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Science and
Health
with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter 4
— Christian Science
versus
Spiritualism
And when they shall say
unto you,
Seek unto them that have familiar
spirits,
And unto wizards that peep and
that mutter;
Should not a people seek unto
their God?
— ISAIAH.
Verily, verily, I say unto
you, If a man keep my saying, he
shall never see death. Then said
the Jews unto him, Now we know
that thou hast a devil.
— JOHN.
Mortal existence is an enigma.
Every day is a mystery. The
testimony of the corporeal senses
cannot inform us what is real and
what is delusive, but the
revelations of Christian Science
unlock the treasures of Truth.
Whatever is false or sinful can
never enter the atmosphere of
Spirit. There is but one Spirit.
Man is never God, but spiritual
man, made in God's likeness,
reflects God. In this scientific
reflection the Ego and the Father
are inseparable. The supposition
that corporeal beings are
spirits, or that there are good
and evil spirits, is a
mistake.
The divine Mind maintains all
identities, from a blade of grass
to a star, as distinct and
eternal. The questions are: What
are God's identities? What is
Soul? Does life or soul exist in
the thing formed?
Nothing is real and eternal,
— nothing is Spirit, —
but God and His idea. Evil has no
reality. It is neither person,
place, nor thing, but is simply a
belief, an illusion of material
sense.
The identity, or idea, of all
reality continues forever; but
Spirit, or the divine Principle
of all, is not in Spirit's
formations. Soul is synonymous
with Spirit, God, the creative,
governing, infinite Principle
outside of finite form, which
forms only reflect.
Close your eyes, and you may
dream that you see a flower,
— that you touch and smell
it. Thus you learn that the
flower is a product of the
so-called mind, a formation of
thought rather than of matter.
Close your eyes again, and you
may see landscapes, men, and
women. Thus you learn that these
also are images, which mortal
mind holds and evolves and which
simulate mind, life, and
intelligence. From dreams also
you learn that neither mortal
mind nor matter is the image or
likeness of God, and that
immortal Mind is not in
matter.
When the Science of Mind is
understood, spiritualism will be
found mainly erroneous, having no
scientific basis nor origin, no
proof nor power outside of human
testimony. It is the offspring of
the physical senses. There is no
sensuality in Spirit. I never
could believe in
spiritualism.
The basis and structure of
spiritualism are alike material
and physical. Its spirits are so
many corporealities, limited and
finite in character and quality.
Spiritualism therefore
presupposes Spirit, which is ever
infinite, to be a corporeal
being, a finite form, — a
theory contrary to Christian
Science.
There is but one spiritual
existence, — the Life of
which corporeal sense can take no
cognizance. The divine Principle
of man speaks through immortal
sense. If a material body —
in other words, mortal, material
sense — were permeated by
Spirit, that body would disappear
to mortal sense, would be
deathless. A condition precedent
to communion with Spirit is the
gain of spiritual life.
So-called spirits are
but corporeal communicators. As
light destroys darkness and in
the place of darkness all is
light, so (in absolute Science)
Soul, or God, is the only
truth-giver to man. Truth
destroys mortality, and brings to
light immortality. Mortal belief
(the material sense of life) and
immortal Truth (the spiritual
sense) are the tares and the
wheat, which are not united by
progress, but separated.
Perfection is not expressed
through imperfection. Spirit is
not made manifest through matter,
the antipode of Spirit. Error is
not a convenient sieve through
which truth can be strained.
God, good, being ever present,
it follows in divine logic that
evil, the suppositional opposite
of good, is never present. In
Science, individual good derived
from God, the infinite
All-in-all, may flow from the
departed to mortals; but evil is
neither communicable nor
scientific. A sinning, earthly
mortal is not the reality of Life
nor the medium through which
truth passes to earth. The joy of
intercourse becomes the jest of
sin, when evil and suffering are
communicable. Not personal
intercommunion but divine law is
the communicator of truth,
health, and harmony to earth and
humanity. As readily can you
mingle fire and frost as Spirit
and matter. In either case, one
does not support the other.
Spiritualism calls one person,
living in this world,
material, but another, who
has died to-day a sinner and
supposedly will return to earth
to-morrow, it terms a
spirit. The fact is that
neither the one nor the other is
infinite Spirit, for Spirit is
God, and man is His likeness.
The belief that one man, as
spirit, can control another man,
as matter, upsets both the
individuality and the Science of
man, for man is image. God
controls man, and God is the only
Spirit. Any other control or
attraction of so-called spirit is
a mortal belief, which ought to
be known by its fruit, — the
repetition of evil.
If Spirit, or God, communed
with mortals or controlled them
through electricity or any other
form of matter, the divine order
and the Science of omnipotent,
omnipresent Spirit would be
destroyed.
The belief that material
bodies return to dust, hereafter
to rise up as spiritual bodies
with material sensations and
desires, is incorrect. Equally
incorrect is the belief that
spirit is confined in a finite,
material body, from which it is
freed by death, and that, when it
is freed from the material body,
spirit retains the sensations
belonging to that body.
