Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter VIII - Footsteps Of Truth

 

Sickness as only thought
209:1
included in matter. Man, being immortal, has a perfect
indestructible life. It is the mortal belief which makes
the body discordant and diseased in proportion as igno-
rance, fear, or human will governs mortals.
Allness of Truth
209:5
Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing
them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas,
the life and light of all its own vast creation;
and man is tributary to divine Mind. The
material and mortal body or mind is not the man.
209:10
The world would collapse without Mind, without the in-
telligence which holds the winds in its grasp. Neither
philosophy nor skepticism can hinder the march of the
Science which reveals the supremacy of Mind. The im-
manent sense of Mind-power enhances the glory of Mind.
Nearness, not distance, lends enchantment to this view.
Spiritual translation
209:16
The compounded minerals or aggregated substances
composing the earth, the relations which constituent
masses hold to each other, the magnitudes,
distances, and revolutions of the celestial
bodies, are of no real importance, when we remember
that they all must give place to the spiritual fact by the
translation of man and the universe back into Spirit. In
proportion as this is done, man and the universe will be
found harmonious and eternal.
209:25
Material substances or mundane formations, astro-
nomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of specu-
lative theories, based on the hypothesis of material law
or life and intelligence resident in matter, will ulti-
mately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of
Spirit.
209:31
Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to un-
derstand God. It shows the superiority of faith by works
210:1
over faith in words. Its ideas are expressed only in "new
tongues;" and these are interpreted by the translation of
the spiritual original into the language which human
thought can comprehend.
Jesus' disregard of matter
210:5
The Principle and proof of Christianity are discerned
by spiritual sense. They are set forth in Jesus' demon-
strations, which show – by his healing the
sick, casting out evils, and destroying death,
"the last enemy that shall be destroyed," –
his disregard of matter and its so-called laws.
210:11
Knowing that Soul and its attributes were forever
manifested through man, the Master healed the sick,
gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the
lame, thus bringing to light the scientific action of the
divine Mind on human minds and bodies and giving
a better understanding of Soul and salvation. Jesus
healed sickness and sin by one and the same metaphysical
process.
Mind not mortal
210:19
The expression mortal mind is really a solecism, for
Mind is immortal, and Truth pierces the error of mortality
as a sunbeam penetrates the cloud. Because,
in obedience to the immutable law of Spirit,
this so-called mind is self-destructive, I name it mortal.
Error soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind.
Matter mindless
210:25
What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say,
"I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well." It is the so‑
called mortal mind which voices this and ap-
pears to itself to make good its claim. To
mortal sense, sin and suffering are real, but immortal
sense includes no evil nor pestilence. Because immortal
sense has no error of sense, it has no sense of error; there-
fore it is without a destructive element.
211:1
If brain, nerves, stomach, are intelligent, – if they talk
to us, tell us their condition, and report how they feel, –
then Spirit and matter, Truth and error, commingle
and produce sickness and health, good and evil, life and
death; and who shall say whether Truth or error is the
greater?
Matter sensationless
211:7
The sensations of the body must either be the sensa-
tions of a so-called mortal mind or of matter. Nerves
are not mind. Is it not provable that Mind is
not mortal and that matter has no sensation?
Is it not equally true that matter does not appear in the
spiritual understanding of being?
211:13
The sensation of sickness and the impulse to sin seem
to obtain in mortal mind. When a tear starts, does not
this so-called mind produce the effect seen in the lachry-
mal gland? Without mortal mind, the tear could not
appear; and this action shows the nature of all so-called
material cause and effect.
211:19
It should no longer be said in Israel that "the fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set
on edge." Sympathy with error should disappear. The
transfer of the thoughts of one erring mind to another,
Science renders impossible.
Nerves painless
211:24
If it is true that nerves have sensation, that matter has
intelligence, that the material organism causes the eyes to
see and the ears to hear, then, when the body
is dematerialized, these faculties must be lost,
for their immortality is not in Spirit; whereas the fact
is that only through dematerialization and spiritualiza-
tion of thought can these faculties be conceived of as
immortal.
