|
Science and
Health
with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter 10
— Science of
Being
That which was from the
beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon, and
our hands have handled, of the
Word of life, . . . That which we
have seen and heard declare we
unto you, that ye also may have
fellowship with us: and truly our
fellowship is with the Father,
and with His Son Jesus
Christ.
— JOHN, First
Epistle.
Here I stand. I can do no
otherwise; so help me God!
Amen!
— MARTIN
LUTHER.
In the material world, thought
has brought to light with great
rapidity many useful wonders.
With like activity have thought's
swift pinions been rising towards
the realm of the real, to the
spiritual cause of those lower
things which give impulse to
inquiry. Belief in a material
basis, from which may be deduced
all rationality, is slowly
yielding to the idea of a
metaphysical basis, looking away
from matter to Mind as the cause
of every effect. Materialistic
hypotheses challenge metaphysics
to meet in final combat. In this
revolutionary period, like the
shepherd-boy with his sling,
woman goes forth to battle with
Goliath.
In this final struggle for
supremacy, semi-metaphysical
systems afford no substantial aid
to scientific metaphysics, for
their arguments are based on the
false testimony of the material
senses as well as on the facts of
Mind. These semi-metaphysical
systems are one and all
pantheistic, and savor of
Pandemonium, a house divided
against itself.
From first to last the
supposed coexistence of Mind and
matter and the mingling of good
and evil have resulted from the
philosophy of the serpent. Jesus'
demonstrations sift the chaff
from the wheat, and unfold the
unity and the reality of good,
the unreality, the nothingness,
of evil.
Human philosophy has made God
manlike. Christian Science makes
man Godlike. The first is error;
the latter is truth. Metaphysics
is above physics, and matter does
not enter into metaphysical
premises or conclusions. The
categories of metaphysics rest on
one basis, the divine Mind.
Metaphysics resolves things into
thoughts, and exchanges the
objects of sense for the ideas of
Soul.
These ideas are perfectly real
and tangible to spiritual
consciousness, and they have this
advantage over the objects and
thoughts of material sense,
— they are good and
eternal.
The testimony of the material
senses is neither absolute nor
divine. I therefore plant myself
unreservedly on the teachings of
Jesus, of his apostles, of the
prophets, and on the testimony of
the Science of Mind. Other
foundations there are none. All
other systems — systems
based wholly or partly on
knowledge gained through the
material senses — are reeds
shaken by the wind, not houses
built on the rock.
The theories I combat are
these: (1) that all is matter;
(2) that matter originates in
Mind, and is as real as Mind,
possessing intelligence and life.
The first theory, that matter is
everything, is quite as
reasonable as the second, that
Mind and matter coexist and
cooperate. One only of the
following statements can be true:
(1) that everything is matter;
(2) that everything is Mind.
Which one is it?
Matter and Mind are opposites.
One is contrary to the other in
its very nature and essence;
hence both cannot be real. If one
is real, the other must be
unreal. Only by understanding
that there is but one power,
— not two powers, matter and
Mind, — are scientific and
logical conclusions reached. Few
deny the hypothesis that
intelligence, apart from man and
matter, governs the universe; and
it is generally admitted that
this intelligence is the eternal
Mind or divine Principle,
Love.
The prophets of old looked for
something higher than the systems
of their times; hence their
foresight of the new dispensation
of Truth. But they knew not what
would be the precise nature of
the teaching and demonstration of
God, divine Mind, in His more
infinite meanings, — the
demonstration which was to
destroy sin, sickness, and death,
establish the definition of
omnipotence, and maintain the
Science of Spirit.
The pride of priesthood is the
prince of this world. It has
nothing in Christ. Meekness and
charity have divine authority.
Mortals think wickedly;
consequently they are wicked.
They think sickly thoughts, and
so become sick. If sin makes
sinners, Truth and Love alone can
unmake them. If a sense of
disease produces suffering and a
sense of ease antidotes
suffering, disease is mental, not
material. Hence the fact that the
human mind alone suffers, is
sick, and that the divine Mind
alone heals.
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.
Neither emasculation, illusion,
nor insubordination exists in
divine Science.
Jesus instructed his disciples
whereby to heal the sick through
Mind instead of matter. He knew
that the philosophy, Science, and
proof of Christianity were in
Truth, casting out all
inharmony.
In Latin the word rendered
disciple signifies
student; and the word indicates
that the power of healing was not
a supernatural gift to those
learners, but the result of their
cultivated spiritual
understanding of the divine
Science, which their Master
demonstrated by healing the sick
and sinning. Hence the universal
application of his saying:
"Neither pray I for these alone,
but for them also which shall
believe on me [understand
me] through their word."
Our Master said, "But the
Comforter . . . shall teach you
all things." When the Science of
Christianity appears, it will
lead you into all truth. The
Sermon on the Mount is the
essence of this Science, and the
eternal life, not the death of
Jesus, is its outcome.
Those, who are willing to
leave their nets or to cast them
on the right side for Truth, have
the opportunity now, as
aforetime, to learn and to
practise Christian healing. The
Scriptures contain it. The
spiritual import of the Word
imparts this power. But, as Paul
says, "How shall they hear
without a preacher? and how shall
they preach, except they be
sent?" If sent, how shall they
preach, convert, and heal
multitudes, except the people
hear?
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."
It is the spiritualization of
thought and Christianization of
daily life, in contrast with the
results of the ghastly farce of
material existence; it is
chastity and purity, in contrast
with the downward tendencies and
earthward gravitation of
sensualism and impurity, which
really attest the divine origin
and operation of Christian
Science. The triumphs of
Christian Science are recorded in
the destruction of error and
evil, from which are propagated
the dismal beliefs of sin,
sickness, and death.
The divine Principle of the
universe must interpret the
universe. God is the divine
Principle of all that represents
Him and of all that really
exists. Christian Science, as
demonstrated by Jesus, alone
reveals the natural, divine
Principle of Science.
Matter and its claims of sin,
sickness, and death are contrary
to God, and cannot emanate from
Him. There is no material
truth. The physical senses can
take no cognizance of God and
spiritual Truth. Human belief has
sought out many inventions, but
not one of them can solve the
problem of being without the
divine Principle of divine
Science. Deductions from material
hypotheses are not scientific.
They differ from real Science
because they are not based on the
divine law.
Divine Science reverses the
false testimony of the material
senses, and thus tears away the
foundations of error. Hence the
enmity between Science and the
senses, and the impossibility of
attaining perfect understanding
till the errors of sense are
eliminated.
The so-called laws of matter
and of medical science have never
made mortals whole, harmonious,
and immortal. Man is harmonious
when governed by Soul. Hence the
importance of understanding the
truth of being, which reveals the
laws of spiritual existence.
God never ordained a material
law to annul the spiritual law.
If there were such a material
law, it would oppose the
supremacy of Spirit, God, and
impugn the wisdom of the creator.
Jesus walked on the waves, fed
the multitude, healed the sick,
and raised the dead in direct
opposition to material laws. His
acts were the demonstration of
Science, overcoming the false
claims of material sense or
law.
Science shows that material,
conflicting mortal opinions and
beliefs emit the effects of error
at all times, but this atmosphere
of mortal mind cannot be
destructive to morals and health
when it is opposed promptly and
persistently by Christian
Science. Truth and Love antidote
this mental miasma, and thus
invigorate and sustain existence.
Unnecessary knowledge gained from
the five senses is only temporal,
— the conception of mortal
mind, the offspring of sense, not
of Soul, Spirit, — and
symbolizes all that is evil and
perishable. Natural
science, as it is commonly
called, is not really natural nor
scientific, because it is deduced
from the evidence of the material
senses. Ideas, on the contrary,
are born of Spirit, and are not
mere inferences drawn from
material premises.
The senses of Spirit abide in
Love, and they demonstrate Truth
and Life. Hence Christianity and
the Science which expounds it are
based on spiritual understanding,
and they supersede the so-called
laws of matter. Jesus
demonstrated this great verity.
When what we erroneously term the
five physical senses are
misdirected, they are simply the
manifested beliefs of mortal
mind, which affirm that life,
substance, and intelligence are
material, instead of spiritual.
These false beliefs and their
products constitute the flesh,
and the flesh wars against
Spirit.
Divine Science is absolute,
and permits no half-way position
in learning its Principle and
rule — establishing it by
demonstration. The conventional
firm, called matter and mind, God
never formed. Science and
understanding, governed by the
unerring and eternal Mind,
destroy the imaginary
copartnership, matter and mind,
formed only to be destroyed in a
manner and at a period as yet
unknown. This suppositional
partnership is already obsolete,
for matter, examined in the light
of divine metaphysics,
disappears.
Matter has no life to lose,
and Spirit never dies. A
partnership of mind with matter
would ignore omnipresent and
omnipotent Mind. This shows that
matter did not originate in God,
Spirit, and is not eternal.
Therefore matter is neither
substantial, living, nor
intelligent. The starting-point
of divine Science is that God,
Spirit, is All-in-all, and that
there is no other might nor Mind,
— that God is Love, and
therefore He is divine
Principle.
To grasp the reality and order
of being in its Science, you must
begin by reckoning God as the
divine Principle of all that
really is. Spirit, Life, Truth,
Love, combine as one, — and
are the Scriptural names for God.
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.
Divine metaphysics, as
revealed to spiritual
understanding, shows clearly that
all is Mind, and that Mind is
God, omnipotence, omnipresence,
omniscience, — that is, all
power, all presence, all Science.
Hence all is in reality the
manifestation of Mind.
Our material human theories
are destitute of Science. The
true understanding of God is
spiritual. It robs the grave of
victory. It destroys the false
evidence that misleads thought
and points to other gods, or
other so-called powers, such as
matter, disease, sin, and death,
superior or contrary to the one
Spirit.
Truth, spiritually discerned,
is scientifically understood. It
casts out error and heals the
sick.
Having one God, one Mind,
unfolds the power that heals the
sick, and fulfils these sayings
of Scripture, "I am the Lord that
healeth thee," and "I have found
a ransom." When the divine
precepts are understood, they
unfold the foundation of
fellowship, in which one mind is
not at war with another, but all
have one Spirit, God, one
intelligent source, in accordance
with the Scriptural command: "Let
this Mind be in you, which was
also in Christ Jesus." Man and
his Maker are correlated in
divine Science, and real
consciousness is cognizant only
of the things of God.
The realization that all
inharmony is unreal brings
objects and thoughts into human
view in their true light, and
presents them as beautiful and
immortal. Harmony in man is as
real and immortal as in music.
Discord is unreal and mortal.
If God is admitted to be the
only Mind and Life, there ceases
to be any opportunity for sin and
death. When we learn in Science
how to be perfect even as our
Father in heaven is perfect,
thought is turned into new and
healthy channels, — towards
the contemplation of things
immortal and away from
materiality to the Principle of
the universe, including
harmonious man.
Material beliefs and spiritual
understanding never mingle. The
latter destroys the former.
Discord is the nothingness
named error. Harmony is the
somethingness named
Truth.
Nature and revelation inform
us that like produces like.
Divine Science does not gather
grapes from thorns nor figs from
thistles. Intelligence never
produces non-intelligence; but
matter is ever non-intelligent
and therefore cannot spring from
intelligence. To all that is
unlike unerring and eternal Mind,
this Mind saith, "Thou shalt
surely die;" and elsewhere the
Scripture says that dust returns
to dust. The non-intelligent
relapses into its own unreality.
Matter never produces mind. The
immortal never produces the
mortal. Good cannot result in
evil. As God Himself is good and
is Spirit, goodness and
spirituality must be immortal.
Their opposites, evil and matter,
are mortal error, and error has
no creator. If goodness and
spirituality are real, evil and
materiality are unreal and cannot
be the outcome of an infinite
God, good.
Natural history presents
vegetables and animals as
preserving their original
species, — like reproducing
like. A mineral is not produced
by a vegetable nor the man by the
brute. In reproduction, the order
of genus and species is preserved
throughout the entire round of
nature. This points to the
spiritual truth and Science of
being. Error relies upon a
reversal of this order, asserts
that Spirit produces matter and
matter produces all the ills of
flesh, and therefore that good is
the origin of evil. These
suppositions contradict even the
order of material so-called
science.