It is a grave mistake to
suppose that matter is any part
of the reality of intelligent
existence, or that Spirit and
matter, intelligence and
non-intelligence, can commune
together. This error Science will
destroy. The sensual cannot be
made the mouthpiece of the
spiritual, nor can the finite
become the channel of the
infinite. There is no
communication between so-called
material existence and spiritual
life which is not subject to
death.
To be on communicable terms
with Spirit, persons must be free
from organic bodies; and their
return to a material condition,
after having once left it, would
be as impossible as would be the
restoration to its original
condition of the acorn, already
absorbed into a sprout which has
risen above the soil. The seed
which has germinated has a new
form and state of existence. When
here or hereafter the belief of
life in matter is extinct, the
error which has held the belief
dissolves with the belief, and
never returns to the old
condition. No correspondence nor
communion can exist between
persons in such opposite dreams
as the belief of having died and
left a material body and the
belief of still living in an
organic, material body.
The caterpillar, transformed
into a beautiful insect, is no
longer a worm, nor does the
insect return to fraternize with
or control the worm. Such a
backward transformation is
impossible in Science. Darkness
and light, infancy and manhood,
sickness and health, are
opposites, — different
beliefs, which never blend. Who
will say that infancy can utter
the ideas of manhood, that
darkness can represent light,
that we are in Europe when we are
in the opposite hemisphere? There
is no bridge across the gulf
which divides two such opposite
conditions as the spiritual, or
incorporeal, and the physical, or
corporeal.
In Christian Science there is
never a retrograde step, never a
return to positions outgrown. The
so-called dead and living cannot
commune together, for they are in
separate states of existence, or
consciousness.
This simple truth lays bare
the mistaken assumption that man
dies as matter but comes to life
as spirit. The so-called dead, in
order to reappear to those still
in the existence cognized by the
physical senses, would need to be
tangible and material, — to
have a material investiture,
— or the material senses
could take no cognizance of the
so-called dead.
Spiritualism would transfer
men from the spiritual sense of
existence back into its material
sense. This gross materialism is
scientifically impossible, since
to infinite Spirit there can be
no matter.
Jesus said of Lazarus: "Our
friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I
go, that I may awake him out of
sleep." Jesus restored Lazarus by
the understanding that Lazarus
had never died, not by an
admission that his body had died
and then lived again. Had Jesus
believed that Lazarus had lived
or died in his body, the Master
would have stood on the same
plane of belief as those who
buried the body, and he could not
have resuscitated it.
When you can waken yourself or
others out of the belief that all
must die, you can then exercise
Jesus' spiritual power to
reproduce the presence of those
who have thought they died,
— but not otherwise.
There is one possible moment,
when those living on the earth
and those called dead, can
commune together, and that is the
moment previous to the
transition, — the moment
when the link between their
opposite beliefs is being
sundered. In the vestibule
through which we pass from one
dream to another dream, or when
we awake from earth's sleep to
the grand verities of Life, the
departing may hear the glad
welcome of those who have gone
before. The ones departing may
whisper this vision, name the
face that smiles on them and the
hand which beckons them, as one
at Niagara, with eyes open only
to that wonder, forgets all else
and breathes aloud his
rapture.
When being is understood, Life
will be recognized as neither
material nor finite, but as
infinite, — as God,
universal good; and the belief
that life, or mind, was ever in a
finite form, or good in evil,
will be destroyed. Then it will
be understood that Spirit never
entered matter and was therefore
never raised from matter. When
advanced to spiritual being and
the understanding of God, man can
no longer commune with matter;
neither can he return to it, any
more than a tree can return to
its seed. Neither will man seem
to be corporeal, but he will be
an individual consciousness,
characterized by the divine
Spirit as idea, not matter.
Suffering, sinning, dying
beliefs are unreal. When divine
Science is universally
understood, they will have no
power over man, for man is
immortal and lives by divine
authority.
The sinless joy, — the
perfect harmony and immortality
of Life, possessing unlimited
divine beauty and goodness
without a single bodily pleasure
or pain, — constitutes the
only veritable, indestructible
man, whose being is spiritual.
This state of existence is
scientific and intact, — a
perfection discernible only by
those who have the final
understanding of Christ in divine
Science. Death can never hasten
this state of existence, for
death must be overcome, not
submitted to, before immortality
appears.
The recognition of Spirit and
of infinity comes not suddenly
here or hereafter. The pious
Polycarp said: "I cannot turn at
once from good to evil." Neither
do other mortals accomplish the
change from error to truth at a
single bound.
Existence continues to be a
belief of corporeal sense until
the Science of being is reached.
Error brings its own
self-destruction both here and
hereafter, for mortal mind
creates its own physical
conditions. Death will occur on
the next plane of existence as on
this, until the spiritual
understanding of Life is reached.
Then, and not until then, will it
be demonstrated that "the second
death hath no power."
The period required for this
dream of material life, embracing
its so-called pleasures and
pains, to vanish from
consciousness, "knoweth no man .
. . neither the Son, but the
Father." This period will be of
longer or shorter duration
according to the tenacity of
error. Of what advantage, then,
would it be to us, or to the
departed, to prolong the material
state and so prolong the illusion
either of a soul inert or of a
sinning, suffering sense, —
a so-called mind fettered to
matter.
