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Everything that exists is a substance of some kind. This primary fact should be the basis of all religion and philosophy for the simple reason that anything which is not a substance has no real existence at all or 'exists' only in the mind as an idea. We should make sure that our ideas of life and our ideas of the universe correspond to reality. Substance is the only reality. The term substance means—that of which everything consists; the essence of everything that has a real concrete existence.
There are two main classes of substance in the universe : (1) the living substance (known as the soul-substance) and (2) the non-living substance (known as matter). All the substances that comprise the universe fall into one of these two categories, or are a combination of the two. In other words, these two kinds of substance make up the entire universe. All our knowledge should be based on these essential facts, otherwise we shall have to bear the liability to delusion, arising from false knowledge, i.e., ideas that have no correspondence to reality.
All substance, both living and non-living is eternal, non-created, without beginning and without end.
It is rather difficult at first, to form a conception of everything being eternal and without any kind of beginning or ending. Eternity means permanence ; and do we not see evidence all around us of continual change? What we perceive as always changing, however, are compounds; and compounds are combinations of two or more substances. The simple, indivisible substances are changeless and permanent. The elements of matter, for instance, are scientifically known to be indestructible. Anything incapable of being destroyed is permanent and without beginning. This attribute is common to all substances, both living and non-living.
For the benefit of those who says that this does not appeal to their reason, a brief outline will be given of the general philosophic reasoning which supports the teaching that all substances are eternal.
Anything which has a real, concrete existence (i.e., substance) cannot suddenly or gradually appear from non-existence. Non-existence is a term meaning nothing whatsoever, therefore non-existence is always and continually nothing. If there was ever a time when substances were non-existent, there would still be no substance and no universe. Even a supposed Supreme Being cannot be deemed to break
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