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Science and
Health
with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter 3
— Marriage
What therefore God hath
joined together, let not man put
asunder.
In the resurrection they neither
marry, nor are given in marriage,
but are as the angels of God in
heaven.
— JESUS.
When our great Teacher came to
him for baptism, John was
astounded. Reading his thoughts,
Jesus added: "Suffer it to be so
now: for thus it becometh us to
fulfil all righteousness." Jesus'
concessions (in certain cases) to
material methods were for the
advancement of spiritual
good.
Marriage is the legal and
moral provision for generation
among human kind. Until the
spiritual creation is discerned
intact, is apprehended and
understood, and His kingdom is
come as in the vision of the
Apocalypse, — where the
corporeal sense of creation was
cast out, and its spiritual sense
was revealed from heaven, —
marriage will continue, subject
to such moral regulations as will
secure increasing virtue.
Infidelity to the marriage
covenant is the social scourge of
all races, "the pestilence that
walketh in darkness, . . . the
destruction that wasteth at
noonday." The commandment, "Thou
shalt not commit adultery," is no
less imperative than the one,
"Thou shalt not kill."
Chastity is the cement of
civilization and progress.
Without it there is no stability
in society, and without it one
cannot attain the Science of
Life.
Union of the masculine and
feminine qualities constitutes
completeness. The masculine mind
reaches a higher tone through
certain elements of the feminine,
while the feminine mind gains
courage and strength through
masculine qualities. These
different elements conjoin
naturally with each other, and
their true harmony is in
spiritual oneness. Both sexes
should be loving, pure, tender,
and strong. The attraction
between native qualities will be
perpetual only as it is pure and
true, bringing sweet seasons of
renewal like the returning
spring.
Beauty, wealth, or fame is
incompetent to meet the demands
of the affections, and should
never weigh against the better
claims of intellect, goodness,
and virtue. Happiness is
spiritual, born of Truth and
Love. It is unselfish; therefore
it cannot exist alone, but
requires all mankind to share
it.
Human affection is not poured
forth vainly, even though it meet
no return. Love enriches the
nature, enlarging, purifying, and
elevating it. The wintry blasts
of earth may uproot the flowers
of affection, and scatter them to
the winds; but this severance of
fleshly ties serves to unite
thought more closely to God, for
Love supports the struggling
heart until it ceases to sigh
over the world and begins to
unfold its wings for heaven.
Marriage is unblest or blest,
according to the disappointments
it involves or the hopes it
fulfils. To happify existence by
constant intercourse with those
adapted to elevate it, should be
the motive of society. Unity of
spirit gives new pinions to joy,
or else joy's drooping wings
trail in dust.
Ill-arranged notes produce
discord. Tones of the human mind
may be different, but they should
be concordant in order to blend
properly. Unselfish ambition,
noble life-motives, and purity,
— these constituents of
thought, mingling, constitute
individually and collectively
true happiness, strength, and
permanence.
There is moral freedom in
Soul. Never contract the horizon
of a worthy outlook by the
selfish exaction of all another's
time and thoughts. With
additional joys, benevolence
should grow more diffusive. The
narrowness and jealousy, which
would confine a wife or a husband
forever within four walls, will
not promote the sweet interchange
of confidence and love; but on
the other hand, a wandering
desire for incessant amusement
outside the home circle is a poor
augury for the happiness of
wedlock. Home is the dearest spot
on earth, and it should be the
centre, though not the boundary,
of the affections.
Said the peasant bride to her
lover: "Two eat no more together
than they eat separately." This
is a hint that a wife ought not
to court vulgar extravagance or
stupid ease, because another
supplies her wants. Wealth may
obviate the necessity for toil or
the chance for ill-nature in the
marriage relation, but nothing
can abolish the cares of
marriage.
"She that is married careth .
. . how she may please her
husband," says the Bible; and
this is the pleasantest thing to
do. Matrimony should never be
entered into without a full
recognition of its enduring
obligations on both sides. There
should be the most tender
solicitude for each other's
happiness, and mutual attention
and approbation should wait on
all the years of married
life.
Mutual compromises will often
maintain a compact which might
otherwise become unbearable. Man
should not be required to
participate in all the annoyances
and cares of domestic economy,
nor should woman be expected to
understand political economy.
Fulfilling the different demands
of their united spheres, their
sympathies should blend in sweet
confidence and cheer, each
partner sustaining the other,
— thus hallowing the union
of interests and affections, in
which the heart finds peace and
home.
Tender words and unselfish
care in what promotes the welfare
and happiness of your wife will
prove more salutary in prolonging
her health and smiles than stolid
indifference or jealousy.
Husbands, hear this and remember
how slight a word or deed may
renew the old trysting-times.