Even if communications from
spirits to mortal consciousness
were possible, such
communications would grow
beautifully less with every
advanced stage of existence. The
departed would gradually rise
above ignorance and materiality,
and Spiritualists would outgrow
their beliefs in material
spiritualism. Spiritism consigns
the so-called dead to a state
resembling that of blighted buds,
— to a wretched purgatory,
where the chances of the departed
for improvement narrow into
nothing and they return to their
old standpoints of matter.
The decaying flower, the
blighted bud, the gnarled oak,
the ferocious beast, — like
the discords of disease, sin, and
death, — are unnatural. They
are the falsities of sense, the
changing deflections of mortal
mind; they are not the eternal
realities of Mind.
How unreasonable is the belief
that we are wearing out life and
hastening to death, and that at
the same time we are communing
with immortality! If the departed
are in rapport with mortality, or
matter, they are not spiritual,
but must still be mortal,
sinning, suffering, and dying.
Then why look to them — even
were communication possible
— for proofs of immortality,
and accept them as oracles?
Communications gathered from
ignorance are pernicious in
tendency.
Spiritualism with its material
accompaniments would destroy the
supremacy of Spirit. If Spirit
pervades all space, it needs no
material method for the
transmission of messages. Spirit
needs no wires nor electricity in
order to be omnipresent.
Spirit is not materially
tangible. How then can it
communicate with man through
electric, material effects? How
can the majesty and omnipotence
of Spirit be lost? God is not in
the medley where matter cares for
matter, where spiritism makes
many gods, and hypnotism and
electricity are claimed to be the
agents of God's government.
Spirit blesses man, but man
cannot "tell whence it cometh."
By it the sick are healed, the
sorrowing are comforted, and the
sinning are reformed. These are
the effects of one universal God,
the invisible good dwelling in
eternal Science.
The act of describing disease
— its symptoms, locality,
and fatality — is not
scientific. Warning people
against death is an error that
tends to frighten into death
those who are ignorant of Life as
God. Thousands of instances could
be cited of health restored by
changing the patient's thoughts
regarding death.
A scientific mental method is
more sanitary than the use of
drugs, and such a mental method
produces permanent health.
Science must go over the whole
ground, and dig up every seed of
error's sowing. Spiritualism
relies upon human beliefs and
hypotheses. Christian Science
removes these beliefs and
hypotheses through the higher
understanding of God, for
Christian Science, resting on
divine Principle, not on material
personalities, in its revelation
of immortality, introduces the
harmony of being.
Jesus cast out evil spirits,
or false beliefs. The Apostle
Paul bade men have the Mind that
was in the Christ. Jesus did his
own work by the one Spirit. He
said: "My Father worketh
hitherto, and I work." He never
described disease, so far as can
be learned from the Gospels, but
he healed disease.
The unscientific practitioner
says: "You are ill. Your brain is
overtaxed, and you must rest.
Your body is weak, and it must be
strengthened. You have nervous
prostration, and must be treated
for it." Science objects to all
this, contending for the rights
of intelligence and asserting
that Mind controls body and
brain.
Mind-science teaches that
mortals need "not be weary in
well doing." It dissipates
fatigue in doing good. Giving
does not impoverish us in the
service of our Maker, neither
does withholding enrich us. We
have strength in proportion to
our apprehension of the truth,
and our strength is not lessened
by giving utterance to truth. A
cup of coffee or tea is not the
equal of truth, whether for the
inspiration of a sermon or for
the support of bodily
endurance.
A communication purporting to
come from the late Theodore
Parker reads as follows: "There
never was, and there never will
be, an immortal spirit." Yet the
very periodical containing this
sentence repeats weekly the
assertion that
spirit-communications are our
only proofs of immortality.
I entertain no doubt of the
humanity and philanthropy of many
Spiritualists, but I cannot
coincide with their views. It is
mysticism which gives
spiritualism its force. Science
dispels mystery and explains
extraordinary phenomena; but
Science never removes phenomena
from the domain of reason into
the realm of mysticism.
It should not seem mysterious
that mind, without the aid of
hands, can move a table, when we
already know that it is
mind-power which moves both table
and hand. Even planchette —
the French toy which years ago
pleased so many people —
attested the control of mortal
mind over its substratum, called
matter.
It is mortal mind which
convulses its substratum, matter.
These movements arise from the
volition of human belief, but
they are neither scientific nor
rational. Mortal mind produces
table-tipping as certainly as
table-setting, and believes that
this wonder emanates from spirits
and electricity. This belief
rests on the common conviction
that mind and matter cooperate
both visibly and invisibly, hence
that matter is intelligent.
There is not so much evidence
to prove intercommunication
between the so-called dead and
the living, as there is to show
the sick that matter suffers and
has sensation; yet this latter
evidence is destroyed by
Mind-science. If Spiritualists
understood the Science of being,
their belief in mediumship would
vanish.
At the very best and on its
own theories, spiritualism can
only prove that certain
individuals have a continued
existence after death and
maintain their affiliation with
mortal flesh; but this fact
affords no certainty of
everlasting life. A man's
assertion that he is immortal no
more proves him to be so, than
the opposite assertion, that he
is mortal, would prove
immortality a lie. Nor is the
case improved when alleged
spirits teach immortality. Life,
Love, Truth, is the only proof of
immortality.
