All that really exists is God and His perfect, infinite spiritual creation. Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in a very-brief dynamic statement in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" says (p. 226): "Withdraw God, divine Principle, from man and the universe, and man and the universe would no longer exist. But annihilate matter, and man and the universe would remain the forever fact, the spiritual 'substance of things hoped for;' and the evidence of the immortality of man and the cosmos is sustained by the intelligent divine Principle, Love." This helps us grasp the significance of what Paul held in consciousness when he said in his letter to the Ephesians (4:6) that there is "one God and Father of all who is above all, and through all, and in you all."
Mrs. Eddy further states (Miscellany, p. 178), "If the world were in ashes, the contents of 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' would remain immortal." A dictionary defines "world" as "the earth and its inhabitants, with their concerns; the sum of human affairs and interests." Most assuredly, if the world of material sense, human concerns, blunders, wars, afflictions, destruction, hate, lack, sin, disease, and death were "in ashes," the universe of God's creating, the one and only universe existing, would remain complete, harmonious, and immortal. Is it not true that the spiritual creation—man, tree, flower, all that is real, useful, and beautiful, all that God created and pronounced good, all that expresses Him, His eternal nature and being—would remain perfect, immortal, unchanged, and eternal?
Man is the highest idea of God, the only idea given dominion over the works of God's hands. Jesus said (John 10:30), "I and my Father are one," and he proved his oneness, or unity, with eternal Life, infinite Mind, by his dominion over evil and death. The Psalmist questions (Ps. 8:4), "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" And he declares: "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet." God crowns man with glory and honor. Do we at times in our thinking crown ourselves and our brother men with dishonesty, dishonor, sin, disease, and death? These aggressive suggestions are from mortal mind and are never any part of man or his experience. God, being infinite Life, permits of no opposing mind, no death mind, for the term mortal concerns death.
