# Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1889)/16 Glossary

CHAPTER XVI.
GLOSSARY.
Language may be defined as the Verbal Body of Thought. Language is not, as sometimes represented in loose expression, the mere dress of thought. It has a vital connection with thought, and is far more truly and appropriately conceived of as the living organic body of thought, — as the natural body, with the Life of the Spirit, having living connections between its parts, giving it a unity and making it a whole, — than as a mere dress, having no relation to thought, and no organic dependence in its parts. — Henry N. Day.
These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, — he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth: “I know thy works; behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” — Apocalypse.
IN Christian Science we learn that the substitution of the spiritual for the material definition of a Scriptural word often elucidates the meaning of the inspired writer.
On this account I add this chapter, which contains the Metaphysical interpretation of Bible terms, — giving their spiritual sense, which is also their original meaning.
Abel. Watchfulness; self-offering; surrendering to the Creator the early fruits of experience.
Abraham. Fidelity; faith in the Divine Life and Eternal Principle of Being.
​This patriarch illustrates the purpose of Love to create trust in Good, and shows the Life-preserving power of spiritual understanding.
Adam. Error; a falsity; the belief of “original sin,” sickness, and death; evil; the opposite of good, or God, and His creation; a curse; a belief in intelligent matter, finity, and mortality; “dust to dust;” red sandstone; nothingness; the first god of mythology; not God's man, who represents the One God, and is His own image and likeness, — even the perfect and spiritual reflection of Spirit, whose Life, Substance, and Intelligence are in and of God; the opposite of Spirit and its creations; that which is not the image and likeness of God, but a material belief, opposed to the One Mind, or Spirit; a so-called finite mind, producing other minds, thus making “gods many and lords many” (1 Cor. viii. 5); a product of nothing, as the opposite of something; an unreality, as opposed to the great reality of spiritual existence and creation; a so-called man, whose origin, substance, and mind are supposed to be the opposite of God, or Spirit; an inverted image of Spirit; the image and likeness of God's opposites, — namely, matter, sin, sickness, and death; the antipodes of Truth, termed error; the counterfeit of Life, which ultimates in death; the opposite of Love, called hate; the antipodes of Spirit's creation, called self-creative matter; Immortality's opposite, mortality; that of which Wisdom saith, “Thou shalt surely die.”
This name represents the false supposition that Life is not eternal, but has beginning and end; that the Infinite enters the finite, Intelligence passes into non-intelligence, ​and Soul terminates in material sense; that the Immortal Mind results in matter, and matter in mortal mind; that the One God and Creator entered what He created, and then disappeared in the atheism of matter.
Almighty. All-power; Infinity; Omnipotence.
Angels. God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, giving the lie to evil, sensuality, and mortality.
Ark. Safety; the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proven to be as immortal as its Principle; the understanding of Spirit, destroying the belief of matter.
God and man are co-existent and eternal. Science shows that the spiritual identities of all things are created by God, and exist forever. The Ark also shows that temptation, if overcome, is followed by exaltation.
Asher (Jacob's son). Hope and faith; spiritual compensation; the ills of the flesh rebuked.
Atonement. The teachings, demonstrations, and sufferings of the man Jesus, when showing mortals the way of salvation from sin, sickness, and death; Divine Science; Soul's triumph over material sense; the supremacy of Spirit asserted; man reassuming the image and likeness of God, in his scientific at-one-ment with Him.
Jesus of Nazareth gave the all-important proof that, when God is understood, it will be seen that God creates man, and man cannot for the smallest instant be without a body. This Divine Science overcame death and ​the grave, and was Jesus' final demonstration that the body is the same after as before death. It follows that there is a future state of probation and progress, wherein to grow out of a material and into the spiritual sense of existence.
The meek and mighty Nazarene exhibited a material body, after the crucifixion, to show his followers the great need there is of spiritualizing thought and action, in order to make man God-like before he reaches what is termed death, — that, after it, he may be fit for the higher school of the “just made perfect.” Not death, but the understanding of Life, or God, spiritualizes man, and determines forever his spiritual progress and his physical condition.
