Science and Health

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Chapter X

268:1In the material world, thought has brought to light with great rapidity many useful wonders. With 3like activity have thought’s swift pinions been rising Materialistic challengetowards the realm of the real, to the spiritual cause of those lower things which give im‐6pulse to inquiry. Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from 9matter to Mind as the cause of every effect. Material‐istic hypotheses challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat. In this revolutionary period, like the shep‐12herd-boy with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath.

    In this final struggle for supremacy, semi-metaphysi‐15cal systems afford no substantial aid to scientific meta‐Confusion confoundedphysics, for their arguments are based on the false testimony of the material senses as 18well as on the facts of Mind. These semi-metaphysical 269 269:1systems are one and all pantheistic, and savor of Pan‐demonium, a house divided against itself.

3    From first to last the supposed coexistence of Mind and matter and the mingling of good and evil have re‐sulted from the philosophy of the serpent. Jesus’ demon‐6strations sift the chaff from the wheat, and unfold the unity and the reality of good, the unreality, the nothing‐ness, of evil.

9    Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike. The first is error; the latter Divine metaphysicsis truth. Metaphysics is above physics, and 12matter does not enter into metaphysical prem‐ises or conclusions. The categories of metaphysics rest on one basis, the divine Mind. Metaphysics resolves 15things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul.

    These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual 18consciousness, and they have this advantage over the ob‐jects and thoughts of material sense, — they are good and eternal.

21    The testimony of the material senses is neither abso‐lute nor divine. I therefore plant myself unreservedly Biblical foundationson the teachings of Jesus, of his apostles, of 24the prophets, and on the testimony of the Science of Mind. Other foundations there are none. All other systems — systems based wholly or partly on 27knowledge 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; 30Rejected theories(2) that matter originates in Mind, and is as real as Mind, possessing intelligence and life. The first theory, that matter is everything, is quite as 270 270:1reasonable as the second, that Mind and matter coexist and cooperate. One only of the following statements can 3be true: (1) that everything is matter; (2) that every‐thing is Mind. Which one is it?

    Matter and Mind are opposites. One is contrary to 6the other in its very nature and essence; hence both can‐not be real. If one is real, the other must be unreal. Only by understanding that there is but one power, — not two 9powers, matter and Mind, — are scientific and logical conclusions reached. Few deny the hypothesis that in‐telligence, apart from man and matter, governs the uni‐12verse; and it is generally admitted that this intelligence is the eternal Mind or divine Principle, Love.

    The prophets of old looked for something higher than 15Prophetic ignorancethe systems of their times; hence their fore‐sight of the new dispensation of Truth. But they knew not what would be the precise nature of the 18teaching and demonstration of God, divine Mind, in His more infinite meanings, — the demonstration which was to destroy sin, sickness, and death, establish the definition 21of omnipotence, and maintain the Science of Spirit.

    The pride of priesthood is the prince of this world. It has nothing in Christ. Meekness and charity have divine 24authority. Mortals think wickedly; consequently they are wicked. They think sickly thoughts, and so become sick. If sin makes sinners, Truth and Love alone can 27unmake them. If a sense of disease produces suffering and a sense of ease antidotes suffering, disease is mental, not material. Hence the fact that the human mind alone 30suffers, is sick, and that the divine Mind alone heals.

    The life of Christ Jesus was not miraculous, but it was indigenous to his spirituality, — the good soil wherein the 271 271:1seed of Truth springs up and bears much fruit. Christ’s Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing 3in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God. Neither emasculation, illusion, nor insubordination 6exists in divine Science.

    Jesus instructed his disciples whereby to heal the sick through Mind instead of matter. He knew that the phi‐9losophy, Science, and proof of Christianity were in Truth, casting out all inharmony.

    In Latin the word rendered disciple signifies student; 12and the word indicates that the power of healing was not Studious disciplesa supernatural gift to those learners, but the result of their cultivated spiritual understand‐15ing of the divine Science, which their Master demonstrated by healing the sick and sinning. Hence the universal ap‐plication of his saying: “Neither pray I for these alone, 18but for them also which shall believe on me [understand me] through their word.”

    Our Master said, “But the Comforter . . . shall 21teach you all things.” When the Science of Christianity New Testament basisappears, it will lead you into all truth. The Sermon on the Mount is the essence of this 24Science, and the eternal life, not the death of Jesus, is its outcome.

    Those, who are willing to leave their nets or to cast 27them on the right side for Truth, have the opportunity Modern evangelnow, as aforetime, to learn and to practise Christian healing. The Scriptures contain it. 30The spiritual import of the Word imparts this power. But, as Paul says, “How shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be 272 272:1sent?” If sent, how shall they preach, convert, and heal multitudes, except the people hear?

3    The spiritual sense of truth must be gained before Truth can be understood. This sense is assimilated only Spirituality of Scriptureas we are honest, unselfish, loving, and meek. 6In the soil of an “honest and good heart” the seed must be sown; else it beareth not much fruit, for the swinish element in human nature uproots it. Jesus said: 9“Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures.” The spiritual sense of the Scriptures brings out the scientific sense, and is the new tongue referred to in the last chapter of Mark’s 12Gospel.

    Jesus’ parable of “the sower” shows the care our Master took not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts 15the spiritual teachings which dulness and grossness could not accept. Reading the thoughts of the people, he said: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast 18ye your pearls before swine.”

    It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce 21Unspiritual contrastsof material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, 24which really attest the divine origin and operation of Chris‐tian Science. The triumphs of Christian Science are re‐corded in the destruction of error and evil, from which are 27propagated the dismal beliefs of sin, sickness, and death.

    The divine Principle of the universe must interpret the universe. God is the divine Principle of all that repre‐30God the Principle of allsents Him and of all that really exists. Chris‐tian Science, as demonstrated by Jesus, alone reveals the natural, divine Principle of Science.

273

273:1    Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and death are contrary to God, and cannot emanate from Him. There 3is 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 6can solve the problem of being without the divine Prin‐ciple of divine Science. Deductions from material hy‐potheses are not scientific. They differ from real Science 9because they are not based on the divine law.

    Divine Science reverses the false testimony of the ma‐Science versus senseterial senses, and thus tears away the foun‐12dations of error. Hence the enmity between Science and the senses, and the impossibility of attaining perfect understanding till the errors of sense 15are eliminated.

    The so-called laws of matter and of medical science have never made mortals whole, harmonious, and immortal. 18Man is harmonious when governed by Soul. Hence the importance of understanding the truth of being, which reveals the laws of spiritual existence.

21    God never ordained a material law to annul the spiritual law. If there were such a material law, it would oppose Spiritual law the only lawthe supremacy of Spirit, God, and impugn the 24wisdom of the creator. Jesus walked on the waves, fed the multitude, healed the sick, and raised the dead in direct opposition to material laws. His acts were 27the demonstration of Science, overcoming the false claims of material sense or law.

    Science shows that material, conflicting mortal opin‐30ions and beliefs emit the effects of error at all times, but this atmosphere of mortal mind cannot be destructive to morals and health when it is opposed promptly and per‐274274:1sistently by Christian Science. Truth and Love antidote this mental miasma, and thus invigorate and sustain ex‐3Material knowledge illusiveistence. Unnecessary knowledge gained from the five senses is only temporal, — the concep‐tion of mortal mind, the offspring of sense, not 6of Soul, Spirit, — and symbolizes all that is evil and perishable. Natural science, as it is commonly called, is not really natural nor scientific, because it is deduced from 9the evidence of the material senses. Ideas, on the con‐trary, are born of Spirit, and are not mere inferences drawn from material premises.

12    The senses of Spirit abide in Love, and they demon‐strate Truth and Life. Hence Christianity and the Sci‐Five senses deceptiveence which expounds it are based on spiritual 15understanding, and they supersede the so-called laws of matter. Jesus demonstrated this great verity. When what we erroneously term the five physical 18senses are misdirected, they are simply the manifested beliefs of mortal mind, which affirm that life, substance, and intelligence are material, instead of spiritual. These 21false beliefs and their products constitute the flesh, and the flesh wars against Spirit.

    Divine Science is absolute, and permits no half-way 24position in learning its Principle and rule — establishing Impossible partnershipit by demonstration. The conventional firm, called matter and mind, God never formed. 27Science and understanding, governed by the unerring and eternal Mind, destroy the imaginary copartnership, matter and mind, formed only to be destroyed in a manner and 30at a period as yet unknown. This suppositional partner‐ship is already obsolete, for matter, examined in the light of divine metaphysics, disappears.

275

275:1    Matter has no life to lose, and Spirit never dies. A partnership of mind with matter would ignore omnipres‐3Spirit the starting-pointent and omnipotent Mind. This shows that matter did not originate in God, Spirit, and is not eternal. Therefore matter is neither substantial, living, 6nor intelligent. The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, — that God is Love, and therefore He 9 is divine Principle.

    To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle 12Divine synonyms of all that really is. Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, combine as one, — and are the Scriptural names for God. All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, im‐15mortality, cause, and effect belong to God. These are His attributes, the eternal manifestations of the infinite divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His 18 wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows.

    Divine metaphysics, as revealed to spiritual understand‐21ing, shows clearly that all is Mind, and that Mind is The divine completenessGod, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience,  — that is, all power, all presence, all Science. 24Hence all is in reality the manifestation of Mind.

    Our material human theories are destitute of Science. The true understanding of God is spiritual. It robs the 27grave of victory. It destroys the false evidence that mis‐leads thought and points to other gods, or other so-called powers, such as matter, disease, sin, and death, superior 30or contrary to the one Spirit.

    Truth, spiritually discerned, is scientifically understood. It casts out error and heals the sick.

276

276:1    Having one God, one Mind, unfolds the power that heals the sick, and fulfils these sayings of Scripture, “I 3Universal brotherhood am the Lord that healeth thee,” and “I have found a ransom.” When the divine precepts are understood, they unfold the foundation of fellowship, 6in which one mind is not at war with another, but all have one Spirit, God, one intelligent source, in accordance with the Scriptural command: “Let this Mind be in you, 9which was also in Christ Jesus.” Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God.

12    The realization that all inharmony is unreal brings objects and thoughts into human view in their true light, and presents them as beautiful and immortal. Harmony 15in 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, 18there ceases to be any opportunity for sin and death. Perfection requisiteWhen we learn in Science how to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, 21thought is turned into new and healthy channels, — towards the contemplation of things immortal and away from materiality to the Principle of the universe, includ‐24ing harmonious man.

    Material beliefs and spiritual understanding never mingle. The latter destroys the former. Discord is the 27nothingness named error. Harmony is the somethingness named Truth.

