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

of a

needle,” than for sinful beliefs to enter the kingdom of 242:1 heaven, eternal harmony. Through repentance, spiritual

baptism, and regeneration, mortals put off their material 242:3 beliefs and false individuality. It is only a

question of time when “they shall all know

Me [God], from the least of them unto the greatest.” 242:6 Denial of the claims of matter is a great step towards

the joys of Spirit, towards human freedom and the final

triumph over the body.

 

The one only way

242:9 There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ

in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no

other reality - to have no other conscious-242:12 ness of life - than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure

of the senses.

242:15 Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant 242:18 of error, - self-will, self-justification, and self-love, -

which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin

and death.

 

Divided vestments

242:21 The vesture of Life is Truth. According to the Bible,

the facts of being are commonly misconstrued, for it is

written: “They parted my raiment among 242:24 them, and for my vesture they did cast lots.”

The divine Science of man is woven into one web of

consistency without seam or rent. Mere speculation or 242:27 superstition appropriates no part of the divine vesture,

while inspiration restores every part of the Christly garment of righteousness.

242:30 The finger-posts of divine Science show the way our

Master trod, and require of Christians the proof which

he gave, instead of mere profession. We may hide 243:1 spiritual ignorance from the world, but we can never

succeed in the Science and demonstration of spiritual 243:3 good through ignorance or hypocrisy.

 

Ancient and modern miracles

 

The divine Love, which made harmless the poisonous

viper, which delivered men from the boiling oil, from 243:6 the fiery furnace, from the jaws of the lion,

can heal the sick in every age and triumph

over sin and death. It crowned the demon-243:9 strations of Jesus with unsurpassed power and love. But

the same “Mind … which was also in Christ Jesus”

must always accompany the letter of Science in order to 243:12 confirm and repeat the ancient demonstrations of prophets

and apostles. That those wonders are not more commonly repeated to-day, arises not so much from lack of 243:15 desire as from lack of spiritual growth.

 

Mental telegraphy

 

The clay cannot reply to the potter. The head, heart,

lungs, and limbs do not inform us that they are dizzy, 243:18 diseased, consumptive, or lame. If this information is conveyed, mortal mind conveys

it. Neither immortal and unerring Mind nor matter, 243:21 the inanimate substratum of mortal mind, can carry

on such telegraphy; for God is “of purer eyes than

to behold evil,” and matter has neither intelligence nor 243:24 sensation.

 

Annihilation of error

 

Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no

sense of hatred. Life has no partnership 243:27 with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law

of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because

they declare nothing except God.

 

Deformity and perfection

243:30 Sickness, sin, and death are not the fruits of Life.

They are inharmonies which Truth destroys. Perfection

does not animate imperfection. Inasmuch as God is 244:1 good and the fount of all being, He does not produce

moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is 244:3 not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error.

Divine Science reveals these grand facts. On

their basis Jesus demonstrated Life, never 244:6 fearing nor obeying error in any form.

 

If we were to derive all our conceptions of man from

what is seen between the cradle and the grave, happi-244:9 ness and goodness would have no abiding-place in man,

and the worms would rob him of the flesh; but Paul

writes: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 244:12 made me free from the law of sin and death.”

 

Man never less than man

 

Man undergoing birth, maturity, and decay is like the

beasts and vegetables, - subject to laws of decay. If 244:15 man were dust in his earliest stage of existence, we might admit the hypothesis that he

returns eventually to his primitive condition; 244:18 but man was never more nor less than man.

 

If man flickers out in death or springs from matter into

being, there must be an instant when God is without His 244:21 entire manifestation, - when there is no full reflection

of the infinite Mind.

 

Man not evolved

 

Man in Science is neither young nor old. He has 244:24 neither birth nor death. He is not a beast, a vegetable,

nor a migratory mind. He does not pass from

matter to Mind, from the mortal to the im-244:27 mortal, from evil to good, or from good to evil. Such

admissions cast us headlong into darkness and dogma.

