My 9th grade science teacher was explaining the law of conservation of mass. “If matter can’t be created or destroyed, how did it get here in the first place?” I asked him. He didn’t have an answer, and it left us both wondering. Was matter ever created?
This is a question that the textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” probes to the depths. In one passage, included in this week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly on the subject “Matter,” Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Is Spirit the source or creator of matter? Science reveals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter” and later, “Spirit and matter can neither coexist nor cooperate, and one can no more create the other than Truth can create error, or vice versa.” She makes the conclusive statement, “Spirit is the only substance and consciousness recognized by divine Science” (pp. 278-279).
To the five physical senses, the existence of matter is a given. But why should we put so much faith in these senses that are recognized as unreliable even from a physical standpoint? Even more so from a spiritual vantage point, the evidence of these senses contradicts what our heart tells us: that there is a power greater than matter, the power of divine Love.
With his healing works, Christ Jesus gave abundant proof of this Love, showing us that we are not at the mercy of matter and its supposed laws, but are created and governed by Spirit, eternally. And Christian Science has given abundant proof that the healing power of God, Love, is available today through the Comforter, “the Spirit of truth,” that Jesus promised would come after him (see John 14:16,17).
For example, when my son was in 4th grade, I was called to the nurse’s office, where she was trying unsuccessfully to stop his nose from bleeding. Fearfully, she said she would normally call for an ambulance in such a situation, but knowing we were Christian Scientists, she thoughtfully asked me what I would like to do.
I was grateful for this nurse’s willingness to allow us to choose the method of treatment we had found so effective over many years. Our family had experienced many immediate proofs of God’s care and healing power through Christian Science, and I knew that God was caring for my son right then and there. With the full expectation of an immediate healing, I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for us.
Our prayers were based on the spiritual facts that this boy was a child of Spirit, not matter; that matter could make no conditions for him; and that everything about him was under the harmonious control of divine Love.
Within a few minutes the bleeding began to subside, and we were able to leave the nurse’s office shortly afterward with everyone’s fears assuaged. When my son and I got home about ten minutes later, the bleeding had stopped completely, and he was full of joy and energy. He suffered no ill effects from this experience and never had a nosebleed like that again.
To me, this healing – and so many others brought about through Christian Science treatment – verifies another passage from this week’s Bible Lesson: “In proportion as matter loses to human sense all entity as man, in that proportion does man become its master. He enters into a diviner sense of the facts, and comprehends the theology of Jesus as demonstrated in healing the sick, raising the dead, and walking over the wave. All these deeds manifested Jesus’ control over the belief that matter is substance, that it can be the arbiter of life or the constructor of any form of existence” (Science and Health, p. 369).
While our present “control over the belief that matter is substance” may be more modest than Jesus’, we can be so grateful that he showed us undeniably that matter is not the power it claims to be, and how we can prove that our true being is actually spiritual and totally cared for by divine Love.
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