211:32
Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure. We
212:1
suffer or enjoy in our dreams, but this pain or pleasure
is not communicated through a nerve. A tooth which has
been extracted sometimes aches again in belief, and the
pain seems to be in its old place. A limb which has been
amputated has continued in belief to pain the owner. If
the sensation of pain in the limb can return, can be pro-
longed, why cannot the limb reappear?
212:8
Why need pain, rather than pleasure, come to this mor-
tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid
than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting
attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut
off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say
was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it
proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, not in matter.
Reverse the process; take away this so-called mind instead
of a piece of the flesh, and the nerves have no sensation.
Human falsities
212:17
Mortals have a modus of their own, undirected and un-
sustained by God. They produce a rose through seed and
soil, and bring the rose into contact with the
olfactory nerves that they may smell it. In
legerdemain and credulous frenzy, mortals believe that
unseen spirits produce the flowers. God alone makes
and clothes the lilies of the field, and this He does by
means of Mind, not matter.
No miracles in Mind-methods
212:25
Because all the methods of Mind are not understood,
we say the lips or hands must move in order to convey
thought, that the undulations of the air convey
sound, and possibly that other methods involve
so-called miracles. The realities of being, its
normal action, and the origin of all things are unseen to
mortal sense; whereas the unreal and imitative move-
ments of mortal belief, which would reverse the immortal
213:1
modus and action, are styled the real. Whoever con-
tradicts this mortal mind supposition of reality is called
a deceiver, or is said to be deceived. Of a man it has
been said, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he;" hence
as a man spiritually understandeth, so is he in truth.
Good indefinable
213:6
Mortal mind conceives of something as either liquid
or solid, and then classifies it materially. Immortal and
spiritual facts exist apart from this mortal and
material conception. God, good, is self-exist-
ent and self-expressed, though indefinable as a whole.
Every step towards goodness is a departure from materi-
ality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit. Material
theories partially paralyze this attraction towards infinite
and eternal good by an opposite attraction towards the
finite, temporary, and discordant.
213:16
Sound is a mental impression made on mortal belief.
The ear does not really hear. Divine Science reveals
sound as communicated through the senses of Soul –
through spiritual understanding.
Music, rhythm of head and heart
213:20
Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The
rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He
was a musician beyond what the world knew.
This was even more strikingly true of Beet-
hoven, who was so long hopelessly deaf. Men-
tal melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede con-
scious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart.
Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing
either discord or harmony according as the hand, which
sweeps over it, is human or divine.
Before human knowledge dipped to its depths into a
false sense of things, – into belief in material origins
which discard the one Mind and true source of being, –
214:1
it is possible that the impressions from Truth were as
distinct as sound, and that they came as sound to the
primitive prophets. If the medium of hearing is wholly
spiritual, it is normal and indestructible.
214:5
If Enoch's perception had been confined to the evidence
before his material senses, he could never have "walked
with God," nor been guided into the demonstration of
life eternal.
Adam and the senses
214:9
Adam, represented in the Scriptures as formed from
dust, is an object-lesson for the human mind. The mate-
rial senses, like Adam, originate in matter and
return to dust, – are proved non-intelligent.
They go out as they came in, for they are still the error,
not the truth of being. When it is learned that the spirit-
ual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions
of Mind to man, then being will be understood and found
to be harmonious.
Idolatrous illusions
214:18
We bow down to matter, and entertain finite thoughts
of God like the pagan idolater. Mortals are inclined to
fear and to obey what they consider a material
body more than they do a spiritual God. All
material knowledge, like the original "tree of knowledge,"
multiplies their pains, for mortal illusions would rob God,
slay man, and meanwhile would spread their table with
cannibal tidbits and give thanks.