Atonement stands for mortality disappearing, and immortality coming to light; for self-abnegation and Love, blessing Truth's enemies. Atonement is not blood flowing from the veins of Jesus, but his outflowing sense of Life, Truth, and Love, — so much higher, purer, and more God-like than mankind's, — shedding its hallowed influence over the whole human race, and marking out the only way to heaven. Atonement is not so much the death on the cross, but the cross-bearing, deathless life, which, was left by Jesus for an example to mankind, and ransoms from sin all who follow it.
Babel. Self-destroying error; a kingdom divided against itself, that cannot stand; material knowledge.
The higher such knowledge builds on the basis of evidence obtained from the five personal senses, the more confusion ensues, and the more certain is the downfall of its structure.
Baptism. Purification by Spirit; being submerged in Truth.
“We are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Cor. v. 8.)
Believing. Firmness and constancy; not a faltering or blind faith, but the perception of spiritual truth.
Benjamin (Jacob's son). A physical belief as to life, substance, and mind; human knowledge, or so-called mortal mind, asserting matter; pride; envy; fame; illusion; a belief in blood, bones, as possessing life, strength, animation, and power to act; renewal of affections, self-offering; a redeemed body; the reflection of a more spiritual mind; the infinite idea of the Infinite Principle; the spiritual shadow of Spirit-substance; that which is constituted of Soul, not sense; the reflection of Deity.
Bride. Purity and innocence, conceiving man in the idea of God; the senses of Soul, which have spiritual bliss, and enjoy but cannot suffer.
Bridegroom. Spiritual understanding; the pure consciousness that God, the Divine Principle, creates man as His own idea, and is the only creative power.
Burial. Destruction to personal sense; out of sight and hearing; annihilation; being submerged in Spirit; immortality brought to light.
Canaan (the son of Ham). A personal belief; the testimony of what is termed material sense; the error ​that would make man mortal, and would make mortal mind a slave to the body, of which man should be the master.
Children. Love's spiritual thoughts and representatives; sensual and mortal beliefs; counterfeits of creation, whose better originals are God's thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity; material suppositions of life, substance, and intelligence, opposed to the Science of Being.
Children of Israel. The representatives of Soul, not sense; the offspring of Spirit; such as are governed by Divine Science, — having wrestled with sin and sense, and having risen higher in the scale of being through great tribulation; part of the ideas of God, beheld as men casting out error and healing the sick; Christ's children.
Christ. Divine Principle, not person; Soul, outside the body; not the person of the man Jesus, but his eternal Spirit; the divine stepping-stone between God and His human children, who are His spiritual ideas reflected.
Church. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from Divine Principle.
The Church is that institution which affords proof of its utility, and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs, to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of Divine Science, — casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick.
​Creator. Spirit; Mind; Intelligence; the animating Principle of all that is real and good; self-existent Life, Truth, and Love, perfect and eternal; the opposite of matter and evil, which have no Principle; God, “who made all that was made,” and could not create an atom or an element that was the opposite of Himself.
Dan (Jacob's son). Animal magnetism; mesmerism; so-called mortal mind controlling mortal mind; error, working out the designs of error; one belief chasing another, — and the stronger error recovering the ground, and holding it for a time against the weaker.
Day. The irradiance of Life; the spiritual idea of creating Truth and Love.
“And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Gen. i. 5.) The objects of time and sense, illumined by spiritual understanding, disappear, and Mind measures time as longer or shorter, according to the good it unfolds. This unfolding is God's day; “and there shall be no night there.”
Death. An illusion, for there is no death; the unreal and untrue; the opposite of God, or Life.
Matter has no life, hence it cannot die, and Mind is immortal. The flesh, warring against Spirit, frets itself free from one belief, only to be fettered by another, until every belief yields to the understanding of God. Any material evidence of death is false, for it contradicts the spiritual facts of Life.