The realm of the real is
Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit
is matter, and the opposite of
the real is not divine, — it
is a human concept. Matter is an
error of statement. This error in
the premise leads to errors in
the conclusion in every statement
into which it enters. Nothing we
can say or believe regarding
matter is immortal, for matter is
temporal and is therefore a
mortal phenomenon, a human
concept, sometimes beautiful,
always erroneous.
Is Spirit the source or
creator of matter? Science
reveals nothing in Spirit out of
which to create matter. Divine
metaphysics explains away matter.
Spirit is the only substance and
consciousness recognized by
divine Science. The material
senses oppose this, but there are
no material senses, for matter
has no mind. In Spirit there is
no matter, even as in Truth there
is no error, and in good no evil.
It is a false supposition, the
notion that there is real
substance-matter, the opposite of
Spirit. Spirit, God, is infinite,
all. Spirit can have no
opposite.
That matter is substantial or
has life and sensation, is one of
the false beliefs of mortals, and
exists only in a supposititious
mortal consciousness. Hence, as
we approach Spirit and Truth, we
lose the consciousness of matter.
The admission that there can be
material substance requires
another admission, — namely,
that Spirit is not infinite and
that matter is self-creative,
self-existent, and eternal. From
this it would follow that there
are two eternal causes, warring
forever with each other; and yet
we say that Spirit is supreme and
all-presence.
The belief of the eternity of
matter contradicts the
demonstration of life as Spirit,
and leads to the conclusion that
if man is material, he originated
in matter and must return to
dust, — logic which would
prove his annihilation.
All that we term sin,
sickness, and death is a mortal
belief. We define matter as
error, because it is the opposite
of life, substance, and
intelligence. Matter, with its
mortality, cannot be substantial
if Spirit is substantial and
eternal. Which ought to be
substance to us, — the
erring, changing, and dying, the
mutable and mortal, or the
unerring, immutable, and
immortal? A New Testament writer
plainly describes faith, a
quality of mind, as "the
substance of things hoped
for."
The doom of matter establishes
the conclusion that matter,
slime, or protoplasm never
originated in the immortal Mind,
and is therefore not eternal.
Matter is neither created by Mind
nor for the manifestation and
support of Mind.
Ideas are tangible and real to
immortal consciousness, and they
have the advantage of being
eternal. Spirit and matter can
neither coexist nor cooperate,
and one can no more create the
other than Truth can create
error, or vice versa.
In proportion as the belief
disappears that life and
intelligence are in or of matter,
the immortal facts of being are
seen, and their only idea or
intelligence is in God. Spirit is
reached only through the
understanding and demonstration
of eternal Life and Truth and
Love.
Every system of human
philosophy, doctrine, and
medicine is more or less infected
with the pantheistic belief that
there is mind in matter; but this
belief contradicts alike
revelation and right reasoning. A
logical and scientific conclusion
is reached only through the
knowledge that there are not two
bases of being, matter and mind,
but one alone, — Mind.
Pantheism, starting from a
material sense of God, seeks
cause in effect, Principle in its
idea, and life and intelligence
in matter.
In the infinitude of Mind,
matter must be unknown. Symbols
and elements of discord and decay
are not products of the infinite,
perfect, and eternal All.
From Love and from the light and
harmony which are the abode of
Spirit, only reflections of good
can come. All things beautiful
and harmless are ideas of Mind.
Mind creates and multiplies them,
and the product must be
mental.
Finite belief can never do
justice to Truth in any
direction. Finite belief limits
all things, and would compress
Mind, which is infinite, beneath
a skull bone. Such belief can
neither apprehend nor worship the
infinite; and to accommodate its
finite sense of the divisibility
of Soul and substance, it seeks
to divide the one Spirit into
persons and souls.
Through this error, human
belief comes to have "gods many
and lords many." Moses declared
as Jehovah's first command of the
Ten: "Thou shalt have no other
gods before me!" But behold the
zeal of belief to establish the
opposite error of many minds. The
argument of the serpent in the
allegory, "Ye shall be as gods,"
urges through every avenue the
belief that Soul is in body, and
that infinite Spirit, and Life,
is in finite forms.
Rightly understood, instead of
possessing a sentient material
form, man has a sensationless
body; and God, the Soul of man
and of all existence, being
perpetual in His own
individuality, harmony, and
immortality, imparts and
perpetuates these qualities in
man, — through Mind, not
matter. The only excuse for
entertaining human opinions and
rejecting the Science of being is
our mortal ignorance of Spirit,
— ignorance which yields
only to the understanding of
divine Science, the understanding
by which we enter into the
kingdom of Truth on earth and
learn that Spirit is infinite and
supreme. Spirit and matter no
more commingle than light and
darkness. When one appears, the
other disappears.
Error presupposes man to be
both mind and matter. Divine
Science contradicts the corporeal
senses, rebukes mortal belief,
and asks: What is the Ego, whence
its origin and what its destiny?
The Ego-man is the reflection of
the Ego-God; the Ego-man is the
image and likeness of perfect
Mind, Spirit, divine
Principle.
The one Ego, the one Mind or
Spirit called God, is infinite
individuality, which supplies all
form and comeliness and which
reflects reality and divinity in
individual spiritual man and
things.
The mind supposed to exist in
matter or beneath a skull bone is
a myth, a misconceived sense and
false conception as to man and
Mind. When we put off the false
sense for the true, and see that
sin and mortality have neither
Principle nor permanency, we
shall learn that sin and
mortality are without actual
origin or rightful existence.
They are native nothingness, out
of which error would simulate
creation through a man formed
from dust.
Divine Science does not put
new wine into old bottles, Soul
into matter, nor the infinite
into the finite. Our false views
of matter perish as we grasp the
facts of Spirit. The old belief
must be cast out or the new idea
will be spilled, and the
inspiration, which is to change
our standpoint, will be lost.
Now, as of old, Truth casts out
evils and heals the sick.
The real Life, or Mind, and
its opposite, the so-called
material life and mind, are
figured by two geometrical
symbols, a circle or sphere and a
straight line. The circle
represents the infinite without
beginning or end; the straight
line represents the finite, which
has both beginning and end. The
sphere represents good, the
self-existent and eternal
individuality or Mind; the
straight line represents evil, a
belief in a self-made and
temporary material existence.
Eternal Mind and temporary
material existence never unite in
figure or in fact.
A straight line finds no
abiding-place in a curve, and a
curve finds no adjustment to a
straight line. Similarly, matter
has no place in Spirit, and
Spirit has no place in matter.
Truth has no home in error, and
error has no foothold in Truth.
Mind cannot pass into
non-intelligence and matter, nor
can non-intelligence become Soul.
At no point can these opposites
mingle or unite. Even though they
seem to touch, one is still a
curve and the other a straight
line.
There is no inherent power in
matter; for all that is material
is a material, human, mortal
thought, always governing itself
erroneously.
Truth is the intelligence of
immortal Mind. Error is the
so-called intelligence of mortal
mind.
Whatever indicates the fall of
man or the opposite of God or
God's absence, is the Adam-dream,
which is neither Mind nor man,
for it is not begotten of the
Father. The rule of inversion
infers from error its opposite,
Truth; but Truth is the light
which dispels error. As mortals
begin to understand Spirit, they
give up the belief that there is
any true existence apart from
God.
Mind is the source of all
movement, and there is no inertia
to retard or check its perpetual
and harmonious action. Mind is
the same Life, Love, and wisdom
"yesterday, and to-day, and
forever." Matter and its effects
— sin, sickness, and death
— are states of mortal mind
which act, react, and then come
to a stop. They are not facts of
Mind. They are not ideas, but
illusions. Principle is absolute.
It admits of no error, but rests
upon understanding.
But what say prevalent
theories? They insist that Life,
or God, is one and the same with
material life so-called. They
speak of both Truth and error as
mind, and of good and evil
as spirit. They claim that
to be life which is but the
objective state of material
sense, — such as the
structural life of the tree and
of material man, — and deem
this the manifestation of the one
Life, God.
This false belief as to what
really constitutes life so
detracts from God's character and
nature, that the true sense of
His power is lost to all who
cling to this falsity. The divine
Principle, or Life, cannot be
practically demonstrated in
length of days, as it was by the
patriarchs, unless its Science be
accurately stated. We must
receive the divine Principle in
the understanding, and live it in
daily life; and unless we so do,
we can no more demonstrate
Science, than we can teach and
illustrate geometry by calling a
curve a straight line or a
straight line a sphere.
Are mentality, immortality,
consciousness, resident in
matter? It is not rational to say
that Mind is infinite, but dwells
in finiteness, — in matter,
— or that matter is infinite
and the medium of Mind.
If God were limited to man or
matter, or if the infinite could
be circumscribed within the
finite, God would be corporeal,
and unlimited Mind would seem to
spring from a limited body; but
this is an impossibility.
Infinite Mind can have no
starting-point, and can return to
no limit. It can never be in
bonds, nor be fully manifested
through corporeality.
Is God's image or likeness
matter, or a mortal, sin,
sickness, and death? Can matter
recognize Mind? Can infinite Mind
recognize matter? Can the
infinite dwell in the finite or
know aught unlike the infinite?
Can Deity be known through the
material senses? Can the material
senses, which receive no direct
evidence of Spirit, give correct
testimony as to spiritual life,
truth, and love?
The answer to all these
questions must forever be in the
negative.
The physical senses can obtain
no proof of God. They can neither
see Spirit through the eye nor
hear it through the ear, nor can
they feel, taste, or smell
Spirit. Even the more subtile and
misnamed material elements are
beyond the cognizance of these
senses, and are known only by the
effects commonly attributed to
them.
According to Christian
Science, the only real senses of
man are spiritual, emanating from
divine Mind. Thought passes from
God to man, but neither sensation
nor report goes from material
body to Mind. The
intercommunication is always from
God to His idea, man. Matter is
not sentient and cannot be
cognizant of good or of evil, of
pleasure or of pain. Man's
individuality is not material.
This Science of being obtains not
alone hereafter in what men call
Paradise, but here and now; it is
the great fact of being for time
and eternity.
What, then, is the material
personality which suffers, sins,
and dies? It is not man, the
image and likeness of God, but
man's counterfeit, the inverted
likeness, the unlikeness
called sin, sickness, and death.
The unreality of the claim that a
mortal is the true image of God
is illustrated by the opposite
natures of Spirit and matter,
Mind and body, for one is
intelligence while the other is
non-intelligence.
Is God a physical personality?
Spirit is not physical. The
belief that a material body is
man is a false conception of man.
The time has come for a finite
conception of the infinite and of
a material body as the seat of
Mind to give place to a diviner
sense of intelligence and its
manifestations, — to the
better understanding that Science
gives of the Supreme Being, or
divine Principle, and idea.
By interpreting God as a
corporeal Saviour but not as the
saving Principle, or divine Love,
we shall continue to seek
salvation through pardon and not
through reform, and resort to
matter instead of Spirit for the
cure of the sick. As mortals
reach, through knowledge of
Christian Science, a higher
sense, they will seek to learn,
not from matter, but from the
divine Principle, God, how to
demonstrate the Christ, Truth, as
the healing and saving power.
It is essential to understand,
instead of believe, what relates
most nearly to the happiness of
being. To seek Truth through
belief in a human doctrine is not
to understand the infinite. We
must not seek the immutable and
immortal through the finite,
mutable, and mortal, and so
depend upon belief instead of
demonstration, for this is fatal
to a knowledge of Science. The
understanding of Truth gives full
faith in Truth, and spiritual
understanding is better than all
burnt offerings.
The Master said, "No man
cometh unto the Father [the
divine Principle of being]
but by me," Christ, Life, Truth,
Love; for Christ says, "I am the
way." Physical causation was put
aside from first to last by this
original man, Jesus. He knew that
the divine Principle, Love,
creates and governs all that is
real.
In the Saxon and twenty other
tongues good is the term
for God. The Scriptures declare
all that He made to be good, like
Himself, — good in Principle
and in idea. Therefore the
spiritual universe is good, and
reflects God as He is.
God's thoughts are perfect and
eternal, are substance and Life.
Material and temporal thoughts
are human, involving error, and
since God, Spirit, is the only
cause, they lack a divine cause.
The temporal and material are not
then creations of Spirit. They
are but counterfeits of the
spiritual and eternal. Transitory
thoughts are the antipodes of
everlasting Truth, though (by the
supposition of opposite
qualities) error must also say,
"I am true." But by this saying
error, the lie, destroys
itself.