After marriage, it is too late
to grumble over incompatibility
of disposition. A mutual
understanding should exist before
this union and continue ever
after, for deception is fatal to
happiness.
The nuptial vow should never
be annulled, so long as its moral
obligations are kept intact; but
the frequency of divorce shows
that the sacredness of this
relationship is losing its
influence, and that fatal
mistakes are undermining its
foundations. Separation never
should take place, and it never
would, if both husband and wife
were genuine Christian
Scientists. Science inevitably
lifts one's being higher in the
scale of harmony and
happiness.
Kindred tastes, motives, and
aspirations are necessary to the
formation of a happy and
permanent companionship. The
beautiful in character is also
the good, welding indissolubly
the links of affection. A
mother's affection cannot be
weaned from her child, because
the mother-love includes purity
and constancy, both of which are
immortal. Therefore maternal
affection lives on under whatever
difficulties.
From the logic of events we
learn that selfishness and
impurity alone are fleeting, and
that wisdom will ultimately put
asunder what she hath not joined
together.
Marriage should improve the
human species, becoming a barrier
against vice, a protection to
woman, strength to man, and a
centre for the affections. This,
however, in a majority of cases,
is not its present tendency, and
why? Because the education of the
higher nature is neglected, and
other considerations, —
passion, frivolous amusements,
personal adornment, display, and
pride, — occupy thought.
An ill-attuned ear calls
discord harmony, not appreciating
concord. So physical sense, not
discerning the true happiness of
being, places it on a false
basis. Science will correct the
discord, and teach us life's
sweeter harmonies.
Soul has infinite resources
with which to bless mankind, and
happiness would be more readily
attained and would be more secure
in our keeping, if sought in
Soul. Higher enjoyments alone can
satisfy the cravings of immortal
man. We cannot circumscribe
happiness within the limits of
personal sense. The senses confer
no real enjoyment.
The good in human affections
must have ascendency over the
evil and the spiritual over the
animal, or happiness will never
be won. The attainment of this
celestial condition would improve
our progeny, diminish crime, and
give higher aims to ambition.
Every valley of sin must be
exalted, and every mountain of
selfishness be brought low, that
the highway of our God may be
prepared in Science. The
offspring of heavenly-minded
parents inherit more intellect,
better balanced minds, and
sounder constitutions.
If some fortuitous
circumstance places promising
children in the arms of gross
parents, often these beautiful
children early droop and die,
like tropical flowers born amid
Alpine snows. If perchance they
live to become parents in their
turn, they may reproduce in their
own helpless little ones the
grosser traits of their
ancestors. What hope of
happiness, what noble ambition,
can inspire the child who
inherits propensities that must
either be overcome or reduce him
to a loathsome wreck?
Is not the propagation of the
human species a greater
responsibility, a more solemn
charge, than the culture of your
garden or the raising of stock to
increase your flocks and herds?
Nothing unworthy of perpetuity
should be transmitted to
children.
The formation of mortals must
greatly improve to advance
mankind. The scientific
morale of marriage is
spiritual unity. If the
propagation of a higher human
species is requisite to reach
this goal, then its material
conditions can only be permitted
for the purpose of generating.
The foetus must be kept mentally
pure and the period of gestation
have the sanctity of
virginity.
The entire education of
children should be such as to
form habits of obedience to the
moral and spiritual law, with
which the child can meet and
master the belief in so-called
physical laws, a belief which
breeds disease.
If parents create in their
babes a desire for incessant
amusement, to be always fed,
rocked, tossed, or talked to,
those parents should not, in
after years, complain of their
children's fretfulness or
frivolity, which the parents
themselves have occasioned.
Taking less "thought for your
life, what ye shall eat, or what
ye shall drink"; less thought
"for your body what ye shall put
on," will do much more for the
health of the rising generation
than you dream. Children should
be allowed to remain children in
knowledge, and should become men
and women only through growth in
the understanding of man's higher
nature.
We must not attribute more and
more intelligence to matter, but
less and less, if we would be
wise and healthy. The divine
Mind, which forms the bud and
blossom, will care for the human
body, even as it clothes the
lily; but let no mortal interfere
with God's government by
thrusting in the laws of erring,
human concepts.
The higher nature of man is
not governed by the lower; if it
were, the order of wisdom would
be reversed. Our false views of
life hide eternal harmony, and
produce the ills of which we
complain. Because mortals believe
in material laws and reject the
Science of Mind, this does not
make materiality first and the
superior law of Soul last. You
would never think that flannel
was better for warding off
pulmonary disease than the
controlling Mind, if you
understood the Science of
being.