    Nature and revelation inform us that like produces 30Like evolving likelike. Divine Science does not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles. Intelli‐gence never produces non-intelligence; but matter is 277 277:1ever non-intelligent and therefore cannot spring from intelligence. To all that is unlike unerring and eternal 3Mind, this Mind saith, “Thou shalt surely die;” and else‐where the Scripture says that dust returns to dust. The non-intelligent relapses into its own unreality. Matter 6never produces mind. The immortal never produces the mortal. Good cannot result in evil. As God Himself is good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be im‐9mortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirit‐uality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and can‐12not be the outcome of an infinite God, good.

    Natural history presents vegetables and animals as preserving their original species, — like reproducing like. 15A mineral is not produced by a vegetable nor the man by the brute. In reproduction, the order of genus and species is preserved throughout the entire round of nature. 18This points to the spiritual truth and Science of being. Error relies upon a reversal of this order, asserts that Spirit produces matter and matter produces all the ills 21of flesh, and therefore that good is the origin of evil. These suppositions contradict even the order of material so-called science.

24    The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine, — it is Material errora human concept. Matter is an error of state‐27ment. 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 immor‐30tal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phe‐nomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous.

278

278:1    Is Spirit the source or creator of matter? Science re‐veals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter. 3Substance versus suppositionDivine metaphysics explains away matter. Spirit is the only substance and consciousness recognized by divine Science. The material 6senses oppose this, but there are no material senses, for matter has no mind. In Spirit there is no matter, even as in Truth there is no error, and in good no evil. It is 9a false supposition, the notion that there is real substance-matter, the opposite of Spirit. Spirit, God, is infinite, all. Spirit can have no opposite.

12    That matter is substantial or has life and sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a One cause supremesupposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, 15as we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter. The admission that there can be material substance requires another admission, — 18namely, that Spirit is not infinite and that matter is self-creative, self-existent, and eternal. From this it would follow that there are two eternal causes, warring forever 21with each other; and yet we say that Spirit is supreme and all-presence.

    The belief of the eternity of matter contradicts the 24demonstration of life as Spirit, and leads to the conclu‐sion that if man is material, he originated in matter and must return to dust, — logic which would prove his an‐27nihilation.

    All that we term sin, sickness, and death is a mortal belief. We define matter as error, because it is the oppo‐30Substance is Spiritsite of life, substance, and intelligence. Mat‐ter, with its mortality, cannot be substantial if Spirit is substantial and eternal. Which ought to 279 279:1be substance to us, — the erring, changing, and dying, the mutable and mortal, or the unerring, immutable, 3and immortal? A New Testament writer plainly de‐scribes faith, a quality of mind, as “the substance of things hoped for.”

6    The doom of matter establishes the conclusion that Material mortalitymatter, slime, or protoplasm never originated in the immortal Mind, and is therefore not 9eternal. Matter is neither created by Mind nor for the manifestation and support of Mind.

    Ideas are tangible and real to immortal consciousness, 12Spiritual tangibilityand they have the advantage of being eternal. Spirit and matter can neither coexist nor co‐operate, and one can no more create the other than 15Truth can create error, or vice versa.

    In proportion as the belief disappears that life and in‐telligence are in or of matter, the immortal facts of 18being are seen, and their only idea or intelligence is in God. Spirit is reached only through the understand‐ing and demonstration of eternal Life and Truth and 21Love.

    Every system of human philosophy, doctrine, and medicine is more or less infected with the pantheistic 24Pantheistic tendenciesbelief that there is mind in matter; but this belief contradicts alike revelation and right reasoning. A logical and scientific conclusion is reached 27only through the knowledge that there are not two bases of being, matter and mind, but one alone, — Mind.

30    Pantheism, starting from a material sense of God, seeks cause in effect, Principle in its idea, and life and intelligence in matter.

280

280:1    In the infinitude of Mind, matter must be unknown. Symbols and elements of discord and decay are not prod‐3The things of God are beautifulucts of the infinite, perfect, and eternal All. From Love and from the light and harmony which are the abode of Spirit, only reflections 6of good can come. All things beautiful and harmless are ideas of Mind. Mind creates and multiplies them, and the product must be mental.

9    Finite belief can never do justice to Truth in any direc‐tion. Finite belief limits all things, and would compress Mind, which is infinite, beneath a skull bone. Such be‐12lief can neither apprehend nor worship the infinite; and to accommodate its finite sense of the divisibility of Soul and substance, it seeks to divide the one Spirit into per‐15sons and souls.

    Through this error, human belief comes to have “gods many and lords many.” Moses declared as Jehovah’s 18Belief in many godsfirst 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 21minds. The argument of the serpent in the allegory, “Ye shall be as gods,” urges through every avenue the belief that Soul is in body, and that infinite Spirit, and Life, is 24in finite forms.

    Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, 27Sensationless bodythe Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities 30in man, — through Mind, not matter. The only excuse for entertaining human opinions and rejecting the Science of being is our mortal ignorance of Spirit, — ignorance 281 281:1which yields only to the understanding of divine Science, the understanding by which we enter into the kingdom 3of Truth on earth and learn that Spirit is infinite and supreme. Spirit and matter no more commingle than light and darkness. When one appears, the other dis‐6appears.

    Error presupposes man to be both mind and matter. Divine Science contradicts the corporeal senses, rebukes 9God and His imagemortal 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 Ego-man 12is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle.

    The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is 15infinite individuality, which supplies all form and come‐liness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things.

18    The mind supposed to exist in matter or beneath a skull bone is a myth, a misconceived sense and false conception as to man and Mind. When we put off the 21false sense for the true, and see that sin and mortality have neither Principle nor permanency, we shall learn that sin and mortality are without actual origin or right‐24ful existence. They are native nothingness, out of which error would simulate creation through a man formed from dust.

27    Divine Science does not put new wine into old bottles, Soul into matter, nor the infinite into the finite. Our The true new ideafalse views of matter perish as we grasp 30the facts of Spirit. The old belief must be cast out or the new idea will be spilled, and the in‐spiration, which is to change our standpoint, will be 282 282:1lost. Now, as of old, Truth casts out evils and heals the sick.

3    The real Life, or Mind, and its opposite, the so-called material life and mind, are figured by two geometrical Figures of beingsymbols, a circle or sphere and a straight 6line. The circle represents the infinite with‐out beginning or end; the straight line represents the finite, which has both beginning and end. The sphere 9represents good, the self-existent and eternal individuality or Mind; the straight line represents evil, a belief in a self-made and temporary material existence. Eternal 12Mind and temporary material existence never unite in figure or in fact.

    A straight line finds no abiding-place in a curve, and a 15curve finds no adjustment to a straight line. Similarly, Opposite symbolsmatter has no place in Spirit, and Spirit has no place in matter. Truth has no home in 18error, and error has no foothold in Truth. Mind cannot pass into non-intelligence and matter, nor can non-intel‐ligence become Soul. At no point can these opposites 21mingle or unite. Even though they seem to touch, one is still a curve and the other a straight line.

    There is no inherent power in matter; for all that is 24material is a material, human, mortal thought, always governing itself erroneously.

    Truth is the intelligence of immortal Mind. Error is 27the so-called intelligence of mortal mind.

    Whatever indicates the fall of man or the opposite of God or God’s absence, is the Adam-dream, which is neither 30Truth is not invertedMind nor man, for it is not begotten of the Father. The rule of inversion infers from error its opposite, Truth; but Truth is the light which 283 283:1dispels error. As mortals begin to understand Spirit, they give up the belief that there is any true existence 3apart from God.

    Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious 6Source of all life and actionaction. Mind is the same Life, Love, and wis‐dom “yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” Matter and its effects — sin, sickness, and 9death — are states of mortal mind which act, react, and then come to a stop. They are not facts of Mind. They are not ideas, but illusions. Principle is absolute. It 12admits of no error, but rests upon understanding.

    But what say prevalent theories? They insist that Life, or God, is one and the same with material life so-15called. 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, — 18such as the structural life of the tree and of material man, — and deem this the manifestation of the one Life, God.

21    This false belief as to what really constitutes life so detracts from God’s character and nature, that the true Spiritual structuresense of His power is lost to all who cling to 24this falsity. The divine Principle, or Life, can‐not be practically demonstrated in length of days, as it was by the patriarchs, unless its Science be accurately 27stated. We must receive the divine Principle in the under‐standing, and live it in daily life; and unless we so do, we can no more demonstrate Science, than we can teach and 30illustrate geometry by calling a curve a straight line or a straight line a sphere.

    Are mentality, immortality, consciousness, resident in 284 284:1matter? It is not rational to say that Mind is infinite, but dwells in finiteness, — in matter, — or that matter is 3infinite and the medium of Mind.

    If God were limited to man or matter, or if the infinite could be circumscribed within the finite, God would be 6Mind never limitedcorporeal, and unlimited Mind would seem to spring from a limited body; but this is an impossibility. Infinite Mind can have no starting-point, 9and can return to no limit. It can never be in bonds, nor be fully manifested through corporeality.

    Is God’s image or likeness matter, or a mortal, sin, 12sickness, and death? Can matter recognize Mind? Material recognition impossibleCan infinite Mind recognize matter? Can the infinite dwell in the finite or know aught un‐15like the infinite? Can Deity be known through the material senses? Can the material senses, which re‐ceive no direct evidence of Spirit, give correct testimony 18as to spiritual life, truth, and love?

    The answer to all these questions must forever be in the negative.

21    The physical senses can obtain no proof of God. They can neither see Spirit through the eye nor hear it through Our physical insensibility to Spiritthe ear, nor can they feel, taste, or smell Spirit. 24Even the more subtile and misnamed ma‐terial elements are beyond the cognizance of these senses, and are known only by the effects com‐27monly attributed to them.

    According to Christian Science, the only real senses of man are spiritual, emanating from divine Mind. 30Thought passes from God to man, but neither sensation nor report goes from material body to Mind. The in‐tercommunication is always from God to His idea, man. 285 285:1Matter is not sentient and cannot be cognizant of good or of evil, of pleasure or of pain. Man’s individu‐3ality is not material. This Science of being obtains not alone hereafter in what men call Paradise, but here and now; it is the great fact of being for time and 6eternity.

    What, then, is the material personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness 9The human counterfeitof God, but man’s counterfeit, the inverted likeness, the unlikeness called sin, sickness, and death. The unreality of the claim that a mortal is 12the true image of God is illustrated by the opposite na‐tures of Spirit and matter, Mind and body, for one is intelligence while the other is non-intelligence.

15    Is God a physical personality? Spirit is not physical. The belief that a material body is man is a false con‐Material misconceptionsception of man. The time has come for a 18finite conception of the infinite and of a ma‐terial body as the seat of Mind to give place to a diviner sense of intelligence and its manifestations, — 21to the better understanding that Science gives of the Supreme Being, or divine Principle, and idea.

