Creation is the sum total of God's complete manifestation—from a flower to a star, from the earth to the cosmos, from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Creation is universal substance in all its variety, form, color, continuity, beauty, and glory. Creation includes man, his activities, his environment, as well as his mode of consciousness and his purpose in fulfilling God's plan. Creation in every limitless detail shows forth the beauty of holiness.
Christian Science reaffirms and explains the Biblical premise of God as the only creator and of His creation as wholly spiritual. Writing in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy states (p. 555), "Creation rests on a spiritual basis." Obviously, then, to grasp the facts of creation we must understand it in its spiritual origin, substance, and manifestation.
The mere admission that there is spiritual causation prepares human thought for spiritual growth. However, human thought cannot rest until it reaches the spiritual ultimate that man and the universe are created by God and therefore are wholly spiritual.
Mortals can no more tamper with or dilute the divine Science of creation and find happiness than they can tamper with mathematics and come up with accurate results. We utilize the rules of mathematics and gain confidence and assurance as we prove them. Similarly, we attain the spiritual realization of immortal man and perfect creation by putting into practice the rules of the Science of being. Spiritual discovery of spiritual reality brings overflowing inspiration and illumines one's way out of material sense. Spiritual creation is here to be proved.
The question is often raised, "What was the beginning of creation?" God is eternal and expresses Himself throughout eternity. Eternity neither begins nor ends. Nothing in creation had a beginning, as it would be calculated materially, but everything in creation is forever unfolding spiritually. This unfoldment designates that which is from everlasting in infinite continuity and perpetuity. Deific unfoldment includes all creation. Unfoldment is Mind's ceaseless activity. Man is now and always unfolding in Mind, for his being is perpetual in Mind's permanence and perfection.
Every concept of true creation that unfolds to us is a spiritual concept. It cannot be otherwise if it is a concept of God's creation. Here someone may say: "But all around us we see the evidence of material concepts, and we call these a material creation. Why are they here? Where did they come from? Since Science maintains that there is only one creation, which is spiritual, how can another creation appear?" Mrs. Eddy answers these questions on pages 507 and 508 of Science and Health where she writes: "Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls ideas material. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall to the level of a human or material belief, called mortal man."
Mrs. Eddy makes it plain that there is but one creation because there is but one cause, one God. Only from the standpoint of misinterpretation can a material sense of existence appear. The mortal belief of creation is simply the failure of mortal mind to behold anything other than its own misconceptions, its own inversion of the one and only perfect creation. Science is here to unfold the realities of God's creation, correct the illusion with immutable Truth, reveal man and the universe as harmonious, complete, ever present, and eternal.
Through illumined spiritual sense we turn away from matter and its dark dreams of error to the brightness of God's creation, radiant with Truth and Love. We become conscious of spiritual light when we understand that it has forever accompanied our true being. Speaking of the Christ, John declared (John 1:9), "That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The reality of man's being has always been in light, as Isaiah proclaimed (60:19), "The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory."
When Jesus healed the man born blind he proved the truth of spiritual creation. The disciples, misguided by the material senses, asked whether the man or his parents had sinned. They were still believing in a false concept of creation. This state of thought brings in its train morbid and biased probings into physical causes, for as long as one believes that he has been born into matter he is liable to accept as real the mental or physical errors that might attend such a birth. Jesus promptly repudiated mortal causation and said, in effect, that their probing would not reveal a single healing truth that would free the blind man. He stood resolutely on the scientific fact that the works of God were manifested only in perfect creation, including perfect man.
The Psalmist knew this and declared (139:14), "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." It was the work of God which Jesus proved in healing the man of blindness. The Master implied, Why waste time speculating on mortal causation, when it is the truth of creation—God's works—which heals? He demonstrated that Soul and its faculties are manifested through man and therefore are normal, complete, indestructible. Spiritual faculties are included in the real creation.
It was Jesus' mission not only to reveal man as the son of God, but also to show how each one can progress out of materiality by understanding man's sonship with his heavenly Father. To maintain man's sonship with God is to side with spiritual sense, to keep thought open to the uninterrupted good which God is ever unfolding. Through the eternal Christ, God's idea, each one has the power to prove his sonship with God in divine Science. Are we casting the weight of thought and action upon the spiritual side of being, with our heavenly creator, thereby witnessing to the things of God as Jesus did?
For one to admit right now that in reality he is the son of God is to begin to banish the doubts, mistakes, and fears of a false mortal existence. It was Jesus' conscious realization that he was the Son of God that imbued him with divine power to overrule every form of error. His consciousness of spiritual sonship was inseparable from his demonstration of the divine power to heal. The divine power to heal will be more natural to us as we uphold and live our real spiritual sonship with God.
Let us beware of a human tendency to acknowledge the belief of material creation first and the truth of spiritual creation second. This tendency has a negative result, and healing thereby becomes a laborious personal effort instead of a spontaneous, joyous, spiritual activity. How often, when error comes to one's attention, does one first accept it and later attempt to reject and correct it? God's creation is first. It is the real and only creation. Let us keep first things first.
Every idea in God's creation has its right place, is essential to the completeness of creation, and fulfills its God-ordained destiny. There is no unwanted idea. There is no man out of place. There is no man without a purpose. Each idea is divinely created, divinely sustained, divinely prospered. Man's identity is not removed from creation by disease, accident, or death. Man's being is intact, secure, and immortal.
Spiritual consciousness, which is inseparable from spiritual creation, empowers one to prove the divine realities here and now. There is but one God, one creator; therefore there is but one creation, and man, the offspring of perfect God, is conscious only of divine Love and its manifestations.
