Suppose you wished to make a garden. Would you take stone, cement, plants, and right away begin laying out the garden indiscriminately? Wouldn't it result in a bit of a shambles? You would first use your ability to think, and then reach out for some inspiration about the garden. And only then would you begin. Without thoughts would there be a garden? What comes first, the thoughts or the garden?
"But," you may say, "the plan for the garden may be mental, but aren't the necessary items entirely material?"
These are all items in thought, concepts, but we mistakenly believe them to be physically substantial and call them matter. Through Christian Science, which teaches the allness of Spirit, God, we can see that what appear to us to be material objects are merely mental pictures, and we begin to do away with the belief that matter is substance. Matter is only as substantial, in human belief, as the thought behind it, and is quite incapable of taking cognizance of its own supposed existence. Change the thought, and the matter-picture changes, or even disappears altogether. The beautiful garden hints at spiritual ideas; what we see as the garden approximates these ideas in such a form as is useful to our present stage of understanding.
