# Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898)/05 Science of Being

CHAPTER V.
SCIENCE OF BEING.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life, — that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
John, First Epistle.
Here I stand. I can do no otherwise; so help me God! Amen!
Martin Luther.
IN the material world thought has brought to light, with great rapidity, many useful wonders. With like rapidity have thought's swift pinions been rising Materialistic challenge. towards the realm of the real, to the spiritual cause of those lower things which give impulse to inquiry. Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is yielding slowly to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind, as the cause of every effect. Materialistic hypotheses challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat. In this revolutionary period, like the shepherd-boy with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath.
Popular metaphysical systems afford, in this final struggle for supremacy, no substantial aid to true ​metaphysics; because their arguments are partly based on the Pandemonium. testimony of the material senses, as well as on the facts of Mind. These systems are, one and all, pantheistic, and savor of Pandemonium, a house divided against itself.
From first to last the supposed union of Mind and matter, the mingling of Good and evil, have resulted from the philosophy of the serpent. Jesus' demonstrations sift the chaff from the wheat, and unfold the unity and the reality of Good, and the unreality, the nothingness, of evil.
Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike. The first is error; the Metaphysical conclusions. last is Truth. Metaphysics is above physics, and matter does not enter into metaphysical premises or conclusions. Its categories rest on one basis; namely, the divine Mind. Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul.
These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual consciousness, and they have this advantage over the objects and thoughts of material sense — that they are good and eternal.
The testimony of the material senses is neither absolute nor divine. I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teachings of Jesus, of his Apostles, of the Prophets, and on the testimony of the Science of Mind. Other foundations there are none. All other systems — systems based wholly or partly on knowledge gained through the material senses — are reeds shaken by the wind, not houses built on the rock.
The theories I combat are these: (1) that all is ​matter; (2) that matter originates in Mind, and is as real as Mind, possessing intelligence and life. The first Rejected theories. theory, that matter is everything, is quite as reasonable as the second, that Mind and matter co-exist and co-operate. One only of the following statements can be true: (1) that everything is matter; (2) that everything is Mind. Which one is it?
Matter and Mind are antagonistic, and both have not place and power. Only by understanding that there is but one Power, — not two powers, matter and Mind, — are correct and logical conclusions reached. Few deny that Intelligence apart from man, and which neither man nor matter has created, forms and governs the universe; and it is generally admitted that this Intelligence is the eternal Mind, or divine Principle.
The Prophets of old believed, but did not understand. They looked for something higher than the systems of Prophetic ignorance. their times; hence their foresight of Christ's coming, of the new dispensation of Truth. But even they knew not what would be the precise nature of the teaching and demonstration of God in His more infinite meanings, which were to reinstate harmony, destroy sin, sickness, and death, establish the definition of omnipotence, and maintain the Science of Spirit.
The mission of Jesus confirmed prophecy, and explained the so-called miracles of olden time as natural Messiahship. demonstrations of the divine power, not yet understood. This established his claim to the Messiahship. In reply to John's inquiry, “Art thou he that should come?” he returned a brief affirmative by recounting his works, instead of referring to his ​doctrine, confident that this exhibition of the divine power to heal would fully answer that question to one John's reply. who had prophesied the Messianic appearing. Hence his reply: “Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; . . . and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.” In other words, he gave his benediction to whosoever should see that such effects, resulting from Mind, must prove the unity of God with the divine Principle which endues all with divine health.
Jesus instructed his disciples to heal the sick through Mind, instead of matter. He knew that the philosophy, Science, and proof of Christianity were in Truth, casting out every kind of error.
In Latin the word rendered disciple signifies student; and the word indicates that the power of healing was Discipleship. not a supernatural gift to these learners, but the result of their cultivated spiritual understanding of the Divine Science which their Master displayed, by healing the sick and sinful. Hence the universal application of his saying: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me [understand me] through their word.”
Our Master said, “But the Comforter . . . shall teach you all things.” When the Science of Christianity New Testament basis. appears, it will lead you into all Truth. The Sermon on the Mount is the essence of this Science, and the eternal Life, not the death of Jesus, was its outcome.
Those who are willing to leave their nets, or to cast them on the right side for Truth, have the opportunity ​now, as aforetime, to learn and practise Christian healing. The Scriptures contain it. The spiritual import of Modern evangel. the Word imparts this power. But, as Paul says, “How shall they hear without a preacher; and how shall they preach, except they be sent?” If sent, how shall they preach, convert, and heal multitudes, except the rabbis are willing?
The spiritual sense of Truth is assimilated when the heart grows honest, unselfish, loving, and meek. In the Spirituality of Scripture. soil of an “honest and good heart” the seed must be sown; else it beareth not much fruit, for the swinish element in human hearts will uproot it. Jesus said: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures.” The spiritual sense of the Scripture brings out the Scientific sense, and is the “new tongue” referred to in the last chapter of Mark's Gospel.
Jesus' parable of the Sower shows the care of our Master not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts the spiritual teachings they could not accept. Reading their thoughts, he said: “Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”
It is in the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the Spiritualized contrasts. ghastly farce of material existence, — of chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, — that the real attestation of the divine origin and operation of Science is to be found. Its triumphs are recorded in the destruction of error and evil, from which are propagated the dismal beliefs of sin, sickness, and death.
​The invisible Principle of the universe must interpret God the Principle, Truth immaterial. it. God is the Principle of all that represents Him, and of all that really exists. Divine Science, as demonstrated by Jesus, alone reveals a natural and divine Principle in Science.
Matter, and its claims to sin, sickness, and death, are contrary to God, and cannot emanate from God. There is no material Truth. The physical senses can take no cognizance of God and spiritual Truth. Human belief has sought out many inventions, but not one of them can solve the problem of Being, without the Principle of Divine Science. Deductions from material hypotheses are not Scientific. They differ from real Science in not being based on Mind.
Divine Science reverses the testimony of the material senses, and thus tears away the foundations of error. Elimination. Hence the enmity between Science and the senses, and the impossibility of attaining perfect understanding, till the errors of sense are eliminated.
The so-called laws of matter and medical science have never made mortals whole, harmonious, and immortal. Man cannot be harmonious, if not governed by Soul. Hence the importance of understanding the Science of Being, which reveals the laws of spiritual existence.
God never ordained a material law to annul the spiritual law. If there were such a law, it would annul the Spiritual law the only law. supremacy of Mind and wisdom of the Creator, Jesus walked on the waves, fed the hungry,
healed the sick, and raised the dead, in direct contradiction to material laws. His acts were the demonstration of Science, as against the false claims of material law.
Science shows that material views, conflicting mortal ​opinions and beliefs, at all times emit the odor of error; but this atmosphere cannot be destructive to morals and Material knowledge illusive. health when opposed promptly and persistently by Christian Science. Truth and Love antidote this mental miasma, and thus invigorate and sustain existence. Knowledge gained from matter, and through the material senses, is only an illusion of mortal mind, — the offspring of bodily sense, not of Soul, Spirit, — and symbolizes all that is evil and perishable. Natural science, as it is commonly called, is not really natural or Scientific, because it is deduced from the evidence of the physical senses. Ideas, on the contrary, are born of Spirit, and are not mere inferences drawn from material premises.
The senses of Spirit abide in understanding, and they demonstrate Truth and Love. Hence Christianity, and Five senses physical. the Science which expounds it, are based on spiritual understanding, and treat as nothing all the products of material sense. What we term the five physical senses are simply beliefs of mortal mind, which affirm that life, substance, and intelligence are material, instead of spiritual. These beliefs, and their products, constitute error, and this error opposes the Truth of Being.
Divine Science is absolute, and permits no half-way positions in learning a Principle, and establishing its Partnership. rule by demonstration. The conventional firm, called matter and mind, God never formed. Unerring and eternal Mind destroys this imaginary copartnership, formed only to be destroyed, in a manner and at a period as yet unknown. This suppositional partnership is already obsolete; for matter, examined in the light of Christian Science, disappears.
​Matter has no life to lose, and Spirit never dies. A copartnership of Mind with matter would ignore Mind. Starting-point. This shows that matter did not originate in immortal Spirit, and is not eternal. Therefore it is neither substantial, living, nor intelligent. The starting-point of Science is that God, Spirit, is supreme, and that there is no other might or Mind, — that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle.
To grasp the reality and order of Being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God, Good, as the only The deific attributes. Mind, Life, Substance, and Intelligence. Life, Truth, Love, Good, are not mere attributes of Deity, but the highest terms we can employ to express our thought of God. They admit of no degrees of comparison. Nothing can be wiser than Wisdom or truer than Truth. Life, Love, and Good have no superiors. Goodness is not equal to Good, which is the Principle of goodness. Truth cannot be truer than Truth, nor love higher than Love.
Divine Metaphysics, as revealed to my understanding, What God is. shows me that all is Mind, and that Mind is God, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, — alias all power, all presence, all Science. Hence all is in reality the manifestation of Mind.
All our merely human theories are destitute of Science. The true understanding of God is eternal. It robs the grave of victory. It takes away sin, and the delusion that there are other gods, other powers, such as disease, sin, and death, superior or contrary to the one omnipotent Good.
Truth, spiritually discerned, is Scientifically understood. It casts out error and heals the sick.
​Having one God, one Mind, establishes the brotherhood of man, and fulfils the divine laws: “Thou shalt have no Brotherhood. other gods before Me,” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” When these divine commands are understood they unfold the Principle of brotherhood, wherein one mind is not at war with another, but all have one Mind, one Soul, one God, one intelligent Source, in accordance with the Scriptural command: “Let this Mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Man and his Maker are correlated in Divine Science, and consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God.
The realization that all discord is unreal brings objects and thoughts into human view in their true light, Discord not real. and presents them as beautiful and immortal. Harmony in man is as real and immortal as in music. Discord is unreal and mortal.
If God is admitted to be the only Mind and Life, there ceases to be any opportunity for sin and death. Perfection. When we learn in Science how to be perfect, even as our leather in Heaven is perfect, thought will be turned into new and healthy channels, — towards the contemplation of things immortal, and away from materiality to the Principle of the universe, including man.
Belief and understanding never mingle. The latter destroys the former. Discord is the nothingness of Error. Harmony is the somethingness of Truth.
Nature and revelation inform us that like produces like. Divine Science gathers not grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. Intelligence never produces non-intelligence; but matter is ever non-intelligent, and ​therefore cannot spring from Intelligence. To all that is unlike unerring and eternal Mind, this Mind saith, Like evolving like. “Thou shalt surely die;” and elsewhere the Scripture saith that dust returns to dust. The non-intelligent relapses into unreality. The Immortal never produces the mortal, and Good cannot result in evil. As God himself is Good and is Spirit, so goodness and spirituality must be immortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal error, and error is the opposite of Truth. If one is real, the other is unreal, and cannot be the outcome of God.
