Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/222

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LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Glover called "error." Man is a Spiritual being only, and the world he inhabits is a Spiritual world. The idea that he is a physical body as well as an immortal soul, is an illusion introduced into the world by Adam and strengthened by all the succeeding generations. In this philosophy it is impossible for man to be both spiritual and material. "We are Spirit, Soul, and not body, and all is good that is Spirit." "The parent of all discord is this strange hypothesis, that Soul is in body, and Life in matter." But by one of the contradictions which abound on every page, Mrs. Glover, in accounting for what seems to be the existence of the body, said that even when man shall have attained the realisation that he is Spirit only, his body will still be here but that it will have no sensation: "How are we to escape from flesh, or mortality, except through the change called death? By understanding we never were flesh, that we are Spirit and not matter. When the belief that we inhabit a body is destroyed we shall live, but our body will have no sensation."

To live by this "science" man must clear his mind of all his previous beliefs, and must understand that all he has believed himself to be, is a falsehood, and that his conduct and the conduct of the whole human race from the beginning have been erroneous. He must ignore his physical body and the material things about him, and he must no longer depend upon the laws of nature or of man, but be governed by spiritual law only. "There is no material law that creates or governs man, or that man should obey; obedience to spiritual law is all that God requires, and this law abrogates matter," wrote Mrs. Glover.