Man in the likeness of God as
revealed in Science cannot help
being immortal. Though the grass
seemeth to wither and the flower
to fade, they reappear. Erase the
figures which express number,
silence the tones of music, give
to the worms the body called man,
and yet the producing, governing,
divine Principle lives on, —
in the case of man as truly as in
the case of numbers and of music,
— despite the so-called laws
of matter, which define man as
mortal. Though the inharmony
resulting from material sense
hides the harmony of Science,
inharmony cannot destroy the
divine Principle of Science. In
Science, man's immortality
depends upon that of God, good,
and follows as a necessary
consequence of the immortality of
good.
That somebody, somewhere, must
have known the deceased person,
supposed to be the communicator,
is evident, and it is as easy to
read distant thoughts as near. We
think of an absent friend as
easily as we do of one present.
It is no more difficult to read
the absent mind than it is to
read the present. Chaucer wrote
centuries ago, yet we still read
his thought in his verse. What is
classic study, but discernment of
the minds of Homer and Virgil, of
whose personal existence we may
be in doubt?
If spiritual life has been won
by the departed, they cannot
return to material existence,
because different states of
consciousness are involved, and
one person cannot exist in two
different states of consciousness
at the same time. In sleep we do
not communicate with the dreamer
by our side despite his physical
proximity, because both of us are
either unconscious or are
wandering in our dreams through
different mazes of
consciousness.
In like manner it would
follow, even if our departed
friends were near us and were in
as conscious a state of existence
as before the change we call
death, that their state of
consciousness must be different
from ours. We are not in their
state, nor are they in the mental
realm in which we dwell.
Communion between them and
ourselves would be prevented by
this difference. The mental
states are so unlike, that
intercommunion is as impossible
as it would be between a mole and
a human being. Different dreams
and different awakenings betoken
a differing consciousness. When
wandering in Australia, do we
look for help to the Esquimaux in
their snow huts?
In a world of sin and
sensuality hastening to a greater
development of power, it is wise
earnestly to consider whether it
is the human mind or the divine
Mind which is influencing one.
What the prophets of Jehovah did,
the worshippers of Baal failed to
do; yet artifice and delusion
claimed that they could equal the
work of wisdom.
Science only can explain the
incredible good and evil elements
now coming to the surface.
Mortals must find refuge in Truth
in order to escape the error of
these latter days. Nothing is
more antagonistic to Christian
Science than a blind belief
without understanding, for such a
belief hides Truth and builds on
error.
Miracles are impossible in
Science, and here Science takes
issue with popular religions. The
scientific manifestation of power
is from the divine nature and is
not supernatural, since Science
is an explication of nature. The
belief that the universe,
including man, is governed in
general by material laws, but
that occasionally Spirit sets
aside these laws, — this
belief belittles omnipotent
wisdom, and gives to matter the
precedence over Spirit.
It is contrary to Christian
Science to suppose that life is
either material or organically
spiritual. Between Christian
Science and all forms of
superstition a great gulf is
fixed, as impassable as that
between Dives and Lazarus. There
is mortal mind-reading and
immortal Mind-reading. The latter
is a revelation of divine purpose
through spiritual understanding,
by which man gains the divine
Principle and explanation of all
things. Mortal mind-reading and
immortal Mind-reading are
distinctly opposite standpoints,
from which cause and effect are
interpreted. The act of reading
mortal mind investigates and
touches only human beliefs.
Science is immortal and
coordinate neither with the
premises nor with the conclusions
of mortal beliefs.
The ancient prophets gained
their foresight from a spiritual,
incorporeal standpoint, not by
foreshadowing evil and mistaking
fact for fiction, —
predicting the future from a
groundwork of corporeality and
human belief. When sufficiently
advanced in Science to be in
harmony with the truth of being,
men become seers and prophets
involuntarily, controlled not by
demons, spirits, or demigods, but
by the one Spirit. It is the
prerogative of the ever-present,
divine Mind, and of thought which
is in rapport with this Mind, to
know the past, the present, and
the future.
Acquaintance with the Science
of being enables us to commune
more largely with the divine
Mind, to foresee and foretell
events which concern the
universal welfare, to be divinely
inspired, — yea, to reach
the range of fetterless Mind.
To understand that Mind is
infinite, not bounded by
corporeality, not dependent upon
the ear and eye for sound or
sight nor upon muscles and bones
for locomotion, is a step towards
the Mindscience by which we
discern man's nature and
existence. This true conception
of being destroys the belief of
spiritualism at its very
inception, for without the
concession of material
personalities called spirits,
spiritualism has no basis upon
which to build.
All we correctly know of
Spirit comes from God, divine
Principle, and is learned through
Christ and Christian Science. If
this Science has been thoroughly
learned and properly digested, we
can know the truth more
accurately than the astronomer
can read the stars or calculate
an eclipse. This Mind-reading is
the opposite of clairvoyance. It
is the illumination of the
spiritual understanding which
demonstrates the capacity of
Soul, not of material sense. This
Soul-sense comes to the human
mind when the latter yields to
the divine Mind.