Natural history presents vegetables and animals as preserving their original species, like reproducing Reproduction. like. A mineral is not produced by a vegetable, nor a man by the brute. In reproduction, throughout the entire round of nature, the order of genus and species is preserved. This points to the spiritual Truth and Science of Being. Error relies upon a reversal of this order, asserts that Spirit produces matter, and consequently all the ills of flesh; and therefore that Good is the author of evil. These suppositions contradict even the order of natural science.
The realm of the real is spiritual. The opposite of Spirit is matter, and the opposite of the real is the Errors in statement. unreal, or material. Matter is an error of statement. This error in the premise leads to errors in the conclusion, in every statement into which it enters. Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is true, except that matter is unreal, and is therefore a belief, which has its beginning and ending.
​Is Spirit the source or creator of matter? Science reveals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter. Substance and supposition. Science repudiates matter. Spirit is the only substance and consciousness recognized by Science. The senses oppose this: but there are no material senses, for matter has no sensation. To Spirit there is no matter; even as to Truth there is no error, and to Good no evil. It is a false supposition, the notion that there is real substance-matter, the opposite of Spirit. Spirit is God, and God is all; hence He can have no opposite.
That matter is substantial, or has life and sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, as we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter. The admission that there can be material substance requires another admission, — namely, that matter is self-creative, self-existent, and therefore eternal. From this it would follow that there are two eternal causes, warring forever with each other; and yet we say that Spirit is supreme and omnipotent.
The belief of the eternity of matter contradicts the demonstration of Life as Spirit, and leads to the conclusion Dust to dust. that if man is material, he originated in dust and must return to it, — logic which would prove his annihilation.
All that we term sin, sickness, and death is comprised in a belief in matter. We define matter as error, Substantial immateriality. because it is a false claim to life, substance, and intelligence. Matter, with its beliefs, cannot be substantial if Spirit is Substance. Which ​ought to be substantial to us, — the erring, changing, and dying, the mutable and mortal, or the unerring, immutable, and immortal? A New Testament writer plainly describes faith, a quality of Mind, as “the substance of things hoped for.”
The mortality of matter establishes the conclusion that matter never originates, never did originate, in the Material mortality. immortal, and is therefore not eternal Substance. Life, or Intelligence. Matter is therefore not created by Mind, or for the manifestation and support of Mind.
Ideas are tangible and real to immortal consciousness; and they have the advantage of being eternal. Tangibility. Spirit and matter cannot co-exist or co-operate; and one can no more create the other, than Truth can create error, or vice versa.
In proportion as the belief disappears that life and intelligence are in or of matter, the immortal facts of Being are seen, whose only Life, or Intelligence, is God. Spirit is reached only through the understanding and demonstration of Life and Truth and Love.
Every system of human philosophy, doctrine, and medicine is more or less infected with the pantheistic Pantheistic tendencies. belief that there is mind in matter; but this belief contradicts alike revelation and right reasoning. A logical and Scientific conclusion is reached only through the knowledge that there are not two bases of life, matter and mind, but only one, — namely, Mind.
Pantheism, starting from a material sense of God, seeks cause in effect, principle in its idea, and life and intelligence in matter.
​Matter is unknown in the universe of Mind. Symbols and elements of discord and decay are not products of Symbolic limitation. the perfect and eternal One. From the infinite light and harmony which are the abode of Spirit, only reflections of Good can come. Trees, plants, and flowers are ideas of Mind. Mind multiplies them, and the product can be only mental.
Finite belief can never do justice to Truth in any direction. It limits all things, and would compress Mind, which is infinite, beneath a skull-bone. Such belief can neither apprehend nor worship the Infinite, and seeks to divide the one Spirit into many, to accommodate its finite sense of the divisibility of soul and substance.
Through this error human belief comes to have “lords many and gods many.” Moses declared, as Jehovah's Gods many. first command of the Ten: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me!” but behold the zeal of belief to establish the opposite error, of many deities. The argument of the serpent in the allegory, “I will make you as gods,” urges, through every avenue, the belief that soul is in body, and that God, infinite Life, is in finite forms.
Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and Sensationless and sentient. God, the Soul of man and of existence, is perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, thus perpetuating these qualities in man.
The only excuse for entertaining human opinions, and rejecting the Science of Being, is our mortal ignorance of Spirit, — ignorance which yields only to the ​understanding of Divine Science, whereby we enter into the kingdom of Truth on earth, and learn that Spirit is supreme, and matter but an error of belief. Spirit and matter no more commingle than light and darkness. When one appears, the other disappears.
Error alone presupposes man to be both mind and matter. Divine Science contradicts the corporeal senses, The Ego. rebukes mental belief, and asks: What is the Ego, whence its origin, and what its destiny? The Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God, the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, and not of corporeality.
The one Ego, one Mind, or Spirit, called God, is infinite Spirit and infinite individuality, supplying all form and comeliness, which reflects divinity in individual man and things.
The mind supposed to exist in matter, or beneath a skull-bone, is a myth, a misconceived sense and false False sense. statement as to man and Mind. We shall all learn that sin and mortality are without any actual origin or rightful existence, when we put off the false sense for the true, and see that they have neither principle nor permanency. They are native nothingness, out of which error would simulate creation, through a man formed from dust instead of Deity.
Divine Science does not put new wine into old bottles, Soul into matter, nor the Infinite into the finite. Our True idea. false views of matter perish as we grasp the facts of Spirit. The old belief must be cast out, or the new idea will be spilled, and the inspiration, which is to change our standpoints, will be lost. Now, as of old. Truth casts out error and heals the sick.
​The real Life, or Mind, and its opposite — the so-called material life — are figured by two geometrical symbols, a A sphere and line. circle, or sphere, and a straight line. The circle represents the Infinite, without beginning or end; the straight line represents the finite, which has both beginning and end. The sphere represents self-existent and eternal individuality and Mind; the straight line, a belief in a self-existent and temporary material existence.
There is no inherent power in matter; for all that is material is a material, human, mortal thought, and is always governed by that thought.
Whatever indicates the opposite of God, or His absence, is only a mortal belief; and this belief is neither Inversion. the Mind nor body of man, for it is not begotten of the Father. The rule of inversion infers from error its opposite, Truth; and Truth is the light which dispels error. As mortals begin to understand Spirit, they give up the belief that there is any true life outside of God.
Truth is the intelligence of immortal Mind. Error is the so-called intelligence of mortal mind.
The opposite symbols, above referred to, never unite in figure or fact. The straight line finds no abiding-place Opposite symbols. in a curve, and the curve finds no adjustment to the straight line. Matter has no place in Spirit, and Spirit has no place in matter. Truth has no home in error, and error has no foothold in Truth. Mind cannot pass into non-intelligence and matter, nor can non-intelligence become Soul. At no point can these opposites mingle or unite. Even though they seem to touch, one is still a curve, and the other remains a straight line.
​Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious Source of all movement. action. It is the same Life, Love, and Wisdom, “yesterday and to-day and forever.” Matter and its beliefs — sin, sickness, and death — are states of mortal mind, which acts, reacts, and then comes to a stop. They are not facts of Mind. They are not ideas, but illusions. Principle is absolute. It admits of no beliefs, but rests upon understanding.
But what say prevalent theories ? They insist that Life, or God, is one and the same with material life, Structure and life. so 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, — such as the structural life of the tree and of material man, — and deem it the manifestation of the one Life, God.
This false belief as to what really constitutes life so detracts from God's character and nature, that the true Finiteness. sense of His power is lost to all who cling to 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 stated accurately. We must receive it in the understanding, and live it in daily life; and unless we so do we cannot teach Science, any more than we can teach and illustrate geometry by calling a curve a straight line, or calling a straight line a sphere.
Are mentality, immortality, consciousness, resident in matter? It is not rational to say that Mind is infinite, but dwells in finiteness, in matter, or that matter is the medium of Mind.
​If God is limited to man or matter, or if the Infinite could be circumscribed within the finite, God would then Starting-point. be corporeal, and unlimited Mind would seem to spring from a limited body; but this is an impossibility. Mind can have no starting-point, and return to no limit. It can never be in bonds, nor be fully manifested through corporeality.
Can God create or accept such representatives of Himself as mortals, sin, sickness, and death? Can Recognition impossible. matter recognize Mind? Can Mind recognize matter? Can the Infinite know aught outside of Infinity? Can Deity be known through the material senses? Can these senses, which afford no direct evidence of God, give correct testimony as to infinite Life, Truth, and Love?
The answer to all these questions must forever be in the negative.
The physical senses can afford no evidence of God. We can neither see Spirit through the eye, nor hear it Our physical insensibility to Spirit. through the ear; nor can we feel, taste, or smell Mind. Even the more subtile and mis-named material elements are beyond the cognizance of these senses, and are known only by certain effects commonly attributed to them.
According to Christian Science the true senses of man are spiritual, emanating from Divine Mind. Thought passes from God to man, but no sensation or report comes back from body to Mind. The intercommunication is always between Mind and thought. Matter is not sentient, and cannot be really cognizant of good or of evil, of pleasure or pain. Man's individuality is not material. This Science of Being obtains not alone ​hereafter, in what men call Paradise, but here and now; for it is the great fact of Being, for time and eternity.
What, then, is the material personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness The human counterfeit. of Truth, but man's counterfeit, the likeness of error, sin, sickness, and death. The unreal claim of mortal mind to be the true image of man's Maker is illustrated by the optical line of incidence, which takes always the opposite direction from the line of reflection.
Is God a physical personality? Spirit is not physical, the idea that mind is within the cranium is a false Material misconceptions. conception of intelligence. The time has come for this finite conception of the Infinite, and a material body, as the seat of mind, to give place to a diviner sense of Mind and its manifestations, — to the better understanding that Science gives of the Supreme Being, or divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love.
By interpreting God as a corporeal Saviour, but not as the saving Principle, we shall continue to seek salvation Salvation. through pardon, and not through reform, and resort to matter, instead of Spirit, for the cure of the sick. As mortals reach, through knowledge of Christian Science, a higher platform, they will seek to learn, not from matter, but from divine Principle, how to demonstrate the Christ as the healing and saving power.
It is essential to understand, instead of believe, what relates most nearly to the happiness of Being. To seek Truth through belief in a human doctrine is not to understand 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 this is fatal to a knowledge of Science. The understanding of Truth gives real faith in it, and is better than all burnt offerings.