Devil. A lie; error; neither a person nor a Principle; the opposite of Truth; a personal belief of evil, sin, ​sickness, and death; animal magnetism; mesmerism. The Devil is the lust of the flesh, which saith: —
I am life and intelligence in matter. There is more than one mind, for I am mind, — a wicked mind, self-made, hut created out of God's materials, and put into the opposite of Mind, termed Matter, thence to reproduce a mortal universe and mortal men, not after the image and likeness of Spirit, but after my own image.
I replenish the earth with venomous reptiles, devouring beasts, — with the forms of life, rising from a mollusk up to sinning, sick, and dying man. More subtle than any beast of the field, I claim this deceit as normal, — that non-intelligence matures from an egg, up to what I term Intelligence. Mortals, alias minds, learn from me to claim evil as more real than good, and as eternal. I claim also that the opposite of God originates in God; else evil and matter must be self-creative powers, co-equal and co-eternal with Deity. As a lie I have the subtlety tn say, and to make it appear, that evil is more successful than good; and that a lie is the truth, or else that Truth is the father of the lie. I declare that the Lord knows all about sin; and. having sin in Mind, He must evolve it as the necessary reflection of His own Mind. Hence I decide that a mortal sinner is God's child, — His own image and likeness.
My first appearance, as a snake, coiled about the Tree of Knowledge, was to give my signet to error (which I name Matter) as having life and mind, — besides material senses, whence all human knowledge shall proceed, and through which it shall be received. This so-called sense of matter is worse than nonsense, hut my progeny, having a material basis, will accept it as truth, and take for granted all this evolution of error and subtlety.
Do not ask who made me, but infer the soft impeachment that God made me. My mythical origin, as material sense and mortal mind, I shall dignify as the appearing of man's ​personality; and when this error begins to die out, I can hold on for a time to another error, — namely, that God is a person, if I am not.
I am aware that a lie would not be a lie unless it claimed to be Truth. Hence the necessity of my claim to resemble Truth; or to make Truth look like me, a lie. In either case, I can succeed as error.
My origin was darkness. I went up “a mist from the earth” (Gen. ii. 6); and I declared that the Lord made, out of the dust of the ground, a man. I know the truth, that there is no matter in Spirit from which to create matter, — and no evil in good, from which to create evil; but having denied the Substance of Truth, Spirit, I name their opposites — error and matter — Substance.
I assert this matter to be sentient with Soul, thus putting this life-giving Infinite inside of a life-destroying finite.
My main point is to avoid being found out in this gross miscreation, and avoid having my man return to dust, as Truth declares he shall. So I call Soul a sinner; and, by a miraculous metamorphosis, convert it into a good soul, — just before it is driven out of matter, because of sin and imbecility, and sent straight into the power and perfection of Spirit.
Because of the error, or lie, that I have grafted into the premises of mortal man, it must follow, in the conclusion, and this man be accursed by Wisdom. So I shall recover my ground on another proposition, as false as my first, saying: “For God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Gen. iii. 5.)
My second lie is the error I shall charge upon Truth: namely, that God, Spirit, made man material, but upright; that then man made himself up wrong; but that the unerring Principle of creation pardons mistakes, instead of destroying them, and accepts the original error.
​I cling to the Tree of Knowledge, because it is matter that clings to me. This is my motto: “A material sense, which can take do cognizance of Spirit, or God, is quite as essential to man as the spiritual sense, that unites him to God.”
My third statement is, that a deep sleep fell upon mortal man, in which a belief of self-mesmerism appeared as the basis of generation; that mortal man dreamed that a woman proceeded from him; and that in turn this woman believed that man proceeded from her. Thus error culminated in a family broil, which lost Eden and the Truth of Being, and Deity disappeared as the Father of mankind.
I was the first to introduce the term Evil. I wish that term to be understood as a factor of theology, instead of mythology. I wish it thought that evil is as real as good, and that the conversation of a snake was as important in the origin of man as the utterance of Jehovah, “Let us make man.” (Gen. i. 26.)
