The true nature of the universe, including man, is set forth by Mary Baker Eddy in her principal work, "Science and Health with Key to the' Scriptures," in what she has termed "the scientific statement of being." It reads as follows (p. 468): "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual."
The fact of the perfect spiritual nature of God and His idea, man, is so radically opposed to the evidence of the material senses that one unacquainted with this Science may find it difficult to accept it at once. One who has not proved in experience the statements quoted may question their correctness, so contrary are they to commonly accepted belief. But opportunity to prove them invariable is open to any sincere seeker after Truth.
Sweeping reversals of general belief and unexplained statements as to the unreality of the material universe, including so-called physical man, poured into the ears of beginning students of Christian Science, may be likened to the unknown tongues mentioned in the fourteenth chapter of I Corinthians. In the eighth and ninth verses the Apostle Paul cautions workers in God's vineyard not to speak in unknown tongues to those whom they would try to bless. He says: "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air."