    By interpreting God as a corporeal Saviour but not as 24the saving Principle, or divine Love, we shall continue Salvation is through reformto seek salvation through pardon and not through reform, and resort to matter instead 27of Spirit for the cure of the sick. As mortals reach, through knowledge of Christian Science, a higher sense, they will seek to learn, not from matter, but from 30the divine Principle, God, how to demonstrate the Christ, Truth, as the healing and saving power.

    It is essential to understand, instead of believe, what 286 286:1relates most nearly to the happiness of being. To seek Truth through belief in a human doctrine is not to un‐3derstand 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 6this is fatal to a knowledge of Science. The understand‐ing of Truth gives full faith in Truth, and spiritual un‐derstanding is better than all burnt offerings.

9    The Master said, “No man cometh unto the Father [the divine Principle of being] but by me,” Christ, Life, Truth, Love; for Christ says, “I am the way.” 12Physical causation was put aside from first to last by this original man, Jesus. He knew that the divine Principle, Love, creates and governs all that 15is real.

    In the Saxon and twenty other tongues good is the term Goodness a portion of Godfor God. The Scriptures declare all that He 18 made to be good, like Himself, — good in Principle and in idea. Therefore the spiritual universe is good, and reflects God as He is.

21    God’s thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life. Material and temporal thoughts are human, Spiritual thoughtsinvolving error, and since God, Spirit, is the 24only 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. 27Transitory thoughts are the antipodes of everlasting Truth, though (by the supposition of opposite qualities) error must also say, “I am true.” But by this saying 30error, the lie, destroys itself.

    Sin, sickness, and death are comprised in human ma‐terial belief, and belong not to the divine Mind. They 287 287:1are without a real origin or existence. They have neither Principle nor permanence, but belong, with all that is 3material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which simulates the creations of Truth. All creations of Spirit are eternal; but creations of matter must return to dust. 6Error supposes man to be both mental and material. Divine Science contradicts this postulate and maintains man’s spiritual identity.

9    We call the absence of Truth, error. Truth and error are unlike. In Science, Truth is divine, and the infinite Divine allness God can have no unlikeness. Did God, Truth, 12create error? No! “Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent 15or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?

    Neither understanding nor truth accompanies error, 18nor is error the offshoot of Mind. Evil calls itself some‐thing, when it is nothing. It saith, “I am man, but I am not the image and likeness of God;” whereas the Scrip‐21tures declare that man was made in God’s likeness.

    Error is false, mortal belief; it is illusion, without spir‐itual identity or foundation, and it has no real existence. 24Error unveiledThe supposition that life, substance, and in‐telligence are in matter, or of it, is an error. Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the 27objective supposition of Spirit’s opposite. The five mate‐rial senses testify to truth and error as united in a mind both good and evil. Their false evidence will finally 30yield to Truth, — to the recognition of Spirit and of the spiritual creation.

    Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The state‐288288:1ment that Truth is real necessarily includes the correlated statement, that error, Truth’s unlikeness, is unreal.

3    The suppositional warfare between truth and error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spir‐The great conflictitual senses and the testimony of the material 6senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the un‐derstanding of divine Love.

9    Superstition and understanding can never combine. When the final physical and moral effects of Christian Science are fully apprehended, the conflict between truth 12and error, understanding and belief, Science and material sense, foreshadowed by the prophets and inaugurated by Jesus, will cease, and spiritual harmony reign. The 15lightnings and thunderbolts of error may burst and flash till the cloud is cleared and the tumult dies away in the distance. Then the raindrops of divinity refresh the 18earth. As St. Paul says: “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (of Spirit).

    The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are 21to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God, The chief stones in the templegood, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and 24cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no ma‐terial life, and no death.

27    Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal The Christ-element man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses. The Christ-element in the Messiah made him 30the Way-shower, Truth and Life.

    The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have learned from error, and man’s real existence as a child 289 289:1of God comes to light. Truth demonstrated is eternal life. Mortal man can never rise from the temporal débris 3 of error, belief in sin, sickness, and death, until he learns that God is the only Life. The belief that life and sensa‐tion are in the body should be overcome by the under‐6standing of what constitutes man as the image of God. Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh.

    A wicked mortal is not the idea of God. He is little 9else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin, Wickedness is not manlust, hatred, envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life 12 and Life’s idea, Truth and Truth’s idea, never make men sick, sinful, or mortal.

    The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still 15overcomes death proves the “king of terrors” to be but Death but an illusiona mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this 18shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe there is no death-process.

21    The belief that matter has life results, by the universal law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree, and flower are supposed to die; but the fact remains, 24that God’s universe is spiritual and immortal.

    The spiritual fact and the material belief of things are contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the 27Spiritual offspringmaterial must be untrue. Life is not in matter. Therefore it cannot be said to pass out of mat‐ter. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Spirit and 30all things spiritual are the real and eternal.

    Man is not the offspring of flesh, but of Spirit, — of Life, not of matter. Because Life is God, Life must be 290 290:1eternal, self-existent. Life is the everlasting I am, the Be‐ing who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.

3    If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man’s being are not in the least understood before what is termed death Death no advantageovertakes mortals, they will rise no higher spir‐6itually in the scale of existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as be‐fore the transition, still seeking happiness through a ma‐9terial, instead of through a spiritual sense of life, and from selfish and inferior motives. That Life or Mind is finite and physical or is manifested through brain and nerves, 12is false. Hence Truth comes to destroy this error and its effects, — sickness, sin, and death. To the spiritual class, relates the Scripture: “On such the second death 15hath no power.”

    If the change called death destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the mo‐18Future purificationment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so. Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be un‐21righteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, re‐moves all ignorance and sin.

    The sin and error which possess us at the instant of 24death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the Sin is punisheddeath of these errors. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes thus only 27when he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain in the act, does not thereby forsake sin. He is no more spiritual for believing that his body died and learning that 30his cruel mind died not. His thoughts are no purer until evil is disarmed by good. His body is as material as his mind, and vice versa.

291

291:1    The suppositions that sin is pardoned while unfor‐saken, that happiness can be genuine in the midst of 3sin, that the so-called death of the body frees from sin, and that God’s pardon is aught but the destruction of sin, — these are grave mistakes. We know that all will 6be 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 9in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to glorified being.

12    Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a local‐Salvation and probationity, but a divine state of Mind in which all the 15manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in posses‐18sion of “the mind of the Lord,” as the Scripture says.

    “In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.” So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been 21transformed 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 24after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needed change. Mind never becomes dust. No resur‐rection from the grave awaits Mind or Life, for the grave 27has no power over either.

    No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-Day of judgmentday of wisdom comes hourly and continually, 30even the judgment by which mortal man is di‐vested of all material error. As for spiritual error there is none.

292

292:1    When the last mortal fault is destroyed, then the final trump will sound which will end the battle of Truth with 3error and mortality; “but of that day and hour, knoweth no man.” Here prophecy pauses. Divine Science alone can compass the heights and depths of being and reveal 6the infinite.

    Truth will be to us “the resurrection and the life” only as it destroys all error and the belief that Mind, the only 9Primitive errorimmortality of man, can be fettered by the body, and Life be controlled by death. A sin‐ful, sick, and dying mortal is not the likeness of God, the 12perfect and eternal.

    Matter is the primitive belief of mortal mind, because this so-called mind has no cognizance of Spirit. To 15mortal mind, matter is substantial, and evil is real. The so-called senses of mortals are material. Hence the so-called life of mortals is dependent on 18matter.

    Explaining the origin of material man and mortal mind, Jesus said: “Why do ye not understand my speech? 21Even 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 24not 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.”

27    This carnal material mentality, misnamed mind, is mortal. Therefore man would be annihilated, were it Immortal mannot for the spiritual real man’s indissoluble 30connection with his God, which Jesus brought to light. In his resurrection and ascension, Jesus showed that a mortal man is not the real essence of manhood, and 293 293:1that this unreal material mortality disappears in presence of the reality.

3    Electricity is not a vital fluid, but the least material form of illusive consciousness, — the material mindless‐Elementary electricityness, which forms no link between matter and 6Mind, and which destroys itself. Matter and mortal mind are but different strata of human belief. The grosser substratum is named matter or body; the more 9ethereal is called mind. This so-called mind and body is the illusion called a mortal, a mind in matter. In reality and in Science, both strata, mortal mind and mortal body, 12are false representatives of man.

    The material so-called gases and forces are counter‐feits of the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency 15is Truth, whose attraction is Love, whose adhesion and cohesion are Life, perpetuating the eternal facts of being. Electricity is the sharp surplus of materiality which coun‐18terfeits the true essence of spirituality or truth, — the great difference being that electricity is not intelligent, while spiritual truth is Mind.

21    There is no vapid fury of mortal mind — expressed in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity  The counterfeit forces— and this so-called mind is self-destroyed. 24The manifestations of evil, which counterfeit divine justice, are called in the Scriptures, “The anger of the Lord.” In reality, they show the self-destruction 27of error or matter and point to matter’s opposite, the strength and permanency of Spirit. Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal har‐30mony, the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil.

    The five physical senses are the avenues and instru‐294294:1ments of human error, and they correspond with error. These senses indicate the common human belief, that life, 3Instruments of errorsubstance, and intelligence are a unison of matter with Spirit. This is pantheism, and carries within itself the seeds of all error.

6    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.

9    The belief that matter thinks, sees, or feels is not more real than the belief that matter enjoys and suffers. This Mortal verdictmortal belief, misnamed man, is error, saying: 12“Matter has intelligence and sensation. Nerves feel. Brain thinks and sins. The stomach can make a man cross. Injury can cripple and matter can kill man.” 15This verdict of the so-called material senses victimizes mortals, taught, as they are by physiology and pathology, to revere false testimony, even the errors that are destroyed 18by Truth through spiritual sense and Science.

    The lines of demarcation between immortal man, repre‐senting Spirit, and mortal man, representing the error that 21Mythical pleasurelife 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, in 24which matter is represented as divided into intelligent gods. Man’s genuine selfhood is recognizable only in what is good and true. Man is neither self-made nor made by 27mortals. God created man.

    The inebriate believes that there is pleasure in intoxica‐tion. The thief believes that he gains something by steal‐30ing, and the hypocrite that he is hiding himself. The Science of Mind corrects such mistakes, for Truth demon‐strates the falsity of error.

295

295:1    The belief that a severed limb is aching in the old loca‐Severed memberstion, the sensation seeming to be in nerves which 3are no longer there, is an added proof of the un‐reliability of physical testimony.

    God creates and governs the universe, including man. 6The universe is filled with spiritual ideas, which He Mortals unlike immortals evolves, and they are obedient to the Mind that makes them. Mortal mind would trans‐9form the spiritual into the material, and then recover man’s original self in order to escape from the mortality of this error. Mortals are not like immortals, 12created in God’s own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the real sense of being, perfect and 15forever intact, will appear.

