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

same Life, Love, and wisdom “yesterday, and to-day, and forever.”

Matter and its effects - sin, sickness, and 283:9 death - are states of mortal mind which act, react, and

then come to a stop. They are not facts of Mind. They

are not ideas, but illusions. Principle is absolute. It 283:12 admits of no error, but rests upon understanding.

 

But what say prevalent theories? They insist that

Life, or God, is one and the same with material life so-283:15 called. They speak of both Truth and error as mind,

and of good and evil as spirit. They claim that to be

life which is but the objective state of material sense, - 283:18 such as the structural life of the tree and of material

man, - and deem this the manifestation of the one Life,

God.

 

Spiritual structure

283:21 This false belief as to what really constitutes life so

detracts from God’s character and nature, that the true

sense of His power is lost to all who cling to 283:24 this falsity. The divine Principle, or Life, cannot be practically demonstrated in length of days, as it

was by the patriarchs, unless its Science be accurately 283:27 stated. We must receive the divine Principle in the understanding, and live it in daily life; and unless we so do, we

can no more demonstrate Science, than we can teach and 283:30 illustrate geometry by calling a curve a straight line or a

straight line a sphere.

 

Are mentality, immortality, consciousness, resident in 284:1 matter? It is not rational to say that Mind is infinite,

but dwells in finiteness, - in matter, - or that matter is 284:3 infinite and the medium of Mind.

 

Mind never limited

 

If God were limited to man or matter, or if the infinite

could be circumscribed within the finite, God would be 284:6 corporeal, and unlimited Mind would seem

to spring from a limited body; but this is an

impossibility. Infinite Mind can have no starting-point, 284:9 and can return to no limit. It can never be in bonds,

nor be fully manifested through corporeality.

 

Material recognition impossible

 

Is God’s image or likeness matter, or a mortal, sin, 284:12 sickness, and death? Can matter recognize Mind?

Can infinite Mind recognize matter? Can the

infinite dwell in the finite or know aught un-284:15 like the infinite? Can Deity be known through

the material senses? Can the material senses, which receive no direct evidence of Spirit, give correct testimony 284:18 as to spiritual life, truth, and love?

 

The answer to all these questions must forever be in

the negative.

 

Our physical insensibility to Spirit

284:21 The physical senses can obtain no proof of God. They

can neither see Spirit through the eye nor hear it through

the ear, nor can they feel, taste, or smell Spirit. 284:24 Even the more subtile and misnamed material elements are beyond the cognizance

of these senses, and are known only by the effects com-284:27 monly attributed to them.

 

According to Christian Science, the only real senses

of man are spiritual, emanating from divine Mind. 284:30 Thought passes from God to man, but neither sensation

nor report goes from material body to Mind. The in—

tercommunication is always from God to His idea, man. 285:1 Matter is not sentient and cannot be cognizant of good

or of evil, of pleasure or of pain. Man’s individu-285:3 ality is not material. This Science of being obtains not

alone hereafter in what men call Paradise, but here

and now; it is the great fact of being for time and 285:6 eternity.

 

The human counterfeit

 

What, then, is the material personality which suffers,

sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness 285:9 of God, but man’s counterfeit, the inverted

likeness, the unlikeness called sin, sickness,

and death. The unreality of the claim that a mortal is 285:12 the true image of God is illustrated by the opposite natures of Spirit and matter, Mind and body, for one is

intelligence while the other is non-intelligence.

 

Material misconceptions

285:15 Is God a physical personality? Spirit is not physical.

The belief that a material body is man is a false conception of man. The time has come for a 285:18 finite conception of the infinite and of a material body as the seat of Mind to give place

to a diviner sense of intelligence and its manifestations, 285:21 to the better understanding that Science gives of the

Supreme Being, or divine Principle, and idea.

 

Salvation is through reform

 

By interpreting God as a corporeal Saviour but not as 285:24 the saving Principle, or divine Love, we shall continue

to seek salvation through pardon and not

through reform, and resort to matter instead 285:27 of Spirit for the cure of the sick. As mortals

reach, through knowledge of Christian Science, a higher

sense, they will seek to learn, not from matter, but from 285:30 the divine Principle, God, how to demonstrate the Christ,

Truth, as the healing and saving power.

 

It is essential to understand, instead of believe, what 286:1 relates most nearly to the happiness of being. To seek

Truth through belief in a human doctrine is not to un-286:3 derstand the infinite. We must not seek the immutable

and immortal through the finite, mutable, and mortal,

and so depend upon belief instead of demonstration, for 286:6 this is fatal to a knowledge of Science. The understanding of Truth gives full faith in Truth, and spiritual understanding is better than all burnt offerings.