I wish it to be understood also that I have endowed matter with conversational powers: a nerve to report that it is pleased or pained; an eye to say that it is blind; a limb to declare that it cannot walk; the head to assert that it has lost its mind.
All this may seem feasible, since the personal or material senses can take no cognizance of God; for the clay shall reply to the potter; and error, in the name of Truth, shall establish my kingdom in matter.
Dove. A symbol of Divine Science; purity and peace; hope and faith.
Dust. Nothingness; the want of Substance, Life, or Intelligence.
Ears. Not organs of the so-called material and personal senses, but spiritual understanding.
Jesus said, referring to spiritual perception, “Having ears, hear ye not?” (Mark viii. 18.)
Earth. A sphere; a type of Eternity and Immortality, which are likewise without beginning or end.
To material sense, Earth is matter; to spiritual sense, it is a compound idea.
Elias. Prophecy; spiritual evidence, opposed to material sense; Science, whereby to discern the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold; the basis of immortality.
“Elias truly shall first come and restore all things.” (Matt. xvii. 11.)
Euphrates. Divine Science, encompassing the universe and man; the true idea of God; a type of the millennial glory which is to come; Metaphysics taking the place of physics; the reign of righteousness; the atmosphere of a finite belief, before it accepted sin, sickness, or death; a state of sinless mortal thought, whose only error is limitation; finity; the opposite of infinity.
Eve. A beginning; mortality; that which does not last forever; a finite belief of life, substance, and intelligence in matter; error; the belief that the human race originated materially instead of spiritually, — that man started firstly from dust, secondly from a rib, and thirdly from an egg; self-imposed folly, and its consequences.
Evening. Mistiness of mortal thought; weariness of mortal mind; obscured views; peace and rest.
Eyes. Spiritual discernment; not matter, but a faculty of Mind.
Jesus said, thinking of the outward vision, “Having eyes, see ye not?” (Mark viii. 18.)
Fan. Separation of fable from fact; that which gives action to thought.
Father. The great eternal Mind; the Divine Principle, commonly called God.
Fear. Heat; inflammation; anxiety; ignorance; error; conscience; caution.
Fire. Fear; remorse; lust; hatred; destruction; affliction, purifying and elevating man.
Firmament. Spiritual understanding; the line of demarcation between Truth and error, between Spirit and so-called matter.
Flesh. An error of personal belief; a supposition that Life, Substance, and Intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief that matter has sensation.
Gad (Jacob's son). Science; spiritual being, understood; haste towards harmony.
Gethsemane. Patient woe; the human yielding to the divine; Love meeting no response, but still remaining Love.
Ghost. An illusion; a belief that Mind is outlined and limited; a supposition that Spirit is finite.
Gihon (river). The rights of woman acknowledged — morally, civilly, and socially.
God. The great I Am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-loving, all-wise, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; Substance; Intelligence.
Gods. Mythology; a belief that Life, Substance, and Intelligence are both Mind and matter; a supposition of sentient personality; the belief that Infinite Mind is in finite forms; the various theories that hold Mind to be a material sense — brains, nerves, matter; minds or souls, going in and out of matter, erring and mortal; the serpents that say, “I will make you as gods,” and whose heads the seed of the woman shall bruise.
Mind is infinite and perfect, and cannot become finite and imperfect.
Good. God; Spirit; omnipotence; omniscience; omnipresence; omniaction.
Ham (Noah's son). A personal belief; sensuality; slavery; tyranny.
Heart. Mortal feelings, motives, affections, joys, and sorrows.
Heaven. Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by Principle; spirituality; the atmosphere of Soul.
Hell. Mortal belief; error; lust; remorse; hatred, sin; sickness; death; suffering and self-destruction, self-imposed agony; effects of sin; all that “maketh and worketh a lie.”
Hiddekel (river). Divine Science, understood and acknowledged.
Holy Ghost. Divine Science; the developments of Eternal Life, Truth, and Love.
