The average person commencing a study or an investigation of Christian Science usually at some point finds himself asking these questions: "You say that Christian Science teaches that God is infinite, All, the one inclusive Spirit, and that there is no matter. Well, if all is Spirit, what about all this of which I now seem to be aware or cognizant—the trees, the flowers, the birds, and other wonders of creation? Have they no reality? When you say that all is Spirit, does this mean the annihilation or obliteration of that which appears to me as a creation? Is this nothing but a figment of my imagination?"
Christian Science gives to the inquirer a perfectly lucid and satisfactory answer to this important question. It does not wipe out or obliterate creation; on the contrary, it explains and establishes its permanency. It declares that the true and only creation is spiritual and mental and consists of unfolding spiritual ideas of Mind; that these ideas are infinite and gloriously ever appearing, indicative, of course, of the infinite nature of God as self-existent cause. It declares that every object in God's spiritual creation has specific and eternal identity and that the material creation of which we seem to be conscious is a poor counterfeit of the real and eternal. Nevertheless, it is an indication and a promise of reality.
Clarifying this important point, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer, Founder, and revelator of Christian Science, says in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 87): "To take all earth's beauty into one gulp of vacuity and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature God's creation, which is unjust to human sense and to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: 'I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied. Matter is a frail conception of mortal mind; and mortal mind is a poorer representative of the beauty, grandeur, and glory of the immortal Mind.'"
