Subject — Substance

5.     Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

6.     In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

7.     Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.

8.     It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.

9.     Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:

10.     So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

1.     Proverbs 8 : 1, 10, 11, 18-21

1     Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?

10     Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold.

11     For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.

18     Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness.

19     My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.

20     I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment:

21     That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.

2.     Matthew 13 : 1-8, 10, 11, 18-23

1     The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.

2     And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.

3     And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

4     And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

5     Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

6     And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

7     And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:

8     But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

10     And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?

11     He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

18     Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower.

19     When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.

20     But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;

21     Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.

22     He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.

23     But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

3.     John 2 : 13-22

13     And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,

14     And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:

15     And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;

16     And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.

17     And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.

18     Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?

19     Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

20     Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?

21     But he spake of the temple of his body.

22     When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.

4.     II Peter 1 : 2-8

2     Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

3     According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

4     Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

5     And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

6     And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;

7     And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

8     For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1.     275 : 14-19

All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God. These are His attributes, the eternal manifestations of the infinite divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows.

2.     468 : 16-24

Question. — What is substance?

Answer. — Substance is that which is eternal and incapable of discord and decay. Truth, Life, and Love are substance, as the Scriptures use this word in Hebrews: "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Spirit, the synonym of Mind, Soul, or God, is the only real substance. The spiritual universe, including individual man, is a compound idea, reflecting the divine substance of Spirit.

3.     272 : 3-18

The spiritual sense of truth must be gained before Truth can be understood. This sense is assimilated only as we are honest, unselfish, loving, and meek. In the soil of an "honest and good heart" the seed must be sown; else it beareth not much fruit, for the swinish element in human nature uproots it. Jesus said: "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures." The spiritual sense of the Scriptures brings out the scientific sense, and is the new tongue referred to in the last chapter of Mark's Gospel.

Jesus' parable of "the sower" shows the care our Master took not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts the spiritual teachings which dulness and grossness could not accept. Reading the thoughts of the people, he said: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."

4.     451 : 8-18

Students of Christian Science, who start with its letter and think to succeed without the spirit, will either make shipwreck of their faith or be turned sadly awry. They must not only seek, but strive, to enter the narrow path of Life, for "wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat." Man walks in the direction towards which he looks, and where his treasure is, there will his heart be also. If our hopes and affections are spiritual, they come from above, not from beneath, and they bear as of old the fruits of the Spirit.

5.     301 : 6-9, 17-29

To himself, mortal and material man seems to be substance, but his sense of substance involves error and therefore is material, temporal.

As God is substance and man is the divine image and likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only the substance of good, the substance of Spirit, not matter. The belief that man has any other substance, or mind, is not spiritual and breaks the First Commandment, Thou shalt have one God, one Mind. Mortal man seems to himself to be material substance, while man is "image" (idea). Delusion, sin, disease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down.

6.     313 : 23-22

Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause. To accommodate himself to immature ideas of spiritual power, — for spirituality was possessed only in a limited degree even by his disciples, — Jesus called the body, which by spiritual power he raised from the grave, "flesh and bones." To show that the substance of himself was Spirit and the body no more perfect because of death and no less material until the ascension (his further spiritual exaltation), Jesus waited until the mortal or fleshly sense had relinquished the belief of substance-matter, and spiritual sense had quenched all earthly yearnings. Thus he found the eternal Ego, and proved that he and the Father were inseparable as God and His reflection or spiritual man. Our Master gained the solution of being, demonstrating the existence of but one Mind without a second or equal.

The Jews, who sought to kill this man of God, showed plainly that their material views were the parents of their wicked deeds. When Jesus spoke of reproducing his body, — knowing, as he did, that Mind was the builder, — and said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," they thought that he meant their material temple instead of his body. To such materialists, the real man seemed a spectre, unseen and unfamiliar, and the body, which they laid in a sepulchre, seemed to be substance. This materialism lost sight of the true Jesus; but the faithful Mary saw him, and he presented to her, more than ever before, the true idea of Life and substance.

7.     270 : 31-5

The life of Christ Jesus was not miraculous, but it was indigenous to his spirituality, — the good soil wherein the seed of Truth springs up and bears much fruit. Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God.

8.     267 : 1-5 (to 1st .)

Every object in material thought will be destroyed, but the spiritual idea, whose substance is in Mind, is eternal. The offspring of God start not from matter or ephemeral dust. They are in and of Spirit, divine Mind, and so forever continue.