Christ Jesus' victory over death on the cross proved for all time the total unrelatedness of Life to destructible matter. His entire three years' mission was devoted to making plain that man is spiritual and therefore immune to matter's so-called laws. Jesus' consciousness of his God-given power over the illusion of life in matter enabled him, when speaking of the temple of his body, to say (John 2:19), "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Mary Baker Eddy writes of this in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 27,) "It is as if he had said: The I— the Life, substance, and intelligence of the universe—is not in matter to be destroyed." Man is indestructible because he is spiritual, not material. The theory that matter is real and that it mingles with mind to form mortal man was supposed to have been first voiced by the talking serpent in the Biblical account of material creation. Christian Science categorically denies this supposition and calls upon its students to prove by demonstration that the so-called material creation is a myth.
We prove matter unreal by impeaching the testimony of its witnesses, the physical senses. A simple experience proves the fallibility of mortal sight when that which appears as solid matter to the naked eye loses some of its solidity and is seen as porous under the microscope. Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 264): "Spirit and its formations are the only realities of being. Matter disappears under the microscope of Spirit." That it also tends to disappear under the material microscope is added evidence of its insubstantiality.
Christian Science teaches that fear, a direct cause of disease, results from one's accepting as real the false impressions of the physical senses and that it is overcome by correcting these false impressions. Becoming convinced of matter's unreality is a major step in the destruction of fear. Another unfailing antidote for fear is spiritual joy.