Sin, sickness, and death are
comprised in human material
belief, and belong not to the
divine Mind. They are without a
real origin or existence. They
have neither Principle nor
permanence, but belong, with all
that is material and temporal, to
the nothingness of error, which
simulates the creations of Truth.
All creations of Spirit are
eternal; but creations of matter
must return to dust. Error
supposes man to be both mental
and material. Divine Science
contradicts this postulate and
maintains man's spiritual
identity.
We call the absence of Truth,
error. Truth and error are
unlike. In Science, Truth is
divine, and the infinite
God can have no unlikeness. Did
God, Truth, create error? No!
"Doth a fountain send forth at
the same place sweet water and
bitter?" God being everywhere and
all-inclusive, how can He be
absent or suggest the absence of
omnipresence and omnipotence? How
can there be more than
all?
Neither understanding nor
truth accompanies error, nor is
error the offshoot of Mind. Evil
calls itself something, when it
is nothing. It saith, "I am man,
but I am not the image and
likeness of God;" whereas the
Scriptures declare that man was
made in God's likeness.
Error is false, mortal belief;
it is illusion, without spiritual
identity or foundation, and it
has no real existence. The
supposition that life, substance,
and intelligence are in
matter, or of it, is an
error. Matter is neither a thing
nor a person, but merely the
objective supposition of Spirit's
opposite. The five material
senses testify to truth and error
as united in a mind both good and
evil. Their false evidence will
finally yield to Truth, — to
the recognition of Spirit and of
the spiritual creation.
Truth cannot be contaminated
by error. The statement that
Truth is real necessarily
includes the correlated
statement, that error, Truth's
unlikeness, is unreal.
The suppositional warfare
between truth and error is only
the mental conflict between the
evidence of the spiritual senses
and the testimony of the material
senses, and this warfare between
the Spirit and flesh will settle
all questions through faith in
and the understanding of divine
Love.
Superstition and understanding
can never combine. When the final
physical and moral effects of
Christian Science are fully
apprehended, the conflict between
truth and error, understanding
and belief, Science and material
sense, foreshadowed by the
prophets and inaugurated by
Jesus, will cease, and spiritual
harmony reign. The lightnings and
thunderbolts of error may burst
and flash till the cloud is
cleared and the tumult dies away
in the distance. Then the
raindrops of divinity refresh the
earth. As St. Paul says: "There
remaineth therefore a rest to the
people of God" (of Spirit).
The chief stones in the temple
of Christian Science are to be
found in the following
postulates: that Life is God,
good, and not evil; that Soul is
sinless, not to be found in the
body; that Spirit is not, and
cannot be, materialized; that
Life is not subject to death;
that the spiritual real man has
no birth, no material life, and
no death.
Science reveals the glorious
possibilities of immortal man,
forever unlimited by the mortal
senses. The Christ-element in the
Messiah made him the Way-shower,
Truth and Life.
The eternal Truth destroys
what mortals seem to have learned
from error, and man's real
existence as a child of God comes
to light. Truth demonstrated is
eternal life. Mortal man can
never rise from the temporal
debris of error, belief in
sin, sickness, and death, until
he learns that God is the only
Life. The belief that life and
sensation are in the body should
be overcome by the understanding
of what constitutes man as the
image of God. Then Spirit will
have overcome the flesh.
A wicked mortal is not the
idea of God. He is little else
than the expression of error. To
suppose that sin, lust, hatred,
envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have
life abiding in them, is a
terrible mistake. Life and Life's
idea, Truth and Truth's idea,
never make men sick, sinful, or
mortal.
The fact that the Christ, or
Truth, overcame and still
overcomes death proves the "king
of terrors" to be but a mortal
belief, or error, which Truth
destroys with the spiritual
evidences of Life; and this shows
that what appears to the senses
to be death is but a mortal
illusion, for to the real man and
the real universe there is no
death-process.
The belief that matter has
life results, by the universal
law of mortal mind, in a belief
in death. So man, tree, and
flower are supposed to die; but
the fact remains, that God's
universe is spiritual and
immortal.
The spiritual fact and the
material belief of things are
contradictions; but the spiritual
is true, and therefore the
material must be untrue. Life is
not in matter. Therefore it
cannot be said to pass out of
matter. Matter and death are
mortal illusions. Spirit and all
things spiritual are the real and
eternal.
Man is not the offspring of
flesh, but of Spirit, — of
Life, not of matter. Because Life
is God, Life must be eternal,
self-existent. Life is the
everlasting I AM, the Being who
was and is and shall be, whom
nothing can erase.
If the Principle, rule, and
demonstration of man's being are
not in the least understood
before what is termed death
overtakes mortals, they will rise
no higher spiritually in the
scale of existence on account of
that single experience, but will
remain as material as before the
transition, still seeking
happiness through a material,
instead of through a spiritual
sense of life, and from selfish
and inferior motives. That Life
or Mind is finite and physical or
is manifested through brain and
nerves, is false. Hence Truth
comes to destroy this error and
its effects, — sickness,
sin, and death. To the spiritual
class, relates the Scripture: "On
such the second death hath no
power."
If the change called
death destroyed the belief
in sin, sickness, and death,
happiness would be won at the
moment of dissolution, and be
forever permanent; but this is
not so. Perfection is gained only
by perfection. They who are
unrighteous shall be unrighteous
still, until in divine Science
Christ, Truth, removes all
ignorance and sin.
The sin and error which
possess us at the instant of
death do not cease at that
moment, but endure until the
death of these errors. To be
wholly spiritual, man must be
sinless, and he becomes thus only
when he reaches perfection. The
murderer, though slain in the
act, does not thereby forsake
sin. He is no more spiritual for
believing that his body died and
learning that his cruel mind died
not. His thoughts are no purer
until evil is disarmed by good.
His body is as material as his
mind, and vice versa.
The suppositions that sin is
pardoned while unforsaken, that
happiness can be genuine in the
midst of sin, that the so-called
death of the body frees from sin,
and that God's pardon is aught
but the destruction of sin,
— these are grave mistakes.
We know that all will be changed
"in the twinkling of an eye,"
when the last trump shall sound;
but this last call of wisdom
cannot come till mortals have
already yielded to each lesser
call in the growth of Christian
character. Mortals need not fancy
that belief in the experience of
death will awaken them to
glorified being.
Universal salvation rests on
progression and probation, and is
unattainable without them. Heaven
is not a locality, but a divine
state of Mind in which all the
manifestations of Mind are
harmonious and immortal, because
sin is not there and man is found
having no righteousness of his
own, but in possession of "the
mind of the Lord," as the
Scripture says.
"In the place where the tree
falleth, there it shall be." So
we read in Ecclesiastes. This
text has been transformed into
the popular proverb, "As the tree
falls, so it must lie." As man
falleth asleep, so shall he
awake. As death findeth mortal
man, so shall he be after death,
until probation and growth shall
effect the needed change. Mind
never becomes dust. No
resurrection from the grave
awaits Mind or Life, for the
grave has no power over
either.
No final judgment awaits
mortals, for the judgment-day of
wisdom comes hourly and
continually, even the judgment by
which mortal man is divested of
all material error. As for
spiritual error there is
none.
When the last mortal fault is
destroyed, then the final trump
will sound which will end the
battle of Truth with error and
mortality; "but of that day and
hour, knoweth no man." Here
prophecy pauses. Divine Science
alone can compass the heights and
depths of being and reveal the
infinite.
Truth will be to us "the
resurrection and the life" only
as it destroys all error and the
belief that Mind, the only
immortality of man, can be
fettered by the body, and Life be
controlled by death. A sinful,
sick, and dying mortal is not the
likeness of God, the perfect and
eternal.
Matter is the primitive belief
of mortal mind, because this
so-called mind has no cognizance
of Spirit. To mortal mind, matter
is substantial, and evil is real.
The so-called senses of mortals
are material. Hence the so-called
life of mortals is dependent on
matter.
Explaining the origin of
material man and mortal mind,
Jesus said: "Why do ye not
understand my speech? Even
because ye cannot hear my word.
Ye are of your father, the devil
[evil], and the lusts of
your father ye will do. He was a
murderer from the beginning, and
abode not in the truth, because
there is no truth in him. When he
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of
his own: for he is a liar, and
the father of it."
This carnal material
mentality, misnamed mind,
is mortal. Therefore man would be
annihilated, were it not for the
spiritual real man's indissoluble
connection with his God, which
Jesus brought to light. In his
resurrection and ascension, Jesus
showed that a mortal man is not
the real essence of manhood, and
that this unreal material
mortality disappears in presence
of the reality.
Electricity is not a vital
fluid, but the least material
form of illusive consciousness,
— the material mindlessness,
which forms no link between
matter and Mind, and which
destroys itself. Matter and
mortal mind are but different
strata of human belief. The
grosser substratum is named
matter or body; the more ethereal
is called mind. This so-called
mind and body is the illusion
called a mortal, a mind in
matter. In reality and in
Science, both strata, mortal mind
and mortal body, are false
representatives of man.
The material so-called gases
and forces are counterfeits of
the spiritual forces of divine
Mind, whose potency is Truth,
whose attraction is Love, whose
adhesion and cohesion are Life,
perpetuating the eternal facts of
being. Electricity is the sharp
surplus of materiality which
counterfeits the true essence of
spirituality or truth, — the
great difference being that
electricity is not intelligent,
while spiritual truth is
Mind.
There is no vapid fury of
mortal mind — expressed in
earthquake, wind, wave,
lightning, fire, bestial ferocity
— and this so-called mind is
self-destroyed. The
manifestations of evil, which
counterfeit divine justice, are
called in the Scriptures, "The
anger of the Lord." In reality,
they show the self-destruction of
error or matter and point to
matter's opposite, the strength
and permanency of Spirit.
Christian Science brings to light
Truth and its supremacy,
universal harmony, the entireness
of God, good, and the nothingness
of evil.
The five physical senses are
the avenues and instruments of
human error, and they correspond
with error. These senses indicate
the common human belief, that
life, substance, and intelligence
are a unison of matter with
Spirit. This is pantheism, and
carries within itself the seeds
of all error.
If man is both mind and
matter, the loss of one finger
would take away some quality and
quantity of the man, for matter
and man would be one.
The belief that matter thinks,
sees, or feels is not more real
than the belief that matter
enjoys and suffers. This mortal
belief, misnamed man, is
error, saying: "Matter has
intelligence and sensation.
Nerves feel. Brain thinks and
sins. The stomach can make a man
cross. Injury can cripple and
matter can kill man." This
verdict of the so-called material
senses victimizes mortals,
taught, as they are by physiology
and pathology, to revere false
testimony, even the errors that
are destroyed by Truth through
spiritual sense and Science.
The lines of demarcation
between immortal man,
representing Spirit, and mortal
man, representing the error that
life and intelligence are in
matter, show the pleasures and
pains of matter to be myths, and
human belief in them to be the
father of mythology, in which
matter is represented as divided
into intelligent gods. Man's
genuine selfhood is recognizable
only in what is good and true.
Man is neither self-made nor made
by mortals. God created man.
The inebriate believes that
there is pleasure in
intoxication. The thief believes
that he gains something by
stealing, and the hypocrite that
he is hiding himself. The Science
of Mind corrects such mistakes,
for Truth demonstrates the
falsity of error.
The belief that a severed limb
is aching in the old location,
the sensation seeming to be in
nerves which are no longer there,
is an added proof of the
unreliability of physical
testimony.
God creates and governs the
universe, including man. The
universe is filled with spiritual
ideas, which He evolves, and they
are obedient to the Mind that
makes them. Mortal mind would
transform the spiritual into the
material, and then recover man's
original self in order to escape
from the mortality of this error.
Mortals are not like immortals,
created in God's own image; but
infinite Spirit being all, mortal
consciousness will at last yield
to the scientific fact and
disappear, and the real sense of
being, perfect and forever
intact, will appear.
The manifestation of God
through mortals is as light
passing through the window-pane.
The light and the glass never
mingle, but as matter, the glass
is less opaque than the walls.
The mortal mind through which
Truth appears most vividly is
that one which has lost much
materiality — much error
— in order to become a
better transparency for Truth.
Then, like a cloud melting into
thin vapor, it no longer hides
the sun.
