The pursuit of knowledge concerning matter—the effort to utilize and control it and especially to find a remedy for its ills—has ever been of absorbing interest to thinkers. Most of this research has been from the standpoint that matter is self-sustaining, substantial, and real. With this approach, devoid of spiritual insight, the true answer as to the nature of matter has not been and cannot be forthcoming. But Christian Science is today offering the answer to mankind in its statement of scientific facts.
This Science, revealing one divine cause and its spiritual effect, not only explains logically and demonstrates conclusively the insubstantial, unreal nature of matter, but it affords positive release from matter's discords and pains. This Science declares matter, with its ills, to be but an erroneous mental concept, not the God-sustained reality of being. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes (p. 278): "Divine metaphysics explains away matter. Spirit is the only substance and consciousness recognized by divine Science."
Since matter can be explained away by Christian Science, it cannot be present in the divine logic and truth of being. On this same basis, the ills of matter also have no factual existence. Clearly, it is not possible for Spirit, the infinite All, to have an opposite. Thus no false concept, calling itself matter or its effects, can in reality exist.