Such intuitions reveal
whatever constitutes and
perpetuates harmony, enabling one
to do good, but not evil. You
will reach the perfect Science of
healing when you are able to read
the human mind after this manner
and discern the error you would
destroy. The Samaritan woman
said: "Come, see a man, which
told me all things that ever I
did: is not this the Christ?"
It is recorded that Jesus, as
he once journeyed with his
students, "knew their thoughts,"
— read them scientifically.
In like manner he discerned
disease and healed the sick.
After the same method, events of
great moment were foretold by the
Hebrew prophets. Our Master
rebuked the lack of this power
when he said: "O ye hypocrites!
ye can discern the face of the
sky; but can ye not discern the
signs of the times?"
Both Jew and Gentile may have
had acute corporeal senses, but
mortals need spiritual sense.
Jesus knew the generation to be
wicked and adulterous, seeking
the material more than the
spiritual. His thrusts at
materialism were sharp, but
needed. He never spared hypocrisy
the sternest condemnation. He
said: "These ought ye to have
done, and not to leave the other
undone." The great Teacher knew
both cause and effect, knew that
truth communicates itself but
never imparts error.
Jesus once asked, "Who touched
me?" Supposing this inquiry to be
occasioned by physical contact
alone, his disciples answered,
"The multitude throng thee."
Jesus knew, as others did not,
that it was not matter, but
mortal mind, whose touch called
for aid. Repeating his inquiry,
he was answered by the faith of a
sick woman. His quick
apprehension of this mental call
illustrated his spirituality. The
disciples' misconception of it
uncovered their materiality.
Jesus possessed more spiritual
susceptibility than the
disciples. Opposites come from
contrary directions, and produce
unlike results.
Mortals evolve images of
thought. These may appear to the
ignorant to be apparitions; but
they are mysterious only because
it is unusual to see thoughts,
though we can always feel their
influence. Haunted houses,
ghostly voices, unusual noises,
and apparitions brought out in
dark seances either involve feats
by tricksters, or they are images
and sounds evolved involuntarily
by mortal mind. Seeing is no less
a quality of physical sense than
feeling. Then why is it more
difficult to see a thought than
to feel one? Education alone
determines the difference. In
reality there is none.
Portraits,
landscape-paintings, fac-similes
of penmanship, peculiarities of
expression, recollected
sentences, can all be taken from
pictorial thought and memory as
readily as from objects
cognizable by the senses. Mortal
mind sees what it believes as
certainly as it believes what it
sees. It feels, hears, and sees
its own thoughts. Pictures are
mentally formed before the artist
can convey them to canvas. So is
it with all material conceptions.
Mind-readers perceive these
pictures of thought. They copy or
reproduce them, even when they
are lost to the memory of the
mind in which they are
discoverable.
It is needless for the thought
or for the person holding the
transferred picture to be
individually and consciously
present. Though individuals have
passed away, their mental
environment remains to be
discerned, described, and
transmitted. Though bodies are
leagues apart and their
associations forgotten, their
associations float in the general
atmosphere of human mind.
The Scotch call such vision
"second sight," when really it is
first sight instead of second,
for it presents primal facts to
mortal mind. Science enables one
to read the human mind, but not
as a clairvoyant. It enables one
to heal through Mind, but not as
a mesmerist.
The mine knows naught of the
emeralds within its rocks; the
sea is ignorant of the gems
within its caverns, of the
corals, of its sharp reefs, of
the tall ships that float on its
bosom, or of the bodies which lie
buried in its sands: yet these
are all there. Do not suppose
that any mental concept is gone
because you do not think of it.
The true concept is never lost.
The strong impressions produced
on mortal mind by friendship or
by any intense feeling are
lasting, and mind-readers can
perceive and reproduce these
impressions.
Memory may reproduce voices
long ago silent. We have but to
close the eyes, and forms rise
before us, which are thousands of
miles away or altogether gone
from physical sight and sense,
and this not in dreamy sleep. In
our day-dreams we can recall that
for which the poet Tennyson
expressed the heart's desire,
—
the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is
still.
The mind may even be cognizant
of a present flavor and odor,
when no viand touches the palate
and no scent salutes the
nostrils.
How are veritable ideas to be
distinguished from illusions? By
learning the origin of each.
Ideas are emanations from the
divine Mind. Thoughts, proceeding
from the brain or from matter,
are offshoots of mortal mind;
they are mortal material beliefs.
Ideas are spiritual, harmonious,
and eternal. Beliefs proceed from
the so-called material senses,
which at one time are supposed to
be substance-matter and at
another are called spirits.
To love one's neighbor as
one's self, is a divine idea; but
this idea can never be seen,
felt, nor understood through the
physical senses. Excite the organ
of veneration or religious faith,
and the individual manifests
profound adoration. Excite the
opposite development, and he
blasphemes. These effects,
however, do not proceed from
Christianity, nor are they
spiritual phenomena, for both
arise from mortal belief.
