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

death? It is the very antipode of immortal Mind, of Truth, and of spiritual law. 208:12 It is not in accordance with the goodness of God’s character that He should make man sick, then leave man to

heal himself; it is absurd to suppose that matter can both 208:15 cause and cure disease, or that Spirit, God, produces

disease and leaves the remedy to matter.

 

John Young of Edinburgh writes: “God is the father 208:18 of mind, and of nothing else.” Such an utterance is

“the voice of one crying in the wilderness” of human

beliefs and preparing the way of Science. Let us learn 208:21 of the real and eternal, and prepare for the reign of

Spirit, the kingdom of heaven, - the reign and rule of

universal harmony, which cannot be lost nor remain 208:24 forever unseen.

 

Sickness as only thought

 

Mind, not matter, is causation. A material body

only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal 208:27 man possesses this body, and he makes it

harmonious or discordant according to the

images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace 208:30 your body in your thought, and you should delineate

upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness. You should

banish all thoughts of disease and sin and of other beliefs 209:1 included in matter. Man, being immortal, has a perfect

indestructible life. It is the mortal belief which makes 209:3 the body discordant and diseased in proportion as ignorance, fear, or human will governs mortals.

 

Allness of Truth

 

Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing 209:6 them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas,

the life and light of all its own vast creation;

and man is tributary to divine Mind. The 209:9 material and mortal body or mind is not the man.

 

The world would collapse without Mind, without the intelligence which holds the winds in its grasp. Neither 209:12 philosophy nor skepticism can hinder the march of the

Science which reveals the supremacy of Mind. The immanent sense of Mind-power enhances the glory of Mind. 209:15 Nearness, not distance, lends enchantment to this view.

 

Spiritual translation

 

The compounded minerals or aggregated substances

composing the earth, the relations which constituent 209:18 masses hold to each other, the magnitudes,

distances, and revolutions of the celestial

bodies, are of no real importance, when we remember 209:21 that they all must give place to the spiritual fact by the

translation of man and the universe back into Spirit. In

proportion as this is done, man and the universe will be 209:24 found harmonious and eternal.

 

Material substances or mundane formations, astronomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of specu-209:27 lative theories, based on the hypothesis of material law

or life and intelligence resident in matter, will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of 209:30 Spirit.

 

Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God. It shows the superiority of faith by works 210:1 over faith in words. Its ideas are expressed only in “new

tongues;” and these are interpreted by the translation of 210:3 the spiritual original into the language which human

thought can comprehend.

 

Jesus’ disregard of matter

 

The Principle and proof of Christianity are discerned 210:6 by spiritual sense. They are set forth in Jesus’ demonstrations, which show - by his healing the

sick, casting out evils, and destroying death, 210:9 “the last enemy that shall be destroyed,” -

his disregard of matter and its so-called laws.

 

Knowing that Soul and its attributes were forever

manifested through man, the Master healed the sick,

gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the

lame, thus bringing to light the scientific action of the 210:15 divine Mind on human minds and bodies and giving

a better understanding of Soul and salvation. Jesus

healed sickness and sin by one and the same metaphysical 210:18 process.

 

Mind not mortal

 

The expression mortal mind is really a solecism, for

Mind is immortal, and Truth pierces the error of mortality 210:21 as a sunbeam penetrates the cloud. Because,

in obedience to the immutable law of Spirit,

this so-called mind is self-destructive, I name it mortal. 210:24 Error soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind.

 

Matter mindless

 

What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say,

“I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well.” It is the so-210:27 called mortal mind which voices this and appears to itself to make good its claim. To

mortal sense, sin and suffering are real, but immortal 210:30 sense includes no evil nor pestilence. Because immortal

sense has no error of sense, it has no sense of error; there

fore it is without a destructive element.

211:1 If brain, nerves, stomach, are intelligent, - if they talk

to us, tell us their condition, and report how they feel, - 211:3 then Spirit and matter, Truth and error, commingle

and produce sickness and health, good and evil, life and

death; and who shall say whether Truth or error is the 211:6 greater?

 

Matter sensationless

 

The sensations of the body must either be the sensations of a so-called mortal mind or of matter. Nerves 211:9 are not mind. Is it not provable that Mind is

not mortal and that matter has no sensation?

Is it not equally true that matter does not appear in the 211:12 spiritual understanding of being?

 

The sensation of sickness and the impulse to sin seem

to obtain in mortal mind. When a tear starts, does not 211:15 this so-called mind produce the effect seen in the lachry—

mal gland? Without mortal mind, the tear could not

appear; and this action shows the nature of all so-called 211:18 material cause and effect.