All that is called mortal
thought is made up of error. The
theoretical mind is matter, named
brain, or material
consciousness, the exact
opposite of real Mind, or Spirit.
Brainology teaches that mortals
are created to suffer and die. It
further teaches that when man is
dead, his immortal soul is
resurrected from death and
mortality. Thus error theorizes
that spirit is born of matter and
returns to matter, and that man
has a resurrection from dust;
whereas Science unfolds the
eternal verity, that man is the
spiritual, eternal reflection of
God.
Progress is born of
experience. It is the ripening of
mortal man, through which the
mortal is dropped for the
immortal. Either here or
hereafter, suffering or Science
must destroy all illusions
regarding life and mind, and
regenerate material sense and
self. The old man with his deeds
must be put off. Nothing sensual
or sinful is immortal. The death
of a false material sense and of
sin, not the death of organic
matter, is what reveals man and
Life, harmonious, real, and
eternal.
The so-called pleasures and
pains of matter perish, and they
must go out under the blaze of
Truth, spiritual sense, and the
actuality of being. Mortal belief
must lose all satisfaction in
error and sin in order to part
with them.
Whether mortals will learn
this sooner or later, and how
long they will suffer the pangs
of destruction, depends upon the
tenacity of error.
The knowledge obtained from
the corporeal senses leads to sin
and death. When the evidence of
Spirit and matter, Truth and
error, seems to commingle, it
rests upon foundations which time
is wearing away. Mortal mind
judges by the testimony of the
material senses, until Science
obliterates this false testimony.
An improved belief is one step
out of error, and aids in taking
the next step and in
understanding the situation in
Christian Science.
Mortal belief is a liar from
the beginning, not deserving
power. It says to mortals, "You
are wretched!" and they think
they are so; and nothing can
change this state, until the
belief changes. Mortal belief
says, "You are happy!" and
mortals are so; and no
circumstance can alter the
situation, until the belief on
this subject changes. Human
belief says to mortals, "You are
sick!" and this testimony
manifests itself on the body as
sickness. It is as necessary for
a health-illusion, as for an
illusion of sickness, to be
instructed out of itself into the
understanding of what constitutes
health; for a change in either a
health-belief or a belief in
sickness affects the physical
condition.
Erroneous belief is destroyed
by truth. Change the evidence,
and that disappears which before
seemed real to this false belief,
and the human consciousness rises
higher. Thus the reality of being
is attained and man found to be
immortal. The only fact
concerning any material concept
is, that it is neither scientific
nor eternal, but subject to
change and dissolution.
Faith is higher and more
spiritual than belief. It is a
chrysalis state of human thought,
in which spiritual evidence,
contradicting the testimony of
material sense, begins to appear,
and Truth, the ever-present, is
becoming understood. Human
thoughts have their degrees of
comparison. Some thoughts are
better than others. A belief in
Truth is better than a belief in
error, but no mortal testimony is
founded on the divine rock.
Mortal testimony can be shaken.
Until belief becomes faith, and
faith becomes spiritual
understanding, human thought has
little relation to the actual or
divine.
A mortal belief fulfils its
own conditions. Sickness, sin,
and death are the vague realities
of human conclusions. Life,
Truth, and Love are the realities
of divine Science. They dawn in
faith and glow full-orbed in
spiritual understanding. As a
cloud hides the sun it cannot
extinguish, so false belief
silences for a while the voice of
immutable harmony, but false
belief cannot destroy Science
armed with faith, hope, and
fruition.
What is termed material sense
can report only a mortal
temporary sense of things,
whereas spiritual sense can bear
witness only to Truth. To
material sense, the unreal is the
real until this sense is
corrected by Christian
Science.
Spiritual sense, contradicting
the material senses, involves
intuition, hope, faith,
understanding, fruition, reality.
Material sense expresses the
belief that mind is in matter.
This human belief, alternating
between a sense of pleasure and
pain, hope and fear, life and
death, never reaches beyond the
boundary of the mortal or the
unreal. When the real is
attained, which is announced by
Science, joy is no longer a
trembler, nor is hope a cheat.
Spiritual ideas, like numbers and
notes, start from Principle, and
admit no materialistic beliefs.
Spiritual ideas lead up to their
divine origin, God, and to the
spiritual sense of being.
Angels are not etherealized
human beings, evolving animal
qualities in their wings; but
they are celestial visitants,
flying on spiritual, not
material, pinions. Angels are
pure thoughts from God, winged
with Truth and Love, no matter
what their individualism may be.
Human conjecture confers upon
angels its own forms of thought,
marked with superstitious
outlines, making them human
creatures with suggestive
feathers; but this is only fancy.
It has behind it no more reality
than has the sculptor's thought
when he carves his "Statue of
Liberty," which embodies his
conception of an unseen quality
or condition, but which has no
physical antecedent reality save
in the artist's own observation
and "chambers of imagery."
My angels are exalted
thoughts, appearing at the door
of some sepulchre, in which human
belief has buried its fondest
earthly hopes. With white fingers
they point upward to a new and
glorified trust, to higher ideals
of life and its joys. Angels are
God's representatives. These
upward-soaring beings never lead
towards self, sin, or
materiality, but guide to the
divine Principle of all good,
whither every real individuality,
image, or likeness of God,
gathers. By giving earnest heed
to these spiritual guides they
tarry with us, and we entertain
"angels unawares."
Knowledge gained from material
sense is figuratively represented
in Scripture as a tree, bearing
the fruits of sin, sickness, and
death. Ought we not then to judge
the knowledge thus obtained to be
untrue and dangerous, since "the
tree is known by his fruit"?
Truth never destroys God's
idea. Truth is spiritual, eternal
substance, which cannot destroy
the right reflection. Corporeal
sense, or error, may seem to hide
Truth, health, harmony, and
Science, as the mist obscures the
sun or the mountain; but Science,
the sunshine of Truth, will melt
away the shadow and reveal the
celestial peaks.
If man were solely a creature
of the material senses, he would
have no eternal Principle and
would be mutable and mortal.
Human logic is awry when it
attempts to draw correct
spiritual conclusions regarding
life from matter. Finite sense
has no true appreciation of
infinite Principle, God, or of
His infinite image or reflection,
man. The mirage, which makes
trees and cities seem to be where
they are not, illustrates the
illusion of material man, who
cannot be the image of God.
So far as the scientific
statement as to man is
understood, it can be proved and
will bring to light the true
reflection of God — the real
man, or the new man (as
St. Paul has it).
The temporal and unreal never
touch the eternal and real. The
mutable and imperfect never touch
the immutable and perfect. The
inharmonious and self-destructive
never touch the harmonious and
self-existent. These opposite
qualities are the tares and
wheat, which never really mingle,
though (to mortal sight) they
grow side by side until the
harvest; then, Science separates
the wheat from the tares, through
the realization of God as ever
present and of man as reflecting
the divine likeness.
Spirit is God, Soul; therefore
Soul is not in matter. If Spirit
were in matter, God would have no
representative, and matter would
be identical with God. The theory
that soul, spirit, intelligence,
inhabits matter is taught by the
schools. This theory is
unscientific. The universe
reflects and expresses the divine
substance or Mind; therefore God
is seen only in the spiritual
universe and spiritual man, as
the sun is seen in the ray of
light which goes out from it. God
is revealed only in that which
reflects Life, Truth, Love,
— yea, which manifests God's
attributes and power, even as the
human likeness thrown upon the
mirror, repeats the color, form,
and action of the person in front
of the mirror.
Few persons comprehend what
Christian Science means by the
word reflection. To
himself, mortal and material man
seems to be substance, but his
sense of substance involves error
and therefore is material,
temporal.
On the other hand, the
immortal, spiritual man is really
substantial, and reflects the
eternal substance, or Spirit,
which mortals hope for. He
reflects the divine, which
constitutes the only real and
eternal entity. This reflection
seems to mortal sense
transcendental, because the
spiritual man's substantiality
transcends mortal vision and is
revealed only through divine
Science.
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.
This falsity presupposes soul
to be an unsubstantial dweller in
material forms, and man to be
material instead of spiritual.
Immortality is not bounded by
mortality. Soul is not compassed
by finiteness. Principle is not
to be found in fragmentary
ideas.
The material body and mind are
temporal, but the real man is
spiritual and eternal. The
identity of the real man is not
lost, but found through this
explanation; for the conscious
infinitude of existence and of
all identity is thereby discerned
and remains unchanged. It is
impossible that man should lose
aught that is real, when God is
all and eternally his. The notion
that mind is in matter, and that
the so-called pleasures and
pains, the birth, sin, sickness,
and death of matter, are real, is
a mortal belief; and this belief
is all that will ever be
lost.
Continuing our definition of
man, let us remember that
harmonious and immortal man has
existed forever, and is always
beyond and above the mortal
illusion of any life, substance,
and intelligence as existent in
matter. This statement is based
on fact, not fable. The Science
of being reveals man as perfect,
even as the Father is perfect,
because the Soul, or Mind, of the
spiritual man is God, the divine
Principle of all being, and
because this real man is governed
by Soul instead of sense, by the
law of Spirit, not by the
so-called laws of matter.
God is Love. He is therefore
the divine, infinite Principle,
called Person or God. Man's true
consciousness is in the mental,
not in any bodily or personal
likeness to Spirit. Indeed, the
body presents no proper likeness
of divinity, though mortal sense
would fain have us so
believe.
Even in Christian Science,
reproduction by Spirit's
individual ideas is but the
reflection of the creative power
of the divine Principle of those
ideas. The reflection, through
mental manifestation, of the
multitudinous forms of Mind which
people the realm of the real is
controlled by Mind, the Principle
governing the reflection.
Multiplication of God's children
comes from no power of
propagation in matter, it is the
reflection of Spirit.
The minutiae of lesser
individualities reflect the one
divine individuality and are
comprehended in and formed by
Spirit, not by material
sensation. Whatever reflects
Mind, Life, Truth, and Love, is
spiritually conceived and brought
forth; but the statement that man
is conceived and evolved both
spiritually and materially, or by
both God and man, contradicts
this eternal truth. All the
vanity of the ages can never make
both these contraries true.
Divine Science lays the axe at
the root of the illusion that
life, or mind, is formed by or is
in the material body, and Science
will eventually destroy this
illusion through the
self-destruction of all error and
the beatified understanding of
the Science of Life.
The belief that pain and
pleasure, life and death,
holiness and unholiness, mingle
in man, — that mortal,
material man is the likeness of
God and is himself a creator,
— is a fatal error.
God, without the image and
likeness of Himself, would be a
nonentity, or Mind unexpressed.
He would be without a witness or
proof of His own nature.
Spiritual man is the image or
idea of God, an idea which cannot
be lost nor separated from its
divine Principle. When the
evidence before the material
senses yielded to spiritual
sense, the apostle declared that
nothing could alienate him from
God, from the sweet sense and
presence of Life and Truth.
It is ignorance and false
belief, based on a material sense
of things, which hide spiritual
beauty and goodness.
Understanding this, Paul said:
"Neither death, nor life, . . .
nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature, shall be able
to separate us from the love of
God." This is the doctrine of
Christian Science: that divine
Love cannot be deprived of its
manifestation, or object; that
joy cannot be turned into sorrow,
for sorrow is not the master of
joy; that good can never produce
evil; that matter can never
produce mind nor life result in
death. The perfect man —
governed by God, his perfect
Principle — is sinless and
eternal.
Harmony is produced by its
Principle, is controlled by it
and abides with it. Divine
Principle is the Life of man.
Man's happiness is not,
therefore, at the disposal of
physical sense. Truth is not
contaminated by error. Harmony in
man is as beautiful as in music,
and discord is unnatural,
unreal.
The science of music governs
tones. If mortals caught harmony
through material sense, they
would lose harmony, if time or
accident robbed them of material
sense. To be master of chords and
discords, the science of music
must be understood. Left to the
decisions of material sense,
music is liable to be
misapprehended and lost in
confusion. Controlled by belief,
instead of understanding, music
is, must be, imperfectly
expressed. So man, not
understanding the Science of
being, — thrusting aside his
divine Principle as
incomprehensible, — is
abandoned to conjectures, left in
the hands of ignorance, placed at
the disposal of illusions,
subjected to material sense which
is discord. A discontented,
discordant mortal is no more a
man than discord is
music.
