"The spiritual dominates the temporal." These significant words are to be found on page 193 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" by Mary Baker Eddy. This important fact must be understood in order to control error. In the practice of Christian Science it is essential to understand the subject of control, to see whence it comes and how it is exercised in our experience.
The carnal or mortal mind assumes control of its own concepts, but it cannot make good its claims. In the light of Christian Science all control is in God, divine Principle. But in order to exercise this control we must oppose and deny the evidence of the material so-called control. Truth controls error. Love controls hate. Life controls death. Spirit controls matter. In every case the spiritual dominates the material. As we dwell upon the presence, power, and all-embracing love of God, or good, we begin to feel something of the supreme control which divine Mind exercises over the whole creation. This control is expressed in what appears as our temporal state as surely as it is in the eternal. Spiritual control is not a fiction on earth and a fact in heaven.
Mortals have long labored under the mistaken belief that Spirit is remote and its control of events miraculous instead of divinely natural. This belief has been common from remote ages. Thus in the early days of Christianity the recovery of a cripple lame from birth, who was instantaneously healed by the spiritual understanding of Peter and John, was regarded by the onlookers as miraculous. We read in Acts (3:11), "And as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly wondering." Seeing their astonishment, Peter turned to the people and pointed out to them that it was not by their own power that he and John had done this work, but through the power of the Christ.