The Master said, “No man cometh unto the Father [the Principle of Being] but by me.” Christ, the Truth and Life of man, reveals the divine Principle; for Christ said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Physical causation was put aside, from first to last, by this original man, Jesus. He knew that divine Principle alone creates and governs the real.
In the Saxon tongue good was the term for God. Goodness and God. The Scriptures declare all He made to be good, like Himself, — good in Principle and in idea. Therefore the spiritual universe is good, and reflects God as He is.
God's thoughts are perfect and eternal, are Substance and Life. Imperfect and temporal thoughts are human, Divine thoughts. involving error; and since God, Spirit, is the 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. Such transitory thoughts are the antipodes of Truth; though (by the supposition of opposites) these errors must also say, “We are true.” But this saying destroys itself.
Sin, sickness, and death are comprised in human material belief, and belong not to a divine Mind. They are without a real origin or existence. They have neither principle nor permanence, but belong, with all that is material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which simulates the creations of Truth. All creations of Spirit ​are eternal; but creations of dust must return to dust. Error supposes man to be both mental and material. Divine Science contradicts this postulate, and rebukes material sense.
We call the absence of Truth, error. Truth and error, to human apprehension, are opposites. In Science, Divine all. Truth is God, and God has no opposite. He is all; therefore error is unreal. Did God create error? No! “Doth a fountain send forth, at the same place, sweet waters and bitter?” God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent, or suggest the absence of omnipotence? How can there be more than all?
Neither understanding nor Truth accompanies error; nor is error the offshoot of Mind. Evil calls itself Mental offshoots. something, when it is nothing. It saith, “I am man, but I am not the image and likeness of God;” whereas the Scriptures declare that man was made in God's likeness.
Error is mortal belief, is illusion, without spiritual identity or principle, and has no real existence. The Error defined. 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 objective representation 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 must yield to Truth only, — to the recognition only of Spirit, and of a spiritual creation.
Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The statement that Truth is real, necessarily includes the correlated statement, that error is unreal.
​The suppositional warfare between Truth and error is only the mental conflict between the testimony of the The great conflict. spiritual senses and the evidence of the material senses, and this warfare will continue till every question between them shall be settled through faith and the understanding of Love.
Superstition and understanding can never combine. The latter destroys the former. Before the physical and moral effects of Christian Science are fully apprehended, the conflict between Truth and error, understanding and belief, Science and material sense, foreshadowed by the Prophets and inaugurated by Jesus, must be carried on to its end. The lightnings and thunderbolts of error must continue to burst and flash; but as the tumult dies away in the distance, the raindrops of divinity will refresh the earth.
The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are to be found in the following postulates: that Life Stones in the temple. is God, Good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and cannot be, material; that Life is not subject to death; that the real man has no consciousness of material life or death.
Science reveals the glorious possibilities of man, The Christ element. unlimited by the mortal senses. The Christ-element in the Messiah made him the Way, Truth, and Life.
In eternal Truth mortals lose what they have learned from error, and man's true existence as a child of God comes to light. Truth, demonstrated, is eternal Life. Mortal man can never rise from the temporal débris 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 understanding of what constitutes man, then the body will be immortal; and spirit will have overcome the flesh.
A wicked man is not the idea of God. He is little else than a creation of error. To suppose that hatred, Wickedness. envy, pride, malice, hypocrisy, have life abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life and Life's idea, Truth and Truth's idea, never make men sick or sinful.
The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still overcomes death, proves the King of Terrors to be but Death but an illusion. a mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a mortal illusion; for to man, and the spiritual universe, there is no death-process.
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, that the entire universe is spiritual and immortal.
The spiritual fact and the material belief of things are opposites; but the spiritual is true, and therefore Spiritual offspring. the material must be untrue. Life is not in matter, so that it cannot be said to pass out of it. Matter and death are but mortal illusions. Spirit, and all things spiritual, are the real and eternal.
Man is not the offspring of flesh, but of Spirit, — of Life, not of death. Because Life is God, it must be eternal, self-existent, — the everlasting I Am, the Being who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.
​If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of Being are not in the least understood before what is termed death Death no elevator. overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher in the scale of existence at that single point of experience; but will remain as material as before the transition, still seeking happiness through a material instead of through a spiritual sense of Life, and from selfish and inferior motives. So long as the error of belief lasts, that life and mind are finite and physical, and are manifested through brain and nerves, so long the penalty of sickness, sin, and death will continue. To the other, the spiritual class, relates the Scripture: “On such the second death hath no power.”
If the change called death destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the Future suffering. moment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so. Perfection is gained only by degrees. They who are unrighteous shall be unrighteous still, until God's wisdom, through Divine Science, removes all their ignorance and sin.
The sin and error which possess us at the instant of death do not cease at that event, but endure till the death Sinlessness. of these errors. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes spiritual only when he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain in the act, does not thereby forsake sin. He is no more spiritual for believing his body dead, and learning that his cruel mind is not dead. His thoughts are no purer until evil is disarmed by goodness. His body is as material as his mind, and vice versa.
The suppositions that sin is pardoned while unforsaken, that happiness can be genuine in the midst of ​sin, that the so-called death of the body frees from sin, and that God's pardon is aught but the destruction of Death changes. sin, — these are grave mistakes. We know that all will be changed “in the twinkling of an eye,” when the last trump shall sound; but this last call of Wisdom cannot come till mortals have already yielded to each lesser call in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to glorified Being.
Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a locality, but a state in which Mind, Salvation and probation. and all the manifestations of Mind, are harmonious and immortal, because sin is destroyed, and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession, like Paul and his followers, of “the Mind of the Lord.”
“In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.” So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been transformed into the popular proverb, “As the tree falls, so it must lie.” As man falleth asleep, so shall he awake. As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needful change. Mind never becomes dust. No resurrection from the grave awaits Mind, for the grave has no power over Mind.
No final judgment awaits mortals; for the judgment-day of Wisdom comes hourly and continually, Judgment. even the judgment by which mortal man is divested of all material error. As for spiritual error there is none.
​When the last mortal fault is destroyed, then the final trump will sound which ends the battle of Truth Victory. with error and mortality; but of “that day and hour, no man knoweth.” Here prophecy pauses. Divine Science alone can compass the heights and depths of Being, and reveal God.
Truth will be to us “the resurrection and the Life” only when it destroys all error, and the belief that Mind, Primitive error. the only immortality of man, can be fettered by the body, and Life be controlled by death. Erring, sinful, sick, and dying men are not the likenesses of perfect and eternal Mind.
Matter is the primitive belief of mortal mind, because this so-called mind has no cognizance of Spirit. To mortal mind, matter is substantial, and evil is good. The senses of mortal mind are material, and its consciousness is dependent on material sense.
Jesus, explaining the origin of material man and mortal mind, said: “Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father, the Devil [evil], and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the Truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
This depraved mortality, misnamed mind, must become extinct, and so man would be annihilated, were it Ascension. not for the spiritual man's indissoluble connection with God, which Jesus brought to light. In his resurrection and ascension he showed that a mortal man is not the real essence of manhood; ​and this unreal mortality disappears in presence of the reality.
Electricity is not a vital fluid, but the least material form of illusive consciousness, — the material Electricity. mindlessness, which forms no link between matter and Mind, and destroys itself. Matter and mortal mind are different strata of human belief. The grosser substratum is named matter. The more ethereal is called human, or mortal mind, and is the illusion that is called mind in matter. Hence it has neither intelligence nor power. Both strata are false presentations of man.
This human mind has neither gases nor forces, whereby to counterfeit the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency is Truth, whose attraction is Love, whose adhesion and cohesion are Life, perpetuating the eternal facts. Electricity is some of the nonsense of error, which ever counterfeits the true essence of eternal Truth, — the great difference being that the former is unreal and the latter is real.
The vapid fury of mortal mind, expressed in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity, shows The counterfeit forces. this so-called mind to be self-destructive. They counterfeit divine justice, and are called, in the Scriptures, “the anger of the Lord.” Really they signify His justice, in the self-destruction of error, and point to its opposite, the strength and permanency of Truth, whose supremacy is ever asserting itself. Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal harmony, the entireness of God, Good, and the nothingness of evil.
The five physical senses are the avenues and ​instruments of human error, which correspond with it. These senses indicate the common human belief, — namely, Instruments of error. that life, substance, and intelligence are a unison of matter with spirit. This is Pantheism, and carries within itself the seeds of all error.
If man is both mind and matter, the loss of one finger would take away some quality and quantity of the man; for matter and man would be one.
What is wrongly termed mind sees only what it believes, and believes only what it sees, — what the Mortal verdict. material senses declare. This mortal belief, mis-named man, says: “Matter has intelligence and sensation. Nerves feel. Brain thinks and sins. The stomach can make a man cross. Injury can cripple and matter kill.” This verdict of the so-called five senses victimizes mortals, taught, as they are by physiology and pathology, to revere those five personal falsities, which are destroyed by Truth, through spiritual sense and understanding.
The lines of demarcation between immortal man, representing Spirit, and mortal man, representing the error Mythical pleasure. that life and intelligence are in matter, show the pleasures and pains of matter to be myths, and human belief in them to be the father of mythology, wherein matter is represented as divided into intelligent gods. Man's genuine selfhood is recognizable only in what is good and true; for man is not the offspring of flesh, but of Spirit.
The inebriate believes there is pleasure in intoxication. The thief believes he gains something by stealing, and the hypocrite that he is hiding himself. The ​Science of Mind corrects such mistakes, as Truth demonstrates the falsity of error.
The belief that a severed limb is aching in the old Severed members. location, when the sensation is believed to be in nerves which are no longer there, is an added proof of the unreliability of physical testimony.
God creates and governs the universe, including man. The universe is filled with spiritual ideas, which He Immortals. evolves, and they are obedient to the Mind which makes them. Mortal mind transforms the spiritual into the material, and must give back the original, if it would escape from the mortality which follows its error. Mortals are not like immortals, created in God's own image; but infinite Spirit is everywhere, and mortal consciousness will at last disappear, and the true sense of Being, real, perfect, and forever intact, will appear.
The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and glass Transparency. never mingle, only the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality, error, in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the light.
All that is called mortal thought is made up of error. The theoretical mind is matter, named brain, or material Brainology. consciousness, the exact opposite of real Mind, or Spirit. Brainology teaches that mortals are created to suffer and die. It further teaches that when man is dead, the immortal Principle, or Soul, is resurrected from death and mortality. Thus error ​theorizes that spirit is born of matter and returns to matter, and has a resurrection from dust; whereas Science unfolds the eternal verity, — that man and angels are spiritual reflections of God.
