Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📖

treasures

of Truth. Whatever is false or sinful can 70:6 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 70:9 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.

 

Real and unreal identity

70:12 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? 70:15 What is Soul? Does life or soul exist in the thing

formed?

71:1 Nothing is real and eternal, - nothing is Spirit, - but

God and His idea. Evil has no reality. It is neither 71:3 person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion

of material sense.

 

The identity, or idea, of all reality continues forever; 71:6 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, 71:9 which forms only reflect.

 

Dream-lessons

 

Close your eyes, and you may dream that you see a

flower, - that you touch and smell it. Thus you learn 71:12 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 land-71:15 scapes, 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 71:18 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.

 

Found wanting

71:21 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 71:24 human testimony. It is the offspring of the

physical senses. There is no sensuality in Spirit. I never

could believe in spiritualism.

71:27 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 71:30 therefore presupposes Spirit, which is ever infinite, to be

a corporeal being, a finite form, - a theory contrary to

Christian Science.

72:1 There is but one spiritual existence, - the Life of

which corporeal sense can take no cognizance. The 72:3 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 72:6 disappear to mortal sense, would be deathless. A condition precedent to communion with Spirit is the gain of

spiritual life.

Spirits obsolete

72:9 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, 72:12 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 72:15 (the spiritual sense) are the tares and the wheat, which

are not united by progress, but separated.

 

Perfection is not expressed through imperfection. 72:18 Spirit is not made manifest through matter, the antipode of Spirit. Error is not a convenient sieve through

which truth can be strained.

 

Scientific phenomena

72:21 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 72:24 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 72:27 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. 72:30 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 73:1 Spirit and matter. In either case, one does not support

the other.

73:3 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. 73:6 The fact is that neither the one nor the other is infinite

Spirit, for Spirit is God, and man is His likeness.

 

One government

 

The belief that one man, as spirit, can control an-73:9 other 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 73:12 other control or attraction of so-called spirit is a mortal

belief, which ought to be known by its fruit, - the repetition of evil.

73:15 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 73:18 Spirit would be destroyed.

 

Incorrect theories

 

The belief that material bodies return to dust, hereafter

to rise up as spiritual bodies with material sensations and 73:21 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 73:24 it is freed from the material body, spirit retains the sensations belonging to that body.

 

No mediumship

 

It is a grave mistake to suppose that matter is any part 73:27 of the reality of intelligent existence, or that Spirit and

matter, intelligence and non-intelligence, can

commune together. This error Science will 73:30 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-74:1 called material existence and spiritual life which is not

subject to death.

 

Opposing conditions

74:3 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 74:6 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 74:9 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 74:12 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 74:15 died and left a material body and the belief of still living

in an organic, material body.

 

Bridgeless division

 

The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect, 74:18 is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to

fraternize with or control the worm. Such

a backward transformation is impossible in 74:21 Science. Darkness and light, infancy and manhood,

sickness and health, are opposites, - different beliefs,

which never blend. Who will say that infancy can utter 74:24 the ideas of manhood, that darkness can represent light,

that we are in Europe when we are in the opposite hemi—

sphere? There is no bridge across the gulf which divides 74:27 two such opposite conditions as the spiritual, or incorporeal, and the physical, or corporeal.

 

In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, 74:30 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.

 

Unscientific investiture

75:1 This simple truth lays bare the mistaken assumption

that man dies as matter but comes to life as spirit. The 75:3 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 75:6 a material investiture, - or the material senses could take

no cognizance of the so-called dead.

 

Spiritualism would transfer men from the spiritual sense 75:9 of existence back into its material sense. This gross materialism is scientifically impossible, since to infinite Spirit

there can be no matter.

 

Raising the dead

75:12 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 75:15 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 75:18 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.

75:21 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 75:24 they died, - but not otherwise.

 

Vision of the dying

 

There is one possible moment, when those living on the

earth and those called dead, can commune together, and 75:27 that is the moment previous to the transition,

- the moment when the link between their opposite beliefs is being sundered. In the vestibule through 75:30 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 76:1 who have gone before. The ones departing may whisper

this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the 76:3 hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes

open only to that wonder, forgets all else and breathes

aloud his rapture.

 

Real Life is God

76:6 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 76:9 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 76:12 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 76:15 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.

76:18 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 76:21 divine authority.

 

Immaterial pleasure

 

The sinless joy, - the perfect harmony and immortality

of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness 76:24 without a single bodily pleasure or pain, -

constitutes the only veritable, indestructible

man, whose being is spiritual. This state of existence 76:27 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 76:30 existence, for death must be overcome, not submitted to,

before immortality appears.

 

The recognition of Spirit and of infinity comes not 77:1 suddenly here or hereafter. The pious Polycarp said:

“I cannot turn at once from good to evil.” Neither do 77:3 other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth

at a single bound.

 

Second death

 

Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense 77:6 until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its

own self-destruction both here and hereafter,

for mortal mind creates its own physical con-77:9 ditions. 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 demon-77:12 strated that “the second death hath no power.”

 

A dream vanishing

 

The period required for this dream of material life,