The senses of Soul
214:26
How transient a sense is mortal sight, when a wound on
the retina may end the power of light and lens! But the
real sight or sense is not lost. Neither age nor
accident can interfere with the senses of Soul,
and there are no other real senses. It is evident that the
body as matter has no sensation of its own, and there is no
oblivion for Soul and its faculties. Spirit's senses are with-
215:1
out pain, and they are forever at peace. Nothing can hide
from them the harmony of all things and the might and
permanence of Truth.
Real being never lost
215:4
If Spirit, Soul, could sin or be lost, then being and im-
mortality would be lost, together with all the faculties of
Mind; but being cannot be lost while God ex-
ists. Soul and matter are at variance from the
very necessity of their opposite natures. Mortals are
unacquainted with the reality of existence, because matter
and mortality do not reflect the facts of Spirit.
215:11
Spiritual vision is not subordinate to geometric alti-
tudes. Whatever is governed by God, is never for an
instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence
and Life.
Light and darkness
215:15
We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real
as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal
sense of the absence of light, at the coming of
which darkness loses the appearance of reality.
So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional
absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before
truth and love.
215:22
With its divine proof, Science reverses the evidence of
material sense. Every quality and condition of mortality
is lost, swallowed up in immortality. Mortal man is the
antipode of immortal man in origin, in existence, and in his
relation to God.
Faith of Socrates
215:27
Because he understood the superiority and immor-
tality of good, Socrates feared not the hemlock poison.
Even the faith of his philosophy spurned phys-
ical timidity. Having sought man's spiritual
state, he recognized the immortality of man. The igno-
rance and malice of the age would have killed the vener-
216:1
able philosopher because of his faith in Soul and his in-
difference to the body.
The serpent of error
216:3
Who shall say that man is alive to-day, but may be dead
to-morrow? What has touched Life, God, to such
strange issues? Here theories cease, and Sci-
ence unveils the mystery and solves the prob-
lem of man. Error bites the heel of truth, but cannot kill
truth. Truth bruises the head of error – destroys error.
Spirituality lays open siege to materialism. On which
side are we fighting?
Servants and masters
216:11
The understanding that the Ego is Mind, and that
there is but one Mind or intelligence, begins at once to
destroy the errors of mortal sense and to supply
the truth of immortal sense. This understand-
ing makes the body harmonious; it makes the nerves,
bones, brain, etc., servants, instead of masters. If man
is governed by the law of divine Mind, his body is in sub-
mission to everlasting Life and Truth and Love. The
great mistake of mortals is to suppose that man, God's
image and likeness, is both matter and Spirit, both good
and evil.
216:22
If the decision were left to the corporeal senses, evil
would appear to be the master of good, and sickness to
be the rule of existence, while health would seem the
exception, death the inevitable, and life a paradox. Paul
asked: "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" (2 Cor-
inthians vi. 15.)
Personal identity
216:28
When you say, "Man's body is material," I say with
Paul: Be "willing rather to be absent from the body,
and to be present with the Lord." Give up
your material belief of mind in matter, and
have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its
217:1
own likeness. The loss of man's identity through the
understanding which Science confers is impossible; and
the notion of such a possibility is more absurd than to
conclude that individual musical tones are lost in the
origin of harmony.
Paul's experience
217:6
Medical schools may inform us that the healing work
of Christian Science and Paul's peculiar Christian con-
version and experience, – which prove Mind
to be scientifically distinct from matter, – are
indications of unnatural mental and bodily conditions,
even of catalepsy and hysteria; yet if we turn to the Scrip-
tures, what do we read? Why, this: "If a man keep my
saying, he shall never see death!" and "Henceforth know
we no man after the flesh!"
Fatigue is mental
217:15
That scientific methods are superior to others, is
seen by their effects. When you have once conquered
a diseased condition of the body through
Mind, that condition never recurs, and you
have won a point in Science. When mentality gives
rest to the body, the next toil will fatigue you less, for
you are working out the problem of being in divine meta-
physics; and in proportion as you understand the con-
trol which Mind has over so-called matter, you will be
able to demonstrate this control. The scientific and
permanent remedy for fatigue is to learn the power of
Mind over the body or any illusion of physical weariness,
and so destroy this illusion, for matter cannot be weary
and heavy-laden.