Progress is born of experience. It is the ripening of mortal man, through which the mortal is dropped for Purgation. the immortal. Either here or hereafter, suffering or Science must destroy all illusions about life and mind, and annihilate material sense and self. The old man, with his deeds, must be put off. Nothing sensual or sinful is immortal. The death of a false material sense and of sin, not the death of organic matter, is what reveals man, and Life, harmonious, real, and eternal.
The so-called pleasures and pains of material sense perish; and they must go out under the blaze of Truth, Purification. spiritual sense, and the actuality of Being. Mortal belief must, through Science or suffering, lose all satisfaction in error and sin, in order to part with them.
Whether mortals will learn this here or hereafter, and how long they will suffer the pangs of fiery destruction, depends upon the tenacity of error.
The knowledge obtained only from the corporeal senses leads to sin and death. When the testimony of Spirit Mixed testimony. and matter. Truth and error, seem to commingle, they rest upon foundations which time is wearing away. Mortal mind judges by the evidence from the material senses, until Science obliterates this false testimony. An improved belief is one step out of error, and aids in understanding the situation in Christian Science.
​Human belief is an autocrat, though not deserving its power. It says to mortals, “You are wretched!” and Belief an autocrat. they become so; and nothing can change this state, until the belief changes. Human belief says, “You are happy!” and mortals are so; and no circumstance can alter the situation, until the belief on this subject changes. Human belief says to mortals, “You are sick!” and this belief manifests itself as sickness. It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself, into the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in either belief affects the physical condition.
Erroneous belief is mental self-mesmerism. Change the belief, and that disappears which before seemed Self-mesmerism. to it real; and whatever is accepted, in
place of the forsaken belief, now seems real. The only fact concerning any belief is, that it is neither Scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and dissolution.
Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is a chrysalis state of human thought, wherein spiritual Faith higher than belief. evidence, contradicting the testimony of material senses, begins to appear, and Truth, the ever-present, is becoming understood. Belief has its degrees of comparison. Some beliefs are better than others. Beliefs in Truth are better than beliefs in error, but no human beliefs are founded on the divine rock. They can be shaken; and until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes understanding, thought has little relation to the actual.
A belief fulfils the illusive conditions of belief. Sickness, sin, and death are the realities of human belief. ​Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of Spirit, which dawn in faith, and glow full-orbed in the understanding. Sunshine and cloud. As a cloud hides the sun it cannot extinguish, so false belief silences for a while the voice of immutable harmony; but it cannot destroy Science armed with faith, hope, and understanding.
What is termed material sense can only report lies about Being, whereas spiritual sense can only bear Truth's witness. witness to the Truth. To material sense the falsehood is the fact, until this sense is corrected by Christian Science.
Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality. Material sense involves the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, between hope and fear, between life and death, never reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal, or the unreal. When the real is attained, which is announced by Science, joy is no longer a trembler, nor is hope a cheat. Spiritual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs concerning them. Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and the spiritual senses.
Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial Thought-angels. visitants, flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. They are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their individualism may be. Human conjecture confers upon them its own forms of thought, marked with superstitious outlines, making them human creatures with ​suggestive pinions; but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more reality than has the sculptor's thought when he carves his statue of Liberty, which embodies his conception of an unseen quality or condition, but which has no physical antecedent reality, save in the artist's own observation and “chambers of imagery.”
My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, where human belief has buried its Our angelic messengers. fondest earthly hopes. With white fingers they point upward to a new and glorified trust, a higher ideal of Life and its joys. Angels are God's impartations to man, — not messengers, or persons, but messages of the true idea of divinity, flowing into humanity. These upward-soaring thoughts never lead mortals toward self or sin, but guide them to the Principle of all Good, whither every pure and uplifting aspiration tends. We should give earnest heed to these spiritual guides. Then they will tarry with us, and we shall be found entertaining “angels unawares.”
Knowledge gained from material sense is figuratively represented in Scripture as a tree, bearing the fruits of Knowledge and Truth. sin, sickness, and death. Ought we not then to judge this knowledge, thus obtained, to be untrue and dangerous, since “the tree is known by its fruits”?
Truth never destroys its own idea. It is the Substance, which cannot destroy its own reflection. Corporeal sense, or error, may hide Truth, health, harmony, and Science, as the mist obscures the sun or the mountain; but Science, the sunshine of Truth, will melt away the shadow, and reveal the celestial peaks.
​If man were solely a creature of the material senses, he would have no eternal Principle, and would be New man. mutable and mortal. Human logic is awry when it attempts to draw correct spiritual conclusions of life from matter. Finite sense has no true appreciation of infinite Principle, — God, — or of His infinite idea, or reflection, — man. The mirage, which makes trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who is not found in the image of God.
So far as the Scientific statement of Being is understood, it can be proven; and the true reflection of God — the real man, or the new man (as Paul has it) — will be brought to light.
The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the The tares and wheat. immutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existing. These opposites are the tares and wheat, which never really mingle, though (to mortal sight) they grow side by side until the harvest. In the harvest, Science separates the wheat from the tares, through the realization of God as ever present, and of man as reflecting the divine likeness.
Spirit is God, or Soul. Soul, or Spirit, is not within a cranium or in matter. If it were so, God would have The divine reflection. but one representative, that is, man, and man would be identical with God. The theory that soul, or spirit, dwells in matter is taught by theologians and physicians. This theory is pantheistic. Man reflects and expresses the divine Substance, or Mind; but God is not in His reflection, any more than ​man is in the mirror which reflects his image, or the sun is in the ray of light which goes out from it. God is seen only in that which reflects Good, Life, Truth, Love, — yea, which manifests all God's attributes and power, even as the human likeness, thrown upon the mirror, repeats precisely the looks and actions of the object in front of it.
Few persons comprehend what Science means by the word reflection. To himself, mortal and material man seems to be substantial; but this is mere belief, or a false view of substance, and involves error.
On the other hand, the immortal and spiritual man is really substantial, and reflects the divine Substance, or Good, which mortals hope for. He reflects divine Life, Truth, and Love, which constitute the only real and eternal entity. This reflection is transcendental, only because the spiritual man's substantiality transcends mortal vision, and is revealed only through divine Science.
As God is Substance, and man also is the offspring of Substance, being made in the divine image and Inverted images. likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has the substance of Good. The belief that man has any other substance, or mind, is not spiritual. Mortal man seems to himself to be substance, but man is “image.” Delusion arises from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and Substance, with everything turned upside down.
This falsity presupposes soul to be an unsubstantial dweller in material forms, and spirit and substance to ​be material instead of immaterial. Immortality is not Denials. bounded by mortality. Infinity is not compassed by finiteness. Principle is not to be found in fragmentary ideas.
Mortal body and material man are delusions which spiritual understanding and Science explain. Yet the Identity not lost. identity of the real man is not lost, but found, through this explanation; for the conscious infinitude of existence is thereby discerned, and remains unchanged. That man should lose aught, when he has all, is impossible. The notion that mind is in matter, and in the pleasures and pains, the sin, sickness, and death of matter, is a mortal belief; and this belief is all that will ever be lost.
Continuing our definition of man, let us remember that the harmonious and immortal man has existed Definition of man. forever, and is always beyond and above the mortal illusion of any life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter. This statement is based on fact, not fable. The Science of Being reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is perfect; because the Soul, or Mind, of man is God, the divine Principle of all being, and the real man is governed by this Soul, instead of sense, by the law of Spirit, not of matter.
God is Love. He is therefore divine Principle, and man is God's image and likeness. His true consciousness is therefore in the mental, not the bodily likeness. Indeed, the body presents no proper likeness of divinity, though mortal mind would fain have us so believe.
Even in Christian Science, reproduction, by Spirit's individual ideas, is but the reflection of the creative ​power of the Principle underlying those ideas. The reflection, through mental propagation, of the Propagation. multitudinous forms of Mind which people the realm of the real, is controlled by Mind, which is their Principle. This multiplication comes from no power of propagation in themselves or in matter.
The minutiæ and grandeur of lesser individualities reflect the one divine Individuality. They are comprehended in Soul and formed by Spirit, not by material sensation. Whatever reflects Life, Truth, and Love is spiritually conceived and brought forth. All the vanity of the ages can never make both these contradictions true. Divine Science lays the axe at the root of the illusion that life, or mind, is in the material body; and it will eventually destroy this illusion, through the self-destruction of all error, and a beatified understanding of the Science of Life, which overcomes death.
A decided error is the belief that pain and pleasure, Error defined. life and death, holiness and unholiness, mingle in man; and that mortal, material man is the likeness of God.
God, without the image and likeness of Himself, would be a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed. God Nonentity. would be without a witness or proof of His own nature. Spiritual man is the idea of God, an idea which cannot be lost, or separated from its divine Principle. When the evidence before the material senses yielded to spiritual sense, the apostle declared that nothing could alienate him from God, from the sweet sense and presence of Life and Truth.
It is ignorance and belief alone, based on a material view of things, which hide spiritual beauty and goodness. ​Understanding this, Paul said: “Neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor Inseparable spirituality. depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.” This is the doctrine of Divine Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that Good can never produce evil, nor Life result in death. The perfect man — governed by God, his perfect Principle — has immortality, sinlessness, and everlasting bliss.
Harmony is produced by its Principle, is controlled by it, and abides with it. Divine Principle is the Life of Man and his music. man. His happiness is not, therefore, at the disposal of physical sense. Truth is not contaminated by error. Harmony in man is as beautiful as in music, and discord is unnatural and repellent.
The principle of music governs tones. If mortals caught harmony through the ear — a material sense — they would lose it again, if time or accident robbed them of hearing. To be master of chords and discords, musical science must be understood. Left to the decisions of material sense, music is liable to be misapprehended, and run into confusion. Controlled by belief, instead of understanding, it is, must be, imperfectly expressed. So man, not understanding Science, — thrusting aside his divine Principle as incomprehensible, — is abandoned to conjectures, left in the hands of ignorance, placed at the disposal of illusions, subjected to the same material sense which creates discord. A discontented, discordant mortal is no more a man than discord is music.
​A picture in the camera, or a face reflected in the mirror, is not the original, though resembling it. Man, Human reflection. in the likeness of his Maker, reflects the central light of Being, the invisible God. As there is no corporeality in the mirrored form, which is but a reflection, so man, like all things else, belongs to God, and his Life is in the Principle above him, not in man's own body.
