Soul is Life, and being spiritual Life, never sins.  Material sense is the so-called material life.  Hence this lower sense sins and suffers, according to material belief, till divine understanding takes away this belief and restores Soul, or spiritual Life.  “He restoreth my soul,” says David.

In his first epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45) Paul writes:  “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”  The apostle refers to the second Adam as the Messiah, our blessed Master, whose interpretation of God and His creation—­by restoring the spiritual sense of man as immortal instead of mortal—­made humanity victorious over death and the grave.

When I discovered the power of Spirit to break the cords of matter, through a change in the mortal sense of things, then I discerned the last Adam as a quickening Spirit, and understood the meaning of the declaration of Holy Writ, “The first shall be last,”—­the living Soul shall be found a quickening Spirit; or, rather, shall reflect the Life of the divine Arbiter.

There is no Matter

“God is a Spirit” (or, more accurately translated, “God is Spirit"), declares the Scripture (John iv. 24), “and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

If God is Spirit, and God is All, surely there can be no matter; for the divine All must be Spirit.

The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize thought and action.  The demonstrations of Jesus annulled the claims of matter, and overruled laws material as emphatically as they annihilated sin.

According to Christian Science, the first idolatrous claim of sin is, that matter exists; the second, that matter is substance; the third, that matter has intelligence; and the fourth, that matter, being so endowed, produces life and death.

Hence my conscientious position, in the denial of matter, rests on the fact that matter usurps the authority of God, Spirit; and the nature and character of matter, the antipode of Spirit, include all that denies and defies Spirit, in quantity or quality.

This subject can be enlarged.  It can be shown, in detail, that evil does not obtain in Spirit, God; and that God, or good, is Spirit alone; whereas, evil does, according to belief, obtain in matter; and that evil is a false claim,—­false to God, false to Truth and Life.  Hence the claim of matter usurps the prerogative of God, saying, “I am a creator.  God made me, and I make man and the material universe.”

Spirit is the only creator, and man, including the universe, is His spiritual concept.  By matter is commonly meant mind,—­not the highest Mind, but a false form of mind.  This so-called mind and matter cannot be separated in origin and action.

What is this mind?  It is not the Mind of Spirit; for spiritualization of thought destroys all sense of matter as substance, Life, or intelligence, and enthrones God in the eternal qualities of His being.