217:29
You say, "Toil fatigues me." But what is this me!
Is it muscle or mind? Which is tired and so speaks?
Without mind, could the muscles be tired? Do the
muscles talk, or do you talk for them? Matter is non‑
218:1
intelligent. Mortal mind does the false talking, and that
which affirms weariness, made that weariness.
Mind never weary
218:3
You do not say a wheel is fatigued; and yet the body
is as material as the wheel. If it were not for what the
human mind says of the body, the body, like
the inanimate wheel, would never be weary.
The consciousness of Truth rests us more than hours of
repose in unconsciousness.
Coalition of sin and sickness
218:9
The body is supposed to say, "I am ill." The reports
of sickness may form a coalition with the reports of sin,
and say, "I am malice, lust, appetite, envy,
hate." What renders both sin and sickness
difficult of cure is, that the human mind is the
sinner, disinclined to self-correction, and believing that
the body can be sick independently of mortal mind and
that the divine Mind has no jurisdiction over the body.
Sickness akin to sin
218:17
Why pray for the recovery of the sick, if you are with-
out faith in God's willingness and ability to heal them?
If you do believe in God, why do you sub-
stitute drugs for the Almighty's power, and
employ means which lead only into material ways of
obtaining help, instead of turning in time of need to
God, divine Love, who is an ever-present help?
218:24
Treat a belief in sickness as you would sin, with sudden
dismissal. Resist the temptation to believe in matter as
intelligent, as having sensation or power.
218:27
The Scriptures say, "They that wait upon the Lord
. . . shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk,
and not faint." The meaning of that passage is not
perverted by applying it literally to moments of fatigue,
for the moral and physical are as one in their results.
When we wake to the truth of being, all disease,
219:1
pain, weakness, weariness, sorrow, sin, death, will be
unknown, and the mortal dream will forever cease. My
method of treating fatigue applies to all bodily ailments,
since Mind should be, and is, supreme, absolute, and
final.
Affirmation and result
219:6
In mathematics, we do not multiply when we should
subtract, and then say the product is correct. No more
can we say in Science that muscles give strength,
that nerves give pain or pleasure, or that matter
governs, and then expect that the result will be harmony.
Not muscles, nerves, nor bones, but mortal mind makes
the whole body "sick, and the whole heart faint;" whereas
divine Mind heals.
219:14
When this is understood, we shall never affirm concern-
ing the body what we do not wish to have manifested. We
shall not call the body weak, if we would have it strong;
for the belief in feebleness must obtain in the human
mind before it can be made manifest on the body, and
the destruction of the belief will be the removal of its
effects. Science includes no rule of discord, but governs
harmoniously. "The wish," says the poet, "is ever father
to the thought."
Scientific beginning
219:23
We may hear a sweet melody, and yet misunderstand
the science that governs it. Those who are healed
through metaphysical Science, not compre-
hending the Principle of the cure, may misun-
derstand it, and impute their recovery to change of air or
diet, not rendering to God the honor due to Him alone.
Entire immunity from the belief in sin, suffering, and
death may not be reached at this period, but we may look
for an abatement of these evils; and this scientific begin-
ning is in the right direction.
Hygiene ineffectual
220:1
We hear it said: "I exercise daily in the open air. I
take cold baths, in order to overcome a predisposition to
take cold; and yet I have continual colds,
catarrh, and cough." Such admissions ought
to open people's eyes to the inefficacy of material hygiene,
and induce sufferers to look in other directions for cause
and cure.
220:8
Instinct is better than misguided reason, as even na-
ture declares. The violet lifts her blue eye to greet the
early spring. The leaves clap their hands as nature's
untired worshippers. The snowbird sings and soars
amid the blasts; he has no catarrh from wet feet, and
procures a summer residence with more ease than a na-
bob. The atmosphere of the earth, kinder than the at-
mosphere of mortal mind, leaves catarrh to the latter.