    The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the 18Goodness transparentglass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that 21one which has lost much materiality — much error — in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides 24the sun.

    All that is called mortal thought is made up of error. The theoretical mind is matter, named brain, or mate‐27rial consciousness,Brainology a myth the exact opposite of real Mind, or Spirit. Brainology teaches that mortals are created to suffer and die. It further 30teaches that when man is dead, his immortal soul is resurrected from death and mortality. Thus error the‐orizes that spirit is born of matter and returns to mat‐296296:1ter, and that man has a resurrection from dust; whereas Science unfolds the eternal verity, that man is the spiritual, 3eternal reflection of God.

    Progress is born of experience. It is the ripening of mortal man, through which the mortal is dropped for 6Scientific purgationthe immortal. Either here or hereafter, suf‐fering or Science must destroy all illusions regarding life and mind, and regenerate material sense 9and 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 12matter, is what reveals man and Life, harmonious, real, and eternal.

    The so-called pleasures and pains of matter perish, 15and they must go out under the blaze of Truth, spiritual sense, and the actuality of being. Mortal belief must lose all satisfaction in error and sin in order to part with 18them.

    Whether mortals will learn this sooner or later, and how long they will suffer the pangs of destruction, de‐21pends upon the tenacity of error.

    The knowledge obtained from the corporeal senses leads to sin and death. When the evidence of Spirit 24Mixed testimony and matter, Truth and error, seems to com‐mingle, it rests upon foundations which time is wearing away. Mortal mind judges by the testimony 27of the material senses, until Science obliterates this false testimony. An improved belief is one step out of error, and aids in taking the next step and in understanding 30the situation in Christian Science.

    Mortal belief is a liar from the beginning, not deserving power. It says to mortals, “You are wretched!” and they 297 297:1think they are so; and nothing can change this state, until the belief changes. Mortal belief says, “You are happy!” 3Belief an autocratand mortals are so; and no circumstance can alter the situation, until the belief on this sub‐ject changes. Human belief says to mortals, “You are 6sick!” and this testimony manifests itself on the body as sickness. It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into 9the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the physical condition.

12    Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real Self-improvement to this false belief, and the human conscious‐15ness rises higher. Thus the reality of being is attained and man found to be immortal. The only fact concerning any material concept is, that it is neither 18scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and dis‐solution.

    Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is 21a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual Faith higher than beliefevidence, contradicting the testimony of mate‐rial sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the 24ever-present, is becoming understood. Human thoughts have their degrees of comparison. Some thoughts are better than others. A belief in Truth is better than a 27belief in error, but no mortal testimony is founded on the divine rock. Mortal testimony can be shaken. Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual under‐30standing, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine.

    A mortal belief fulfils its own conditions. Sickness, 298 298:1sin, and death are the vague realities of human conclu‐sions. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of divine 3Science. They dawn in faith and glow full-orbed in spiritual understanding. As a cloud hides the sun it cannot extinguish, so false belief silences for a while the 6voice of immutable harmony, but false belief cannot de‐stroy Science armed with faith, hope, and fruition.

    What is termed material sense can report only a mor‐9tal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can Truth’s witnessbear witness only to Truth. To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected 12by Christian Science.

    Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, in‐volves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, real‐15ity. Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and death, never 18reaches 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. Spirit‐21ual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs. Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense 24of being.

    Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial 27Thought-angelsvisitants, flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their indi‐30vidualism may be. Human conjecture confers upon angels its own forms of thought, marked with superstitious out‐lines, making them human creatures with suggestive 299 299:1feathers; but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more reality than has the sculptor’s thought when he carves 3his “Statue of Liberty,” which embodies his concep‐tion of an unseen quality or condition, but which has no physical antecedent reality save in the artist’s own ob‐6servation and “chambers of imagery.”

    My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried 9Our angelic messengersits fondest earthly hopes. With white fin‐gers they point upward to a new and glo‐rified trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys. Angels 12are God’s representatives. These upward-soaring beings never lead towards self, sin, or materiality, but guide to the divine Principle of all good, whither every real indi‐15viduality, image, or likeness of God, gathers. By giving earnest heed to these spiritual guides they tarry with us, and we entertain “angels unawares.”

18    Knowledge gained from material sense is figuratively represented in Scripture as a tree, bearing the fruits of Knowledge and Truthsin, sickness, and death. Ought we not then 21to judge the knowledge thus obtained to be untrue and dangerous, since “the tree is known by his fruit”?

24    Truth never destroys God’s idea. Truth is spiritual, eternal substance, which cannot destroy the right reflec‐tion. Corporeal sense, or error, may seem to hide Truth, 27health, 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 30peaks.

    If man were solely a creature of the material senses, he would have no eternal Principle and would be mutable 300 300:1and mortal. Human logic is awry when it attempts to draw correct spiritual conclusions regarding life from 3Old and new manmatter. Finite sense has no true apprecia‐tion of infinite Principle, God, or of His infi‐nite image or reflection, man. The mirage, which makes 6trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image of God.

9    So far as the scientific statement as to man is under‐stood, it can be proved and will bring to light the true reflection of God — the real man, or the new man (as 12St. Paul has it).

    The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the im‐15The tares and wheatmutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existent. These opposite qualities are the tares 18and wheat, which never really mingle, though (to mortal sight) they grow side by side until the harvest; then, Sci‐ence separates the wheat from the tares, through the real‐21ization of God as ever present and of man as reflecting the divine likeness.

    Spirit is God, Soul; therefore Soul is not in matter. If 24Spirit were in matter, God would have no representative, The divine reflectionand matter would be identical with God. The theory that soul, spirit, intelligence, in‐27habits matter is taught by the schools. This theory is unscientific. The universe reflects and expresses the di‐vine substance or Mind; therefore God is seen only in the 30spiritual universe and spiritual man, as the sun is seen in the ray of light which goes out from it. God is re‐vealed only in that which reflects Life, Truth, Love, — 301 301:1yea, which manifests God’s attributes and power, even as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror, repeats 3the color, form, and action of the person in front of the mirror.

    Few persons comprehend what Christian Science 6means by the word reflection. To himself, mortal and material man seems to be substance, but his sense of substance involves error and therefore is material, 9temporal.

    On the other hand, the immortal, spiritual man is really substantial, and reflects the eternal substance, or Spirit, 12which mortals hope for. He reflects the divine, which constitutes the only real and eternal entity. This reflection seems to mortal sense transcendental, because the spiritual 15man’s substantiality transcends mortal vision and is re‐vealed only through divine Science.

    As God is substance and man is the divine image and 18likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only Inverted images and ideasthe substance of good, the substance of Spirit, not matter. The belief that man has any other 21substance, or mind, is not spiritual and breaks the First Commandment, Thou shalt have one God, one Mind. Mortal man seems to himself to be material sub‐24stance, while man is “image” (idea). Delusion, sin, dis‐ease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the 27focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down.

30    This falsity presupposes soul to be an unsubstantial dweller in material forms, and man to be material instead of spiritual. Immortality is not bounded by mortality. 302 302:1Soul is not compassed by finiteness. Principle is not to be found in fragmentary ideas.

3    The material body and mind are temporal, but the real man is spiritual and eternal. The identity of the Identity not lostreal man is not lost, but found through this 6explanation; for the conscious infinitude of existence and of all identity is thereby discerned and re‐mains unchanged. It is impossible that man should lose 9aught that is real, when God is all and eternally his. The notion that mind is in matter, and that the so-called pleas‐ures and pains, the birth, sin, sickness, and death of 12matter, are real, is a mortal belief; and this belief is all that will ever be lost.

    Continuing our definition of man, let us remember that 15harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and Definition of manis always beyond and above the mortal illu‐sion of any life, substance, and intelligence 18as 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, 21of the spiritual man is God, the divine Principle of all being, and because this real man is governed by Soul instead of sense, by the law of Spirit, not by the so-called 24laws of matter.

    God is Love. He is therefore the divine, infinite Prin‐ciple, called Person or God. Man’s true consciousness 27is in the mental, not in any bodily or personal likeness to Spirit. Indeed, the body presents no proper likeness of divinity, though mortal sense would fain have us so 30believe.

    Even in Christian Science, reproduction by Spirit’s individual ideas is but the reflection of the creative power 303 303:1of the divine Principle of those ideas. The reflection, through mental manifestation, of the multitudinous 3Mental propagationforms of Mind which people the realm of the real is controlled by Mind, the Principle governing the reflection. Multiplication of God’s chil‐6dren comes from no power of propagation in matter, it is the reflection of Spirit.

    The minutiæ of lesser individualities reflect the one di‐9vine individuality and are comprehended in and formed by Spirit, not by material sensation. Whatever reflects Mind, Life, Truth, and Love, is spiritually conceived and 12brought forth; but the statement that man is conceived and evolved both spiritually and materially, or by both God and man, contradicts this eternal truth. All the 15vanity of the ages can never make both these contraries true. Divine Science lays the axe at the root of the illu‐sion that life, or mind, is formed by or is in the material 18body, and Science will eventually destroy this illusion through the self-destruction of all error and the beatified understanding of the Science of Life.

21    The belief that pain and pleasure, life and death, holi‐Error definedness and unholiness, mingle in man, — that mortal, material man is the likeness of God 24and is himself a creator, — is a fatal error.

    God, without the image and likeness of Himself, would be a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed. He would be 27Man’s entity spiritualwithout a witness or proof of His own na‐ture. Spiritual man is the image or idea of God, an idea which cannot be lost nor sep‐30arated from its divine Principle. When the evidence before the material senses yielded to spiritual sense, the apostle declared that nothing could alienate him from 304 304:1God, from the sweet sense and presence of Life and Truth.

3    It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and good‐Man inseparable from Loveness. Understanding this, Paul said: “Nei‐6ther death, nor life, . . . nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from 9the love of God.” This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into 12sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man — governed 15by God, his perfect Principle — is sinless and eternal.

    Harmony is produced by its Principle, is controlled by it and abides with it. Divine Principle is the Life 18Harmony natural of man. Man’s happiness is not, therefore, at the disposal of physical sense. Truth is not contaminated by error. Harmony in man is as beautiful 21as in music, and discord is unnatural, unreal.

    The science of music governs tones. If mortals caught harmony through material sense, they would lose har‐24mony, if time or accident robbed them of material sense. To be master of chords and discords, the science of music must be understood. Left to the decisions 27of material sense, music is liable to be misappre‐hended and lost in confusion. Controlled by belief, instead of understanding, music is, must be, imper‐30fectly expressed. So man, not understanding the Sci‐ence of being, — thrusting aside his divine Principle as incomprehensible, — is abandoned to conjectures, left in 305 305:1the hands of ignorance, placed at the disposal of illusions, subjected to material sense which is discord. A discon‐3tented, discordant mortal is no more a man than discord is music.