A picture in the camera or a
face reflected in the mirror is
not the original, though
resembling it. Man, in the
likeness of his Maker, reflects
the central light of being, the
invisible God. As there is no
corporeality in the mirrored
form, which is but a reflection,
so man, like all things real,
reflects God, his divine
Principle, not in a mortal
body.
Gender also is a quality, not
of God, but a characteristic of
mortal mind. The verity that
God's image is not a creator,
though he reflects the creation
of Mind, God, constitutes the
underlying reality of reflection.
"Then answered Jesus and said
unto them: Verily, verily I say
unto you, the Son can do nothing
of himself, but what he seeth the
Father do: for what things soever
He doeth, these also doeth the
Son likewise."
The inverted images presented
by the senses, the deflections of
matter as opposed to the Science
of spiritual reflection, are all
unlike Spirit, God. In the
illusion of life that is here
to-day and gone to-morrow, man
would be wholly mortal, were it
not that Love, the divine
Principle that obtains in divine
Science, destroys all error and
brings immortality to light.
Because man is the reflection of
his Maker, he is not subject to
birth, growth, maturity, decay.
These mortal dreams are of human
origin, not divine.
The Sadducees reasoned falsely
about the resurrection, but not
so blindly as the Pharisees, who
believed error to be as immortal
as Truth. The Pharisees thought
that they could raise the
spiritual from the material. They
would first make life result in
death, and then resort to death
to reproduce spiritual life.
Jesus taught them how death was
to be overcome by spiritual Life,
and demonstrated this beyond
cavil.
Life demonstrates Life. The
immortality of Soul makes man
immortal. If God, who is Life,
were parted for a moment from His
reflection, man, during that
moment there would be no divinity
reflected. The Ego would be
unexpressed, and the Father would
be childless, — no
Father.
If Life or Soul and its
representative, man, unite for a
period and then are separated as
by a law of divorce to be brought
together again at some uncertain
future time and in a manner
unknown, — and this is the
general religious opinion of
mankind, — we are left
without a rational proof of
immortality. But man cannot be
separated for an instant from
God, if man reflects God. Thus
Science proves man's existence to
be intact.
The myriad forms of mortal
thought, made manifest as matter,
are not more distinct nor real to
the material senses than are the
Soul-created forms to spiritual
sense, which cognizes Life as
permanent. Undisturbed amid the
jarring testimony of the material
senses, Science, still enthroned,
is unfolding to mortals the
immutable, harmonious, divine
Principle, — is unfolding
Life and the universe, ever
present and eternal.
God's man, spiritually
created, is not material and
mortal.
The parent of all human
discord was the Adam-dream, the
deep sleep, in which originated
the delusion that life and
intelligence proceeded from and
passed into matter. This
pantheistic error, or so-called
serpent, insists still
upon the opposite of Truth,
saying, "Ye shall be as gods;"
that is, I will make error as
real and eternal as Truth.
Evil still affirms itself to
be mind, and declares that there
is more than one intelligence or
God. It says: "There shall be
lords and gods many. I declare
that God makes evil minds and
evil spirits, and that I aid Him.
Truth shall change sides and be
unlike Spirit. I will put spirit
into what I call matter, and
matter shall seem to have life as
much as God, Spirit, who
is the only Life."
This error has proved itself
to be error. Its life is found to
be not Life, but only a
transient, false sense of an
existence which ends in death.
Error charges its lie to Truth
and says: "The Lord knows it. He
has made man mortal and material,
out of matter instead of Spirit."
Thus error partakes of its own
nature and utters its own
falsities. If we regard matter as
intelligent, and Mind as both
good and evil, every sin or
supposed material pain and
pleasure seems normal, a part of
God's creation, and so weighs
against our course
Spiritward.
Truth has no beginning. The
divine Mind is the Soul of man,
and gives man dominion over all
things. Man was not created from
a material basis, nor bidden to
obey material laws which Spirit
never made; his province is in
spiritual statutes, in the higher
law of Mind.
Above error's awful din,
blackness, and chaos, the voice
of Truth still calls: "Adam,
where art thou? Consciousness,
where art thou? Art thou dwelling
in the belief that mind is in
matter, and that evil is mind, or
art thou in the living faith that
there is and can be but one God,
and keeping His commandment?"
Until the lesson is learned that
God is the only Mind governing
man, mortal belief will be afraid
as it was in the beginning, and
will hide from the demand, "Where
art thou?" This awful demand,
"Adam, where art thou?" is met by
the admission from the head,
heart, stomach, blood, nerves,
etc.: "Lo, here I am, looking for
happiness and life in the body,
but finding only an illusion, a
blending of false claims, false
pleasure, pain, sin, sickness,
and death."
The Soul-inspired patriarchs
heard the voice of Truth, and
talked with God as consciously as
man talks with man.
Jacob was alone,
wrestling with error, —
struggling with a mortal sense of
life, substance, and intelligence
as existent in matter with its
false pleasures and pains, —
when an angel, a message from
Truth and Love, appeared to him
and smote the sinew, or strength,
of his error, till he saw its
unreality; and Truth, being
thereby understood, gave him
spiritual strength in this Peniel
of divine Science. Then said the
spiritual evangel: "Let me go,
for the day breaketh;" that is,
the light of Truth and Love dawns
upon thee. But the patriarch,
perceiving his error and his need
of help, did not loosen his hold
upon this glorious light until
his nature was transformed. When
Jacob was asked, "What is thy
name?" he straightway answered;
and then his name was changed to
Israel, for "as a prince" had he
prevailed and had "power with God
and with men." Then Jacob
questioned his deliverer, "Tell
me, I pray thee, thy
name;" but this appellation was
withheld, for the messenger was
not a corporeal being, but a
nameless, incorporeal impartation
of divine Love to man, which, to
use the word of the Psalmist,
restored his Soul, —
gave him the spiritual sense of
being and rebuked his material
sense.
The result of Jacob's struggle
thus appeared. He had conquered
material error with the
understanding of Spirit and of
spiritual power. This changed the
man. He was no longer called
Jacob, but Israel, — a
prince of God, or a soldier of
God, who had fought a good fight.
He was to become the father of
those, who through earnest
striving followed his
demonstration of the power of
Spirit over the material senses;
and the children of earth who
followed his example were to be
called the children of Israel,
until the Messiah should rename
them. If these children should go
astray, and forget that Life is
God, good, and that good is not
in elements which are not
spiritual, — thus losing the
divine power which heals the sick
and sinning, — they were to
be brought back through great
tribulation, to be renamed in
Christian Science and led to deny
material sense, or mind in
matter, even as the gospel
teaches.
The Science of being shows it
to be impossible for infinite
Spirit or Soul to be in a finite
body or for man to have an
intelligence separate from his
Maker. It is a self-evident error
to suppose that there can be such
a reality as organic animal or
vegetable life, when such
so-called life always ends in
death. Life is never for a moment
extinct. Therefore it is never
structural nor organic, and is
never absorbed nor limited by its
own formations.
The artist is not in his
painting. The picture is the
artist's thought objectified. The
human belief fancies that it
delineates thought on matter, but
what is matter? Did it exist
prior to thought? Matter is made
up of supposititious mortal
mind-force; but all might is
divine Mind. Thought will finally
be understood and seen in all
form, substance, and color, but
without material accompaniments.
The potter is not in the clay;
else the clay would have power
over the potter. God is His own
infinite Mind, and expresses
all.
Day may decline and shadows
fall, but darkness flees when the
earth has again turned upon its
axis. The sun is not affected by
the revolution of the earth. So
Science reveals Soul as God,
untouched by sin and death,
— as the central Life and
intelligence around which circle
harmoniously all things in the
systems of Mind.
Soul changeth not. We are
commonly taught that there is a
human soul which sins and is
spiritually lost, — that
soul may be lost, and yet be
immortal. If Soul could sin,
Spirit, Soul, would be flesh
instead of Spirit. It is the
belief of the flesh and of
material sense which sins. If
Soul sinned, Soul would die. Sin
is the element of
self-destruction, and spiritual
death is oblivion. If there was
sin in Soul, the annihilation of
Spirit would be inevitable. The
only Life is Spirit, and if
Spirit should lose Life as God,
good, then Spirit, which has no
other existence, would be
annihilated.
Mind is God, and God is not
seen by material sense, because
Mind is Spirit, which material
sense cannot discern. There is
neither growth, maturity, nor
decay in Soul. These changes are
the mutations of material sense,
the varying clouds of mortal
belief, which hide the truth of
being.
What we term mortal mind or
carnal mind, dependent on matter
for manifestation, is not Mind.
God is Mind: all that Mind, God,
is, or hath made, is good, and He
made all. Hence evil is not made
and is not real.
Soul is immortal because it is
Spirit, which has no element of
self-destruction. Is man lost
spiritually? No, he can only lose
a sense material. All sin is of
the flesh. It cannot be
spiritual. Sin exists here or
hereafter only so long as the
illusion of mind in matter
remains. It is a sense of sin,
and not a sinful soul, which is
lost. Evil is destroyed by the
sense of good.
Through false estimates of
soul as dwelling in sense and of
mind as dwelling in matter,
belief strays into a sense of
temporary loss or absence of
soul, spiritual truth. This state
of error is the mortal dream of
life and substance as existent in
matter, and is directly opposite
to the immortal reality of being.
So long as we believe that soul
can sin or that immortal Soul is
in mortal body, we can never
understand the Science of being.
When humanity does understand
this Science, it will become the
law of Life to man, — even
the higher law of Soul, which
prevails over material sense
through harmony and
immortality.
The objects cognized by the
physical senses have not the
reality of substance. They are
only what mortal belief calls
them. Matter, sin, and mortality
lose all supposed consciousness
or claim to life or existence, as
mortals lay off a false sense of
life, substance, and
intelligence. But the spiritual,
eternal man is not touched by
these phases of mortality.
How true it is that whatever
is learned through material sense
must be lost because such
so-called knowledge is reversed
by the spiritual facts of being
in Science. That which material
sense calls intangible, is found
to be substance. What to material
sense seems substance, becomes
nothingness, as the sense-dream
vanishes and reality appears.
The senses regard a corpse,
not as man, but simply as matter.
People say, "Man is dead;" but
this death is the departure of a
mortal's mind, not of matter. The
matter is still there. The belief
of that mortal that he must die
occasioned his departure; yet you
say that matter has caused his
death.
People go into ecstasies over
the sense of a corporeal Jehovah,
though with scarcely a spark of
love in their hearts; yet God
is Love, and without Love,
God, immortality cannot appear.
Mortals try to believe without
understanding Truth; yet God
is Truth. Mortals claim
that death is inevitable; but
man's eternal Principle is
ever-present Life. Mortals
believe in a finite personal God;
while God is infinite Love, which
must be unlimited.
Our theories are based on
finite premises, which cannot
penetrate beyond matter. A
personal sense of God and of
man's capabilities necessarily
limits faith and hinders
spiritual understanding. It
divides faith and understanding
between matter and Spirit, the
finite and the infinite, and so
turns away from the intelligent
and divine healing Principle to
the inanimate drug.
Jesus' spiritual origin and
his demonstration of divine
Principle richly endowed him and
entitled him to sonship in
Science. He was the son of a
virgin. The term Christ Jesus, or
Jesus the Christ (to give the
full and proper translation of
the Greek), may be rendered
"Jesus the anointed," Jesus the
God-crowned or the divinely royal
man, as it is said of him in the
first chapter of Hebrews:
—
Therefore God, even thy God,
hath anointed thee With the oil
of gladness above thy
fellows.
With this agrees another
passage in the same chapter,
which refers to the Son as "the
brightness of His [God's]
glory, and the express
[expressed] image of His
person [infinite Mind]."
It is noteworthy that the phrase
"express image" in the Common
Version is, in the Greek
Testament, character.
Using this word in its higher
meaning, we may assume that the
author of this remarkable epistle
regarded Christ as the Son of
God, the royal reflection of the
infinite; and the cause given for
the exaltation of Jesus, Mary's
son, was that he "loved
righteousness and hated
iniquity." The passage is made
even clearer in the translation
of the late George R. Noyes,
D.D.: "Who, being a brightness
from His glory, and an image of
His being."
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.
Because of mortals' material
and sinful belief, the spiritual
Jesus was imperceptible to them.