Gender also is a quality, a characteristic of mind, not of matter. Man is not a creator, though he reflects Gender. Mind's creations, which constitute the underlying reality of Science. “Then answered Jesus and said unto them: Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do; for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”
The inverted images presented by the senses, the deflections of matter, as opposed to the Science of spiritual Inverted images. reflection, are all unlike Spirit. In the illusion of life that is here to-day and gone tomorrow, man would be wholly mortal, were it not that Love, the divine Principle gained through Divine Science, destroys all error and brings Immortality to light. Because man is the reflection of his Maker, he is not subject to birth, growth, maturity, decay. These mortal dreams are of human origin, not divine.
The Sadducees reasoned falsely about the resurrection; but not so blindly as the Pharisees, who believed Jewish views. error to be as immortal as Truth. The Pharisees thought they could raise the spiritual from the material. They would first make life result in death, and then resort to death to reproduce spiritual ​life. Jesus taught them how death was to be overcome by spiritual Life, and demonstrated this beyond cavil.
Life demonstrates Life. The immortality of Soul makes man immortal. If God, who is the Soul of man, Divinity childless. were parted for a moment from His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless, — no Father.
If Soul and its representative, man, unite only for a period, to be then separated, as by a law of divorce, to be brought together again at some uncertain future time, and in a manner unknown, — and this is the general religious opinion of mankind, — we are left without a rational proof of immortality. But man cannot be separated for an instant from God, whom he reflects. Science proves man's existence to be intact.
The myriad forms of mortal thought, made manifest as matter, are not more distinct or real to the material Thought-forms. senses than are the Soul-created forms to spiritual sense, wherein Life is permanent. Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses, Science, still enthroned, is unfolding to mortals the immutable, harmonious, divine Principle, Life and its idea, — the universe, present and eternal.
Is God's man, spiritually created, material and mortal? Did he originate in nothingness and dust, and spring Reptilian demand. from matter instead of Spirit? The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, the deep sleep, oblivion, and illusion, portrayed in the illusion that life and intelligence originate from and pass into matter. This pantheistic error, first called the ​serpent, insists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, “I will make you as gods;” that is, I will make error itself to be as real and eternal as Truth.
Error affirms itself in mind, and declares that there is more than one Mind. Error says: There shall be lords and gods many. I declare that God makes minds and spirits, and makes them both evil and good. Truth shall change sides, and be the opposite of Spirit. I will put spirit into what I call matter, and it shall seem to have life, as much as God, Spirit, who is Life.
This error has led to bad results. Its life is found to be not Life, but only a transient sense of existence, Bad results. which ends in death. Error charges its lie to Truth, and says: The Lord knows it. He has made man mortal and material, out of matter instead of Spirit. Thus error partakes of its own evil, and utters its Amen. If we regard mind as both good and evil, every supposed material pain and pleasure seems normal, a portion of God's plan of creation, and weighs against our course Spiritward.
When the divine Mind made man, that Mind gave him dominion over all the earth. He was not created Higher statutes. from a material basis, or bidden to obey material laws which Spirit never made. His
government is in the higher law of Mind, in spiritual statutes.
Above error's awful din, blackness, and void, the voice of Truth still calls: “Adam, where art thou? The great question. Consciousness, where art thou? Art thou dwell mg in the belief that Mind is in matter, and
that evil is mind? or art thou in the living faith that there can be no other mind but God, and keeping His ​commandment?” Until the lesson is learned that God is the only, Mind governing man, mortal belief will be afraid, as it was in the beginning, and will hide from the demand, “Where art thou?” This awful demand, “Adam, where art thou?” is met with the admission, from the head, heart, stomach, blood, nerves: Lo, here am I, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion of pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and death.
The Soul-inspired Patriarchs heard the voice of Truth, and talked with God as consciously as man talks with man.
Jacob was alone, wrestling with error, — struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence Wrestling of Jacob. as existent in matter, with its false pleasures and pains, — when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him, and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till it became powerless; and thereby Truth, being understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of Divine Science. Then said the spiritual evangel: “Let me go, for the day breaketh;” that is, The light of Truth and Love dawns upon thee; but the Patriarch, perceiving his own error and need of help, did not loosen his hold upon this glorious light until his nature was transformed. When Jacob was asked, “What is thy name?” he straightway answered; and then his name was changed to Israel, for “as a prince” had he prevailed, and had “power with God and with men.” Then Jacob questioned his deliverer, “What is thy name?” but this appellation was nameless and withheld, for the messenger was not a corporeal being, but an incorporeal impartation of God to man, which, to use ​the word of the Psalmist, restored his Soul, — gave him the true sense of Being, and rebuked his material sense.
The result of his struggle thus appeared. He had conquered material error with the understanding of New name. Spirit and spiritual power. This changed the man. He was no longer called Jacob, but Israel, — a Prince of God, or a Soldier of God, who had fought a good light. He was to become the father of those who followed his demonstration of the power of Spirit over the material senses, through earnest striving; and the children of earth who followed his example were to be called the Children of Israel, until the Messiah should rename them. If these children should go astray, and forget that Life is God, Good, and Good is not in elements which are the opposite of Spirit, and thus lose the divine power which heals the sick and sinful, they were to be brought back through great tribulation, and led to deny material sense, even as the Gospel teaches.
The Science of Being shows it to be impossible for infinite Soul to be in a finite body, and man to be a Oneness with God. separate intelligence from his Maker. It is a self-evident error that there can be such a reality as organic animal or vegetable life, when it always ends in death; for Life is never for a moment extinct, is never structural or organic, and is never absorbed or limited by its own formations.
The artist is not in his painting. The picture is his thought evolved. The human belief fancies that it The painter and potter. delineates thought on matter; but what is matter? Did it exist prior to thought? Matter is made up of supposititious mortal mind-force, but ​all might is divine Mind. Thought will finally be understood and seen in all form, substance, and color, but without material accompaniments. The potter is not in the clay; else the clay would have power over the potter. God is His own infinite Mind, and governs all.
Day may decline and shadows fall, but darkness flees when the earth has again turned upon its axis. The Immortal axis. sun is not affected by the revolution of the earth. So Science reveals Soul as God, untouched by sin and death, as the central Life and Intelligence, around which circle harmoniously all things in the systems of Mind.
Soul changeth not. We are commonly taught that there is a human soul which sins, and is lost spiritually, Soul imperishable. — that soul may be lost, and yet is immortal. If Soul could sin, Spirit would be material instead of spiritual. It is the thought, or motive, of material sense which sins. If Soul sinned, Soul would die. Sin is the element of self-destruction, and spiritual death is oblivion. Then the annihilation of Spirit would be inevitable. The only Life is Spirit, and if Spirit loses Life as God, Spirit hath no other existence, and would become nothingness.
Soul, or Mind, is not seen by a corporeal sense, because it is Spirit, which physical sight cannot discern. There is neither growth, maturity, nor decay in Soul. These errors are the mutations of sense, the varying clouds of mortal belief, which hide the Truth of Being.
What is termed mortal mind, or evil spirit, — erring, sinning, and dependent on matter for manifestation and life, — is not Mind. All that Mind is, or hath made, is good, and He made all; hence there is no evil.
​Soul is immortal because it is Spirit, with no element of self-destruction. Is man lost spiritually? No, he Sin fleshly. can only be lost materially. All sin is of the flesh. It cannot be spiritual. Sin exists only so long as the material illusion remains. It is the sense of sin, and not the sinful soul, which must be lost.
Through false estimates of soul as dwelling in sense, and mind as dwelling in matter, belief strays into a Soul impeccable. sense of temporary loss or absence of soul. This state of error is the mortal dream of life and substance as existent in matter, and is directly opposite to the immortal reality of Being. So long as we believe that soul can sin, or that immortal Soul is in mortal body, we can never understand the Science of Being. When humanity does understand this Science, it will become the law of Life to man, — even the higher law of Soul, which prevails over material sense, through harmony and immortality.
The objects cognized by the physical senses have not the reality of Substance. They are only what mortal belief calls them. As mortals lay off a false sense of life, substance, and intelligence, — matter, sin, and mortality lose all supposed consciousness or claim to life or existence. But the spiritual, eternal man is not touched by these phases of mortality.
How true it is that whatever is learned through material sense must be lost because it is reversed by the Sense dreams. facts of Science. That which material sense deems shadow is found to be Substance. What it deems substantial becomes nothingness, when the sense-dreams vanish, and reality appears.
​The senses look on a corpse, not as man, but simply as matter. Men say, “The body is dead;” but this death is the departure of a mortal mind, and not of matter. The matter is there still. The consent of that mortal mind to depart occasions its departure; yet you say that matter has died.
People go into ecstasies over the idea of a corporeal Jehovah, though with scarcely a spark of love in their Foolish ecstacies. hearts; yet God is Love, and without God, immortality cannot appear. Mortals try to believe without understanding Truth, yet God is Truth. Mortals claim that man must die, when his divine Principle is ever-present Life. Mortals believe in a finitely human God; when God is Love, that must be demonstrated.
Our theories are based on finite premises, which cannot penetrate beyond matter. A limited sense of God Shallow theories. and of man's capabilities necessarily limits faith and hinders understanding. It divides faith and understanding between matter and Spirit, the finite and the Infinite, and so turns away from the Infinite and healing Principle to the inanimate drug.
Jesus' spiritual origin, and his demonstration of divine Principle, richly endowed him, and entitled him to The one anointed. sonship in Science. He was the son of a virgin. The term Christ Jesus, or Jesus the Christ (to give the full and proper translation of the Greek), may be rendered “Jesus the anointed,” — Jesus the God-crowned, or the divinely royal man; as it is said of him in the first chapter of Hebrews:
* Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee
* With the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
which refers to the Son as “the brightness of His [God's] glory, and the express [expressed] image of His personality [infinite Mind].” It is noteworthy that the phrase express image, in the Common Version, is, in the Greek Testament, character. Using this word in its higher meaning, we may assume that the author of this remarkable epistle regarded Christ as the Son of God, the royal reflection of the Infinite; and the cause given for the exaltation of Jesus, Mary's son, was that he “loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” The passage is made even clearer in the translation of the late George R. Noyes, D.D., “Who, being a brightness from His glory, and an image of His Being.”
Jesus of Nazareth was the most Scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material Jesus the Scientist. surface of things, and found their spiritual cause. To accommodate himself to immature ideas of spiritual power, — for spirituality was possessed only in a limited degree, even by his disciples, — Jesus called the body, which by this power he raised from the grave, “flesh and bones.” To show that the Substance of himself was Spirit, and the body no more perfect because of death, and no less material until the Ascension (his further spiritual exaltation) made it so, he waited until the mortal, or fleshly, sense had relinquished the belief of substance-matter, and spiritual sense had quenched all earthly yearnings. Thus he found the eternal Ego, and proved that he and the Father were inseparable as Principle and Idea. Then it was that our Master gained the solution of Being, demonstrating the existence of but one Mind, without a second or equal.
