THE above statement is being affirmed daily, often hourly, by more members of the human race than ever before in human history. It ends "the scientific statement of being" given by Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 468). It is acclaimed in the concluding part of every Christian Science Sunday church service. This simple denial that man is material, coupled with the unqualified affirmation that he is now, not sometime shall be, spiritual, indicates the radical difference between Christian Science and all other systems of religious teaching.
The numerous Christian sects accept the Master's teaching that God is Spirit. Christian Science alone accepts the logical deduction therefrom that the effect of Spirit, named man, is spiritual, and is spiritual now and always. So erroneously educated has human thought become in its belief that man is what matter and material sense say he is that men have broken with reason and logic and in effect say that man, although his cause may be Spirit, is embodied in and conditioned by Spirit's opposite, matter, and is therefore material, not spiritual. This repudiation by religious orthodoxy of divine logic Christian Science is here to correct.
What is meant when we say that man is not material but spiritual? We all know pretty well what is meant when the statement is made that man is material; but the meaning of the statement that man is spiritual is not perceived even by many who believe this to be true. We can only understand the spiritual nature of man through education in spiritual truth, and this education can be acquired only by individual effort and self-instruction. The most important question for every student of the Science of Life to answer is, Am I doing the studying, praying, and applying which are essential to my gaining a clearer understanding of the spiritual nature of man—of myself and of my brother as God causes us to be?