The higher his demonstration of
divine Science carried the
problem of being, and the more
distinctly he uttered the demands
of its divine Principle, Truth
and Love, the more odious he
became to sinners and to those
who, depending on doctrines and
material laws to save them from
sin and sickness, were submissive
to death as being in supposed
accord with the inevitable law of
life. Jesus proved them wrong by
his resurrection, and said:
"Whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die."
That saying of our Master, "I
and my Father are one," separated
him from the scholastic theology
of the rabbis. His better
understanding of God was a rebuke
to them. He knew of but one Mind
and laid no claim to any other.
He knew that the Ego was Mind
instead of body and that matter,
sin, and evil were not Mind; and
his understanding of this divine
Science brought upon him the
anathemas of the age.
The opposite and false views
of the people hid from their
sense Christ's sonship with God.
They could not discern his
spiritual existence. Their carnal
minds were at enmity with it.
Their thoughts were filled with
mortal error, instead of with
God's spiritual idea as presented
by Christ Jesus. The likeness of
God we lose sight of through sin,
which beclouds the spiritual
sense of Truth; and we realize
this likeness only when we subdue
sin and prove man's heritage, the
liberty of the sons of God.
Jesus' spiritual origin and
understanding enabled him to
demonstrate the facts of being,
— to prove irrefutably how
spiritual Truth destroys material
error, heals sickness, and
overcomes death. The divine
conception of Jesus pointed to
this truth and presented an
illustration of creation. The
history of Jesus shows him to
have been more spiritual than all
other earthly personalities.
Wearing in part a human form
(that is, as it seemed to mortal
view), being conceived by a human
mother, Jesus was the mediator
between Spirit and the flesh,
between Truth and error.
Explaining and demonstrating the
way of divine Science, he became
the way of salvation to all who
accepted his word. From him
mortals may learn how to escape
from evil. The real man being
linked by Science to his Maker,
mortals need only turn from sin
and lose sight of mortal selfhood
to find Christ, the real man and
his relation to God, and to
recognize the divine sonship.
Christ, Truth, was demonstrated
through Jesus to prove the power
of Spirit over the flesh, —
to show that Truth is made
manifest by its effects upon the
human mind and body, healing
sickness and destroying sin.
Jesus represented Christ, the
true idea of God. Hence the
warfare between this spiritual
idea and perfunctory religion,
between spiritual
clear-sightedness and the
blindness of popular belief,
which led to the conclusion that
the spiritual idea could be
killed by crucifying the flesh.
The Christ-idea, or the
Christ-man, rose higher to human
view because of the crucifixion,
and thus proved that Truth was
the master of death. Christ
presents the indestructible man,
whom Spirit creates, constitutes,
and governs. Christ illustrates
that blending with God, his
divine Principle, which gives man
dominion over all the earth.
The spiritual idea of God, as
presented by Jesus, was scourged
in person, and its Principle was
rejected. That man was accounted
a criminal who could prove God's
divine power by healing the sick,
casting out evils, spiritualizing
materialistic beliefs, and
raising the dead, — those
dead in trespasses and sins,
satisfied with the flesh, resting
on the basis of matter, blind to
the possibilities of Spirit and
its correlative truth.
Jesus uttered things which had
been "secret from the foundation
of the world," — since
material knowledge usurped the
throne of the creative divine
Principle, insisted on the might
of matter, the force of falsity,
the insignificance of spirit, and
proclaimed an anthropomorphic
God.
Whosoever lives most the life
of Jesus in this age and declares
best the power of Christian
Science, will drink of his
Master's cup. Resistance to Truth
will haunt his steps, and he will
incur the hatred of sinners, till
"wisdom is justified of her
children." These blessed
benedictions rest upon Jesus'
followers: "If the world hate
you, ye know that it hated me
before it hated you;" "Lo, I am
with you alway," — that is,
not only in all time, but in
all ways and
conditions.
The individuality of man is no
less tangible because it is
spiritual and because his life is
not at the mercy of matter. The
understanding of his spiritual
individuality makes man more
real, more formidable in truth,
and enables him to conquer sin,
disease, and death. Our Lord and
Master presented himself to his
disciples after his resurrection
from the grave, as the self-same
Jesus whom they had loved before
the tragedy on Calvary.
To the materialistic Thomas,
looking for the ideal Saviour in
matter instead of in Spirit and
to the testimony of the material
senses and the body, more than to
Soul, for an earnest of
immortality, — to him Jesus
furnished the proof that he was
unchanged by the crucifixion. To
this dull and doubting disciple
Jesus remained a fleshly reality,
so long as the Master remained an
inhabitant of the earth. Nothing
but a display of matter could
make existence real to Thomas.
For him to believe in matter was
no task, but for him to conceive
of the substantiality of Spirit
— to know that nothing can
efface Mind and immortality, in
which Spirit reigns — was
more difficult.
Corporeal senses define
diseases as realities; but the
Scriptures declare that God made
all, even while the corporeal
senses are saying that matter
causes disease and the divine
Mind cannot or will not heal it.
The material senses originate and
support all that is material,
untrue, selfish, or debased. They
would put soul into soil, life
into limbo, and doom all things
to decay. We must silence this
lie of material sense with the
truth of spiritual sense. We must
cause the error to cease that
brought the belief of sin and
death and would efface the pure
sense of omnipotence.
Is the sick man sinful above
all others? No! but so far as he
is discordant, he is not the
image of God. Weary of their
material beliefs, from which
comes so much suffering, invalids
grow more spiritual, as the error
— or belief that life is in
matter — yields to the
reality of spiritual Life.
The Science of Mind denies the
error of sensation in matter, and
heals with Truth. Medical science
treats disease as though disease
were real, therefore right, and
attempts to heal it with matter.
If disease is right it is wrong
to heal it. Material methods are
temporary, and are not adapted to
elevate mankind.
The governor is not subjected
to the governed. In Science man
is governed by God, divine
Principle, as numbers are
controlled and proved by His
laws. Intelligence does not
originate in numbers, but is
manifested through them. The body
does not include soul, but
manifests mortality, a false
sense of soul. The delusion that
there is life in matter has no
kinship with the Life
supernal.
Science depicts disease as
error, as matter versus
Mind, and error reversed as
subserving the facts of health.
To calculate one's life-prospects
from a material basis, would
infringe upon spiritual law and
misguide human hope. Having faith
in the divine Principle of health
and spiritually understanding
God, sustains man under all
circumstances; whereas the lower
appeal to the general faith in
material means (commonly called
nature) must yield to the
all-might of infinite Spirit.
Throughout the infinite cycles
of eternal existence, Spirit and
matter neither concur in man nor
in the universe.
The varied doctrines and
theories which presuppose life
and intelligence to exist in
matter are so many ancient and
modern mythologies. Mystery,
miracle, sin, and death will
disappear when it becomes fairly
understood that the divine Mind
controls man and man has no Mind
but God.
The divine Science taught in
the original language of the
Bible came through inspiration,
and needs inspiration to be
understood. Hence the
misapprehension of the spiritual
meaning of the Bible, and the
misinterpretation of the Word in
some instances by uninspired
writers, who only wrote down what
an inspired teacher had said. A
misplaced word changes the sense
and misstates the Science of the
Scriptures, as, for instance, to
name Love as merely an attribute
of God; but we can by special and
proper capitalization speak of
the love of Love, meaning by that
what the beloved disciple meant
in one of his epistles, when he
said, "God is love." Likewise we
can speak of the truth of Truth
and of the life of Life, for
Christ plainly declared, "I am
the way, the truth, and the
life."
Metaphors abound in the Bible,
and names are often expressive of
spiritual ideas. The most
distinguished theologians in
Europe and America agree that the
Scriptures have both a spiritual
and literal meaning. In Smith's
Bible Dictionary it is said: "The
spiritual interpretation of
Scripture must rest upon both the
literal and moral;" and in the
learned article on Noah in the
same work, the familiar text,
Genesis vi. 3, "And the Lord
said, My spirit shall not always
strive with man, for that he also
is flesh," is quoted as follows,
from the original Hebrew: "And
Jehovah said, My spirit shall not
forever rule [or be
humbled] in men, seeing that
they are [or, in their error
they are] but flesh." Here
the original text declares
plainly the spiritual fact of
being, even man's eternal and
harmonious existence as image,
idea, instead of matter (however
transcendental such a thought
appears), and avers that this
fact is not forever to be humbled
by the belief that man is flesh
and matter, for according to that
error man is mortal.
The one important
interpretation of Scripture is
the spiritual. For example, the
text, "In my flesh shall I see
God," gives a profound idea of
the divine power to heal the ills
of the flesh, and encourages
mortals to hope in Him who
healeth all our diseases; whereas
this passage is continually
quoted as if Job intended to
declare that even if disease and
worms destroyed his body, yet in
the latter days he should stand
in celestial perfection before
Elohim, still clad in material
flesh, — an interpretation
which is just the opposite of the
true, as may be seen by studying
the book of Job. As Paul says, in
his first epistle to the
Corinthians, "Flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of
God."
The Hebrew Lawgiver, slow of
speech, despaired of making the
people understand what should be
revealed to him. When, led by
wisdom to cast down his rod, he
saw it become a serpent, Moses
fled before it; but wisdom bade
him come back and handle the
serpent, and then Moses' fear
departed. In this incident was
seen the actuality of Science.
Matter was shown to be a belief
only. The serpent, evil, under
wisdom's bidding, was destroyed
through understanding divine
Science, and this proof was a
staff upon which to lean. The
illusion of Moses lost its power
to alarm him, when he discovered
that what he apparently saw was
really but a phase of mortal
belief.
It was scientifically
demonstrated that leprosy was a
creation of mortal mind and not a
condition of matter, when Moses
first put his hand into his bosom
and drew it forth white as snow
with the dread disease, and
presently restored his hand to
its natural condition by the same
simple process. God had lessened
Moses' fear by this proof in
divine Science, and the inward
voice became to him the voice of
God, which said: "It shall come
to pass, if they will not believe
thee, neither hearken to the
voice of the first sign, that
they will believe the voice of
the latter sign." And so it was
in the coming centuries, when the
Science of being was demonstrated
by Jesus, who showed his students
the power of Mind by changing
water into wine, and taught them
how to handle serpents unharmed,
to heal the sick and cast out
evils in proof of the supremacy
of Mind.
When understanding changes the
standpoints of life and
intelligence from a material to a
spiritual basis, we shall gain
the reality of Life, the control
of Soul over sense, and we shall
perceive Christianity, or Truth,
in its divine Principle. This
must be the climax before
harmonious and immortal man is
obtained and his capabilities
revealed. It is highly important
— in view of the immense
work to be accomplished before
this recognition of divine
Science can come — to turn
our thoughts towards divine
Principle, that finite belief may
be prepared to relinquish its
error.
Man's wisdom finds no
satisfaction in sin, since God
has sentenced sin to suffer. The
necromancy of yesterday
foreshadowed the mesmerism and
hypnotism of to-day. The drunkard
thinks he enjoys drunkenness, and
you cannot make the inebriate
leave his besottedness, until his
physical sense of pleasure yields
to a higher sense. Then he turns
from his cups, as the startled
dreamer who wakens from an
incubus incurred through the
pains of distorted sense. A man
who likes to do wrong —
finding pleasure in it and
refraining from it only through
fear of consequences — is
neither a temperate man nor a
reliable religionist.
The sharp experiences of
belief in the supposititious life
of matter, as well as our
disappointments and ceaseless
woes, turn us like tired children
to the arms of divine Love. Then
we begin to learn Life in divine
Science. Without this process of
weaning, "Canst thou by searching
find out God?" It is easier to
desire Truth than to rid one's
self of error. Mortals may seek
the understanding of Christian
Science, but they will not be
able to glean from Christian
Science the facts of being
without striving for them. This
strife consists in the endeavor
to forsake error of every kind
and to possess no other
consciousness but good.
Through the wholesome
chastisements of Love, we are
helped onward in the march
towards righteousness, peace, and
purity, which are the landmarks
of Science. Beholding the
infinite tasks of truth, we
pause, — wait on God. Then
we push onward, until boundless
thought walks enraptured, and
conception unconfined is winged
to reach the divine glory.