Even Shakespeare’s poetry pictures age as infancy, as 244:30 helplessness and decadence, instead of assigning to man

the everlasting grandeur and immortality of development,

power, and prestige.

245:1 The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the

benefits of destroying that illusion, are illustrated in a 245:3 sketch from the history of an English woman, published

in the London medical magazine called The Lancet.

 

Perpetual youth

 

Disappointed in love in her early years, she became 245:6 insane and lost all account of time. Believing that she

was still living in the same hour which parted

her from her lover, taking no note of years, 245:9 she stood daily before the window watching for her

lover’s coming. In this mental state she remained young.

Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no 245:12 older. Some American travellers saw her when she was

seventy-four, and supposed her to be a young woman.

She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but 245:15 youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her

age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that

she must be under twenty.

245:18 This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful

hint, upon which a Franklin might work with more certainty than when he coaxed the enamoured lightning 245:21 from the clouds. Years had not made her old, because

she had taken no cognizance of passing time nor thought

of herself as growing old. The bodily results of her belief 245:24 that she was young manifested the influence of such a belief. She could not age while believing herself young, for

the mental state governed the physical.

245:27 Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the

foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four;

and the primary of that illustration makes it plain that 245:30 decrepitude is not according to law, nor is it a necessity of

nature, but an illusion.

 

Man reflects God

 

The infinite never began nor will it ever end. Mind 246:1 and its formations can never be annihilated. Man is not

a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and 246:3 sorrow, sickness and health, life and death.

Life and its faculties are not measured by

calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal 246:6 likeness of their Maker. Man is by no means a material

germ rising from the imperfect and endeavoring to reach

Spirit above his origin. The stream rises no higher than 246:9 its source.

 

The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and

gives ugliness to age. The radiant sun of virtue and truth 246:12 coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, un—

dimmed by a declining sun. As the physical and material, the transient sense of beauty fades, the radiance of 246:15 Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with bright

and imperishable glories.

 

Undesirable records

 

Never record ages. Chronological data are no part 246:18 of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are

so many conspiracies against manhood and

womanhood. Except for the error of meas-246:21 uring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man

would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and

still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise. Man, 246:24 governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and

grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty,

and holiness.

 

True life eternal

246:27 Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the

demonstration thereof. Life and goodness are immortal.

Let us then shape our views of existence into 246:30 loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather

than into age and blight.

 

Acute and chronic beliefs reproduce their own types. 247:1 The acute belief of physical life comes on at a remote

period, and is not so disastrous as the chronic belief.

 

Eyes and teeth renewed

247:3 I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost,

sight and teeth. A woman of eighty-five, whom I knew,

had a return of sight. Another woman at 247:6 ninety had new teeth, incisors, cuspids, bi—

cuspids, and one molar. One man at sixty

had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth without 247:9 a decaying cavity.

 

Eternal beauty

 

Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty

of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as 247:12 mortal belief. Custom, education, and fashion

form the transient standards of mortals. Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its 247:15 own, - the radiance of Soul. Immortal men and women

are models of spiritual sense, drawn by perfect Mind

and reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness 247:18 which transcend all material sense.

 

The divine loveliness

 

Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Being possesses its qualities before they are perceived hu-247:21 manly. Beauty is a thing of life, which

dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, 247:24 outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal

with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches

the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with 247:27 starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness.

 

The embellishments of the person are poor substitutes

for the charms of being, shining resplendent and eternal 247:30 over age and decay.

 

The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and

more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure 248:1 in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony.

 

Love’s endowment

248:3 Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon

its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less

than beautiful. Men and women of riper 248:6 years and larger lessons ought to ripen into

health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness

or gloom. Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal 248:9 freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images

of thought and destroying the woes of sense which each

day brings to a nearer tomb.

 

Mental sculpture

248:12 The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in

order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors,

working at various forms, moulding and chisel-248:15 ing thought. What is the model before mortal

mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering?

Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you repro-248:18 ducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious

sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all

mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding 248:21 it before your gaze continually. The result is that you

are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life-work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline 248:24 and deformity of matter models.

 

Perfect models

 

To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right