286:9 The Master said, “No man cometh unto the Father

[the divine Principle of being] but by me,” Christ,

Life, Truth, Love; for Christ says, “I am the way.” 286:12 Physical causation was put aside from first to

last by this original man, Jesus. He knew that the

divine. Principle, Love, creates and governs all that 286:15 is real.

 

Goodness a portion of God

 

In the Saxon and twenty other tongues good is the term

for God. The Scriptures declare all that He 286:18 made to be good, like Himself, - good in

Principle and in idea. Therefore the spiritual

universe is good, and reflects God as He is.

 

Spiritual thoughts

286:21 God’s thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance

and Life. Material and temporal thoughts are human,

involving error, and since God, Spirit, is the 286:24 only cause, they lack a divine cause. The

temporal and material are not then creations of Spirit.

They are but counterfeits of the spiritual and eternal. 286:27 Transitory thoughts are the antipodes of everlasting

Truth, though (by the supposition of opposite qualities)

error must also say, “I am true.” But by this saying 286:30 error, the lie, destroys itself.

 

Sin, sickness, and death are comprised in human material belief, and belong not to the divine Mind. They 287:1 are without a real origin or existence. They have neither

Principle nor permanence, but belong, with all that is 287:3 material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which

simulates the creations of Truth. All creations of Spirit

are eternal; but creations of matter must return to dust. 287:6 Error supposes man to be both mental and material.

Divine Science contradicts this postulate and maintains

man’s spiritual identity.

 

Divine allness

287:9 We call the absence of Truth, error. Truth and error

are unlike. In Science, Truth is divine, and the infinite

God can have no unlikeness. Did God, Truth, 287:12 create error? No! “Doth a fountain send

forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” God

being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent 287:15 or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence?

How can there be more than all?

 

Neither understanding nor truth accompanies error, 287:18 nor is error the offshoot of Mind. Evil calls itself something, when it is nothing. It saith, “I am man, but I am

not the image and likeness of God;” whereas the Scrip-287:21 tures declare that man was made in God’s likeness.

 

Error unveiled

 

Error is false, mortal belief; it is illusion, without spiritual identity or foundation, and it has no real existence. 287:24 The supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter, or of it, is an error.

Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the 287:27 objective supposition of Spirit’s opposite. The five material senses testify to truth and error as united in a mind

both good and evil. Their false evidence will finally 287:30 yield to Truth, - to the recognition of Spirit and of the

spiritual creation.

 

Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The state-288:1 ment that Truth is real necessarily includes the correlated

statement, that error, Truth’s unlikeness, is unreal.

 

The great conflict

288:3 The suppositional warfare between truth and error is

only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spiritual senses and the testimony of the material 288:6 senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and

flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the understanding of divine Love. 288:9 Superstition and understanding can never combine.

When the final physical and moral effects of Christian

Science are fully apprehended, the conflict between truth 288:12 and error, understanding and belief, Science and material

sense, foreshadowed by the prophets and inaugurated

by Jesus, will cease, and spiritual harmony reign. The 288:15 lightnings and thunderbolts of error may burst and flash

till the cloud is cleared and the tumult dies away in the

distance. Then the raindrops of divinity refresh the 288:18 earth. As St. Paul says: “There remaineth therefore

a rest to the people of God” (of Spirit).

 

The chief stones in the temple

 

The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are 288:21 to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God,

good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not

to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and 288:24 cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject

to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no material life, and no death.

 

The Christ-element

288:27 Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal

man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses.

The Christ-element in the Messiah made him 288:30 the Way-shower, Truth and Life.

 

The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have

learned from error, and man’s real existence as a child 289:1 of God comes to light. Truth demonstrated is eternal

life. Mortal man can never rise from the temporal debris 289:3 of error, belief in sin, sickness, and death, until he learns

that God is the only Life. The belief that life and sensation are in the body should be overcome by the under-289:6 standing of what constitutes man as the image of God.

Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh.

 

Wickedness is not man

 

A wicked mortal is not the idea of God. He is little 289:9 else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin,

lust, hatred, envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life

abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life 289:12 and life’s idea, Truth and Truth’s idea, never make men

sick, sinful, or mortal.

 

Death but an illusion

 

The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still 289:15 overcomes death proves the “king of terrors” to be but

a mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys

with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this 289:18 shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a

mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe

there is no death-process.

289:21 The belief that matter has life results, by the universal

law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree,

and flower are supposed to die; but the fact remains, 289:24 that God’s universe is spiritual and immortal.

 

Spiritual offspring