I, or Ego. Principle; Spirit; Soul; impersonal, unerring, immortal, and eternal Mind.
There is but one I, or Us, but one Principle, or Mind, governing all being; yet man and woman are identified forever in their individual characters, even as numbers that never blend with each other, though they are governed by one Principle. All the objects of God's creating reflect one Mind; and whatever reflects not this one Mind is a falsity, error — even the belief that Life, Substance, and Intelligence are both mental and material.
I Am. Impersonal and eternal Mind; Divine Principle, not person; God; the only Ego.
In. A term obsolete in Science.
Soul, or Spirit, is infinite. Hence it can be in nothing, for it is bigger than all things. Principle is not in its idea; and idea is in the Divine Principle, only to come out of it as Mind, or God, expressed.
Intelligence. Substance; self-existent and eternal Mind; that which is never unconscious or limited; Deity.
Issachar (Jacob's son). A personal belief; the offspring of error; envy; hatred; selfishness; self-will; lust.
Jacob. A personal belief, embracing duplicity, repentance, sensualism; inspiration; the revelations of Science, wherein the so-called material senses yield to the spiritual sense of Life and Love.
Japhet (Noah's son). A type of spiritual peace, flowing from the understanding that God is the Divine Principle of all being, and man His idea, the child of His care.
Jerusalem. Mortal belief and knowledge, obtained from the so-called five material senses; the pride of power, and the power of pride; sensuality; envy; oppression; tyranny.
Jesus. The spiritual idea of God coming to material beliefs, rebuking and destroying them, and bringing to light man's immortality; the mediator, or spiritual link in creation, which unites God and man in Divine Science; the idea of Truth; the loved of the Father; the idea of Principle, which overcomes the belief of sin, sickness, and death; the highest idea of God, reflected by man, of which the so-called material senses have taken cognizance.
Jesus has a twofold appearing: as a man, understanding that Life is Spirit and eternal harmony, rebuking the belief of material life and an eternal discord, — with the presence of Truth and Love, to destroy these beliefs and errors; and as Soul, showing at the same time the omnipotence of Spirit, and the impotence of what we term matter. This duplexity of being specially fitted him to teach the Christian Science which he lived.
Joseph. A personal idea of Truth, rebuking mortal belief, or error, and showing the immortality and supremacy of Truth; pure Love, blessing its enemies.
Judah. A personal and material belief disappearing; the spiritual understanding of God and man appearing.
Kingdom of Heaven. The reign of harmony in Divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme.
Knowledge. Evidence obtained from the five material senses; mortality; beliefs and opinions; human theories, doctrines, hypotheses; that which is not divine, and is the origin of sin, sickness, and death; the opposite of spiritual Truth and understanding.
Lamb of God. The spiritual idea of Love; self-immolation; innocence and purity; sacrifice.
Levi (Jacob's son). A personal and sensual belief; mortal man; denial of the fulness of God's creation; ecclesiastical despotism.
Lord. In the Hebrew this term is sometimes employed to represent a title, which has the inferior sense of Master, or Ruler. In the Greek, the word kyrios almost always has this lower sense, unless specially coupled with the word God. Its higher signification is Supreme Ruler.
Lord God. Jehovah.
This double term is not used in the first chapter of ​Genesis, the record of spiritual creation. It is introduced into the second and following chapters, when the spiritual sense of God and infinity were disappearing to the writer's thought, — when the scientific statements of the Scriptures became clouded, through a physical sense of God as finite and personal. From this followed idolatry and mythology, belief in many gods, or material intelligences, as the opposite of the one Spirit or Intelligence, named Elohim, or God.
Man. The infinite idea of Infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind; the idea of Principle, not person; the compound idea of God, including all other ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious identity of being, as found in Science, where man is 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 possesses no life, intelligence, or creative power of his own, but reflects all that belongs to his Maker.
And God said: “Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (Gen. i. 26.)
Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death, inasmuch as he derives his essence from God, and possesses not a single original or underived power. Hence man cannot depart from holiness. Nor can God, by whom man was evolved, engender a capacity or freedom to sin. In ​Divine Science, God and man are inseparable, as Principle and its idea.
The highest form of man is woman.
Matter. Mythology; mortality; another name for mortal mind; a material belief, viz. that Intelligence, Substance, and Life belong to non-intelligence and mortality, — that Life results in death, and death in Life, — that sensation is in the sensationless, and that Mind originates in matter; the opposite of Spirit; the opposite of Intelligence; the opposite of God; that of which Immortal Mind takes no cognizance; that which mortal mind sees, feels, hears, tastes, and smells only in belief.
Matter is neither self-existent, nor a product of Spirit. An image of thought, reflected on the retina, is all the eye beholds. Matter, as defined by the schools, cannot, of itself, see, feel, hear, taste, or smell. It is not self-cognizant, — cannot feel itself, see itself, or understand itself. Take away mortal mind, and matter is without its supposed selfhood. It can take no cognizance of Spirit, or God.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” (Gen. i. 1, 2.) In the vast forever, — in the Science and Truth of Being, — the only facts are Spirit and its innumerable creations. Darkness and chaos are the imaginary opposites of light, understanding, and eternal harmony, and are the elements of nothingness, called matter.
We admit that black is not a color, because it reflects no light. So evil should be denied identity or power, because it has none of the original hues of God. ​Paul said, “For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” (Rom. i. 20.) When the Substance of Spirit appears in Metaphysical Science, the nothingness of matter is recognized. Where the Spirit of God is — and there is no place where God is not — evil becomes Nothing, the opposite of the Something of Spirit.
Mind. The only “I,” or “Us”; the only Spirit, Soul, Principle, Substance, Life, Truth, Love, the One God; not that which is in man, but the Divine Principle or God, of whom man is the full and perfect expression; Deity, which outlines, but is not outlined.
There can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and if we claimed no other, and accepted no other, sin would be unknown.
The only exterminators of error are the great truths that Good, or God, is the only Mind; that His opposite — called Evil and Devil — is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without Intelligence or Truth.
We can have but one Mind if that one is infinite. We bury the sense of infinitude, when we admit that, although God is infinite, evil has a place in this infinity; for it could have no place — where all space is filled with God — except in Him.
We lose the high signification of Omnipotence, when admitting that God, or Good, is omnipotent, and has all-power, yet that there is another power named Evil.
The belief that there is more than the One Mind is as pernicious to divine theology, as are ancient mythology and pagan idolatry. With one Father, even God, the ​whole family of man would be brethren; and with one Mind, and that God, or Good, the brotherhood of man would consist of Love and Truth, and have unity of Principle and spiritual power, which is Divine Science.
The existence of more than one Mind was the basic error of idolatry, which supposed the loss of spiritual power, the loss of the spiritual presence of Life as eternal Truth, without an opposite error, and the loss of Love as ever-present and universal.
Divine Science explains the abstract statement that there is one Mind only, by the following self-evident proposition. If Good, or God, is real, — evil, the opposite of God, is unreal. Then evil can only obtain the floor by our admitting its reality. The children of God have but one Mind. How can Good lapse into evil, when God, the Mind of man, never sins. The standard of perfection was originally God and man; and has this standard changed?
God is the Principle of man; and the Principle of man remaining perfect, its idea, or reflection, — man, — remains perfect. Man is the expression of God's being. If ever there was a moment when man expressed not this perfection, he could not have expressed the being of God; and there would have been a time when Deity was without entity, without a defined state of being. If man has lost perfection, he has lost his Principle, has lost Mind. If man ever existed without a Principle, or Mind, then being was a myth.
The relations of God and man, Divine Principle and its idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from or return to harmony, but holds the divine order, or spiritual law, to have ever been ​unchanged in its eternal history, wherein God, and all that He creates, are perfect and eternal.