    A picture in the camera or a face reflected in the mirror 6is not the original, though resembling it. Man, in the Human reflectionlikeness of his Maker, reflects the central light of being, the invisible God. As there is no cor‐9poreality in the mirrored form, which is but a reflection, so man, like all things real, reflects God, his divine Prin‐ciple, not in a mortal body.

12    Gender also is a quality, not of God, but a character‐istic of mortal mind. The verity that God’s image is not a creator, though he reflects the creation of Mind, God, 15constitutes the underlying reality of reflection. “Then answered Jesus and said unto them: Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he 18seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”

    The inverted images presented by the senses, the de‐21flections of matter as opposed to the Science of spirit‐Inverted imagesual reflection, are all unlike Spirit, God. In the illusion of life that is here to-day and 24gone to-morrow, man would be wholly mortal, were it not that Love, the divine Principle that obtains in divine Science, destroys all error and brings immor‐27tality to light. Because man is the reflection of his Maker, he is not subject to birth, growth, maturity, de‐cay. These mortal dreams are of human origin, not 30divine.

    The Sadducees reasoned falsely about the resurrec‐tion, but not so blindly as the Pharisees, who believed 306 306:1error to be as immortal as Truth. The Pharisees thought that they could raise the spiritual from the material. They 3Jewish traditionswould 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 6spiritual Life, and demonstrated this beyond cavil.

    Life demonstrates Life. The immortality of Soul makes man immortal. If God, who is Life, were parted for a 9Divinity not childlessmoment from His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be 12childless, — no Father.

    If Life or Soul and its representative, man, unite for a period and then are separated as by a law of divorce to 15be 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 18rational proof of immortality. But man cannot be sep‐arated for an instant from God, if man reflects God. Thus Science proves man’s existence to be intact.

21    The myriad forms of mortal thought, made manifest as matter, are not more distinct nor real to the mate‐Thought-formsrial senses than are the Soul-created forms 24to spiritual sense, which cognizes Life as per‐manent. Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses, Science, still enthroned, is unfolding 27to mortals the immutable, harmonious, divine Principle,  — is unfolding Life and the universe, ever present and eternal.

30    God’s man, spiritually created, is not material and mortal.

    The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, 307 307:1the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter. 3The serpent’s whisperThis pantheistic error, or so-called serpent, in‐sists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, “Ye shall be as gods;” that is, I will make error as real 6and eternal as Truth.

    Evil still affirms itself to be mind, and declares that there is more than one intelligence or God. It says: 9“There shall be lords and gods many. I declare that God makes evil minds and evil spirits, and that I aid Him. Truth shall change sides and be unlike Spirit. I will 12put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem to have life as much as God, Spirit, who is the only Life.”

    This error has proved itself to be error. Its life is found 15to be not Life, but only a transient, false sense of an ex‐Bad results from erroristence which ends in death. Error charges its lie to Truth and says: “The Lord knows 18it. He has made man mortal and material, out of mat‐ter instead of Spirit.” Thus error partakes of its own nature and utters its own falsities. If we regard matter 21as intelligent, and Mind as both good and evil, every sin or supposed material pain and pleasure seems normal, a part of God’s creation, and so weighs against our course 24Spiritward.

    Truth has no beginning. The divine Mind is the Soul of man, and gives man dominion over all things. Man 27Higher statuteswas not created from a material basis, nor bidden to obey material laws which Spirit never made; his province is in spiritual statutes, in the higher 30law of Mind.

    Above error’s awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: “Adam, where art thou? Conscious‐308308:1ness, where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou 3The great questionin the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandment?” Until the lesson is learned that God is the only Mind gov‐6erning 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?” 9is met by the admission from the head, heart, stomach, blood, nerves, etc.: “Lo, here I am, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion, a blend‐12ing of false claims, false pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and death.”

    The Soul-inspired patriarchs heard the voice of Truth, 15and 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 18Wrestling of Jacobas 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, 21or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science. Then said 24the 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 error and his need 27of 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; 30and 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, “Tell me, 309 309:1I pray thee, thy name;” but this appellation was withheld, for the messenger was not a corporeal being, but a name‐3less, incorporeal impartation of divine Love to man, which, to use the word of the Psalmist, restored his Soul, — gave him the spiritual sense of being and rebuked his material 6sense.

    The result of Jacob’s struggle thus appeared. He had conquered material error with the understanding of Spirit 9Israel the new name and of 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 12a good fight. He was to become the father of those, who through earnest striving followed his demonstration of the power of Spirit over the material senses; and the children 15of 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 18 is God, good, and that good is not in elements which are not spiritual, — thus losing the divine power which heals the sick and sinning, — they were to be brought back 21through great tribulation, to be renamed in Christian Science and led to deny material sense, or mind in matter, even as the gospel teaches.

24    The Science of being shows it to be impossible for in‐finite Spirit or Soul to be in a finite body or for man to Life never structuralhave an intelligence separate from his Maker. 27It is a self-evident error to suppose that there can be such a reality as organic animal or vegetable life, when such so-called life always ends in death. Life is 30never for a moment extinct. Therefore it is never struc‐tural nor organic, and is never absorbed nor limited by its own formations.

310

310:1    The artist is not in his painting. The picture is the artist’s thought objectified. The human belief fancies 3Thought seen as substancethat it delineates thought on matter, but what is matter? Did it exist prior to thought? Matter is made up of supposititious mortal mind-force; 6but 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 9the clay; else the clay would have power over the potter. God is His own infinite Mind, and expresses all.

    Day may decline and shadows fall, but darkness flees 12when the earth has again turned upon its axis. The sun The central intelligenceis not affected by the revolution of the earth. So Science reveals Soul as God, untouched 15by sin and death, — as the central Life and intelligence around which circle harmoniously all things in the sys‐tems of Mind.

18    Soul changeth not. We are commonly taught that there is a human soul which sins and is spiritually lost, — that Soul imperishablesoul may be lost, and yet be immortal. If 21Soul could sin, Spirit, Soul, would be flesh in‐stead of Spirit. It is the belief of the flesh and of mate‐rial sense which sins. If Soul sinned, Soul would die. 24Sin is the element of self-destruction, and spiritual death is oblivion. If there was sin in Soul, the annihilation of Spirit would be inevitable. The only Life is Spirit, and 27if Spirit should lose Life as God, good, then Spirit, which has no other existence, would be annihilated.

    Mind is God, and God is not seen by material sense, 30because Mind is Spirit, which material sense cannot dis‐cern. There is neither growth, maturity, nor decay in Soul. These changes are the mutations of material sense, 311 311:1the varying clouds of mortal belief, which hide the truth of being.

3    What we term mortal mind or carnal mind, dependent on matter for manifestation, is not Mind. God is Mind: all that Mind, God, is, or hath made, is good, and He 6 made all. Hence evil is not made and is not real.

    Soul is immortal because it is Spirit, which has no ele‐ment of self-destruction. Is man lost spiritually? No, 9Sin only of the fleshhe can only lose a sense material. All sin is of the flesh. It cannot be spiritual. Sin exists here or hereafter only so long as the illusion of mind in 12matter remains. It is a sense of sin, and not a sinful soul, which is lost. Evil is destroyed by the sense of good.

    Through false estimates of soul as dwelling in sense 15and of mind as dwelling in matter, belief strays into a Soul impeccablesense of temporary loss or absence of soul, spir‐itual truth. This state of error is the mortal 18dream 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 21mortal body, we can never understand the Science of be‐ing. When humanity does understand this Science, it will become the law of Life to man, — even the higher law 24of Soul, which prevails over material sense through har‐mony and immortality.

    The objects cognized by the physical senses have not 27the reality of substance. They are only what mortal belief calls them. Matter, sin, and mortality lose all supposed consciousness or claim to life or existence, as 30mortals lay off a false sense of life, substance, and intelli‐gence. But the spiritual, eternal man is not touched by these phases of mortality.

312

312:1    How true it is that whatever is learned through material sense must be lost because such so-called knowledge is 3Sense-dreamsreversed by the spiritual facts of being in Science. That which material sense calls intangible, is found to be substance. What to material 6sense seems substance, becomes nothingness, as the sense-dream vanishes and reality appears.

    The senses regard a corpse, not as man, but simply as 9matter. People say, “Man is dead;” but this death is the departure of a mortal’s mind, not of matter. The matter is still there. The belief of that mortal that he 12must die occasioned his departure; yet you say that matter has caused his death.

    People go into ecstasies over the sense of a corporeal 15Jehovah, though with scarcely a spark of love in their Vain ecstasieshearts; yet God is Love, and without Love, God, immortality cannot appear. Mortals try 18to believe without understanding Truth; yet God is Truth. Mortals claim that death is inevitable; but man’s eternal Principle is ever-present Life. Mortals believe in 21a finite personal God; while God is infinite Love, which must be unlimited.

    Our theories are based on finite premises, which can‐24not penetrate beyond matter. A personal sense of God Man-made theoriesand of man’s capabilities necessarily limits faith and hinders spiritual understanding. It 27divides faith and understanding between matter and Spirit, the finite and the infinite, and so turns away from the intelligent and divine healing Principle to the inanimate 30drug.

    Jesus’ spiritual origin and his demonstration of divine Principle richly endowed him and entitled him to sonship 313 313:1in Science. He was the son of a virgin. The term Christ Jesus, or Jesus the Christ (to give the full and 3The one anointedproper translation of the Greek), may be ren‐dered “Jesus the anointed,” Jesus the God-crowned or the divinely royal man, as it is said of him in 6the first chapter of Hebrews: — Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee With the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

9    With this agrees another passage in the same chapter, which refers to the Son as “the brightness of His [God’s] glory, and the express [expressed] image of His person 12[infinite Mind].” It is noteworthy that the phrase “ex‐press image” in the Common Version is, in the Greek Testament, character. Using this word in its higher mean‐15ing, 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 ex‐18altation of Jesus, Mary’s son, was that he “loved right‐eousness and hated iniquity.” The passage is made even clearer in the translation of the late George R. 21Noyes, D.D.: “Who, being a brightness from His glory, and an image of His being.”

    Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that 24ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material Jesus the Scientistsurface of things, and found the spiritual cause. To accommodate himself to imma‐27ture ideas of spiritual power, — for spirituality was pos‐sessed only in a limited degree even by his disciples, — Jesus called the body, which by spiritual power he 30raised from the grave, “flesh and bones.” To show that the substance of himself was Spirit and the body 314 314:1no more perfect because of death and no less material until the ascension (his further spiritual exaltation), 3Jesus waited until the mortal or fleshly sense had re‐linquished the belief of substance-matter, and spiritual sense had quenched all earthly yearnings. Thus he found 6the eternal Ego, and proved that he and the Father were inseparable as God and His reflection or spiritual man. Our Master gained the solution of being, demonstrating 9the 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 their 12The bodily resurrectionwicked deeds. When Jesus spoke of repro‐ducing his body, — knowing, as he did, that Mind was the builder, — and said, “Destroy this temple, 15and in three days I will raise it up,” they thought that he meant their material temple instead of his body. To such materialists, the real man seemed a spectre, unseen and 18unfamiliar, 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 21presented to her, more than ever before, the true idea of Life and substance.

    Because of mortals’ material and sinful belief, the 24spiritual Jesus was imperceptible to them. The higher Opposition of materialistshis demonstration of divine Science carried the problem of being, and the more dis‐27tinctly he uttered the demands of its divine Principle, Truth and Love, the more odious he became to sinners and to those who, depending on doctrines and material 30laws to save them from sin and sickness, were submis‐sive to death as being in supposed accord with the inevitable law of life. Jesus proved them wrong by 315 315:1his resurrection, and said: “Whosoever liveth and be‐lieveth in me shall never die.”

3    That saying of our Master, “I and my Father are one,” separated him from the scholastic theology of the rabbis. Hebrew theologyHis better understanding of God was a rebuke 6to them. He knew of but one Mind and laid no claim to any other. He knew that the Ego was Mind instead of body and that matter, sin, and evil were not 9Mind; and his understanding of this divine Science brought upon him the anathemas of the age.

    The opposite and false views of the people hid from 12their sense Christ’s sonship with God. They could not The true sonshipdiscern his spiritual existence. Their carnal minds were at enmity with it. Their thoughts 15were filled with mortal error, instead of with God’s spirit‐ual idea as presented by Christ Jesus. The likeness of God we lose sight of through sin, which beclouds the spir‐18itual sense of Truth; and we realize this likeness only when we subdue sin and prove man’s heritage, the liberty of the sons of God.

21    Jesus’ spiritual origin and understanding enabled him to demonstrate the facts of being, — to prove irrefutably Immaculate conceptionhow spiritual Truth destroys material error, 24heals sickness, and overcomes death. The divine conception of Jesus pointed to this truth and pre‐sented an illustration of creation. The history of Jesus 27shows him to have been more spiritual than all other earthly personalities.

    Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it seemed 30to mortal view), being conceived by a human mother, Jesus was the mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error. Explaining and demonstrat‐316316:1ing the way of divine Science, he became the way of salvation to all who accepted his word. From him mor‐3Jesus as mediatortals may learn how to escape from evil. The real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal 6selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship. Christ, Truth, was demonstrated through Jesus to prove the power of 9Spirit over the flesh, — to show that Truth is made manifest by its effects upon the human mind and body, healing sickness and destroying sin.

12    Jesus represented Christ, the true idea of God. Hence the warfare between this spiritual idea and perfunctory Spiritual governmentreligion, between spiritual clear-sightedness 15and 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-18man, rose higher to human view because of the crucifixion, and thus proved that Truth was the master of death. Christ presents the indestructible man, whom Spirit cre‐21ates, constitutes, and governs. Christ illustrates that blending with God, his divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth.

24    The spiritual idea of God, as presented by Jesus, was scourged in person, and its Principle was rejected. That Deadness in sinman was accounted a criminal who could 27prove God’s divine power by healing the sick, casting out evils, spiritualizing materialistic beliefs, and raising the dead, — those dead in trespasses and 30sins, satisfied with the flesh, resting on the basis of mat‐ter, blind to the possibilities of Spirit and its correla‐tive truth.

317

317:1    Jesus uttered things which had been “secret from the foundation of the world,” — since material knowledge 3usurped the throne of the creative divine Principle, insisted on the might of matter, the force of falsity, the insignifi‐cance of spirit, and proclaimed an anthropomorphic God.

6    Whosoever lives most the life of Jesus in this age and declares best the power of Christian Science, will The cup of Jesusdrink of his Master’s cup. Resistance to 9Truth will haunt his steps, and he will in‐cur the hatred of sinners, till “wisdom is justified of her children.” These blessed benedictions rest upon 12Jesus’ followers: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;” “Lo, I am with you alway,” — that is, not only in all time, but in all ways 15 and conditions.

    The individuality of man is no less tangible because it is spiritual and because his life is not at the mercy of 18matter. The understanding of his spiritual individuality makes man more real, more formidable in truth, and en‐ables him to conquer sin, disease, and death. Our Lord 21 and Master presented himself to his disciples after his resurrection from the grave, as the self-same Jesus whom they had loved before the tragedy on Calvary.

24    To the materialistic Thomas, looking for the ideal Saviour in matter instead of in Spirit and to the testi‐Material skepticismmony of the material senses and the body, 27more than to Soul, for an earnest of immor‐tality, — to him Jesus furnished the proof that he was unchanged by the crucifixion. To this dull and doubt‐30ing disciple Jesus remained a fleshly reality, so long as the Master remained an inhabitant of the earth. Noth‐ing but a display of matter could make existence real 318 318:1to Thomas. For him to believe in matter was no task, but for him to conceive of the substantiality of Spirit — 3to know that nothing can efface Mind and immortality, in which Spirit reigns — was more difficult.

    Corporeal senses define diseases as realities; but the 6Scriptures declare that God made all, even while the cor‐What the senses originateporeal senses are saying that matter causes disease and the divine Mind cannot or will 9not heal it. The material senses originate and support all that is material, untrue, selfish, or debased. They would put soul into soil, life into limbo, and doom 12all things to decay. We must silence this lie of material sense with the truth of spiritual sense. We must cause the error to cease that brought the belief of sin and death 15and would efface 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 image of God. 18Sickness as discordWeary of their material beliefs, from which comes so much suffering, invalids grow more spiritual, as the error — or belief that life is in matter — 21yields to the reality of spiritual Life.

    The Science of Mind denies the error of sensation in matter, and heals with Truth. Medical science treats 24disease as though disease were real, therefore right, and attempts to heal it with matter. If disease is right it is wrong to heal it. Material methods are temporary, and 27are not adapted to elevate mankind.

    The governor is not subjected to the governed. In Science man is governed by God, divine Principle, as 30numbers are controlled and proved by His laws. Intelli‐gence does not originate in numbers, but is manifested through them. The body does not include soul, but man‐319319:1ifests mortality, a false sense of soul. The delusion that there is life in matter has no kinship with the Life supernal.

3    Science depicts disease as error, as matter versus Mind, and error reversed as subserving the facts of Unscientific introspectionhealth. To calculate one’s life-prospects 6from a material basis, would infringe upon spiritual law and misguide human hope. Having faith in the divine Principle of health and spiritually under‐9standing God, sustains man under all circumstances; whereas the lower appeal to the general faith in material means (commonly called nature) must yield to the all-12might of infinite Spirit.

    Throughout the infinite cycles of eternal existence, Spirit and matter neither concur in man nor in the universe.

15    The varied doctrines and theories which presuppose life and intelligence to exist in matter are so many ancient God the only Mindand modern mythologies. Mystery, miracle, 18sin, and death will disappear when it becomes fairly understood that the divine Mind controls man and man has no Mind but God.

21    The divine Science taught in the original language of the Bible came through inspiration, and needs inspi‐Scriptures misinterpretedration to be understood. Hence the misappre‐24hension of the spiritual meaning of the Bible, and the misinterpretation of the Word in some instances by uninspired writers, who only wrote 27down 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 30an attribute of God; but we can by special and proper capitalization speak of the love of Love, meaning by that what the beloved disciple meant in one of his epistles, 320 320:1when he said, “God is love.” Likewise we can speak of the truth of Truth and of the life of Life, for Christ plainly 3declared, “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 6Interior meaningtheologians in Europe and America agree that the Scriptures have both a spiritual and lit‐eral meaning. In Smith’s Bible Dictionary it is said: 9“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, 12Genesis 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 15said, 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 18spiritual fact of being, even man’s eternal and harmo‐nious existence as image, idea, instead of matter (how‐ever transcendental such a thought appears), and avers 21that this fact is not forever to be humbled by the belief that man is flesh and matter, for according to that error man is mortal.

24    The one important interpretation of Scripture is the spiritual. For example, the text, “In my flesh shall I Job, on the resurrection see God,” gives a profound idea of the di‐27vine 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 30as if Job intended to declare that even if disease and worms destroyed his body, yet in the latter days he should stand in celestial perfection before Elohim, still clad 321 321:1in material flesh, — an interpretation which is just the op‐posite of the true, as may be seen by studying the book 3of Job. As Paul says, in his first epistle to the Corin‐thians, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”

6    The Hebrew Lawgiver, slow of speech, despaired of making the people understand what should be revealed Fear of the serpent overcometo him. When, led by wisdom to cast down his 9rod, he saw it become a serpent, Moses fled be‐fore it; but wisdom bade him come back and handle the serpent, and then Moses’ fear departed. In 12this incident was seen the actuality of Science. Matter was shown to be a belief only. The serpent, evil, under wisdom’s bidding, was destroyed through understanding 15divine Science, and this proof was 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 18but a phase of mortal belief.

    It was scientifically demonstrated that leprosy was a creation of mortal mind and not a condition of matter, 21Leprosy healedwhen Moses 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 con‐24dition by the same simple process. God had lessened Moses’ fear by this proof in divine Science, and the in‐ward voice became to him the voice of God, which said: 27“It shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign.” And so it was in the coming 30centuries, 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 322 322:1serpents unharmed, to heal the sick and cast out evils in proof of the supremacy of Mind.

3    When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall Standpoints changedgain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over 6sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his 9capabilities revealed. It is highly important — in view of the immense work to be accomplished before this recog‐nition of divine Science can come — to turn our thoughts 12towards divine Principle, that finite belief may be pre‐pared to relinquish its error.

    Man’s wisdom finds no satisfaction in sin, since God 15has sentenced sin to suffer. The necromancy of yester‐Saving the inebriateday foreshadowed the mesmerism and hypno‐tism of to-day. The drunkard thinks he enjoys 18drunkenness, 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 21the startled dreamer who wakens from an incubus in‐curred through the pains of distorted sense. A man who likes to do wrong — finding pleasure in it and refraining 24from it only through fear of consequences — is neither a temperate man nor a reliable religionist.

    The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life 27of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless Uses of sufferingwoes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to learn Life 30 in divine Science. Without this process of weaning, “Canst thou by searching find out God?” It is easier to desire Truth than to rid one’s self of error. Mortals 323 323:1may seek the understanding of Christian Science, but they will not be able to glean from Christian Science the facts 3of being without striving for them. This strife consists in the endeavor to forsake error of every kind and to pos‐sess no other consciousness but good.