Eloquence re-echoes the
strains of Truth and Love. It is
due to inspiration rather than to
erudition. It shows the
possibilities derived from divine
Mind, though it is said to be a
gift whose endowment is obtained
from books or received from the
impulsion of departed spirits.
When eloquence proceeds from the
belief that a departed spirit is
speaking, who can tell what the
unaided medium is incapable of
knowing or uttering? This
phenomenon only shows that the
beliefs of mortal mind are
loosed. Forgetting her ignorance
in the belief that another mind
is speaking through her, the
devotee may become unwontedly
eloquent. Having more faith in
others than in herself, and
believing that somebody else
possesses her tongue and mind,
she talks freely.
Destroy her belief in outside
aid, and her eloquence
disappears. The former limits of
her belief return. She says, "I
am incapable of words that glow,
for I am uneducated." This
familiar instance reaffirms the
Scriptural word concerning a man,
"As he thinketh in his heart, so
is he." If one believes that he
cannot be an orator without study
or a superinduced condition, the
body responds to this belief, and
the tongue grows mute which
before was eloquent.
Mind is not necessarily
dependent upon educational
processes. It possesses of itself
all beauty and poetry, and the
power of expressing them. Spirit,
God, is heard when the senses are
silent. We are all capable of
more than we do. The influence or
action of Soul confers a freedom,
which explains the phenomena of
improvisation and the fervor of
untutored lips.
Matter is neither intelligent
nor creative. The tree is not the
author of itself. Sound is not
the originator of music, and man
is not the father of man. Cain
very naturally concluded that if
life was in the body, and man
gave it, man had the right to
take it away. This incident shows
that the belief of life in matter
was "a murderer from the
beginning."
If seed is necessary to
produce wheat, and wheat to
produce flour, or if one animal
can originate another, how then
can we account for their primal
origin? How were the loaves and
fishes multiplied on the shores
of Galilee, — and that, too,
without meal or monad from which
loaf or fish could come?
The earth's orbit and the
imaginary line called the equator
are not substance. The earth's
motion and position are sustained
by Mind alone. Divest yourself of
the thought that there can be
substance in matter, and the
movements and transitions now
possible for mortal mind will be
found to be equally possible for
the body. Then being will be
recognized as spiritual, and
death will be obsolete, though
now some insist that death is the
necessary prelude to
immortality.
In dreams we fly to Europe and
meet a far-off friend. The
looker-on sees the body in bed,
but the supposed inhabitant of
that body carries it through the
air and over the ocean. This
shows the possibilities of
thought. Opium and hashish eaters
mentally travel far and work
wonders, yet their bodies stay in
one place. This shows what mortal
mentality and knowledge are.
The admission to one's self
that man is God's own likeness
sets man free to master the
infinite idea. This conviction
shuts the door on death, and
opens it wide towards
immortality. The understanding
and recognition of Spirit must
finally come, and we may as well
improve our time in solving the
mysteries of being through an
apprehension of divine Principle.
At present we know not what man
is, but we certainly shall know
this when man reflects God.
The Revelator tells us of "a
new heaven and a new earth." Have
you ever pictured this heaven and
earth, inhabited by beings under
the control of supreme
wisdom?
Let us rid ourselves of the
belief that man is separated from
God, and obey only the divine
Principle, Life and Love. Here is
the great point of departure for
all true spiritual growth.
It is difficult for the sinner
to accept divine Science, because
Science exposes his nothingness;
but the sooner error is reduced
to its native nothingness, the
sooner man's great reality will
appear and his genuine being will
be understood. The destruction of
error is by no means the
destruction of Truth or Life, but
is the acknowledgment of
them.
Absorbed in material selfhood
we discern and reflect but
faintly the substance of Life or
Mind. The denial of material
selfhood aids the discernment of
man's spiritual and eternal
individuality, and destroys the
erroneous knowledge gained from
matter or through what are termed
the material senses.
Certain erroneous postulates
should be here considered in
order that the spiritual facts
may be better apprehended.
The first erroneous postulate
of belief is, that substance,
life, and intelligence are
something apart from God.
The second erroneous postulate
is, that man is both mental and
material.
The third erroneous postulate
is, that mind is both evil and
good; whereas the real Mind
cannot be evil nor the medium of
evil, for Mind is God.
The fourth erroneous postulate
is, that matter is intelligent,
and that man has a material body
which is part of himself.
The fifth erroneous postulate
is, that matter holds in itself
the issues of life and death,
— that matter is not only
capable of experiencing pleasure
and pain, but also capable of
imparting these sensations. From
the illusion implied in this last
postulate arises the
decomposition of mortal bodies in
what is termed death.
Mind is not an entity within
the cranium with the power of
sinning now and forever.
In old Scriptural pictures we
see a serpent coiled around the
tree of knowledge and speaking to
Adam and Eve. This represents the
serpent in the act of commending
to our first parents the
knowledge of good and evil, a
knowledge gained from matter, or
evil, instead of from Spirit. The
portrayal is still graphically
accurate, for the common
conception of mortal man — a
burlesque of God's man — is
an outgrowth of human knowledge
or sensuality, a mere offshoot of
material sense.