​The Jews, who sought to kill this man of God, showed plainly that their material views were the parents of The bodily resurrection. their wicked deeds. When Jesus spake of reproducing his body, — knowing, as he did, that Mind was the builder, — and said, “Though you destroy this temple, yet will I build it again,” they thought he referred to their material Temple, instead of his body. To such materialists, Spirit, or God, seemed a spectre, unseen and unfamiliar; and the body, which they laid in a sepulchre, seemed to be substance. This materialism lost sight of the true Jesus; but the faithful Mary saw him, and he presented to her, more than ever before, the true idea of Life and Substance.
Because of mortals' material and sinful belief, the spiritual Jesus was imperceptible to them. The higher his demonstration of Divine Science carried the problem of Being, and the more distinctly he uttered the demands of its Principle, Truth, and Love, the more odious he became to sinners, and to those depending on doctrines and material laws, to save them from sin and sickness, and submissive to death as the inevitable law of matter. Jesus proved them wrong by his resurrection, and said: “Whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die.”
That saying of our Master, “I and my Father are one,” separated him from the scholastic theology of the rabbis, Hebrew theology. His better understanding of God was a rebuke to them. He knew of but one Mind, and laid no claim to any other. He knew that the Ego was Mind, instead of body, — that matter, sin, and evil were not Mind; and his understanding of this Divine Science brought upon him the anathemas of the world.
​The opposite and false views of the people hid from their eyes Christ's sonship with God. Tlicy could not The true sonship. discern his spiritual existence. Their carnal minds were at enmity with it. Their thoughts were filled with mortal error, instead of God's spiritual idea as presented by Christ Jesus. The likeness of God we lose sight of through sin, which beclouds the spiritual sense of Truth; and we only regain this likeness when we subdue sin, and regain man's heritage, and the liberty of the sons of God.
Jesus' spiritual origin and understanding enabled him to demonstrate the facts of Being, — to prove, Immaculate conception. irrefutably, how spiritual Truth destroys material error, heals sickness, and overcomes death. The divine conception of Jesus pointed to this Truth, and presented an illustration of creation. The history of Jesus shows him to have been more spiritual than all other earthly personalities.
Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it seemed to mortal view), being conceived by a human mother, Mediatorship. Jesus was the mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error. Explaining and demonstrating the way of Divine Science, he became the way of salvation to all who accepted his word, that mortals might learn of him and escape from evil. The true man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin, and lose sight of material selfhood, to find the real man and his relation to God, and recognize the divine sonship. Christ was manifested through Jesus to prove the power of Spirit over the flesh, — to show that Truth is made manifest upon the human mind and body, healing sickness and sin.
​Jesus presented this true idea of God. Hence the warfare between this spiritual idea and perfunctory Spirituality indelible. religion, between spiritual clear-sightedness and the blindness of popular belief, which led to the conclusion that the spiritual idea could be killed by crucifying the flesh. The Christ-idea, or the Christ-man, rose higher to human view because of the crucifixion, and thus proved that Truth was the master of death. Christ represented the indestructible man, whom Spirit creates, constitutes, and governs. Thus he illustrated that blending with the Maker which gives man dominion over all the earth.
The idea of God, presented by Jesus, was scourged in person and rejected in Principle; and man was Spiritual deadness. accounted a criminal who could prove God's powerful reality by healing the sick, casting out error, spiritualizing materialistic beliefs, raising the dead, — dead in trespasses and sins, resting on the basis of matter, and blind to the perception of Spirit, or Truth.
He uttered things which had been “secret from the foundation of the world,” — ever since knowledge usurped the throne of the creative Principle, and insisted on the might of matter, the force of falsity, the insignificance of spirit, and proclaimed an anthropomorphic God.
Whosoever lives the life of Jesus, in this century, declares the reality of Christian Science, and will drink The cup and crown. most deeply of his Master's cup. Resistance to Truth will haunt his steps, and he will incur the hatred of error, till “Wisdom is justified of her children.” These blessed benedictions rest upon Jesus' ​followers: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;” “Lo, I am with you always,” — that is, not only in all time, but in all ways, or conditions.
The individuality of our blaster was no less tangible because it was spiritual, and because his Life was not at the mercy of matter. This understanding made him more real, more formidable in Truth, and enabled him to triumph over death, and present himself to his disciples, after his resurrection from the grave, as the self-same Jesus whom they had loved before the tragedy on Calvary.
To the materialistic Thomas, looking for the ideal Saviour in matter instead of in Spirit, and to the Material skepticism. evidence of the senses and the body, more than to Soul, for an earnest of immortality, — to him Jesus furnished the proof that he was unchanged by the crucifixion. To this dull and doubting disciple Jesus therefore remained a fleshly reality, so long as he remained an inhabitant of the earth. Nothing but a display of matter could make existence real to Thomas. For him to believe in matter was no task; but for him to conceive of the substantiality of Spirit — to know that nothing can rule out Mind and Immortality, wherein Spirit reigns — was more difficult.
Corporeal senses define diseases as realities; but the Scriptures declare that Mind makes all, even while Diseases unreal. these senses are saying that matter causes disease, and immortal Mind cannot heal it. Mortal sense supports all that is untrue, selfish, or debased. It would put soul into soil, life into limbo, and doom all things to decay. We must put to ​silence this lie of material sense, with the Truth of spiritual sense. We must cause the error to cease that brought sin and death, and would shut out the pure sense of omnipotence.
Is the sick man sinful above all others? No! but so far as he is discordant, he is not the idea of God. Sickness no proof of sin. Weary of their material beliefs, whence come so much sorrow, mortals grow more spiritual, as the error — or belief that life is in matter — yields to the hope of spiritual existence.
The Science of Mind deals with disease as error, and heals with Truth. Medical science treats disease as if it were real and right, and heals it, or attempts to heal it, with matter. Material methods are temporary, and have never elevated mankind.
The governor is not subject to be governed. In Science man is governed by his Principle, as numbers are Principle in numbers. by their law. Intelligence does not originate in numbers, but is manifested through them. The body does not include soul, but manifests a false sense of soul. The delusion that there is life in matter has no kinship with the Life supernal.
It is not Scientific to examine the body, in order to ascertain if we are in health, and learn our life-prospects; Introspection. because this is to infringe upon God's government. To employ drugs for the cure of disease shows a lack of faith in God, the divine Principle of all harmony; but if your faith, or understanding, is insufficient to demonstrate Divine Science, your lower appeal is to the general faith in material means, and this must finally be outgrown.
Incorrect reasoning leads to practical error. The ​wrong thought should be arrested before it can be made manifest.
The varied doctrines and theories which presuppose life and intelligence to exist in matter are so many Mythologies. ancient and modern mythologies. Mystery, miracle, and error will disappear when it becomes fairly understood that Spirit controls the body, and that man should have no other mind but God.
The Divine Science taught in the original language of the Bible came through inspiration, and needs Scriptures misread. inspiration to be understood. Hence the misapprehension of its spiritual meaning, and the misinterpretation of the Word, in some instances, by uninspired writers, who were only writing down what an inspired teacher had said. A misplaced word changes the sense and misstates the Science of the Scriptures; as, for instance, to name Love as merely an attribute of God; but we can, by special and proper capitalization, speak of the love of Love, meaning thereby what the Beloved Disciple meant in one of his epistles, when he said, “God is Love.” Likewise we can speak of the truth of Truth, and the life of Life; for Christ plainly declared, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Metaphors abound in the Bible, and names are often expressive of spiritual ideas. The most distinguished Interior meaning. theologians in Europe and America agree that the Scriptures have both a spiritual and literal meaning. In Smith's Bible Dictionary it is said: “The spiritual interpretation of Scripture must rest upon both the literal and moral;” and in the learned article on Noah, in the same work, the familiar text, Genesis vi. 3, “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not ​always strive with man, for that he also is flesh,” is quoted as follows, from the original Hebrew: “And Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not forever rule [or be humbled] in men, seeing that they are [or, in their error they are] but flesh.” Here the original text declares plainly the spiritual fact of Being, even man's eternal and harmonious existence as idea, instead of matter (however transcendental appears such a thought), and avers that this fact was not forever to be humbled by the belief that man is flesh and matter, for according to that error he is mortal.
The one important interpretation of Scripture is the spiritual. For instance, the text, “In my flesh shall I Job, on the resurrection. see God,” gives a profound idea of the divine power to heal the ills of the flesh, and encourages mortals to hope in Him who healeth all our diseases; whereas this passage is continually quoted as if Job intended to declare that if disease and worms destroyed his body, yet in the latter days he should stand in celestial perfection before Elohim, though still clad in material flesh, — an interpretation which is just the opposite of the true, as may be seen by studying the Book of Job. As Paul says, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.”
The Hebrew Lawgiver, slow of speech, despaired of making the people understand what should be revealed Egyptian serpents. to him. When he was led by Wisdom to cast down his rod, and he saw it become a serpent, Moses fled before it; but Wisdom bade him come back and handle the serpent, and then his fear departed. In this incident was seen the actuality of Science. Matter was shown to be a belief only. The ​serpent, under Wisdom's bidding, became a symbol of strength, a staff upon which to lean. The illusion of Moses lost its power to alarm him, when he discovered that what he apparently saw was really but a different phase of mortal belief.
It was Scientifically established that leprosy was a creation of mortal mind, and not matter, when Moses Leprosy. first put his hand into his bosom, and drew it forth white as snow with the dread disease, and presently restored his hand to its natural condition, by the same simple process. God had lessened his fear by this proof in Christian Science, and the inward voice became to him the voice of God, which said: “It shall come to pass, if they will not hear thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter.” And so it was in the coming centuries, when the Science of Being was demonstrated by Jesus, who showed his students the power of Mind, by changing water into wine, and taught them how to handle serpents unharmed, to heal the sick, and cast out error. Then they understood the supremacy of Spirit.
When we change the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain Standpoints and climax. the perfect Life, or control of Soul over sense,
and receive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax, before harmonious and immortal man is fully understood, and his capabilities shown. It is highly important — in view of the immense work to be accomplished before this recognition of Divine Science can come — to turn our thoughts in this direction, that finite belief may be prepared to relinquish its error.
​Man's wisdom finds no satisfaction in sin, but corporeal sense finds pleasure therein. The drunkard Drunkards. thinks he enjoys drunkenness; and you cannot make the inebriate leave his besottedness, until his physical sense of pleasure yields to a higher sense. Then he turns from his cups, as the startled dreamer who wakens from an incubus incurred through the pains of distorted sense. A man who likes to do wrong — finding pleasure in it, and refraining from it only through fear of consequences — is neither a safe temperance-man nor a reliable religionist.