In Science man is the
offspring of Spirit. The
beautiful, good, and pure
constitute his ancestry. His
origin is not, like that of
mortals, in brute instinct, nor
does he pass through material
conditions prior to reaching
intelligence. Spirit is his
primitive and ultimate source of
being; God is his Father, and
Life is the law of his being.
Civil law establishes very
unfair differences between the
rights of the two sexes.
Christian Science furnishes no
precedent for such injustice, and
civilization mitigates it in some
measure. Still, it is a marvel
why usage should accord woman
less rights than does either
Christian Science or
civilization.
Our laws are not impartial, to
say the least, in their
discrimination as to the person,
property, and parental claims of
the two sexes. If the elective
franchise for women will remedy
the evil without encouraging
difficulties of greater
magnitude, let us hope it will be
granted. A feasible as well as
rational means of improvement at
present is the elevation of
society in general and the
achievement of a nobler race for
legislation, — a race having
higher aims and motives.
If a dissolute husband deserts
his wife, certainly the wronged,
and perchance impoverished, woman
should be allowed to collect her
own wages, enter into business
agreements, hold real estate,
deposit funds, and own her
children free from
interference.
Want of uniform justice is a
crying evil caused by the
selfishness and inhumanity of
man. Our forefathers exercised
their faith in the direction
taught by the Apostle James, when
he said: "Pure religion and
undefiled before God and the
Father, is this, To visit the
fatherless and widows in their
affliction, and to keep himself
unspotted from the world."
Pride, envy, or jealousy seems
on most occasions to be the
master of ceremonies, ruling out
primitive Christianity. When a
man lends a helping hand to some
noble woman, struggling alone
with adversity, his wife should
not say, "It is never well to
interfere with your neighbor's
business." A wife is sometimes
debarred by a covetous domestic
tyrant from giving the ready aid
her sympathy and charity would
afford.
Marriage should signify a
union of hearts. Furthermore, the
time cometh of which Jesus spake,
when he declared that in the
resurrection there should be no
more marrying nor giving in
marriage, but man would be as the
angels. Then shall Soul rejoice
in its own, in which passion has
no part. Then white-robed purity
will unite in one person
masculine wisdom and feminine
love, spiritual understanding and
perpetual peace.
Until it is learned that God
is the Father of all, marriage
will continue. Let not mortals
permit a disregard of law which
might lead to a worse state of
society than now exists. Honesty
and virtue ensure the stability
of the marriage covenant. Spirit
will ultimately claim its own,
— all that really is, —
and the voices of physical sense
will be forever hushed.
Experience should be the
school of virtue, and human
happiness should proceed from
man's highest nature. May Christ,
Truth, be present at every bridal
altar to turn the water into wine
and to give to human life an
inspiration by which man's
spiritual and eternal existence
may be discerned.
If the foundations of human
affection are consistent with
progress, they will be strong and
enduring. Divorces should warn
the age of some fundamental error
in the marriage state. The union
of the sexes suffers fearful
discord. To gain Christian
Science and its harmony, life
should be more metaphysically
regarded.
The broadcast powers of evil
so conspicuous to-day show
themselves in the materialism and
sensualism of the age, struggling
against the advancing spiritual
era. Beholding the world's lack
of Christianity and the
powerlessness of vows to make
home happy, the human mind will
at length demand a higher
affection.
There will ensue a
fermentation over this as over
many other reforms, until we get
at last the clear straining of
truth, and impurity and error are
left among the lees. The
fermentation even of fluids is
not pleasant. An unsettled,
transitional stage is never
desirable on its own account.
Matrimony, which was once a fixed
fact among us, must lose its
present slippery footing, and man
must find permanence and peace in
a more spiritual adherence.
The mental chemicalization,
which has brought conjugal
infidelity to the surface, will
assuredly throw off this evil,
and marriage will become purer
when the scum is gone.
Thou art right, immortal
Shakespeare, great poet of
humanity:
Sweet are the uses of
adversity; Which, like the toad,
ugly and venomous, Wears yet a
precious jewel in his head.
Trials teach mortals not to
lean on a material staff, —
a broken reed, which pierces the
heart. We do not half remember
this in the sunshine of joy and
prosperity. Sorrow is salutary.
Through great tribulation we
enter the kingdom. Trials are
proofs of God's care. Spiritual
development germinates not from
seed sown in the soil of material
hopes, but when these decay, Love
propagates anew the higher joys
of Spirit, which have no taint of
earth. Each successive stage of
experience unfolds new views of
divine goodness and love.
Amidst gratitude for conjugal
felicity, it is well to remember
how fleeting are human joys.
Amidst conjugal infelicity, it is
well to hope, pray, and wait
patiently on divine wisdom to
point out the path.
