Mind Revealed Through Matter
INSTEAD of matter and mind being in antagonism, as Christian Science teaches, matter is a manifestation of the divine mind. “For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.” Rom. 1:20. According to this scripture the visible makes manifest the invisible; the things seen make understandable the things unseen. The material world is the screen on which the divine thought is portrayed; the material creation is the panorama of the mind of God. The two invisible things thus made visible are stated to be “His everlasting power and divinity.” In Rom. 1:20 the invisible things of God are said to be two; namely, power and character. We know that power is invisible. Were it not for the action of matter under the impulse of power, power would be unknown. We can not see muscular power, or spiritual power, or gravity, or electricity, or even light itself. Power is invisible. But acting upon the things seen and moving matter by its impulse, we learn something of all forces. The same is true of character. Look at a man, a stranger, and you can not read his character. But watch him for a time until the character manifests itself in outward actions, in visible conduct, and you learn something of the character. And yet you learn only so much of his character as is thus revealed in conduct; for character itself is invisible. And so invisible character is made visible by its manifested conduct within the realm of matter. And this is the principle that Christian Science, so called, has passed over in its partial and erroneous philosophy of the divine government. Repeating its incomprehensible and untrue maxim that “All is Mind,” it stumbles over the fact that mind alone must be mind isolated. Thought, the product of mind, is invisible until it affects the different forms of matter and is thus made manifest. God’s thoughts to us are infinite. For our education, for our encouragement, for our salvation, He has put His thoughts into visible forms. We have His thoughts in stone, in soil, in flower, in plant, in tree, in hill, in valley, in sky, in earth, in man, and, more clearly than elsewhere, in His word, and in the life of the Christ of that word. To picture God’s thought is one great purpose for a material creation. It is because of this that the prophet can say, “Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created these,9that bringeth out their host by number.” Isa. 40:26. The psalmist, too, affirms, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” There is no antagonism between matter and spirit; for matter obeys spirit. In the beginning matter obeyed the word of the Creator, and even now and always matter alone obeys Him. It is true that God has put man’s mind or spirit in a degree in control over this material body; subjected it in hope as was shown in the preceding article; and man has caused this material body, the flesh, to disobey, in a measure, the dictates of the Spirit. Just so long as God does not interfere with man’s free-will, so long will the conflict continue. Even so, we simply show that the conflict is a conflict between the will or mind of man and the will or mind of God. It is mind and not matter that involves the trouble; and in this very thing lies man’s sin and man’s responsibility. We need matter to give form, and form embodies ideas; thus invisible mind projects itself into the visible world. Only through matter does one soul or mind communicate with another soul or mind. Only thus are we able to represent our thoughts to another. Through the medium of the material world we are able to speak and write our thoughts, and mind communicates with mind. Thus we see that man needs matter by which to put his ideas into form. Form therefore is as necessary as conception; reality is as necessary as ideality. By this, one man expresses ideas in pictures; another carves and graves them on stone; many put their ideas into written form, and all except the mutes put their ideas into the form of speech. Somewhat similarly God placed His ideas in a visible creation. And this visible creation is still, with some exceptions which we will note, the embodiment of His thought. If it were not so, the psalmist could not say that “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” It would be folly otherwise for the prophet to say, “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things.” It is true the earth has been cursed because of the sin and violence of man; but even so it but proves the subjection of matter to the mind of man. All matter without exception is subject to mind, some mind. But in spite of the marring of nature through the transgression of man, nature still mirrors the beneficent character of God, “being understood by the things that are made.” Rom. 1:20. Man seeks to do violence to himself and others and thus degrade creation; but partly obscured through the ravages of sin tho it is, nature still speaks of its divine Author. The visible manifests forth the invisible.