Uncover error, and it turns
the lie upon you. Until the fact
concerning error — namely,
its nothingness — appears,
the moral demand will not be met,
and the ability to make nothing
of error will be wanting. We
should blush to call that real
which is only a mistake. The
foundation of evil is laid on a
belief in something besides God.
This belief tends to support two
opposite powers, instead of
urging the claims of Truth alone.
The mistake of thinking that
error can be real, when it is
merely the absence of truth,
leads to belief in the
superiority of error.
Do you say the time has not
yet come in which to recognize
Soul as substantial and able to
control the body? Remember Jesus,
who nearly nineteen centuries ago
demonstrated the power of Spirit
and said, "He that believeth on
me, the works that I do shall he
do also," and who also said, "But
the hour cometh, and now
is, when the true worshippers
shall worship the Father in
spirit and in truth." "Behold,
now is the accepted time;
behold, now is the day of
salvation," said Paul.
Divine logic and revelation
coincide. If we believe
otherwise, we may be sure that
either our logic is at fault or
that we have misinterpreted
revelation. Good never causes
evil, nor creates aught that can
cause evil.
Good does not create a mind
susceptible of causing evil, for
evil is the opposing error and
not the truth of creation.
Destructive electricity is not
the offspring of infinite good.
Whatever contradicts the real
nature of the divine Esse,
though human faith may clothe it
with angelic vestments, is
without foundation.
The belief that Spirit is
finite as well as infinite has
darkened all history. In
Christian Science, Spirit, as a
proper noun, is the name of the
Supreme Being. It means quantity
and quality, and applies
exclusively to God. The modifying
derivatives of the word
spirit refer only to
quality, not to God. Man is
spiritual. He is not God, Spirit.
If man were Spirit, then men
would be spirits, gods. Finite
spirit would be mortal, and this
is the error embodied in the
belief that the infinite can be
contained in the finite. This
belief tends to becloud our
apprehension of the kingdom of
heaven and of the reign of
harmony in the Science of
being.
Jesus taught but one God, one
Spirit, who makes man in the
image and likeness of Himself,
— of Spirit, not of matter.
Man reflects infinite Truth,
Life, and Love. The nature of
man, thus understood, includes
all that is implied by the terms
"image" and "likeness" as used in
Scripture. The truly Christian
and scientific statement of
personality and of the relation
of man to God, with the
demonstration which accompanied
it, incensed the rabbis, and they
said: "Crucify him, crucify him .
. . by our law he ought to die,
because he made himself the Son
of God."
The eastern empires and
nations owe their false
government to the misconceptions
of Deity there prevalent.
Tyranny, intolerance, and
bloodshed, wherever found, arise
from the belief that the infinite
is formed after the pattern of
mortal personality, passion, and
impulse.
The progress of truth confirms
its claims, and our Master
confirmed his words by his works.
His healingpower evoked denial,
ingratitude, and betrayal,
arising from sensuality. Of the
ten lepers whom Jesus healed, but
one returned to give God thanks,
— that is, to acknowledge
the divine Principle which had
healed him.
Our Master easily read the
thoughts of mankind, and this
insight better enabled him to
direct those thoughts aright; but
what would be said at this period
of an infidel blasphemer who
should hint that Jesus used his
incisive power injuriously? Our
Master read mortal mind on a
scientific basis, that of the
omnipresence of Mind. An
approximation of this discernment
indicates spiritual growth and
union with the infinite
capacities of the one Mind. Jesus
could injure no one by his
Mind-reading. The effect of his
Mind was always to heal and to
save, and this is the only
genuine Science of reading mortal
mind. His holy motives and aims
were traduced by the sinners of
that period, as they would be
to-day if Jesus were personally
present. Paul said, "To be
spiritually minded is life." We
approach God, or Life, in
proportion to our spirituality,
our fidelity to Truth and Love;
and in that ratio we know all
human need and are able to
discern the thought of the sick
and the sinning for the purpose
of healing them. Error of any
kind cannot hide from the law of
God.
Whoever reaches this point of
moral culture and goodness cannot
injure others, and must do them
good. The greater or lesser
ability of a Christian Scientist
to discern thought
scientifically, depends upon his
genuine spirituality. This kind
of mind-reading is not
clairvoyance, but it is important
to success in healing, and is one
of the special characteristics
thereof.
We welcome the increase of
knowledge and the end of error,
because even human invention must
have its day, and we want that
day to be succeeded by Christian
Science, by divine reality.
Midnight foretells the dawn. Led
by a solitary star amid the
darkness, the Magi of old
foretold the Messiahship of
Truth. Is the wise man of to-day
believed, when he beholds the
light which heralds Christ's
eternal dawn and describes its
effulgence?
Lulled by stupefying
illusions, the world is asleep in
the cradle of infancy, dreaming
away the hours. Material sense
does not unfold the facts of
existence; but spiritual sense
lifts human consciousness into
eternal Truth. Humanity advances
slowly out of sinning sense into
spiritual understanding;
unwillingness to learn all things
rightly, binds Christendom with
chains.
Love will finally mark the
hour of harmony, and
spiritualization will follow, for
Love is Spirit. Before error is
wholly destroyed, there will be
interruptions of the general
material routine. Earth will
become dreary and desolate, but
summer and winter, seedtime and
harvest (though in changed
forms), will continue unto the
end, — until the final
spiritualization of all things.
