ny of the material senses.

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. G