In order to apprehend more, we
must put into practice what we
already know. We must recollect
that Truth is demonstrable when
understood, and that good is not
understood until demonstrated. If
"faithful over a few things," we
shall be made rulers over many;
but the one unused talent decays
and is lost. When the sick or the
sinning awake to realize their
need of what they have not, they
will be receptive of divine
Science, which gravitates towards
Soul and away from material
sense, removes thought from the
body, and elevates even mortal
mind to the contemplation of
something better than disease or
sin. The true idea of God gives
the true understanding of Life
and Love, robs the grave of
victory, takes away all sin and
the delusion that there are other
minds, and destroys
mortality.
The effects of Christian
Science are not so much seen as
felt. It is the "still, small
voice" of Truth uttering itself.
We are either turning away from
this utterance, or we are
listening to it and going up
higher. Willingness to become as
a little child and to leave the
old for the new, renders thought
receptive of the advanced idea.
Gladness to leave the false
landmarks and joy to see them
disappear, — this
disposition helps to precipitate
the ultimate harmony. The
purification of sense and self is
a proof of progress. "Blessed are
the pure in heart: for they shall
see God."
Unless the harmony and
immortality of man are becoming
more apparent, we are not gaining
the true idea of God; and the
body will reflect what governs
it, whether it be Truth or error,
understanding or belief, Spirit
or matter. Therefore "acquaint
now thyself with Him, and be at
peace." Be watchful, sober, and
vigilant. The way is straight and
narrow, which leads to the
understanding that God is the
only Life. It is a warfare with
the flesh, in which we must
conquer sin, sickness, and death,
either here or hereafter, —
certainly before we can reach the
goal of Spirit, or life in
God.
Paul was not at first a
disciple of Jesus but a
persecutor of Jesus' followers.
When the truth first appeared to
him in Science, Paul was made
blind, and his blindness was
felt; but spiritual light soon
enabled him to follow the example
and teachings of Jesus, healing
the sick and preaching
Christianity throughout Asia
Minor, Greece, and even in
imperial Rome.
Paul writes, "If Christ
[Truth] be not risen,
then is our preaching vain." That
is, if the idea of the supremacy
of Spirit, which is the true
conception of being, come not to
your thought, you cannot be
benefited by what I say.
Jesus said substantially, "He
that believeth in me shall not
see death." That is, he who
perceives the true idea of Life
loses his belief in death. He who
has the true idea of good loses
all sense of evil, and by reason
of this is being ushered into the
undying realities of Spirit. Such
a one abideth in Life, —
life obtained not of the body
incapable of supporting life, but
of Truth, unfolding its own
immortal idea. Jesus gave the
true idea of being, which results
in infinite blessings to
mortals.
In Colossians (iii. 4) Paul
writes: "When Christ, who is our
life, shall appear [be
manifested], then shall ye
also appear [be
manifested] with him in
glory." When spiritual being is
understood in all its perfection,
continuity, and might, then shall
man be found in God's image. The
absolute meaning of the apostolic
words is this: Then shall man be
found, in His likeness, perfect
as the Father, indestructible in
Life, "hid with Christ in God,"
— with Truth in divine Love,
where human sense hath not seen
man.
Paul had a clear sense of the
demands of Truth upon mortals
physically and spiritually, when
he said: "Present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service." But he,
who is begotten of the beliefs of
the flesh and serves them, can
never reach in this world the
divine heights of our Lord. The
time cometh when the spiritual
origin of man, the divine Science
which ushered Jesus into human
presence, will be understood and
demonstrated.
When first spoken in any age,
Truth, like the light, "shineth
in darkness, and the darkness
comprehended it not." A false
sense of life, substance, and
mind hides the divine
possibilities, and conceals
scientific demonstration.
If we wish to follow Christ,
Truth, it must be in the way of
God's appointing. Jesus said, "He
that believeth on me, the works
that I do shall he do also." He,
who would reach the source and
find the divine remedy for every
ill, must not try to climb the
hill of Science by some other
road. All nature teaches God's
love to man, but man cannot love
God supremely and set his whole
affections on spiritual things,
while loving the material or
trusting in it more than in the
spiritual.
We must forsake the foundation
of material systems, however
time-honored, if we would gain
the Christ as our only Saviour.
Not partially, but fully, the
great healer of mortal mind is
the healer of the body.
The purpose and motive to live
aright can be gained now. This
point won, you have started as
you should. You have begun at the
numeration-table of Christian
Science, and nothing but wrong
intention can hinder your
advancement. Working and praying
with true motives, your Father
will open the way. "Who did
hinder you, that ye should not
obey the truth?"
Saul of Tarsus beheld the way
— the Christ, or Truth
— only when his uncertain
sense of right yielded to a
spiritual sense, which is always
right. Then the man was changed.
Thought assumed a nobler outlook,
and his life became more
spiritual. He learned the wrong
that he had done in persecuting
Christians, whose religion he had
not understood, and in humility
he took the new name of Paul. He
beheld for the first time the
true idea of Love, and learned a
lesson in divine Science.
Reform comes by understanding
that there is no abiding pleasure
in evil, and also by gaining an
affection for good according to
Science, which reveals the
immortal fact that neither
pleasure nor pain, appetite nor
passion, can exist in or of
matter, while divine Mind can and
does destroy the false beliefs of
pleasure, pain, or fear and all
the sinful appetites of the human
mind.
What a pitiful sight is
malice, finding pleasure in
revenge! Evil is sometimes a
man's highest conception of
right, until his grasp on good
grows stronger. Then he loses
pleasure in wickedness, and it
becomes his torment. The way to
escape the misery of sin is to
cease sinning. There is no other
way. Sin is the image of the
beast to be effaced by the sweat
of agony. It is a moral madness
which rushes forth to clamor with
midnight and tempest.
To the physical senses, the
strict demands of Christian
Science seem peremptory; but
mortals are hastening to learn
that Life is God, good, and that
evil has in reality neither place
nor power in the human or the
divine economy.
Fear of punishment never made
man truly honest. Moral courage
is requisite to meet the wrong
and to proclaim the right. But
how shall we reform the man who
has more animal than moral
courage, and who has not the true
idea of good? Through human
consciousness, convince the
mortal of his mistake in seeking
material means for gaining
happiness. Reason is the most
active human faculty. Let that
inform the sentiments and awaken
the man's dormant sense of moral
obligation, and by degrees he
will learn the nothingness of the
pleasures of human sense and the
grandeur and bliss of a spiritual
sense, which silences the
material or corporeal. Then he
not only will be saved, but
is saved.
Mortals suppose that they can
live without goodness, when God
is good and the only real Life.
What is the result? Understanding
little about the divine Principle
which saves and heals, mortals
get rid of sin, sickness, and
death only in belief. These
errors are not thus really
destroyed, and must therefore
cling to mortals until, here or
hereafter, they gain the true
understanding of God in the
Science which destroys human
delusions about Him and reveals
the grand realities of His
allness.
This understanding of man's
power, when he is equipped by
God, has sadly disappeared from
Christian history. For centuries
it has been dormant, a lost
element of Christianity. Our
missionaries carry the Bible to
India, but can it be said that
they explain it practically, as
Jesus did, when hundreds of
persons die there annually from
serpent-bites? Understanding
spiritual law and knowing that
there is no material law, Jesus
said: "These signs shall follow
them that believe, . . . they
shall take up serpents, and if
they drink any deadly thing, it
shall not hurt them. They shall
lay hands on the sick, and they
shall recover." It were well had
Christendom believed and obeyed
this sacred saying.
Jesus' promise is perpetual.
Had it been given only to his
immediate disciples, the
Scriptural passage would read
you, not they. The
purpose of his great life-work
extends through time and includes
universal humanity. Its Principle
is infinite, reaching beyond the
pale of a single period or of a
limited following. As time moves
on, the healing elements of pure
Christianity will be fairly dealt
with; they will be sought and
taught, and will glow in all the
grandeur of universal
goodness.
A little leaven leavens the
whole lump. A little
understanding of Christian
Science proves the truth of all
that I say of it. Because you
cannot walk on the water and
raise the dead, you have no right
to question the great might of
divine Science in these
directions. Be thankful that
Jesus, who was the true
demonstrator of Science, did
these things, and left his
example for us. In Science we can
use only what we understand. We
must prove our faith by
demonstration.
One should not tarry in the
storm if the body is freezing,
nor should he remain in the
devouring flames. Until one is
able to prevent bad results, he
should avoid their occasion. To
be discouraged, is to resemble a
pupil in addition, who attempts
to solve a problem of Euclid, and
denies the rule of the problem
because he fails in his first
effort.
There is no hypocrisy in
Science. Principle is imperative.
You cannot mock it by human will.
Science is a divine demand, not a
human. Always right, its divine
Principle never repents, but
maintains the claim of Truth by
quenching error. The pardon of
divine mercy is the destruction
of error. If men understood their
real spiritual source to be all
blessedness, they would struggle
for recourse to the spiritual and
be at peace; but the deeper the
error into which mortal mind is
plunged, the more intense the
opposition to spirituality, till
error yields to Truth.
Human resistance to divine
Science weakens in proportion as
mortals give up error for Truth
and the understanding of being
supersedes mere belief. Until the
author of this book learned the
vastness of Christian Science,
the fixedness of mortal
illusions, and the human hatred
of Truth, she cherished sanguine
hopes that Christian Science
would meet with immediate and
universal acceptance.
When the following platform is
understood and the letter and the
spirit bear witness, the
infallibility of divine
metaphysics will be
demonstrated.
I. God is infinite, the only
Life, substance, Spirit, or Soul,
the only intelligence of the
universe, including man. Eye hath
neither seen God nor His image
and likeness. Neither God nor the
perfect man can be discerned by
the material senses. The
individuality of Spirit, or the
infinite, is unknown, and thus a
knowledge of it is left either to
human conjecture or to the
revelation of divine Science.
II. God is what the Scriptures
declare Him to be, — Life,
Truth, Love. Spirit is divine
Principle, and divine Principle
is Love, and Love is Mind, and
Mind is not both good and bad,
for God is Mind; therefore there
is in reality one Mind only,
because there is one God.
III. The notion that both evil
and good are real is a delusion
of material sense, which Science
annihilates. Evil is nothing, no
thing, mind, nor power. As
manifested by mankind it stands
for a lie, nothing claiming to be
something, — for lust,
dishonesty, selfishness, envy,
hypocrisy, slander, hate, theft,
adultery, murder, dementia,
insanity, inanity, devil, hell,
with all the etceteras that word
includes.
IV. God is divine Life, and
Life is no more confined to the
forms which reflect it than
substance is in its shadow. If
life were in mortal man or
material things, it would be
subject to their limitations and
would end in death. Life is Mind,
the creator reflected in His
creations. If He dwelt within
what He creates, God would not be
reflected but absorbed, and the
Science of being would be forever
lost through a mortal sense,
which falsely testifies to a
beginning and an end.
V. The Scriptures imply that
God is All-in-all. From this it
follows that nothing possesses
reality nor existence except the
divine Mind and His ideas. The
Scriptures also declare that God
is Spirit. Therefore in Spirit
all is harmony, and there can be
no discord; all is Life, and
there is no death. Everything in
God's universe expresses Him.
VI. God is individual,
incorporeal. He is divine
Principle, Love, the universal
cause, the only creator, and
there is no other self-existence.
He is all-inclusive, and is
reflected by all that is real and
eternal and by nothing else. He
fills all space, and it is
impossible to conceive of such
omnipresence and individuality
except as infinite Spirit or
Mind. Hence all is Spirit and
spiritual.
VII. Life, Truth, and Love
constitute the triune Person
called God, — that is, the
triply divine Principle, Love.
They represent a trinity in
unity, three in one, — the
same in essence, though multiform
in office: God the Father-Mother;
Christ the spiritual idea of
sonship; divine Science or the
Holy Comforter. These three
express in divine Science the
threefold, essential nature of
the infinite. They also indicate
the divine Principle of
scientific being, the intelligent
relation of God to man and the
universe.
VIII. Father-Mother is the
name for Deity, which indicates
His tender relationship to His
spiritual creation. As the
apostle expressed it in words
which he quoted with approbation
from a classic poet: "For we are
also His offspring."
IX. Jesus was born of Mary.
Christ is the true idea voicing
good, the divine message from God
to men speaking to the human
consciousness. The Christ is
incorporeal, spiritual, —
yea, the divine image and
likeness, dispelling the
illusions of the senses; the Way,
the Truth, and the Life, healing
the sick and casting out evils,
destroying sin, disease, and
death. As Paul says: "There is
one God, and one mediator between
God and men, the man Christ
Jesus." The corporeal man Jesus
was human.
