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

and then punishing him for it? Would any one call it

wise and good to create the primitive, and then punish its

derivative?

 

Two infinite creators absurd

356:30 Does subsequent follow its antecedent? It does.

Was there original self-creative sin? Then there must

have been more than one creator, more than one God. 357:1 In common justice, we must admit that God will not

punish man for doing what He created man 357:3 capable of doing, and knew from the outset

that man would do. God is “of purer eyes

than to behold evil.” We sustain Truth, not by accept-357:6 ing, but by rejecting a lie.

 

Jesus said of personified evil, that it was “a liar, and

the father of it.” Truth creates neither a lie, a capacity 357:9 to lie, nor a liar. If mankind would relinquish the belief

that God makes sickness, sin, and death, or makes man

capable of suffering on account of this malevolent triad, 357:12 the foundations of error would be sapped and error’s destruction ensured; but if we theoretically endow mortals

with the creativeness and authority of Deity, how dare we 357:15 attempt to destroy what He hath made, or even to deny

that God made man evil and made evil good?

 

Anthropomorphism

 

History teaches that the popular and false notions 357:18 about the Divine Being and character have originated

in the human mind. As there is in reality but

one God, one Mind, wrong notions about God 357:21 must have originated in a false supposition, not in immortal Truth, and they are fading out. They are false

claims, which will eventually disappear, according to the 357:24 vision of St. John in the Apocalypse.

 

One supremacy

 

If what opposes God is real, there must be two

powers, and God is not supreme and infinite. Can 357:27 Deity be almighty, if another mighty and

self-creative cause exists and sways mankind? Has the Father “Life in Himself,” as the Scrip-357:30 tures say, and, if so, can Life, or God, dwell in evil and

create it? Can matter drive Life, Spirit, hence, and so

defeat omnipotence?

 

Matter impotent

358:1 Is the woodman’s axe, which destroys a tree’s so-called

life, superior to omnipotence? Can a leaden bullet de-358:3 prive a man of Life, - that is, of God, who is

man’s Life? If God is at the mercy of matter,

then matter is omnipotent. Such doctrines are “confu-358:6 sion worse confounded.” If two statements directly contradict each other and one is true, the other must be false.

Is Science thus contradictory?

 

Scientific and Biblical facts

358:9 Christian Science, understood, coincides with the

Scriptures, and sustains logically and demonstratively

every point it presents. Otherwise it would 358:12 not be Science, and could not present its

proofs. Christian Science is neither made up of contradictory aphorisms nor of the inventions of those who scoff 358:15 at God. It presents the calm and clear verdict of Truth

against error, uttered and illustrated by the prophets,

by Jesus, by his apostles, as is recorded throughout the 358:18 Scriptures.

 

Why are the words of Jesus more frequently cited

for our instruction than are his remarkable works? Is 358:21 it not because there are few who have gained a true

knowledge of the great import to Christianity of those

works?

 

Personal confidence

358:24 Sometimes it is said; “Rest assured that whatever

effect Christian Scientists may have on the sick, comes

through rousing within the sick a belief 358:27 that in the removal of disease these healers

have wonderful power, derived from the Holy Ghost.”

Is it likely that church-members have more faith in 358:30 some Christian Scientist, whom they have perhaps

never seen and against whom they have been warned,

than they have in their own accredited and orthodox 359:1 pastors, whom they have seen and have been taught

to love and to trust?

359:3 Let any clergyman try to cure his friends by their

faith in him. Will that faith heal them? Yet Scientists will take the same cases, and cures will follow. 359:6 Is this because the patients have more faith in the Scientist than in their pastor? I have healed infidels whose

only objection to this method was, that I as a Chris-359:9 tian Scientist believed in the Holy Spirit, while they, the

patients, did not.

 

Even though you aver that the material senses are 359:12 indispensable to man’s existence or entity, you must

change the human concept of life, and must at length

know yourself spiritually and scientifically. The evi-359:15 dence of the existence of Spirit, Soul, is palpable only to

spiritual sense, and is not apparent to the material senses,

which cognize only that which is the opposite of Spirit.