Husbands and wives should
never separate if there is no
Christian demand for it. It is
better to await the logic of
events than for a wife
precipitately to leave her
husband or for a husband to leave
his wife. If one is better than
the other, as must always be the
case, the other pre-eminently
needs good company. Socrates
considered patience salutary
under such circumstances, making
his Xantippe a discipline for his
philosophy.
Sorrow has its reward. It
never leaves us where it found
us. The furnace separates the
gold from the dross that the
precious metal may be graven with
the image of God. The cup our
Father hath given, shall we not
drink it and learn the lessons He
teaches?
When the ocean is stirred by a
storm, then the clouds lower, the
wind shrieks through the
tightened shrouds, and the waves
lift themselves into mountains.
We ask the helmsman: "Do you know
your course? Can you steer safely
amid the storm?" He answers
bravely, but even the dauntless
seaman is not sure of his safety;
nautical science is not equal to
the Science of Mind. Yet, acting
up to his highest understanding,
firm at the post of duty, the
mariner works on and awaits the
issue. Thus should we deport
ourselves on the seething ocean
of sorrow. Hoping and working,
one should stick to the wreck,
until an irresistible propulsion
precipitates his doom or sunshine
gladdens the troubled sea.
The notion that animal natures
can possibly give force to
character is too absurd for
consideration, when we remember
that through spiritual ascendency
our Lord and Master healed the
sick, raised the dead, and
commanded even the winds and
waves to obey him. Grace and
Truth are potent beyond all other
means and methods.
The lack of spiritual power in
the limited demonstration of
popular Christianity does not put
to silence the labor of
centuries. Spiritual, not
corporeal, consciousness is
needed. Man delivered from sin,
disease, and death presents the
true likeness or spiritual
ideal.
Systems of religion and
medicine treat of physical pains
and pleasures, but Jesus rebuked
the suffering from any such cause
or effect. The epoch approaches
when the understanding of the
truth of being will be the basis
of true religion. At present
mortals progress slowly for fear
of being thought ridiculous. They
are slaves to fashion, pride, and
sense. Sometime we shall learn
how Spirit, the great architect,
has created men and women in
Science. We ought to weary of the
fleeting and false and to cherish
nothing which hinders our highest
selfhood.
Jealousy is the grave of
affection. The presence of
mistrust, where confidence is
due, withers the flowers of Eden
and scatters love's petals to
decay. Be not in haste to take
the vow "until death do us part."
Consider its obligations, its
responsibilities, its relations
to your growth and to your
influence on other lives.
I never knew more than one
individual who believed in
agamogenesis; she was unmarried,
a lovely character, was suffering
from incipient insanity, and a
Christian Scientist cured her. I
have named her case to
individuals, when casting my
bread upon the waters, and it may
have caused the good to ponder
and the evil to hatch their silly
innuendoes and lies, since
salutary causes sometimes incur
these effects. The perpetuation
of the floral species by bud or
cell-division is evident, but I
discredit the belief that
agamogenesis applies to the human
species.
Christian Science presents
unfoldment, not accretion; it
manifests no material growth from
molecule to mind, but an
impartation of the divine Mind to
man and the universe.
Proportionately as human
generation ceases, the unbroken
links of eternal, harmonious
being will be spiritually
discerned; and man, not of the
earth earthly but coexistent with
God, will appear. The scientific
fact that man and the universe
are evolved from Spirit, and so
are spiritual, is as fixed in
divine Science as is the proof
that mortals gain the sense of
health only as they lose the
sense of sin and disease. Mortals
can never understand God's
creation while believing that man
is a creator. God's children
already created will be cognized
only as man finds the truth of
being. Thus it is that the real,
ideal man appears in proportion
as the false and material
disappears. No longer to marry or
to be "given in marriage" neither
closes man's continuity nor his
sense of increasing number in
God's infinite plan. Spiritually
to understand that there is but
one creator, God, unfolds all
creation, confirms the
Scriptures, brings the sweet
assurance of no parting, no pain,
and of man deathless and perfect
and eternal.
If Christian Scientists
educate their own offspring
spiritually, they can educate
others spiritually and not
conflict with the scientific
sense of God's creation. Some day
the child will ask his parent:
"Do you keep the First
Commandment? Do you have one God
and creator, or is man a
creator?" If the father replies,
"God creates man through man,"
the child may ask, "Do you teach
that Spirit creates materially,
or do you declare that Spirit is
infinite, therefore matter is out
of the question?" Jesus said,
"The children of this world
marry, and are given in marriage:
But they which shall be accounted
worthy to obtain that world, and
the resurrection from the dead,
neither marry, nor are given in
marriage."
Go
to Chapter 4: Christian Science
versus
Spiritualism
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