6    Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, we are helped onward in the march towards righteousness, A bright outlookpeace, and purity, which are the landmarks 9of Science. Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause, — wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and concep‐12tion unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.

    In order to apprehend more, we must put into prac‐tice what we already know. We must recollect that 15Need and supplyTruth is demonstrable when understood, and that good is not understood until demonstrated. If “faithful over a few things,” we shall be made rulers 18over many; but the one unused talent decays and is lost. When the sick or the sinning awake to realize their need of what they have not, they will be receptive of divine 21Science, which gravitates towards Soul and away from material sense, removes thought from the body, and ele‐vates even mortal mind to the contemplation of some‐24thing better than disease or sin. The true idea of God gives the true understanding of Life and Love, robs the grave of victory, takes away all sin and the delusion that 27there are other minds, and destroys mortality.

    The effects of Christian Science are not so much seen Childlike receptivityas felt. It is the “still, small voice” of Truth 30 uttering 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 324 324:1to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks 3and joy to see them disappear, — this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress. “Blessed are the 6pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

    Unless the harmony and immortality of man are be‐coming more apparent, we are not gaining the true idea 9Narrow pathwayof God; and the body will reflect what gov‐erns it, whether it be Truth or error, understanding or belief, Spirit or matter. Therefore 12“acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace.” Be watchful, sober, and vigilant. The way is straight and narrow, which leads to the understanding that God 15is the only Life. It is a warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either here or hereafter, — certainly before we can reach the goal 18of Spirit, or life in God.

    Paul was not at first a disciple of Jesus but a perse‐cutor of Jesus’ followers. When the truth first appeared 21Paul’s enlightenmentto him in Science, Paul was made blind, and his blindness was felt; but spiritual light soon enabled him to follow the example and teach‐24ings of Jesus, healing the sick and preaching Christian‐ity throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even in imperial Rome.

27    Paul writes, “If Christ [Truth] be not risen, then is our preaching vain.” That is, if the idea of the suprem‐acy of Spirit, which is the true conception of being, 30come not to your thought, you cannot be benefited by what I say.

    Jesus said substantially, “He that believeth in me 325 325:1shall not see death.” That is, he who perceives the true idea of Life loses his belief in death. He who has 3Abiding in Lifethe true idea of good loses all sense of evil, and by reason of this is being ushered into the undying realities of Spirit. Such a one abideth in Life, — 6life obtained not of the body incapable of supporting life, but of Truth, unfolding its own immortal idea. Jesus gave the true idea of being, which results in infinite bless‐9ings to mortals.

    In Colossians (iii. 4) Paul writes: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear [be manifested], then shall ye also 12Indestructible beingappear [be manifested] with him in glory.” When spiritual being is understood in all its perfection, continuity, and might, then shall man be found 15in God’s image. The absolute meaning of the apostolic words is this: Then shall man be found, in His likeness, perfect as the Father, indestructible in Life, “hid with 18Christ in God,” — with Truth in divine Love, where human sense hath not seen man.

    Paul had a clear sense of the demands of Truth upon 21mortals physically and spiritually, when he said: “Pre‐Consecration requiredsent your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, ac‐ceptable unto God, which is your reasonable 24service.” But he, who is begotten of the beliefs of the flesh and serves them, can never reach in this world the divine heights of our Lord. The time cometh when 27the spiritual origin of man, the divine Science which ushered Jesus into human presence, will be understood and demonstrated.

30    When first spoken in any age, Truth, like the light, “shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” A false sense of life, substance, and mind 326 326:1hides the divine possibilities, and conceals scientific demonstration.

3    If we wish to follow Christ, Truth, it must be in the way of God’s appointing. Jesus said, “He that believeth Loving God supremelyon me, the works that I do shall he do also.” 6He, 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 God’s 9love to man, but man cannot love God supremely and set his whole affections on spiritual things, while loving the material or trusting in it more than in the spiritual.

12    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, the great 15healer of mortal mind is the healer of the body.

    The purpose and motive to live aright can be gained now. This point won, you have started as you should. 18You have begun at the numeration-table of Christian Science, and nothing but wrong intention can hinder your advancement. Working and praying with true motives, 21your Father will open the way. “Who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the truth?”

    Saul of Tarsus beheld the way — the Christ, or Truth  24— only when his uncertain sense of right yielded to a Conversion of Saulspiritual sense, which is always right. Then the man was changed. Thought assumed a 27nobler outlook, and his life became more spiritual. He learned the wrong that he had done in persecuting Chris‐tians, whose religion he had not understood, and in hu‐30mility he took the new name of Paul. He beheld for the first time the true idea of Love, and learned a lesson in divine Science.

327

327:1    Reform comes by understanding that there is no abid‐ing pleasure in evil, and also by gaining an affection for 3good according to Science, which reveals the immortal fact that neither pleasure nor pain, appetite nor passion, can exist in or of matter, while divine Mind can and does 6destroy the false beliefs of pleasure, pain, or fear and all the sinful appetites of the human mind.

    What a pitiful sight is malice, finding pleasure in re‐9venge! Evil is sometimes a man’s highest conception Image of the beastof right, until his grasp on good grows stronger. Then he loses pleasure in wickedness, and it 12becomes 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. 15It is a moral madness which rushes forth to clamor with midnight and tempest.

    To the physical senses, the strict demands of Christian 18Peremptory demandsScience seem peremptory; but mortals are has‐tening to learn that Life is God, good, and that evil has in reality neither place nor power in the human or 21the divine economy.

    Fear of punishment never made man truly honest. Moral courage is requisite to meet the wrong and to 24Moral courageproclaim the right. But how shall we re‐form the man who has more animal than moral courage, and who has not the true idea of good? 27Through human consciousness, convince the mortal of his mistake in seeking material means for gaining hap‐piness. Reason is the most active human faculty. Let 30that inform the sentiments and awaken the man’s dor‐mant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense 328 328:1and the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal. Then he not only will 3be saved, but is saved.

    Mortals suppose that they can live without goodness, when God is good and the only real Life. What is the 6Final destruction of errorresult? Understanding little about the divine Principle which saves and heals, mortals get rid of sin, sickness, and death only in belief. These errors 9are not thus really destroyed, and must therefore cling to mortals until, here or hereafter, they gain the true un‐derstanding of God in the Science which destroys human 12delusions about Him and reveals the grand realities of His allness.

    This understanding of man’s power, when he is 15equipped by God, has sadly disappeared from Christian Promise perpetualhistory. For centuries it has been dormant, a lost element of Christianity. Our missionaries 18carry the Bible to India, but can it be said that they explain it practically, as Jesus did, when hundreds of persons die there annually from serpent-bites? Under‐21standing spiritual law and knowing that there is no mate‐rial law, Jesus said: “These signs shall follow them that believe, . . . they shall take up serpents, and if they 24drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” It were well had Christendom believed and obeyed this 27sacred saying.

    Jesus’ promise is perpetual. Had it been given only to his immediate disciples, the Scriptural passage would 30read you, not they. The purpose of his great life-work extends through time and includes universal humanity. Its Principle is infinite, reaching beyond the pale of a 329 329:1single period or of a limited following. As time moves on, the healing elements of pure Christianity will be fairly 3dealt with; they will be sought and taught, and will glow in all the grandeur of universal goodness.

    A little leaven leavens the whole lump. A little under‐6standing of Christian Science proves the truth of all that Imitation of JesusI say of it. Because you cannot walk on the water and raise the dead, you have no right to 9question the great might of divine Science in these direc‐tions. Be thankful that Jesus, who was the true demon‐strator of Science, did these things, and left his example for 12us. In Science we can use only what we understand. We must prove our faith by demonstration.

    One should not tarry in the storm if the body is freez‐15ing, nor should he remain in the devouring flames. Un‐til one is able to prevent bad results, he should avoid their occasion. To be discouraged, is to resemble a pupil in 18addition, who attempts to solve a problem of Euclid, and denies the rule of the problem because he fails in his first effort.

21    There is no hypocrisy in Science. Principle is impera‐tive. You cannot mock it by human will. Science is a Error destroyed, not pardoneddivine demand, not a human. Always right, 24its divine Principle never repents, but main‐tains the claim of Truth by quenching error. The pardon of divine mercy is the destruction of error. If 27men understood their real spiritual source to be all bless‐edness, they would struggle for recourse to the spiritual and be at peace; but the deeper the error into which mor‐30tal mind is plunged, the more intense the opposition to spirituality, till error yields to Truth.

    Human resistance to divine Science weakens in pro‐330330:1portion as mortals give up error for Truth and the un‐derstanding of being supersedes mere belief. Until the 3The hopeful outlookauthor of this book learned the vastness of Christian Science, the fixedness of mortal illu‐sions, and the human hatred of Truth, she cherished 6sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with immediate and universal acceptance.

    I. God is infinite, the only Life, substance, Spirit, or 12Soul, the only intelligence of the universe, including man. The deific supremacyEye hath neither seen God nor His image and likeness. Neither God nor the perfect man 15can be discerned by the material senses. The individ‐uality of Spirit, or the infinite, is unknown, and thus a knowledge of it is left either to human conjecture or to the 18revelation of divine Science.

    II. God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be, — Life, Truth, Love. Spirit is divine Principle, and divine 21The deific definitionsPrinciple is Love, and Love is Mind, and Mind is not both good and bad, for God is Mind; therefore there is in reality one Mind only, be‐24cause there is one God.

    III. The notion that both evil and good are real is a delusion of material sense, which Science annihilates. 27Evil obsoleteEvil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power. As manifested by mankind it stands for a lie, nothing claiming to be something, — for lust, dishonesty, 30selfishness, envy, hypocrisy, slander, hate, theft, adultery, murder, dementia, insanity, inanity, devil, hell, with all the etceteras that word includes.

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331:1    IV. God is divine Life, and Life is no more confined to the forms which reflect it than substance is in its 3Life the creatorshadow. If life were in mortal man or mate‐rial things, it would be subject to their limi‐tations and would end in death. Life is Mind, the creator 6reflected 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 9sense, which falsely testifies to a beginning and an end.

    V. The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From 12this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence Allness of Spiritexcept the divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. 15Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God’s universe expresses Him.

18    VI. God is individual, incorporeal. He is divine Prin‐ciple, Love, the universal cause, the only creator, and The universal causethere is no other self-existence. He is all-21inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else. He fills all space, and it is impossible to conceive of such omnipresence and in‐24dividuality except as infinite Spirit or Mind. Hence all is Spirit and spiritual.

    VII. Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person 27 called God, — that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. Divine trinityThey represent a trinity in unity, three in one, — the same in essence, though multi‐30form in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spirit‐ual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essen‐332332:1tial nature of the infinite. They also indicate the divine Principle of scientific being, the intelligent relation of God 3to man and the universe.