359:18 True Christianity is to be honored wherever found,

but when shall we arrive at the goal which that word

implies? From Puritan parents, the discov-359:21 erer of Christian Science early received her

religious education. In childhood, she often listened

with joy to these words, falling from the lips of her 359:24 saintly mother, “God is able to raise you up from sickness;” and she pondered the meaning of that Scripture

she so often quotes: “And these signs shall follow them 359:27 that believe; … they shall lay hands on the sick,

and they shall recover.”

 

Two different artists

 

A Christian Scientist and an opponent are like two 359:30 artists. One says: “I have spiritual ideals,

indestructible and glorious. When others see

them as I do, in their true light and loveliness, - and 360:1 know that these ideals are real and eternal because drawn

from Truth, - they will find that nothing is lost, and all 360:3 is won, by a right estimate of what is real.”

 

The other artist replies: “You wrong my experience.

I have no mind-ideals except those which are both mental 360:6 and material. It is true that materiality renders these

ideals imperfect and destructible; yet I would not exchange mine for thine, for mine give me such personal 360:9 pleasure, and they are not so shockingly transcendental.

They require less self-abnegation, and keep Soul well out

of sight. Moreover, I have no notion of losing my old 360:12 doctrines or human opinions.”

 

Choose ye to-day

 

Dear reader, which mind-picture or externalized thought

shall be real to you, - the material or the spiritual? 360:15 Both you cannot have. You are bringing out

your own ideal. This ideal is either temporal

or eternal. Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you 360:18 try to have two models, then you practically have none.

Like a pendulum in a clock, you will be thrown back and

forth, striking the ribs of matter and swinging between the 360:21 real and the unreal.

 

Hear the wisdom of Job, as given in the excellent translation of the late Rev. George R. Noyes, D.D.: - 360:24 Shall mortal man be more just than God?

Shall man be more pure than his Maker?

Behold, He putteth no trust in His ministering spirits, 360:27 And His angels He chargeth with frailty.

 

Of old, the Jews put to death the Galilean Prophet,

the best Christian on earth, for the truth he spoke and 360:30 demonstrated, while to-day, Jew and Christian can unite

in doctrine and denomination on the very basis of Jesus’

words and works. The Jew believes that the Messiah or 361:1 Christ has not yet come; the Christian believes that

Christ is God. Here Christian Science intervenes, ex-361:3 plains these doctrinal points, cancels the disagreement,

and settles the question. Christ, as the true spiritual idea,

is the ideal of God now and forever, here and everywhere. 361:6 The Jew who believes in the First Commandment is a

monotheist; he has one omnipresent God. Thus the Jew

unites with the Christian’s doctrine that God is come and

is present now and forever. The Christian who believes

in the First Commandment is a monotheist. This he

virtually unites with the Jew’s belief in one God, and 361:12 recognizes that Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself

declared, but is the Son of God. This declaration of

Jesus, understood, conflicts not at all with another of his 361:15 sayings: “I and my Father are one,” - that is, one in

quality, not in quantity. As a drop of water is one with

the ocean, a ray of light one with the, sun, even so God 361:18 and man, Father and son, are one in being. The Scripture reads: “For in Him we live, and move, and have

our being.”

361:21 I have revised Science and Health only to give a

clearer and fuller expression of its original meaning. Spiritual ideas unfold as we advance. A human perception of 361:24 divine Science, however limited, must be correct in order

to be Science and subject to demonstration. A germ of infinite Truth, though least in the kingdom of heaven is the 361:27 higher hope on earth, but it will be rejected and reviled

until God prepares the soil for the seed. That which

when sown bears immortal fruit, enriches mankind only 361:30 when it is understood, - hence the many readings given

the Scriptures, and the requisite revisions of /Science and

Health with Key to the Scriptures/.