 

It should no longer be said in Israel that “the fathers

have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set 211:21 on edge.” Sympathy with error should disappear. The

transfer of the thoughts of one erring mind to another,

Science renders impossible.

 

Nerves painless

211:24 If it is true that nerves have sensation, that matter has

intelligence, that the material organism causes the eyes to

see and the ears to hear, then, when the body 211:27 is dematerialized, these faculties must be lost,

for their immortality is not in Spirit; whereas the fact

is that only through dematerialization and spiritualiza-211:30 tion of thought can these faculties be conceived of as

immortal.

 

Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure. We 212:1 suffer or enjoy in our dreams, but this pain or pleasure

is not communicated through a nerve. A tooth which has 212:3 been extracted sometimes aches again in belief, and the

pain seems to be in its old place. A limb which has been

amputated has continued in belief to pain the owner. If 212:6 the sensation of pain in the limb can return, can be prolonged, why cannot the limb reappear?

 

Why need pain, rather than pleasure, come to this mor-212:9 tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid

than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting

attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut 212:12 off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say

was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it

proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, not in matter. 212:15 Reverse the process; take away this so-called mind instead

of a piece of the flesh, and the nerves have no sensation.

 

Human falsities

 

Mortals have a modus of their own, undirected and un-212:18 sustained by God. They produce a rose through seed and

soil, and bring the rose into contact with the

olfactory nerves that they may smell it. In 212:21 legerdemain and credulous frenzy, mortals believe that

unseen spirits produce the flowers. God alone makes

and clothes the lilies of the field, and this He does by 212:24 means of Mind, not matter.

 

No miracles in Mind-methods

 

Because all the methods of Mind are not understood,

we say the lips or hands must move in order to convey 212:27 thought, that the undulations of the air convey

sound, and possibly that other methods involve

so-called miracles. The realities of being, its 212:30 normal action, and the origin of all things are unseen to

mortal sense; whereas the unreal and imitative movements of mortal belief, which would reverse the immortal 213:1 modus and action, are styled the real. Whoever contradicts this mortal mind supposition of reality is called 213:3 a deceiver, or is said to be deceived. Of a man it has

been said, “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he;” hence

as a man spiritually understandeth, so is he in truth.

 

Good indefinable

213:6 Mortal mind conceives of something as either liquid

or solid, and then classifies it materially. Immortal and

spiritual facts exist apart from this mortal and 213:9 material conception. God, good, is self-existent and self-expressed, though indefinable as a whole.

Every step towards goodness is a departure from materi-213:12 ality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit. Material

theories partially paralyze this attraction towards infinite

and eternal good by an opposite attraction towards the 213:15 finite, temporary, and discordant.

 

Sound is a mental impression made on mortal belief.

The ear does not really hear. Divine Science reveals 213:18 sound as communicated through the senses of Soul -

through spiritual understanding.

 

Music, rhythm of head and heart

 

Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The 213:21 rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He

was a musician beyond what the world knew.

This was even more strikingly true of Beet-213:24 hoven, who was so long hopelessly deaf. Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart. 213:27 Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing

either discord or harmony according as the hand, which

sweeps over it, is human or divine. 213:30 Before human knowledge dipped to its depths into a

false sense of things, - into belief in material origins

which discard the one Mind and true source of being, - 214:1 it is possible that the impressions from Truth were as

distinct as sound, and that they came as sound to the 214:3 primitive prophets. If the medium of hearing is wholly

spiritual, it is normal and indestructible.

 

If Enoch’s perception had been confined to the evidence 214:6 before his material senses, he could never have “walked

with God,” nor been guided into the demonstration of

life eternal.

 

Adam and the senses

214:9 Adam, represented in the Scriptures as formed from

dust, is an object-lesson for the human mind. The material senses, like Adam, originate in matter and 214:12 return to dust, - are proved non-intelligent.

They go out as they came in, for they are still the error,

not the truth of being. When it is learned that the spirit-214:15 ual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions

of Mind to man, then being will be understood and found

to be harmonious.

 

Idolatrous illusions

214:18 We bow down to matter, and entertain finite thoughts

of God like the pagan idolater. Mortals are inclined to

fear and to obey what they consider a material 214:21 body more than they do a spiritual God. All

material knowledge, like the original “tree of knowledge,”

multiplies their pains, for mortal illusions would rob God, 214:24 slay man, and meanwhile would spread their table with

cannibal tidbits and give thanks.

 

The senses of Soul

 

How transient a sense is mortal sight, when a wound on 214:27 the retina may end the power of light and lens! But the

real sight or sense is not lost. Neither age nor

accident can interfere with the senses of Soul, 214:30 and there are no other real senses.