Colds, coughs, and contagion are engendered solely by
human theories.
The reflex phenomena
220:18
Mortal mind produces its own phenomena, and then
charges them to something else, – like a kitten
glancing into the mirror at itself and thinking
it sees another kitten.
220:22
A clergyman once adopted a diet of bread and water
to increase his spirituality. Finding his health failing,
he gave up his abstinence, and advised others never to
try dietetics for growth in grace.
Volition far-reaching
220:26
The belief that either fasting or feasting makes men
better morally or physically is one of the fruits of "the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil," con-
cerning which God said, "Thou shalt not eat
of it." Mortal mind forms all conditions of the mortal
body, and controls the stomach, bones, lungs, heart, blood,
etc., as directly as the volition or will moves the hand.
Starvation and dyspepsia
221:1
I knew a person who when quite a child adopted the
Graham system to cure dyspepsia. For many years, he
ate only bread and vegetables, and drank noth-
ing but water. His dyspepsia increasing, he
decided that his diet should be more rigid, and
thereafter he partook of but one meal in twenty-four
hours, this meal consisting of only a thin slice of bread
without water. His physician also recommended that
he should not wet his parched throat until three hours
after eating. He passed many weary years in hunger
and weakness, almost in starvation, and finally made up
his mind to die, having exhausted the skill of the doctors,
who kindly informed him that death was indeed his only
alternative. At this point Christian Science saved him,
and he is now in perfect health without a vestige of the
old complaint.
221:17
He learned that suffering and disease were the self‑
imposed beliefs of mortals, and not the facts of being;
that God never decreed disease, – never ordained a law
that fasting should be a means of health. Hence semi‑
starvation is not acceptable to wisdom, and it is equally
far from Science, in which being is sustained by God, Mind.
These truths, opening his eyes, relieved his stomach, and
he ate without suffering, "giving God thanks;" but he
never enjoyed his food as he had imagined he would
when, still the slave of matter, he thought of the flesh-
pots of Egypt, feeling childhood's hunger and undisci-
plined by self-denial and divine Science.
Mind and stomach
221:29
This new-born understanding, that neither food nor
the stomach, without the consent of mortal
mind, can make one suffer, brings with it an-
other lesson, – that gluttony is a sensual illusion, and
222:1
that this phantasm of mortal mind disappears as we better
apprehend our spiritual existence and ascend the ladder
of life.
222:4
This person learned that food affects the body only
as mortal mind has its material methods of working, one
of which is to believe that proper food supplies nutriment
and strength to the human system. He learned also that
mortal mind makes a mortal body, whereas Truth re-
generates this fleshly mind and feeds thought with the
bread of Life.
222:11
Food had less power to help or to hurt him after he
had availed himself of the fact that Mind governs man,
and he also had less faith in the so-called pleasures and
pains of matter. Taking less thought about what he
should eat or drink, consulting the stomach less about
the economy of living and God more, he recovered
strength and flesh rapidly. For many years he had
been kept alive, as was believed, only by the strictest ad-
herence to hygiene and drugs, and yet he continued ill
all the while. Now he dropped drugs and material
hygiene, and was well.
222:22
He learned that a dyspeptic was very far from being
the image and likeness of God, – far from having "do-
minion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air, and over the cattle," if eating a bit of animal flesh
could overpower him. He finally concluded that God
never made a dyspeptic, while fear, hygiene, physiology,
and physics had made him one, contrary to His commands.
Life only in Spirit
222:29
In seeking a cure for dyspepsia consult matter not at
all, and eat what is set before you, "asking
no question for conscience sake." We must
destroy the false belief that life and intelligence are in
223:1
matter, and plant ourselves upon what is pure and per-
fect. Paul said, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not
fulfil the lust of the flesh." Sooner or later we shall learn
that the fetters of man's finite capacity are forged by the
illusion that he lives in body instead of in Soul, in matter
instead of in Spirit.