The opposite of Truth, — named Error, — the opposite of Science, and the evidence before the five personal senses, afford no evidence of the grand facts of being; even as these so-called senses receive no intimation of the earth's motions, or the science of astronomy, but yield assent thereto on the basis of Science.
Thus should the truth of Divine Science be admitted, although the evidence thereof is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense; because it is fully sustained by spiritual sense, Divine Science, the evidence of God's and man's co-existence. God is all-powerful and ever-present. Therefore there is no other power or presence, and the spirituality of man and the universe is the only fact of creation. “Let God be true, and every [material] man a liar.”
Miracle. That which is divinely natural, but must be learned humanly; a phenomenon of Science.
Morning. Light; symbol of Truth; revelation and progress.
Mortal Mind. Nothing, claiming to be something, for Mind is immortal; mythology; belief, creating other beliefs, and naming them matter; a supposition of material sense, alias the belief that sensation is in matter, which is sensationless; a belief that Life, Substance, and Intelligence are in and of matter; the opposite of Spirit, and therefore the opposite of Good, or God; the belief that Life has a beginning, and therefore an end; the ​belief that man is the offspring of mortals; the belief that there can be more than one Creator; idolatry; that which appears to the so-called material senses, but neither exists in Science, nor can be recognized by spiritual sense; not a believer; sin; sickness; death.
Moses. A personal belief; moral courage; a type of moral law, and the demonstration thereof; proof that, without the gospel, — the unity of justice and Love, — there is something spiritually lacking, demanding its penalty in moral law.
Mother. Divine and eternal Principle, Life, Truth, and Love.
New Jerusalem. Divine Science; the spiritual facts of man and the universe, and the harmony thereof; the kingdom of heaven, or reign of harmony. Noah. A personal belief; knowledge of the nothingness of material things, and the immortality of all that is spiritual.
Oil. Consecration; charity; gentleness; prayer; the heavenly inspiration.
Pharisee. A personal and sensuous belief; self-righteousness; vanity; hypocrisy.
Prophet. A spiritual seer; disappearance of material sense, before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth.
Purse. Laying up treasures in matter; error.
Pyson (river). The love of the good and beautiful, and their immortality.
Red Dragon. Fear; inflammation; sensuality; subtlety; error; animal magnetism.
Resurrection. Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of Immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief, yielding to spiritual understanding.
Reuben (Jacob's son). A personal belief; sensuality, delusion; mortality; error.
River. Channel of thought.
When smooth and unobstructed, it typifies the course of Truth; but muddy, foaming, and dashing, it is a type of error.
Rock. Spiritual foundation, Truth.
Salvation. Life, Truth, and Love, understood and demonstrated, as supreme over all.
Sin, sickness, and death are destroyed through the Divine Science that Jesus taught and proved.
Seal. The signet of error, unveiled by Truth.
Serpent. (Ophis, in Greek; Nacash, in Hebrew.) Subtlety; a lie; the opposite of Truth, named error; the first statement of mythology and idolatry; the belief in more than one God; mesmerism; animal magnetism; the first lie of limitation; finity; the first claim that ​there is an opposite of Spirit, or Good, termed matter, or evil; the first authority that error exists as fact, instead of fable; the first claim that sin, sickness, and death are the realities of Life.
The Serpent was the first creature to claim that Being, God, is not Omnipotent, and that there is another power, named Evil, that is as real and eternal as Good, or God.
Sheep. Innocence; inoffensiveness; those who follow their Leader.
Shem (Noah's son). A personal belief; kindly affection; Love rebuking error; reproof of sensualism.
Spirit. Divine Substance; Mind; Principle; all that is good; God; that only which is perfect, infinite, everlasting; omnipresence and omnipotence.
Spirits. Mortal beliefs; mortal men and women; supposed intelligences, or gods; the opposites of God; errors; hallucinations.
Sun. The symbol of Soul governing man, — of Truth, reflecting Life and Intelligence.
Sword. The idea of Truth; two-edged justice; revenge; anger.
Tares. Mortality; error; sin; sickness; death.
