Excerpt from Questions and Answers MARY BAKER EDDY          Are material things real when they are harmonious, and do they disappear only to the natural sense? Does this Scripture, "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things," imply that Spirit takes note of matter?          The Science of Mind, as well as the material universe, shows that nothing which is material is in perpetual harmony. Matter is manifest mortal mind, and it exists only to material sense. Real sensation is not material; it is, and must be, mental: and Mind is not mortal, it is immortal. Being is God, infinite Spirit; therefore it cannot cognize aught material, or outside of infinity.          The Scriptural passage quoted affords no evidence of the reality of matter, or that God is conscious of it. The so-called material body is said to suffer, but this supposition is proven erroneous when Mind casts out the suffering. The Scripture saith, "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth;" and again, "He doth not afflict willingly." Interpreted materially, these passages conflict; they mingle the testimony of immortal Science with mortal sense; but once discern their spiritual meaning, and it separates the false sense from the true, and establishes the reality of what is spiritual, and the unreality of materiality.          Law is never material: it is always mental and moral, and a commandment to the wise. The foolish disobey moral law, and are punished. Human wisdom therefore can get no farther than to say, He knoweth that we have need of experience. Belief fulfils the conditions of a belief, and these conditions destroy the belief. Hence the verdict of experience: We have need of these things; we have need to know that the so-called pleasures and pains of matter — yea, that all subjective states of false sensation — are unreal.   Excerpt from "Questions and Answers" Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 72 - 73

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