantial. Far from being substance in any true sense of the word, that which mortals call matter, fading and temporal as it is, simply indicates a lack of the true understanding of substance. A negation cannot express in itself positive spiritual qualities. Thus, lack of wisdom is ignorance, or the absence of positive knowledge. Likewise, any asserted condition of so-called matter is a mythical state, possessing not an element of actuality or truth.
Thus it will be seen that nothing connected with so-called material existence, no experiences or conditions it seems to manifest, can be real or substantial; they are illusions, dreams, for all that is real exists in the everywhere of reality, in the infinity of good, which is God and His expression.
The belief that there is a realm outside of God's perfect creation wherein exists a sick, fallen, sinful man is the lie of the serpent—the subtle suggestion that there is something to be known besides God, good. Who or what is it that believes this lie? Jesus said of the devil, or evil, "He is a liar, and the father of it," thus indicating the lie and the liar to be one and the same. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 487), "The believer and belief are one and are mortal." The believer, therefore, could not be man, God's perfect likeness, whose immortality Jesus proved beyond a shadow of doubt. A supposed awareness of evil, a pseudo consciousness, says this only to and of itself. The perfect man of God's creating has never been involved in any lie about himself, about God, or about God's universe.
The human footsteps toward an apprehension of these great facts are simple, but essential. All must take them sooner or later. They follow naturally from an honest, earnest desire to learn and express the truth about God and about man as God's likeness. There must be a willingness to live up to one's highest concept of good, or right, and an effort to be as loving, as accurate, as upright as one knows how to be in all that he says and thinks and does. As the student faithfully uses the knowledge of good he has already gained, he comes to know more of God and to see the spiritual facts more clearly. Such a one will remain constant in whatever difficulties, until some gleam of the truth of being dawns upon his thought, for God, the Principle of all good, supports each sincere desire for an effort after righteousness, and crowns it with increased inspiration and light.
Mrs. Eddy says on page 428 of Science and Health: "The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal. We must hold forever the consciousness of existence, and sooner or later, through Christ and Christian Science, we must master sin and death." As the concept of man as spiritual, perfect, indestructible, and substantial is entertained in thought, the resultant spiritualized perception will see these qualities manifested. This is indeed the laying off of the old man and putting on of the new which the Scriptures describe; and this individual achievement advances the realization or consciousness of that complete dominion which is the birthright of man in God's likeness.