Temple. Body; the idea of Life, Substance, and Intelligence; the superstructure of Truth; the shrine of ​affection; a material belief, where thoughts congregate to worship a personal Deity.
Thummim. Perfection; the eternal demand of Divine Science.
The Urim and Thummin, which were to he on Aaron's breast when he went before Jehovah, were holiness, and purification of thought and being, which alone can fit us for the spiritual office of teaching. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. v. 48.)
Time. Moral measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge; matter; error; that which begins before, and continues after, what is termed death, until the mortal disappears, and spiritual perfection appears.
Tithe. Contribution; tenth part; homage; gratitude; a sacrifice to the gods.
Uncleanliness. Impure thoughts; error; sin.
Ungodliness. Opposition to the Divine Principle, and its spiritual idea.
Unknown. That which spiritual sense alone comprehends, and which is unknown to the material senses.
Paganism and Agnosticism may define Deity as “the Great Unknowable;” but Christian Science brings God much nearer to man, and makes Him better known as the All-in-All, forever near.
​Paul saw in Athens an altar dedicated “to the unknown god.” Referring to it he said to the Athenians: “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” (Acts xvii. 23.)
Urim. Light.
The Rabbins believed that the stones in the breast-plate of the high-priest had supernatural illumination; but Christian Science reveals Spirit, not matter, as the illuminator of all. The illuminations of Science give us a sense of the nothingness of error; and they show the spiritual inspiration of Love and Truth to be the only fit preparation for admission to the presence and power of the Most High.
Valley. Depression; meekness; darkness. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” (Ps. xxiii. 4.)
Though the way is dark in mortal sense, Divine Life and Truth destroy the unrest of mortal thought, the fear of death, and the supposed reality of error. Science, contradicting sense, makes the valley bud and blossom, and causes darkness and doubt to disappear.
Veil. A cover; concealment; hiding; hypocrisy.
The Jewish women wore veils over their faces, in token of reverence and submission, and in accordance with Pharisaical notions.
The Judaic religion consisted mostly of rites and ceremonies. The motives and affections of a man were of little account, if only he appeared unto men to fast. The great Nazarene, as meek as he was mighty, rebuked ​the hypocrisy which made long petitions for blessings on material methods, but cloaked the crime, latent in thought, which was ready to spring into action, and crucify God's anointed. The martyrdom of Jesus was the culminating sin of Pharisaism. It rent the veil of the Temple, revealed the false foundations and superstructures of superficial religion, tore from bigotry and superstition their coverings, and opened the sepulchre with Divine Science, — Immortality, Truth, and Love.
Wilderness. Loneliness; doubt; darkness; spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule wherein a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of being.
Will. The motive-power of error; belief; animal magnetism; the might and wisdom of God.
“For this is the will of God.” (1 Thess. iv. 3.)
Human Will, being a quality of so-called mortal mind, is a wrong-doer; hence it should not be named God, Mind, or one of His qualities.
Wind. A simple idea of Intelligence, indicating the might of Omnipotence; the movements of God's spiritual government, encompassing all things, and coming from the four corners of the earth; destruction; anger; mortal passions.
Wine. Inspiration; understanding; error; a belief that Spirit is in matter; temptation; passion.
Year. A solar measurement of time; mortality and immortality.
​“One day with the Lord is as a thousand years.” (2 Peter ii. 8.)
One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, would prolong the longevity of mortals a thousand years. This exalted view, continued and retained when the Science of Being is understood, would bridge over, with Life discerned spiritually, the interval of Death; and man would be in the full consciousness of his immortality and eternal harmony, where sin, sickness, and death are unknown. Time is a mortal thought, whose divisor is the solar year. Eternity is God's measurement of Soul-filled years.
You. A personal and material belief; finity; mortality; error.
Zeal. The reflected animation of Life, Truth, and Love; blind enthusiasm; mortal will.
Zion. Spiritual foundation and superstructure; inspiration; spiritual strength; emptiness; unfaithfulness; desolation.