"If the world were in ashes, the contents of 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' would remain immortal," is the arresting statement made by Mary Baker Eddy in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 178). The immortal truths revealed to us in this "little book" have always been; and they will continue to live throughout all eternity. In it, man is shown to be God's individual, perfect idea. Can we not accordingly know that "if the world were in ashes," man "would remain immortal," unchanged, in the realm of Mind?
If the world of mortal fear, hate, rebellion, greed, sin, disease, and death were "in ashes"—the ashes of a dissolving, material sense of man and the universe—and the now smoldering fires of hate, rebellion, and destruction were replaced with the sunshine of Truth and Love, there would come into view the shores of eternity, golden with beauty and bounty, with peace and perfection.
"Substance is that which is eternal and incapable of discord and decay. Truth, Life, and Love are substance, as the Scriptures use this word in Hebrews," says our beloved Leader on page 468 of Science and Health. This profound statement of spiritual fact reveals to us that, since God is All and fills all space, He is infinite substance. Soul, divine consciousness, the opposite of material sense testimony, is real substance, is all-embracing, is all real being. The understanding of this fact enabled Jesus to speak "as one having authority" to every argument of sin and disease and to overcome death.