Soul greater than body
223:7
Matter does not express Spirit. God is infinite omni-
present Spirit. If Spirit is all and is everywhere, what
and where is matter? Remember that truth
is greater than error, and we cannot put the
greater into the less. Soul is Spirit, and Spirit is greater
than body. If Spirit were once within the body, Spirit
would be finite, and therefore could not be Spirit.
The question of the ages
223:14
The question, "What is Truth," convulses the world.
Many are ready to meet this inquiry with the assurance
which comes of understanding; but more are
blinded by their old illusions, and try to "give
it pause." "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into
the ditch."
223:20
The efforts of error to answer this question by some
ology are vain. Spiritual rationality and free thought ac-
company approaching Science, and cannot be put down.
They will emancipate humanity, and supplant unscientific
means and so-called laws.
Heralds of Science
223:25
Peals that should startle the slumbering thought from
its erroneous dream are partially unheeded; but the last
trump has not sounded, or this would not be
so. Marvels, calamities, and sin will much
more abound as truth urges upon mortals its resisted
claims; but the awful daring of sin destroys sin, and
foreshadows the triumph of truth. God will over-
turn, until "He come whose right it is." Longevity
224:1
is increasing and the power of sin diminishing, for the
world feels the alterative effect of truth through every
pore.
224:4
As the crude footprints of the past disappear from the
dissolving paths of the present, we shall better understand
the Science which governs these changes, and shall plant
our feet on firmer ground. Every sensuous pleasure or
pain is self-destroyed through suffering. There should
be painless progress, attended by life and peace instead
of discord and death.
Sectarianism and opposition
224:11
In the record of nineteen centuries, there are sects
many but not enough Christianity. Centuries ago re-
ligionists were ready to hail an anthropomor-
phic God, and array His vicegerent with pomp
and splendor; but this was not the manner
of truth's appearing. Of old the cross was truth's cen-
tral sign, and it is to-day. The modern lash is less
material than the Roman scourge, but it is equally as
cutting. Cold disdain, stubborn resistance, opposition
from church, state laws, and the press, are still the har-
bingers of truth's full-orbed appearing.
224:22
A higher and more practical Christianity, demonstrat-
ing justice and meeting the needs of mortals in sickness
and in health, stands at the door of this age, knocking
for admission. Will you open or close the door upon this
angel visitant, who cometh in the quiet of meekness, as he
came of old to the patriarch at noonday?
Mental emancipation
224:28
Truth brings the elements of liberty. On its banner
is the Soul-inspired motto, "Slavery is abolished." The
power of God brings deliverance to the cap-
tive. No power can withstand divine Love.
What is this supposed power, which opposes itself to God?
225:1
Whence cometh it? What is it that binds man with iron
shackles to sin, sickness, and death? Whatever enslaves
man is opposed to the divine government. Truth makes
man free.
Truth's ordeal
225:5
You may know when first Truth leads by the few-
ness and faithfulness of its followers. Thus it is that
the march of time bears onward freedom's
banner. The powers of this world will fight,
and will command their sentinels not to let truth pass
the guard until it subscribes to their systems; but Science,
heeding not the pointed bayonet, marches on. There is
always some tumult, but there is a rallying to truth's
standard.
Immortal sentences
225:14
The history of our country, like all history, illustrates
the might of Mind, and shows human power to be propor-
tionate to its embodiment of right thinking. A
few immortal sentences, breathing the omnipo-
tence of divine justice, have been potent to break despotic
fetters and abolish the whipping-post and slave market;
but oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the
breath of freedom come from the cannon's mouth. Love
is the liberator.
Slavery abolished
225:23
Legally to abolish unpaid servitude in the United
States was hard; but the abolition of mental slavery is
a more difficult task. The despotic tenden-
cies, inherent in mortal mind and always ger-
minating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out
through the action of the divine Mind.
225:29
Men and women of all climes and races are still in
bondage to material sense, ignorant how to obtain their
freedom. The rights of man were vindicated in a single
section and on the lowest plane of human life, when Afri-
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