X. Jesus demonstrated Christ;
he proved that Christ is the
divine idea of God — the
Holy Ghost, or Comforter,
revealing the divine Principle,
Love, and leading into all
truth.
XI. Jesus was the son of a
virgin. He was appointed to speak
God's word and to appear to
mortals in such a form of
humanity as they could understand
as well as perceive. Mary's
conception of him was spiritual,
for only purity could reflect
Truth and Love, which were
plainly incarnate in the good and
pure Christ Jesus. He expressed
the highest type of divinity,
which a fleshly form could
express in that age. Into the
real and ideal man the fleshly
element cannot enter. Thus it is
that Christ illustrates the
coincidence, or spiritual
agreement, between God and man in
His image.
XII. The word Christ is
not properly a synonym for Jesus,
though it is commonly so used.
Jesus was a human name, which
belonged to him in common with
other Hebrew boys and men, for it
is identical with the name
Joshua, the renowned Hebrew
leader. On the other hand, Christ
is not a name so much as the
divine title of Jesus. Christ
expresses God's spiritual,
eternal nature. The name is
synonymous with Messiah, and
alludes to the spirituality which
is taught, illustrated, and
demonstrated in the life of which
Christ Jesus was the embodiment.
The proper name of our Master in
the Greek was Jesus the Christ;
but Christ Jesus better signifies
the Godlike.
XIII. The advent of Jesus of
Nazareth marked the first century
of the Christian era, but the
Christ is without beginning of
years or end of days. Throughout
all generations both before and
after the Christian era, the
Christ, as the spiritual idea,
— the reflection of God,
— has come with some measure
of power and grace to all
prepared to receive Christ,
Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and
the prophets caught glorious
glimpses of the Messiah, or
Christ, which baptized these
seers in the divine nature, the
essence of Love. The divine
image, idea, or Christ was, is,
and ever will be inseparable from
the divine Principle, God. Jesus
referred to this unity of his
spiritual identity thus: "Before
Abraham was, I am;" "I and my
Father are one;" "My Father is
greater than I." The one Spirit
includes all identities.
XIV. By these sayings Jesus
meant, not that the human Jesus
was or is eternal, but that the
divine idea or Christ was and is
so and therefore antedated
Abraham; not that the corporeal
Jesus was one with the Father,
but that the spiritual idea,
Christ, dwells forever in the
bosom of the Father, God, from
which it illumines heaven and
earth; not that the Father is
greater than Spirit, which is
God, but greater, infinitely
greater, than the fleshly Jesus,
whose earthly career was
brief.
XV. The invisible Christ was
imperceptible to the so-called
personal senses, whereas Jesus
appeared as a bodily existence.
This dual personality of the
unseen and the seen, the
spiritual and material, the
eternal Christ and the corporeal
Jesus manifest in flesh,
continued until the Master's
ascension, when the human,
material concept, or Jesus,
disappeared, while the spiritual
self, or Christ, continues to
exist in the eternal order of
divine Science, taking away the
sins of the world, as the Christ
has always done, even before the
human Jesus was incarnate to
mortal eyes.
XVI. This was "the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the
world," — slain, that is,
according to the testimony of the
corporeal senses, but undying in
the deific Mind. The Revelator
represents the Son of man as
saying (Revelation i. 17, 18): "I
am the first and the last: I am
he that liveth, and was dead
[not understood]; and,
behold, I am alive for evermore,
[Science has explained
me]." This is a mystical
statement of the eternity of the
Christ, and is also a reference
to the human sense of Jesus
crucified.
XVII. Spirit being God, there
is but one Spirit, for there can
be but one infinite and therefore
one God. There are neither
spirits many nor gods many. There
is no evil in Spirit, because God
is Spirit. The theory, that
Spirit is distinct from matter
but must pass through it, or into
it, to be individualized, would
reduce God to dependency on
matter, and establish a basis for
pantheism.
XVIII. Spirit, God, has
created all in and of Himself.
Spirit never created matter.
There is nothing in Spirit out of
which matter could be made, for,
as the Bible declares, without
the Logos, the Aeon or Word of
God, "was not anything made that
was made." Spirit is the only
substance, the invisible and
indivisible infinite God. Things
spiritual and eternal are
substantial. Things material and
temporal are insubstantial.
XIX. Soul and Spirit being
one, God and Soul are one, and
this one never included in a
limited mind or a limited body.
Spirit is eternal, divine.
Nothing but Spirit, Soul, can
evolve Life, for Spirit is more
than all else. Because Soul is
immortal, it does not exist in
mortality. Soul must be
incorporeal to be Spirit, for
Spirit is not finite. Only by
losing the false sense of Soul
can we gain the eternal unfolding
of Life as immortality brought to
light.
XX. Mind is the divine
Principle, Love, and can produce
nothing unlike the eternal
Father-Mother, God. Reality is
spiritual, harmonious, immutable,
immortal, divine, eternal.
Nothing unspiritual can be real,
harmonious, or eternal. Sin,
sickness, and mortality are the
suppositional antipodes of
Spirit, and must be
contradictions of reality.
XXI. The Ego is deathless and
limitless, for limits would imply
and impose ignorance. Mind is the
I AM, or infinity. Mind never
enters the finite. Intelligence
never passes into
non-intelligence, or matter. Good
never enters into evil, the
unlimited into the limited, the
eternal into the temporal, nor
the immortal into mortality. The
divine Ego, or individuality, is
reflected in all spiritual
individuality from the
infinitesimal to the
infinite.
XXII. Immortal man was and is
God's image or idea, even the
infinite expression of infinite
Mind, and immortal man is
coexistent and coeternal with
that Mind. He has been forever in
the eternal Mind, God; but
infinite Mind can never be in
man, but is reflected by man. The
spiritual man's consciousness and
individuality are reflections of
God. They are the emanations of
Him who is Life, Truth, and Love.
Immortal man is not and never was
material, but always spiritual
and eternal.
XXIII. God is indivisible. A
portion of God could not enter
man; neither could God's fulness
be reflected by a single man,
else God would be manifestly
finite, lose the deific
character, and become less than
God. Allness is the measure of
the infinite, and nothing less
can express God.
XXIV. God, the divine
Principle of man, and man in
God's likeness are inseparable,
harmonious, and eternal. The
Science of being furnishes the
rule of perfection, and brings
immortality to light. God and man
are not the same, but in the
order of divine Science, God and
man coexist and are eternal. God
is the parent Mind, and man is
God's spiritual offspring.
XXV. God is individual and
personal in a scientific sense,
but not in any anthropomorphic
sense. Therefore man, reflecting
God, cannot lose his
individuality; but as material
sensation, or a soul in the body,
blind mortals do lose sight of
spiritual individuality. Material
personality is not realism; it is
not the reflection or likeness of
Spirit, the perfect God.
Sensualism is not bliss, but
bondage. For true happiness, man
must harmonize with his
Principle, divine Love; the Son
must be in accord with the
Father, in conformity with
Christ. According to divine
Science, man is in a degree as
perfect as the Mind that forms
him. The truth of being makes man
harmonious and immortal, while
error is mortal and
discordant.
XXVI. Christian Science
demonstrates that none but the
pure in heart can see God, as the
gospel teaches. In proportion to
his purity is man perfect; and
perfection is the order of
celestial being which
demonstrates Life in Christ,
Life's spiritual ideal.
XXVII. The true idea of man,
as the reflection of the
invisible God, is as
incomprehensible to the limited
senses as is man's infinite
Principle. The visible universe
and material man are the poor
counterfeits of the invisible
universe and spiritual man.
Eternal things (verities) are
God's thoughts as they exist in
the spiritual realm of the real.
Temporal things are the thoughts
of mortals and are the unreal,
being the opposite of the real or
the spiritual and eternal.
XXVIII. Subject sickness, sin,
and death to the rule of health
and holiness in Christian
Science, and you ascertain that
this Science is demonstrably
true, for it heals the sick and
sinning as no other system can.
Christian Science, rightly
understood, leads to eternal
harmony. It brings to light the
only living and true God and man
as made in His likeness; whereas
the opposite belief — that
man originates in matter and has
beginning and end, that he is
both soul and body, both good and
evil, both spiritual and material
— terminates in discord and
mortality, in the error which
must be destroyed by Truth. The
mortality of material man proves
that error has been ingrafted
into the premises and conclusions
of material and mortal
humanity.
XXIX. The word Adam is
from the Hebrew adamah,
signifying the red color of
the ground, dust,
nothingness. Divide the name
Adam into two syllables, and it
reads, a dam, or
obstruction. This suggests the
thought of something fluid, of
mortal mind in solution. It
further suggests the thought of
that "darkness . . . upon the
face of the deep," when matter or
dust was deemed the agent of
Deity in creating man, —
when matter, as that which is
accursed, stood opposed to
Spirit. Here a dam is not
a mere play upon words; it stands
for obstruction, error, even the
supposed separation of man from
God, and the obstacle which the
serpent, sin, would impose
between man and his creator. The
dissection and definition of
words, aside from their
metaphysical derivation, is not
scientific. Jehovah declared the
ground was accursed; and from
this ground, or matter, sprang
Adam, notwithstanding God had
blessed the earth "for man's
sake." From this it follows that
Adam was not the ideal man for
whom the earth was blessed. The
ideal man was revealed in due
time, and was known as Christ
Jesus.
XXX. The destruction of sin is
the divine method of pardon.
Divine Life destroys death, Truth
destroys error, and Love destroys
hate. Being destroyed, sin needs
no other form of forgiveness.
Does not God's pardon, destroying
any one sin, prophesy and involve
the final destruction of all
sin?
XXXI. Since God is All, there
is no room for His unlikeness.
God, Spirit, alone created all,
and called it good. Therefore
evil, being contrary to good, is
unreal, and cannot be the product
of God. A sinner can receive no
encouragement from the fact that
Science demonstrates the
unreality of evil, for the sinner
would make a reality of sin,
— would make that real which
is unreal, and thus heap up
"wrath against the day of wrath."
He is joining in a conspiracy
against himself, — against
his own awakening to the awful
unreality by which he has been
deceived. Only those, who repent
of sin and forsake the unreal,
can fully understand the
unreality of evil.
XXXII. As the mythology of
pagan Rome has yielded to a more
spiritual idea of Deity, so will
our material theories yield to
spiritual ideas, until the finite
gives place to the infinite,
sickness to health, sin to
holiness, and God's kingdom comes
"in earth, as it is in heaven."
The basis of all health,
sinlessness, and immortality is
the great fact that God is the
only Mind; and this Mind must be
not merely believed, but it must
be understood. To get rid of sin
through Science, is to divest sin
of any supposed mind or reality,
and never to admit that sin can
have intelligence or power, pain
or pleasure. You conquer error by
denying its verity. Our various
theories will never lose their
imaginary power for good or evil,
until we lose our faith in them
and make life its own proof of
harmony and God.
This text in the book of
Ecclesiastes conveys the
Christian Science thought,
especially when the word
duty, which is not in the
original, is omitted: "Let us
hear the conclusion of the whole
matter: Fear God, and keep His
commandments: for this is the
whole duty of man." In other
words: Let us hear the conclusion
of the whole matter: love God and
keep His commandments: for this
is the whole of man in His image
and likeness. Divine Love is
infinite. Therefore all that
really exists is in and of God,
and manifests His love.
"Thou shalt have no other gods
before me." (Exodus xx. 3.) The
First Commandment is my favorite
text. It demonstrates Christian
Science. It inculcates the
triunity of God, Spirit, Mind; it
signifies that man shall have no
other spirit or mind but God,
eternal good, and that all men
shall have one Mind. The divine
Principle of the First
Commandment bases the Science of
being, by which man demonstrates
health, holiness, and life
eternal. One infinite God, good,
unifies men and nations;
constitutes the brotherhood of
man; ends wars; fulfils the
Scripture, "Love thy neighbor as
thyself;" annihilates pagan and
Christian idolatry, —
whatever is wrong in social,
civil, criminal, political, and
religious codes; equalizes the
sexes; annuls the curse on man,
and leaves nothing that can sin,
suffer, be punished or
destroyed.
Go
to Chapter 11: Some Objections
Answered
|
