Are all material objects simply ideas, or is matter altogether nonexistent? If matter doesn’t exist, how can material objects express beauty, or be reflections of ideas?
— From a participant at the Portland, Oregon, Youth Summit
A: The relationship between material objects and spiritual ideas is clearly delineated in Mary Baker Eddy’s answer to a similar question posed on page 60 of her book Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896. There she says, in part: “. . . every creation or idea of Spirit has its counterfeit in some matter belief. Every material belief hints the existence of spiritual reality; and if mortals are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that material belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand.”
