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

The supposed existence of 470:6 more than one mind was the basic error of idolatry. This

error assumed the loss of spiritual power, the loss of the

spiritual presence of Life as infinite Truth without an 470:9 unlikeness, and the loss of Love as ever present and

universal.

 

The divine standard of perfection

 

Divine Science explains the abstract statement that 470:12 there is one Mind by the following self-evident proposition: If God, or good, is real, then evil, the

unlikeness of God, is unreal. And evil can 470:15 only seem to be real by giving reality to the

unreal. The children of God have but one Mind. How

can good lapse into evil, when God, the Mind of man, 470:18 never sins? The standard of perfection was originally

God and man. Has God taken down His own standard,

and has man fallen?

 

Indestructible relationship

470:21 God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle

of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection,

man, remains perfect. Man is the expression 470:24 of God’s being. If there ever was a moment

when man did not express the divine perfection, then there was a moment when man did not express 470:27 God, and consequently a time when Deity was unexpressed - that is, without entity. If man has lost perfection, then he has lost his perfect Principle, the divine 470:30 Mind. If man ever existed without this perfect Principle

or Mind, then man’s existence was a myth.

 

The relations of God and man, divine Principle and 471:1 idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows

no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine 471:3 order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged

in its eternal history.

 

Celestial evidence

471:6 The unlikeness of Truth, - named error, - the opposite of Science, and the evidence before the five corporeal senses, afford no indication of the grand 471:9 facts of being; even as these so-called senses

receive no intimation of the earth’s motions or of the

science of astronomy, but yield assent to astronomical 471:12 propositions on the authority of natural science.

 

The facts of divine Science should be admitted, -

although the evidence as to these facts is not supported 471:15 by evil, by matter, or by material sense, - because the

evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by

spiritual sense. Man is, and forever has been, God’s re-471:18 flection. God is infinite, therefore ever present, and

there is no other power nor presence. Hence the spirituality of the universe is the only fact of creation. “Let 471:21 God be true, but every [material] man a liar.”

 

The test of experience

 

Question. - Are doctrines and creeds a benefit to man?

Answer. - The author subscribed to an orthodox 471:24 creed in early youth, and tried to adhere to it until she

caught the first gleam of that which interprets God as above mortal sense. This 471:27 view rebuked human beliefs, and gave the spiritual import, expressed through Science, of all that proceeds

from the divine Mind. Since then her highest creed has 471:30 been divine Science, which, reduced to human apprehension, she has named Christian Science. This Science 472:1 teaches man that God is the only Life, and that this Life

is Truth and Love; that God is to be understood, adored, 472:3 and demonstrated; that divine Truth casts out suppositional error and heals the sick.

 

God’s law destroys evil

 

The way which leads to Christian Science is straight 472:6 and narrow. God has set His signet upon Science, making it coordinate with all that is real and only

with that which is harmonious and eternal. 472:9 Sickness, sin, and death, being inharmonious, do not

originate in God nor belong to His government. His

law, rightly understood, destroys them. Jesus furnished 472:12 proofs of these statements.

 

Evanescent materiality

 

Question. - What is error?

Answer. - Error is a supposition that pleasure and 472:15 pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind’s

faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. 472:18 Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal

because untrue. It is that which seemeth to be and is not.

If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should 472:21 have a self-evident absurdity - namely, erroneous truth.

Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

 

Unrealities that seem real

 

Question. - Is there no sin? 472:24 Answer. - All reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal. That which He creates is good,

and He makes all that is made. Therefore 472:27 the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is

the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring

belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not 472:30 true, because they are not of God. We learn in Christian 473:1 Science that all inharmony of mortal mind or body is illusion, possessing neither reality nor identity though seeming 473:3 to be real and identical.

 

Christ the ideal Truth

 

The Science of Mind disposes of all evil. Truth, God,

is not the father of error. Sin, sickness, and death are 473:6 to be classified as effects of error. Christ

came to destroy the belief of sin. The God—

principle is omnipresent and omnipotent. God is every-473:9 where, and nothing apart from Him is present or has

power. Christ is the ideal Truth, that comes to heal

sickness and sin through Christian Science, and attributes 473:12 all power to God. Jesus is the name of the man who,

more than all other men, has presented Christ, the true

idea of God, healing the sick and the sinning and destroy-473:15 ing the power of death. Jesus is the human man, and

Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of Jesus the

Christ.