    VIII. Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which in‐dicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. 6 Father-MotherAs the apostle expressed it in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet: “For we are also His offspring.”

9    IX. Jesus was born of Mary. Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speak‐The Son of Goding to the human consciousness. The Christ 12is incorporeal, spiritual, — yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and 15casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death. As Paul says: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” The corporeal 18man Jesus was human.

    X. Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ Holy Ghost or Comforteris the divine idea of God — the Holy Ghost, 21or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth.

    XI. Jesus was the son of a virgin. He was appointed 24to speak God’s word and to appear to mortals in such Christ Jesusa form of humanity as they could understand as well as perceive. Mary’s conception of 27him was spiritual, for only purity could reflect Truth and Love, which were plainly incarnate in the good and pure Christ Jesus. He expressed the highest type of 30divinity, which a fleshly form could express in that age. Into the real and ideal man the fleshly element cannot enter. Thus it is that Christ illustrates the coincidence, 333 333:1or spiritual agreement, between God and man in His image.

3    XII. The word Christ is not properly a synonym for Jesus, though it is commonly so used. Jesus was a human Messiah or Christname, which belonged to him in common with 6other Hebrew boys and men, for it is identical with the name Joshua, the renowned Hebrew leader. On the other hand, Christ is not a name so much as the divine 9title of Jesus. Christ expresses God’s spiritual, eternal nature. The name is synonymous with Messiah, and al‐ludes to the spirituality which is taught, illustrated, and 12demonstrated in the life of which Christ Jesus was the embodiment. The proper name of our Master in the Greek was Jesus the Christ; but Christ Jesus better sig‐15nifies the Godlike.

    XIII. The advent of Jesus of Nazareth marked the first century of the Christian era, but the Christ is 18The divine Principle and ideawithout beginning of years or end of days. Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spirit‐21ual idea, — the reflection of God, — has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets 24caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love. The divine image, idea, or Christ was, is, and 27ever will be inseparable from the divine Principle, God. Jesus referred to this unity of his spiritual identity thus: “Before Abraham was, I am;” “I and my Father are 30one;” “My Father is greater than I.” The one Spirit includes all identities.

    XIV. By these sayings Jesus meant, not that the hu‐334334:1man Jesus was or is eternal, but that the divine idea or Christ was and is so and therefore antedated Abraham; 3Spiritual onenessnot that the corporeal Jesus was one with the Father, but that the spiritual idea, Christ, dwells forever in the bosom of the Father, God, from 6which it illumines heaven and earth; not that the Father is greater than Spirit, which is God, but greater, infinitely greater, than the fleshly Jesus, whose earthly career was 9brief.

    XV. The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a 12The Son’s dualitybodily existence. This dual personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and mate‐rial, the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest 15in flesh, continued until the Master’s ascension, when the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in 18the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes.

21    XVI. This was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” — slain, that is, according to the testi‐Eternity of the Christmony of the corporeal senses, but undying in 24the 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 27[not understood]; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, [Science has explained me].” This is a mystical state‐ment of the eternity of the Christ, and is also a reference 30to the human sense of Jesus crucified.

    XVII. Spirit being God, there is but one Spirit, for there can be but one infinite and therefore one God. 335 335:1There are neither spirits many nor gods many. There is no evil in Spirit, because God is Spirit. The theory, 3Infinite Spiritthat Spirit is distinct from matter but must pass through it, or into it, to be individualized, would reduce God to dependency on matter, and establish 6a basis for pantheism.

    XVIII. Spirit, God, has created all in and of Him‐self. Spirit never created matter. There is nothing in 9The only substanceSpirit out of which matter could be made, for, as the Bible declares, without the Logos, the Æon or Word of God, “was not anything made 12that was made.” Spirit is the only substance, the in‐visible and indivisible infinite God. Things spiritual and eternal are substantial. Things material and temporal 15are insubstantial.

    XIX. Soul and Spirit being one, God and Soul are one, and this one never included in a limited mind or a 18Soul and Spirit onelimited body. Spirit is eternal, divine. Noth‐ing but Spirit, Soul, can evolve Life, for Spirit is more than all else. Because Soul is immortal, it does 21not exist in mortality. Soul must be incorporeal to be Spirit, for Spirit is not finite. Only by losing the false sense of Soul can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life as 24immortality brought to light.

    XX. Mind is the divine Principle, Love, and can pro‐duce nothing unlike the eternal Father-Mother, God. 27The one divine MindReality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspirit‐ual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. Sin, sickness, 30and mortality are the suppositional antipodes of Spirit, and must be contradictions of reality.

    XXI. The Ego is deathless and limitless, for limits 336 336:1would imply and impose ignorance. Mind is the I am, or infinity. Mind never enters the finite. Intelligence 3The divine Egonever passes into non-intelligence, or matter. Good never enters into evil, the unlimited into the limited, the eternal into the temporal, nor the im‐6mortal into mortality. The divine Ego, or individuality, is reflected in all spiritual individuality from the infini‐tesimal to the infinite.

9    XXII. Immortal man was and is God’s image or idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind, and immor‐The real manhoodtal man is coexistent and coeternal with that 12Mind. He has been forever in the eternal Mind, God; but infinite Mind can never be in man, but is reflected by man. The spiritual man’s consciousness 15and individuality are reflections of God. They are the emanations of Him who is Life, Truth, and Love. Im‐mortal man is not and never was material, but always 18spiritual and eternal.

    XXIII. God is indivisible. A portion of God could not enter man; neither could God’s fulness be reflected 21Indivisibility of the infiniteby a single man, else God would be manifestly finite, lose the deific character, and become less than God. Allness is the measure of the infinite, and 24nothing less can express God.

    XXIV. God, the divine Principle of man, and man in God’s likeness are inseparable, harmonious, and eternal. 27God the parent MindThe Science of being furnishes the rule of per‐fection, and brings immortality to light. God and man are not the same, but in the order of divine Sci‐30ence, God and man coexist and are eternal. God is the parent Mind, and man is God’s spiritual offspring.

    XXV. God is individual and personal in a scientific 337 337:1sense, but not in any anthropomorphic sense. Therefore man, reflecting God, cannot lose his individuality; but as 3Man reflects the perfect Godmaterial sensation, or a soul in the body, blind mortals do lose sight of spiritual individuality. Material personality is not realism; it is not 6the reflection or likeness of Spirit, the perfect God. Sen‐sualism is not bliss, but bondage. For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love; the 9Son must be in accord with the Father, in conformity with Christ. According to divine Science, man is in a degree as perfect as the Mind that forms him. The truth of be‐12ing makes man harmonious and immortal, while error is mortal and discordant.

    XXVI. Christian Science demonstrates that none but 15Purity the path to perfectionthe pure in heart can see God, as the gospel teaches. In proportion to his purity is man perfect; and perfection is the order of celestial 18being which demonstrates Life in Christ, Life’s spiritual ideal.

    XXVII. The true idea of man, as the reflection of the 21invisible God, is as incomprehensible to the limited senses True idea of manas is man’s infinite Principle. The visible uni‐verse and material man are the poor counter‐24feits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. Eternal things (verities) are God’s thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the 27thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the oppo‐site of the real or the spiritual and eternal.

    XXVIII. Subject sickness, sin, and death to the rule 30Truth demonstratedof health and holiness in Christian Science, and you ascertain that this Science is demon‐strably true, for it heals the sick and sinning as no 338 338:1other system can. Christian Science, rightly under‐stood, leads to eternal harmony. It brings to light the 3only living and true God and man as made in His like‐ness; whereas the opposite belief — that man originates in matter and has beginning and end, that he is both 6soul and body, both good and evil, both spiritual and material — terminates in discord and mortality, in the error which must be destroyed by Truth. The mortality 9of material man proves that error has been ingrafted into the premises and conclusions of material and mortal humanity.

12    XXIX. The word Adam is from the Hebrew adamah, signifying the red color of the ground, dust, nothingness. Adam not ideal manDivide the name Adam into two syllables, 15and it reads, a dam, or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, of mortal mind in solution. It further suggests the thought of that 18“darkness . . . upon the face of the deep,” when mat‐ter or dust was deemed the agent of Deity in creating man, — when matter, as that which is accursed, stood 21opposed to Spirit. Here a dam is not a mere play upon words; it stands for obstruction, error, even the sup‐posed separation of man from God, and the obstacle 24which the serpent, sin, would impose between man and his creator. The dissection and definition of words, aside from their metaphysical derivation, is not scien‐27tific. Jehovah declared the ground was accursed; and from this ground, or matter, sprang Adam, notwith‐standing God had blessed the earth “for man’s sake.” 30From 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 was known as Christ Jesus.

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339:1    XXX. The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. Divine Life destroys death, Truth destroys 3Divine pardonerror, and Love destroys hate. Being de‐stroyed, sin needs no other form of forgiveness. Does not God’s pardon, destroying any one sin, prophesy 6and involve the final destruction of all sin?

    XXXI. Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness. God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it 9Evil not produced by Godgood. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God. A sinner can receive no encouragement from the fact that 12Science demonstrates the unreality of evil, for the sinner would make a reality of sin, — would make that real which is unreal, and thus heap up “wrath against the 15day of wrath.” He is joining in a conspiracy against himself, — against his own awakening to the awful un‐reality by which he has been deceived. Only those, who 18repent of sin and forsake the unreal, can fully understand the unreality of evil.

    XXXII. As the mythology of pagan Rome has yielded 21to a more spiritual idea of Deity, so will our material Basis of health and immortalitytheories yield to spiritual ideas, until the finite gives place to the infinite, sickness to health, 24sin to holiness, and God’s kingdom comes “in earth, as it is in heaven.” The basis of all health, sin‐lessness, and immortality is the great fact that God is 27the only Mind; and this Mind must be not merely be‐lieved, but it must be understood. To get rid of sin through Science, is to divest sin of any supposed mind 30or reality, and never to admit that sin can have intelli‐gence or power, pain or pleasure. You conquer error by denying its verity. Our various theories will never lose 340 340:1their imaginary power for good or evil, until we lose our faith in them and make life its own proof of harmony 3and God.

    This text in the book of Ecclesiastes conveys the Christian Science thought, especially when the word 6duty, 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 9duty of man.” In other words: Let us hear the con‐clusion of the whole matter: love God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole of man in His 12 image and likeness. Divine Love is infinite. Therefore all that really exists is in and of God, and manifests His love.

15    “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus xx. 3.) The First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the tri-18unity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal good, and that all men shall have one Mind. The divine Principle 21 of the First Commandment bases the Science of being, by which man demonstrates health, holiness, and life eternal. One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; con‐24stitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, “Love thy neighbor as thyself;” annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, — whatever is wrong in 27social, 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.