"The darkest hour precedes the
dawn."
This material world is even
now becoming the arena for
conflicting forces. On one side
there will be discord and dismay;
on the other side there will be
Science and peace. The breaking
up of material beliefs may seem
to be famine and pestilence, want
and woe, sin, sickness, and
death, which assume new phases
until their nothingness appears.
These disturbances will continue
until the end of error, when all
discord will be swallowed up in
spiritual Truth.
Mortal error will vanish in a
moral chemicalization. This
mental fermentation has begun,
and will continue until all
errors of belief yield to
understanding. Belief is
changeable, but spiritual
understanding is changeless.
As this consummation draws
nearer, he who has shaped his
course in accordance with divine
Science will endure to the end.
As material knowledge diminishes
and spiritual understanding
increases, real objects will be
apprehended mentally instead of
materially.
During this final conflict,
wicked minds will endeavor to
find means by which to accomplish
more evil; but those who discern
Christian Science will hold crime
in check. They will aid in the
ejection of error. They will
maintain law and order, and
cheerfully await the certainty of
ultimate perfection.
In reality, the more closely
error simulates truth and
so-called matter resembles its
essence, mortal mind, the more
impotent error becomes as a
belief. According to human
belief, the lightning is fierce
and the electric current swift,
yet in Christian Science the
flight of one and the blow of the
other will become harmless. The
more destructive matter becomes,
the more its nothingness will
appear, until matter reaches its
mortal zenith in illusion and
forever disappears. The nearer a
false belief approaches truth
without passing the boundary
where, having been destroyed by
divine Love, it ceases to be even
an illusion, the riper it becomes
for destruction. The more
material the belief, the more
obvious its error, until divine
Spirit, supreme in its domain,
dominates all matter, and man is
found in the likeness of Spirit,
his original being.
The broadest facts array the
most falsities against
themselves, for they bring error
from under cover. It requires
courage to utter truth; for the
higher Truth lifts her voice, the
louder will error scream, until
its inarticulate sound is forever
silenced in oblivion.
"He uttered His voice, the
earth melted." This Scripture
indicates that all matter will
disappear before the supremacy of
Spirit.
Christianity is again
demonstrating the Life that is
Truth, and the Truth that is
Life, by the apostolic work of
casting out error and healing the
sick. Earth has no repayment for
the persecutions which attend a
new step in Christianity; but the
spiritual recompense of the
persecuted is assured in the
elevation of existence above
mortal discord and in the gift of
divine Love.
The prophet of to-day beholds
in the mental horizon the signs
of these times, the reappearance
of the Christianity which heals
the sick and destroys error, and
no other sign shall be given.
Body cannot be saved except
through Mind. The Science of
Christianity is misinterpreted by
a material age, for it is the
healing influence of Spirit (not
spirits) which the
material senses cannot
comprehend, — which can only
be spiritually discerned. Creeds,
doctrines, and human hypotheses
do not express Christian Science;
much less can they demonstrate
it.
Beyond the frail premises of
human beliefs, above the
loosening grasp of creeds, the
demonstration of Christian
Mind-healing stands a revealed
and practical Science. It is
imperious throughout all ages as
Christ's revelation of Truth, of
Life, and of Love, which remains
inviolate for every man to
understand and to practise.
For centuries — yea,
always — natural science has
not been considered a part of any
religion, Christianity not
excepted. Even now multitudes
consider that which they call
science has no proper
connection with faith and piety.
Mystery does not enshroud
Christ's teachings, and they are
not theoretical and fragmentary,
but practical and complete; and
being practical and complete,
they are not deprived of their
essential vitality.
The way through which
immortality and life are learned
is not ecclesiastical but
Christian, not human but divine,
not physical but metaphysical,
not material but scientifically
spiritual. Human philosophy,
ethics, and superstition afford
no demonstrable divine Principle
by which mortals can escape from
sin; yet to escape from sin, is
what the Bible demands. "Work out
your own salvation with fear and
trembling," says the apostle, and
he straightway adds: "for it is
God which worketh in you both to
will and to do of His good
pleasure" (Philippians ii. 12,
13). Truth has furnished the key
to the kingdom, and with this key
Christian Science has opened the
door of the human understanding.
None may pick the lock nor enter
by some other door. The ordinary
teachings are material and not
spiritual. Christian Science
teaches only that which is
spiritual and divine, and not
human. Christian Science is
unerring and Divine; the human
sense of things errs because it
is human.
Those individuals, who adopt
theosophy, spiritualism, or
hypnotism, may possess natures
above some others who eschew
their false beliefs. Therefore my
contest is not with the
individual, but with the false
system. I love mankind, and shall
continue to labor and to
endure.
The calm, strong currents of
true spirituality, the
manifestations of which are
health, purity, and
self-immolation, must deepen
human experience, until the
beliefs of material existence are
seen to be a bald imposition, and
sin, disease, and death give
everlasting place to the
scientific demonstration of
divine Spirit and to God's
spiritual, perfect man.
Go
to Chapter 5: Animal Magnetism
Unmasked
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