 

Jesus not God

473:18 In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced

the teaching and practice of Christianity, affording the

proof of Christianity’s truth and love; but to 473:21 reach his example and to test its unerring Science according to his rule, healing sickness, sin, and

death, a better understanding of God as divine Prin-473:24 ciple, Love, rather than personality or the man Jesus, is

required.

 

Jesus not understood

 

Jesus established what he said by demonstration, 473:27 thus making his acts of higher importance than his

words. He proved what he taught. This

is the Science of Christianity. Jesus proved 473:30 the Principle, which heals the sick and casts out error,

to be divine. Few, however, except his students understood in the least his teachings and their glorious 474:1 proofs, - namely, that Life, Truth, and Love (the Principle of this unacknowledged Science) destroy all error, 474:3 evil, disease, and death.

 

Miracles rejected

 

The reception accorded to Truth in the early Christian era is repeated to-day. Whoever introduces the 474:6 Science of Christianity will be scoffed at and

scourged with worse cords than those which

cut the flesh. To the ignorant age in which it first 474:9 appears, Science seems to be a mistake, - hence the

misinterpretation and consequent maltreatment which

it receives. Christian marvels (and marvel is the sim-474:12 ple meaning of the Greek word rendered miracle in the

New Testament) will be misunderstood and misused

by many, until the glorious Principle of these marvels is 474:15 gained.

 

Divine fulfilment

 

If sin, sickness, and death are as real as Life, Truth,

and Love, then they must all be from the same source; 474:18 God must be their author. Now Jesus came

to destroy sin, sickness, and death yet the

Scriptures aver, “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” 474:21 Is it possible, then, to believe that the evils which Jesus

lived to destroy are real or the offspring of the divine

will?

 

Truth destroys falsity

474:24 Despite the hallowing influence of Truth in the destruction of error, must error still be immortal? Truth

spares all that is true. If evil is real, Truth 474:27 must make it so; but error, not Truth, is

the author of the unreal, and the unreal vanishes,

while all that is real is eternal. The apostle says that 474:30 the mission of Christ is to “destroy the works of the

devil.” Truth destroys falsity and error, for light and

darkness cannot dwell together. Light extinguishes the 475:1 darkness, and the Scripture declares that there is “no

night there.” To Truth there is no error, - all is Truth. 475:3 To infinite Spirit there is no matter, - all is Spirit, divine

Principle and its idea.

 

Fleshly factors unreal

 

Question. - What is man? 475:6 Answer. - Man is not matter; he is not made up of

brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The

Scriptures inform us that man is made in 475:9 the image and likeness of God. Matter is

not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so

unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and be-475:12 cause he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of

Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of 475:15 God, including all right ideas; the generic term for

all that reflects God’s image and likeness; the conscious

identity of being as found in Science, in which man is 475:18 the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal;

that which has no separate mind from God; that which

has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which 475:21 possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his

own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker.

 

And God said: “Let us make man in our image, after 475:24 our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish

of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,

and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that 475:27 creepeth upon the earth.”

 

Man unfallen

 

Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The

real man cannot depart from holiness, nor 475:30 can God, by whom man is evolved, engender

the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not 476:1 God’s man. Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals.

They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil, 476:3 which declares that man begins in dust or as a material

embryo. In divine Science, God and the real man are

inseparable as divine Principle and idea.

 

Mortals are not immortals

476:6 Error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed.

Error will cease to claim that soul is in body, that life

and intelligence are in matter, and that 476:9 this matter is man. God is the Principle of

man, and man is the idea of God. Hence man is not

mortal nor material. Mortals will disappear, and im-476:12 mortals, or the children of God, will appear as the only

and eternal verities of man. Mortals are not fallen children of God. They never had a perfect state of being, 476:15 which may subsequently be regained. They were, from

the beginning of mortal history, “conceived in sin and

brought forth in iniquity.” Mortality is finally swallowed 476:18 up in immortality. Sin, sickness, and death must disappear to give place to the facts which belong to immortal

man.

 

Imperishable identity

476:21 Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual

status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood.

Remember that the Scriptures say of mortal 476:24 man: “As for man, his days are as grass: as

a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind

passeth over it, and it is gone;