Watching Point 269

269 — WATCH lest you feel confused by the fact that at times in her letters and early editions of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy wrote, “You are Spirit.” Although this mode of expression does not appear in the latest editions of her works, nevertheless she never indicated that it was incorrect.

Once a student started an entire offshoot of Christian Science on this statement, and taught the veriest newcomer to declare, “I am God.” He based this teaching on the first edition of the textbook. Yet one of the sentences he used to bolster up his contention, also convicts him of misteaching, when it is quoted in its entirety. “That we are Spirit and Spirit is God, is undeniably true . . . but the shocking audacity that calls itself God and demonstrates only erring mortality surprises us.”

The story goes that once Mrs. Eddy touched Adam Dickey’s hand and asked him what it was. When he declared that it was matter, she said, “No, it is Spirit.” He demurred, but Mrs. Eddy again repeated her assertion. Then he quoted the textbook as saying, “God is Spirit and man is spiritual.” She then said, “Nevertheless, Mr. Dickey, it is Spirit.” Here Mrs. Eddy was proving the faithfulness and consistency of her demonstration, showing that no matter how emphatically the senses testified to the lie that Mr. Dickey was matter, she had made the demonstration to see that he was Spirit. If you viewed a beautiful garden in the bright sunshine, and then got lost in the same garden at night, so that every plant appeared to be some fearful monster, if you touched one, your memory would tell you that it was a lovely bloom, if you could subdue your fear sufficiently to recall this fact.

This vindication of our Leader’s teaching is not intended to encourage a student to adopt this terminology, but merely to reassure students that she was not unscientific in her early statements, even if later a mode of expression that was better adapted to mortal mind’s comprehension was revealed to her.

On August 23,1887, she wrote to Mrs. Emma Thompson, “I trust you are strong and know that there is but one Mind, and that this Mind governs you, permeates your body and brains with Truth, hence there is no room for error to steal in, and matter is not you. You are Spirit, the idea of God, and the Mind that was in Jesus must be in you, for God is All, the outside and inside of Truth and — its ideas.”