The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless Weariness of error. woes, turn us, like tired children, to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to learn Life, in Divine Science. Without this process of weaning, “who by searching can find out God?” It is easier to desire Truth than to rid one's self of error. Mortals may seek the understanding of Christian Science, but they will not be able to glean from it the facts of Being, without laboring for them. This strife consists in the endeavor to destroy error of every kind, and possess no other mind but God.
Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, we are helped onward in the march towards righteousness and Bright outlook. purity, which are the landmarks of Science. Pausing before the infinite tasks of Truth, we rest for a moment. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.
In order to apprehend more, we must put into practice what we already know. We must recollect that ​Truth is demonstrable, when understood, and that it is not understood until demonstrated. If “faithful over a The loss and gain. few things,” we shall be made “rulers over
many;” but the one unused talent decays and is lost. When the sick or the sinful awake to realize their need of what they have not, they will be receptive of Divine Science, which gravitates towards Soul and away from material sense, removes thought from the body, and elevates even mortal mind to the contemplation of something better than disease or sin. The true idea of God gives the true understanding of Life and Love, robs the grave of its victory, takes away all sin, and the delusion that there are other gods, and destroys mortality.
The influence of Christian Science is not so much seen as felt. The “still, small voice” of Truth is uttering Stillness and purity. itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to it and going
up higher. Willingness to become as a little child, and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the old landmarks, and joy to see them disappear, — this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress; for none but “the pure in heart shall see God.”
Unless the harmony and immortality of man are becoming more apparent, we are not gaining the true idea Narrow pathway. of God; and the body will reflect what governs it, whether it be Truth or error, Understanding or belief, Spirit or matter. Therefore “acquaint thyself now with God, and be at peace.” Be watchful, sober, and vigilant. The way is strait and narrow, which ​leads to the understanding that God is Life. It is a warfare with the flesh, wherein we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either now or hereafter, but certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit, or Life, as God.
Paul was not at first a disciple of Jesus, but a persecutor of his followers. When the Truth first Blindness and sight. appeared to him in Science he was blind, and his blindness was felt; but spiritual light soon enabled him to follow the example and teachings of Jesus, healing the sick and preaching Christianity throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even in imperial Rome.
Paul writes, “If Christ [Truth] be not risen, then is my preaching vain;” that is: If this idea of the supremacy of Spirit, which is the true conception of Being, come not to your thought, you cannot be benefited by what I say.
Jesus said substantially, “He that believeth in me shall not see death;” that is: He who perceives the Abiding in Life. true idea of Life loses all sense of death. He who has the right idea of Good loses his sense of evil, and by reason of this is ushering himself into the undying realities of Spirit. Such an one abideth in Life, — Life obtained not of the body, incapable of supporting Life, but of Truth, developing its own immortal idea. Jesus gave the true idea of Life, which results in infinite blessings to mortals.
In Colossians (iii. 4) Paul writes: “When Christ, who is our Life, shall appear [be manifested], then shall ye Indestructible Being. also appear [be manifested] with him in glory.” When spiritual Being is understood in all its perfection, continuity, and might, then shall we be like Christ. The real meaning of the apostolic words is this: ​Then shall man be found perfect as the Father, indestructible in his Life, “hid, with Christ, in God,” where human sense hath not seen it, — safe in divine Love.
Paul had a clear sense of the demands of Truth upon mortals, physically and spiritually, when he said: Sacrificial heights. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” But can he who is begotten of the beliefs of the flesh, or serves them, ever reach, in this world, the divine heights of his Master? The time cometh when the spiritual origin of man, the Science which ushered Jesus into human presence, will be understood and demonstrated.
When first spoken in any age. Truth, like the light, “shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” A false sense of life, substance, and mind hides the divine possibilities, and conceals Scientific demonstration.
If we wish to follow Christ, Truth, it must be in the way of his appointing. Jesus said, “The works that I Hill of Science. do, ye shall do.” He who would reach the source, and find the divine remedy for every ill, must not try to climb the hill of Science by some other road. All nature teaches love to God; but we cannot love Him supremely, and set our whole affections on spiritual things, while loving the material, or trusting to it more than to the spiritual.
We must forsake the foundation of material systems, however time-honored, if we would gain the Christ as our only Saviour. Not partially, but fully, this healer of mortal mind was the healer of the body.
The purpose and motive to live aright can be gained to-day. These points won, you have started as you ​should. You have begun at the numeration-table of Christian Science, and nothing but wrong intention can hinder your advancement. Working and praying, with true motives on your part, your Father will open the way. “Who did hinder you, that you should not obey the Truth?”
Saul of Tarsus only beheld the way — the Christ, or St. Paul's conversion. Truth — when his uncertain sense of right yielded to a spiritual sense, which is always right. Then the man was changed. Thought assumed a nobler outlook, and his life became more spiritual. Then Paul learned the wrong he had done in persecuting Christians, whose religion he had not understood. He beheld for the first time the true idea of Love, and learned a lesson in Divine Science.
Reform comes by understanding that there is no abiding pleasure in evil; and also by gaining an affection Reform. for goodness according to Science, which reveals the immortal fact that neither pleasure nor pain, appetite nor passion, exist in or of matter, while divine Mind can and does destroy the false sense of pleasure and of fear, and all the appetites of the human mind.
What a pitiful sight is malice, finding pleasure in revenge! Evil is sometimes a man's highest conception Image of the beast. of right, until his grasp on goodness grows stronger. Then he loses pleasure in wickedness, and it becomes his torment. The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease sinning. There is no other way. Sin is the image of the beast, to be effaced by the sweat of agony. It is a moral madness, which rushes forth to clamor with midnight and tempest.
​To the physical senses, the strict demands of Christian Strictest demands. Science seem peremptory; but mortals are hastening to learn that Life is God, or Good, and that evil has rightly neither place nor power in the human or divine economy.
Fear of punishment never made man truly honest. Moral courage is requisite to meet the wrong and Moral courage. proclaim the right. But how shall we reform the man who has more animal than moral courage, who has lost the true idea of Soul? Through silent argument, convince the mortal of his mistake in seeking such means for procuring happiness. Perhaps reason is the most active human faculty. Let that inform the sentiments, and awaken the man's dormant sense of moral obligation; and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense, and the grandeur and bliss of a diviner sense, superior to matter. Then he not only will be saved, but is saved.
Mortals suppose they can live without goodness, when God is Good, the only real Life. What is the result? Final destruction of error. Understanding little about the divine Principle which saves and heals, mortals get rid of sin, sickness, and death only in appearance. These errors are not thus really destroyed, and must therefore cling to mortals until, here or hereafter, they gain the true understanding of God, in the Science which destroys human delusions about Him, and reveals the grand realities of His supremacy.
This understanding of man's power, as equipped by God, has sadly disappeared from Christian Missionaries. history. For centuries it has been dormant, a lost element of Christianity. Our missionaries carry ​the Bible to India; but can it be said that they explain it practically, as Jesus did, when hundreds die there annually from serpent-bites?
Understanding spiritual law, and knowing there is no material law, Jesus said: “These signs shall follow them Apostolic wonders. that believe: They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
Jesus' promise was perpetual. Had it been given only to his immediate disciples, the Scriptural passage would read you, not them. The purpose of his great life-work extends through time, and touches universal humanity. Its Principle is infinite, extending beyond the pale of a single period or a limited following. As time moves on, the healing elements of pure Christianity will be fairly dealt with, sought, and taught, and will glow in all the grandeur of universal goodness.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump. A little understanding of Christian Science proves the truth of all Imitation of Jesus. I Say of it. Because you cannot walk on the water and raise the dead, you have no right to question the great might of Divine Science in this direction. Be thankful that Jesus, who was its true demonstrator, did this, and left his example for us. We can use only what we understand, and must prove our faith by our works.
One should not tarry in the storm if the body is freezing, or remain in the devouring flames. Unable to prevent bad results, one should avoid their Euclid. occasion. To do otherwise is to resemble a pupil in addition, who attempts to solve a problem of ​Euclid, and denies the principle of the problem, because he fails in his first effort.
There is no hypocrisy in Science. Principle is imperative. You cannot mock it by human will. Science Repentance and pardon. is a divine demand, not a human. Always right, its Principle never repents, never dishonors the claim of Truth by forgiveness. Through understanding it destroys error, but never pardons it. If men understood their real divine source to be all blessedness, they would struggle for recourse to the divine, and be at peace; but the deeper the error into which mortal mind is plunged, the more intense the opposition to Truth.
Human resistance to Divine Science weakens in proportion as mortals give up error for Truth, and Prospects. the understanding of Being supersedes mere belief. Until the author of this book learned the vastness of Christian Science, the fixedness of mortal illusions, and human hatred of Truth, she cherished sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with immediate and universal acceptance.
When the following platform is understood, and the letter and the Spirit bear witness, the infallibility of Divine Science will be demonstrated.
I. God is supreme Being, the only Life, Substance, and Soul, the only Intelligence of the universe, including The deific supremacy. man. Eye hath neither seen God, nor His likeness. Neither God nor the perfect man can be discerned by the human senses. The individuality of Spirit is unknown, and thus a knowledge of it is left either to human conjecture or the revelation of Divine Science.
​II. God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be, — Life, Truth, Love. God is Spirit, and Spirit is divine The deific definitions. Principle. Principle is divine Mind, and Mind is not both good and bad, for God is Mind; therefore Mind is Good only, and there is but one Mind because there is but one God.
III. God is Good, and evil cannot proceed from Good. The notion that evil and goodness can be combined in one Deific Good. nature is a delusion of material sense, which must yield to Science. In the Saxon language good was the term for God. The Scriptures declare all that He made to be good, like Himself, — good in Principle and in idea. In infinite Good there is no room for evil.
IV. God is the only Life, and Life is no more in the forms which express it, than Substance is in its Deific Life. shadow. If Life were in mortal man, or material things, it would be subject to their limitations and end in death. Life is the Creator reflected in His creations. If He dwelt within what He creates, God would not be reflected, but absorbed, and the Science of Being would be forever lost, — through a mortal sense of life which has beginning and end.
V. The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality or existence Deific allness. except Mind, God. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit and Life. Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; and in Life there is no death. In infinite Good there is no evil. Everything in God's universe is His idea.
VI. God is individual, incorporeal, the universal Cause, the only Creator, and there is no other ​causation. God is all-inclusive, and is reflected by Deific individuality. everything real and eternal. He fills all space, and it is impossible to conceive of such omnipresence and individuality except as Mind. All is Spirit and spiritual.
