When we consider a building, a bridge, an airplane, or any one of the variety of modern-day useful wonders, we might well ponder the questions: What is the actual substance of this project? What is it that gives a building its usefulness, an airplane its capacity to fly, or a bridge its serviceability and dependability? Certainly it is the intelligence that conceived it and brought it forth. Without intelligence there would be nothing but a useless, shapeless mass of raw material without meaning. It can readily be seen, then, that intelligence, rather than matter, is the substance of the order we see in the material universe.
From this simple consideration we may arrive at a very important metaphysical and spiritual fact, namely that real intelligence, divine Mind, or God, is the actual substance of all real spiritual being. God is the great architect, the one infinite Mind, which constitutes all spiritual individuality and is the substance of all true being. It is He that gives form, purpose, definition, to thought and action. Hence it is He who is the one great cause and the creator of man. It is clearly pointed out in the Bible (Gen. 1:2): "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Then follows the first and authentic record of creation, in which all being is seen as created by divine Mind and hence as spiritual and perfect. The Bible continues consistently this scientific sense by declaring that God, Spirit, Mind, made man "in his own image, in the image of God created he him" (Gen. 1:27).
The substance of man's being is the Mind that made him. Since man is the reflection, or expression, of God, he has no being apart from his divine source. Mary Baker Eddy states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 470), "God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection, man, remains perfect." In this we find that man's substance is eternal, perfect, harmonious, spiritual, whole, because it is, in fact, the divine Mind that created man. The understanding of this truth releases us from the fear of disease and sin, for these are not to be found in the divine Mind, the only real cause. We resolutely turn from matter to Spirit, from so-called material laws to the facts of divine government, to find the substance of Soul and the indestructibility of man as the idea of God.
