People everywhere are laboring under the conviction that substance is finite and that it appears as a part of life only during the span of earthly existence. This limited view stems from the belief that substance is material rather than spiritual.
Christian Science teaches that Spirit, God, is the only real substance and the only Life. Life and substance are, therefore, perpetually intact and inseparable. This Science shows that substance is wholly good, vitally active, unlimited; it denounces matter as delusive, inert, substanceless. As we rise above the material, or mortal, sense of things, this substance of all-inclusive good becomes spiritually discernible and, for practical purposes, manifests itself in our daily experience in accord with Christ Jesus' saying, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."Matt. 6:33;
Substance actually inheres in thought. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes, "God's thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life."Science and Health, p. 286; Divine thoughts, diversified in quality, comprise the all of true—of living—substance. Even from the human standpoint, what we experience as substance is the outward manifestation of thought. Our thoughts determine what our lives will be. It is vital, therefore, that we choose our thoughts wisely, discriminating between erroneous, restrictive beliefs, such as discord and strife, and substantial spiritual ideas, such as harmony and peace.
When it springs from the belief in multiple minds preying upon one another, thought conveys an illusory sense of substance and satisfaction or else an apparent lack of whatever is considered desirable. Mortal thought foments rivalry and selfish competition and accounts for such contrasting conditions as opulence and indigence, dominance and submissiveness, success and failure.
When, on the other hand, thought originates in God, the one Mind, it bears the fruit of Spirit, the impress of Life, not matter. Such thought, humanly entertained, is identical with the spontaneous flow of good and is evidenced in the things added. The confidence it inspires in the stability and universality of good stimulates a desire for more of its appearing in individual consciousness.
Representing God's allness, spiritual man includes within himself all the substance he needs; he embodies every right thought or idea. He can never know lack, because he is ceaselessly reflecting the eternal qualities of benign law—loveliness, purity, peace, joy, harmony, freshness, integrity, wisdom, beauty, vitality, holiness, and dominion.
It is only as we adopt right thoughts to the exclusion of false notions that we find the man of substance, the individualized consciousness of good, as our real identity, and experience the divine affluence in daily life. It is then that we regard our human benefits as transitional blessings symbolic of spiritual living and appraise genuine health, happiness, and security as states of uplifted thought rather than as material conditions.
Since God can be expressed only by that which bears witness to His own nature, it follows that our ability to entertain thoughts of good is conclusive evidence that we are even now reflecting spiritual life and substance, regardless of certain intruding beliefs to the contrary. Christian Science points out that in the ratio that each individual is prepared to surrender material craving to spiritual desire, he can develop his thinking along Godlike lines and increase his sense of true substance. Self-sacrifice entailing as it does spiritual attainment, is its own reward.
By their repeated demonstrations of good as the only substance, earnest students of divine Science the world over have gained the assurance, yes, the conviction, that human existence, containing elements of good, continues through the mistiness of time into the dawn and sunshine of eternity; that those who pass on enjoy life both here and hereafter as they continue to progress spiritually.
The conscientious student knows that substance is spiritual and eternally intact. He rejects every suggestion of depletion or inaction, of attenuated substance and life. He discards such a cliché as the struggle for survival or the survival of the fittest and strives to realize his identity in terms of true substance, immortal Life. As he does so, his human life becomes one of surviving gently, free from stress and strain, but not in the sense of merely staying alive or improving his lot at the expense of others. For one needs only to survive the lie of life in matter, and he does so in proportion to his spiritual enrichment.
The true sense of substance as Life never vanishes from Mind, nor does it cease to be expressed by the real man. Our dim sense of substance is dispelled in the degree that we dispose of limiting beliefs and understand that all of good is available to everyone.
Our acceptance of spiritual, inextinguishable aliveness as the present fact gives us courage and inspiration, serving as a vantage point from which we may, through consistent prayer, gain a growing inner conviction of the boundless substance of good and bring it into increasingly sharper focus in our day-to-day living.
In the calm and quiet of right knowing we can, as free moral agents, eject whatever fraudulent beliefs may have crept into our thinking. As we do this, guarding the while against further encroachments that would have us deny God's allness, we eliminate fear, anxiety, doubt, and discouragement, with their concomitants of impatience, dishonesty, greed, and envy. Cultivating unselfed love, and in consequence practicing such virtues as impartial consideration, integrity, humanitarianism, humility, patience, and gratitude, we broaden our outlook on life. And then we see it externalized in the humanly right activity, intelligence, resourcefulness, opportunity, health, friendship, freedom, supply, comfort, safety, or happiness.
Fully aware of the subtlety yet powerlessness of the carnal mind, our Master said, "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."John 10:10; The aggressive suggestion of animal magnetism would becloud and nullify our nobler concepts of substance and life; but by exercising our Christly dominion, we can readily counteract and annihilate every such insidious intent as we strive for the highest—the absolute standard of being—and reach out for the Life that is God.
With every improved belief the individual's sense of substance inevitably takes on higher meaning. In Miscellaneous Writings, Mrs. Eddy says, "The pleasant sensations of human belief, of form and color, must be spiritualized, until we gain the glorified sense of substance as in the new heaven and earth, the harmony of body and Mind."Mis., p. 86.
It is conceivable that in the thoughts of many spiritually-minded lovers of nature the rose, for example, becomes more and more a symbol of divine beauty. Illumined thought brings things into their proper spiritual perspective, and lasting satisfaction ensues.
Life, God, is Spirit, the only real substance, and Life and its image are eternal. Let us accept our spiritual aliveness as an established verity, unswayed by time-honored theories to the contrary. This done, let us use it as a premise on the basis of which to build our spirituality, our sense of substantive good, not merely to enhance our temporal well-being, but in exercise of the prerogative we never truly relinquished as the sons and heirs of God.