VII. Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune God, or triply divine Principle. They represent a trinity in Divine trinity. unity, three in one, — the same in essence, though multiform in office: God the Father; Christ the type of Sonship; Divine Science, or the Holy Comforter. These three express the threefold, essential nature of the Infinite. They also indicate Scientific Being, and the whole relation of God and man.
VIII. Father is the name for Spirit, God, which The Father. indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. As the apostle expressed it, in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet: “For we are also His offspring.”
IX. Jesus was born of Mary, Christ was born of God. Jesus was a mediator between humanity and Spirit. He The Son. voiced Truth. He spoke to the human sense through the divine. As Paul says: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” He was the rebuke of Spirit, dispelling the illusions of the senses. With the Divine Mind he healed the sick and cast out evils, such as sin, disease, and death.
X. The Holy Ghost, or Spirit, reveals this triune Holy Ghost. Principle, and is expressed in Divine Science, which is the Comforter, leading into all Truth, and revealing the divine Principle of the universe, — universal and perpetual harmony.
​XI. Jesus was the Virgin's son. In the flesh he was appointed to speak God's word to human flesh, and Jesus. appear to mortals in such a form of humanity as they could understand as well as perceive. Mary's conception of him was spiritual; for only purity could reflect Truth and Love, which were to be incarnate in the good and pure Christ Jesus. He expressed the highest type in that age which a fleshly form could express of manhood. Into the real and ideal man the sensual element cannot enter. Thus it was that Christ born of the Father illustrated the coincidence, or spiritual agreement, between God and man.
XII. The word Christ is not properly a synonym for Jesus, though it is commonly so used. Jesus was a Messiah. human name, which belonged to him in common with other Hebrew boys and men — for it is identical with the name of Joshua, the renowned Hebrew leader. On the other hand, Christ is not a name so much as a title, and belongs to our Master exclusively. Christ expresses God's spiritual, eternal idea. The name is synonymous with Messiah, and alludes to the spirituality which was taught, illustrated and demonstrated in the Life whereof Christ Jesus was the embodiment. The proper name of our Master, in the Greek, was Jesus the Christ; but Christ Jesus better signifies the God-like.
XIII. The advent of Jesus of Nazareth marked the first century of the Christian era, but the Christ was The deific Principle and idea. without beginning of years or end of days. Throughout all generations, both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea, — as the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, — has ​come, with some measure of power and grace, to all those prepared to receive Christ, Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the Prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the spiritual idea, the divine nature, the essence of Love. The divine idea, or Christ, was, is, and ever will be inseparable from its Divine Principle, God. Jesus referred to this unity, saying: “Before Abraham was, I am;” “I and my Father are one;” “My Father is greater than I.”
XIV. By these sayings he meant, not that the human Jesus was eternal, but that the divine idea or Christ was Spiritual oneness. so, and therefore antedated Abraham; not that the corporeal Jesus was one with the Father, but that the unseen idea or Christ dwelt forever in the bosom of the Father, God; not that the Father was greater than Spirit, which was and is God, but greater, infinitely greater, than the fleshly Jesus, whose earthly career was for a day.
XV. The invisible Christ was incorporeal, whereas Jesus was a corporeal or bodily existence. This dual Duality. personality, of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and material, the Christ and Jesus, continued until the Master's ascension; when the human, the corporeal concept, or Jesus, disappeared; while his invisible self, or Christ, continued to exist in the eternal order of Divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ had always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes.
XVI. This was “the Lamb slain from the foundation Eternal sacrifice. of the world,” — slain, that is, according to the testimony of the corporeal senses, but undying in the deific Mind. The Revelator represents ​the Son of Man as saying (Revelation i. 17, 18): “I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead, not understood, and behold I am alive for evermore.” This is a mystical statement of the eternity of the Christ, and is also a reference to the human sense of Jesus crucified.
XVII. Spirit is infinite. There is but one Spirit, because there can be but one Infinite, and therefore but one Spirit. God. There are neither spirits many nor gods many. There is no evil in Spirit, because Spirit is God. The theory that Spirit is distinct from matter but must pass through it, or into it, to be individualized, would reduce Spirit to the dependency of matter, and establish a basis for pantheism.
XVIII. Spirit has created all, in and of Spirit. God never created matter, for there is nothing in Spirit out Substance. of which matter could be made; for, as the Bible declares, without the Logos, the Wisdom or Word of God, “was not anything made that was made.” Spirit is the only Substance, the invisible and indivisible God. Things spiritual and eternal are substantial. Things material and temporal are insubstantial.
XIX. Soul and Spirit are one. God is Soul. Therefore there can be but one Soul. Soul is not corporeal; Soul. neither does it belong to a limited mind or a limited body. Soul is Spirit, Divine Principle. Nothing but Spirit, Soul, can contain Soul, because Spirit is larger than all else. If soul is immortal, it cannot exist in matter. Soul must be incorporeal to be Spirit, for Spirit is not body. Only by losing the false, finite sense of Soul, can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life, which is immortality brought to light.
​XX. Mind is divine Principle, reality, and can produce nothing unlike Himself, God, the eternal Love. The single divine Mind. Reality is harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. Sin, sickness, and mortality are inharmonious, are the opposite of Mind, and must be contradictions of reality.
XXI. The Ego is deathless and limitless, for limits would imply and impose ignorance. Mind is the only The Ego. Ego, or infinitude. Mind never enters the finite. Intelligence never passes into non-intelligence, or matter. Good never enters into evil, the Unlimited into the limited, the Eternal into the temporal, nor the Immortal into mortality. The divine Ego, or individuality, is all-inclusive Being.
XXII. Man was and is God's idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind, and coexistent and coeternal The real manhood. with that Mind. Man has been forever in the eternal Mind, God; but infinite Mind can never be in man, though made manifest through him. Man's consciousness and individuality are reflections of God. They are the emanations of Him who is Life, Truth, and Love. Idea was and is never material, but always spiritual and eternal.
XXIII. A portion of God could not enter corporeal mortal man; neither could His fulness be reflected by Indivisibility. him, or God would be manifestly finite, lose the deific character, and become less than God. Wholeness is the measure of the infinite God, and nothing else can express Infinity. God can only be reflected by spiritual, incorporeal man, not contained in mortal, finite man.
​XXIV. God and man, Principle and idea, are inseparable, harmonious, and eternal. The Science of divine Scientific unification. Principle and its idea furnishes the rule of perfect Being, and brings immortality to light. God and man are not one; but in the order of Divine Science, as divine Principle and idea, God and man are inseparable. God is the parent Mind, and man is His offspring.
XXV. God is personal, in its Scientific sense, but not in any anthropomorphic sense. As reflecting Him, Eternal identity. man therefore cannot lose his individuality; but as material sensation, as a dream of soul in the body, man does lose his individuality. Material individuality is not unfettered, nor is it the reflection, or likeness, of the perfect God. Sensualism is not bliss, but bondage. For true happiness, the man must harmonize with his divine Principle; the Son must be in accord with the Father, according to Jesus' word. According to Christian Science, man is as perfect as the Mind which forms him. The Truth of Being is harmonious and immortal, but error is mortal and untrue.
XXVI. Christian Science demonstrates that none but the pure in heart can see God, as the Gospel teaches. Purity. In proportion to his purity and perfection, is man in the proper order of celestial Being, and able to demonstrate Life through Christ, its spiritual idea, even as Jesus did.
XXVII. The true idea of man, as the reflection of the invisible God, is as incomprehensible, to the limited True and false man. senses, as his infinite Principle. The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. ​Eternal verities are God's thoughts, as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals, and are the unreal, being the opposite of the spiritual and eternal.
XXVIII. Subject sickness, sin, and death to the rule, in Christian Science, of health and holiness, and Truth demonstrated. you ascertain that this Science is demonstrably true, for it heals the sick and sinful as no other system can. Christian Science, rightly understood, leads to eternal harmony, and brings to light the only living and true God, and man as made in His likeness; whereas the opposite belief — that man originates in matter, and has beginning and end, that he is both soul and body, both spiritual and material, — terminates in discord and mortality, in the error that must be destroyed by Truth. The mortality of material man proves that error has been ingrafted into the premises and conclusions of material and mortal humanity.
XXIX. The word Adam is from the Hebrew adamah, signifying the red color of the ground, dust, Original sin. nothingness. Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, a dam, or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, of mortal mind in solution, of the darkness which seemed to appear when “darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and matter stood as opposed to Spirit, as that which is accursed. Jehovah declared the ground — matter, or earth — accursed; and from this earth, or matter, sprang Adam, although God had blessed the earth “for man's sake.” From this it follows that Adam was not the ideal man for whom the earth was blessed. The ideal man was revealed in due time, and known as Christ Jesus.
​XXX. The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. Divine Life destroys death, Truth destroys Divine pardon. error, and Love destroys hate. Being destroyed, sin needs no other form of forgiveness. Does not God's pardon, destroying any one sin, prophesy and involve the final destruction of all sin?
XXXI. Since God is All, there is no room for His opposite. He alone created the real, and it is good; Evil unreal. therefore evil, being the opposite of goodness, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God. The evil-doer can receive no encouragement from the fact that Science teaches that evil is the unreality of existence; for the sinner is making a reality of sin, — making that real which is unreal, — and thus heaping up “wrath against the day of wrath.” He is joining in a conspiracy against himself, — against his awakening to the awful unreality by which he has been deceived. Only those who repent of sin, and forsake all evil, can fully understand the unreality of evil.
XXXII. As the mythology of pagan Rome has yielded to a more spiritual idea of Deity, so will our material Basis of health. theories yield to spiritual ideas, until the finite gives place to the infinite, sickness to health, sin to holiness, and God's kingdom comes “on earth as in Heaven.” The basis of all health, sinlessness, and immortality is the great fact that God is the only Mind; and this Mind must be not merely believed, but understood. To get rid of sin, through Science, is to divest sin of any supposed mind or reality, and never to admit that sin can have intelligence or power, pain or pleasure. You conquer error by denying its verity. Our various theories will never lose their imaginary power ​for good or evil until we lose our belief in them, and make Life its own proof of harmony and God.
This text in the Book of Ecclesiastes conveys the Christian Science thought, especially when the word Finality. duty, which is not in the original, is omitted: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole [duty] of man.” In other words: Love and its manifestation are All in all. There is naught else, nothing else is. Divine Love is infinite, therefore all that really exists is divine Love.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus xx. 3.) This First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the triunity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal Good, and all men shall have one Mind. Its divine Principle bases the Science of Being, whereby man demonstrates health, holiness, and Life eternal. One God unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, “Love thy neighbor as thyself;” annihilates Pagan and Christian idolatry; all social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.