Chapter 10: 'Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy

Chapter X - Science Of Being

291:1
The suppositions that sin is pardoned while unfor-

saken, that happiness can be genuine in the midst of

sin, that the so-called death of the body frees from sin,

and that God's pardon is aught but the destruction of

sin, – these are grave mistakes. We know that all will

be changed "in the twinkling of an eye," when the last

trump shall sound; but this last call of wisdom cannot

come till mortals have already yielded to each lesser call

in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need not

fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken

them to glorified being.

Salvation and probation

291:12
Universal salvation rests on progression and probation,

and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a local-

ity, but a divine state of Mind in which all the

manifestations of Mind are harmonious and

immortal, because sin is not there and man is

found having no righteousness of his own, but in posses-

sion of "the mind of the Lord," as the Scripture says.

291:19
"In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall

be." So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been

transformed into the popular proverb, "As the tree

falls, so it must lie." As man falleth asleep, so shall he

awake. As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be

after death, until probation and growth shall effect the

needed change. Mind never becomes dust. No resur-

rection from the grave awaits Mind or Life, for the grave

has no power over either.

Day of judgment

291:28
No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-

day of wisdom comes hourly and continually,

even the judgment by which mortal man is di-

vested of all material error. As for spiritual error there

is none.

292:1
When the last mortal fault is destroyed, then the final

trump will sound which will end the battle of Truth with

error 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

the infinite.

Primitive error

292:7
Truth will be to us "the resurrection and the life" only

as it destroys all error and the belief that Mind, the only

immortality 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

perfect and eternal.

292:13
Matter is the primitive belief of mortal mind, because

this so-called mind has no cognizance of Spirit. To

mortal mind, matter is substantial, and evil is

real. The so-called senses of mortals are material.

Hence the so-called life of mortals is dependent on

matter.

292:19
Explaining the origin of material man and mortal mind,

Jesus said: "Why do ye not understand my speech?

Even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your

father, the devil [evil], and the lusts of your father ye will

do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode

not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When

he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar,

and the father of it."

Immortal man

292:27
This carnal material mentality, misnamed mind, is

mortal. Therefore man would be annihilated, were it

not for the spiritual real man's indissoluble

connection 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

293:1
that this unreal material mortality disappears in presence

of the reality.

Elementary electricity

293:3
Electricity is not a vital fluid, but the least material

form of illusive consciousness, – the material mindless-

ness, which forms no link between matter and

Mind, 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

ethereal 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,

are false representatives of man.

293:13
The material so-called gases and forces are counter-

feits of the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency

is 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-

terfeits the true essence of spirituality or truth, – the

great difference being that electricity is not intelligent,

while spiritual truth is Mind.

The counterfeit forces

293:21
There is no vapid fury of mortal mind – expressed in

earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity

– and this so-called mind is self-destroyed.

The manifestations of evil, which counterfeit

divine justice, are called in the Scriptures, "The anger

of the Lord." In reality, they show the self-destruction

of 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-

mony, the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness

of evil.

Instruments of error

293:32
The five physical senses are the avenues and instru-

294:1
ments of human error, and they correspond with error.

These senses indicate the common human belief, that life,

substance, and intelligence are a unison of

matter with Spirit. This is pantheism, and

carries within itself the seeds of all error.

294:6
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.

Mortal verdict

294:9
The belief that matter thinks, sees, or feels is not more

real than the belief that matter enjoys and suffers. This

mortal belief, misnamed man, is error, saying:

"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."

This 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

by Truth through spiritual sense and Science.

Mythical pleasure

294:19
The lines of demarcation between immortal man, repre-

senting Spirit, and mortal man, representing the error that

life and intelligence are in matter, show the

pleasures and pains of matter to be myths, and

human belief in them to be the father of mythology, in

which 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

mortals. God created man.

294:28
The inebriate believes that there is pleasure in intoxica-

tion. The thief believes that he gains something by steal-

ing, and the hypocrite that he is hiding himself. The

Science of Mind corrects such mistakes, for Truth demon-

strates the falsity of error.

Severed members

295:1
The belief that a severed limb is aching in the old loca-

tion, the sensation seeming to be in nerves which

are no longer there, is an added proof of the un-

reliability of physical testimony.

Mortals unlike immortals

295:5
God creates and governs the universe, including man.

The universe is filled with spiritual ideas, which He

evolves, and they are obedient to the Mind

that makes them. Mortal mind would trans-

form 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,

created 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

forever intact, will appear.

Goodness transparent

295:16
The manifestation of God through mortals is as light

passing through the window-pane. The light and the

glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass

is less opaque than the walls. The mortal

mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that

one which has lost much materiality – much error – in

order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then,

like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides

the sun.

Brainology a myth

295:25
All that is called mortal thought is made up of error.

The theoretical mind is matter, named brain, or mate-

rial consciousness, the exact opposite of real

Mind, or Spirit. Brainology teaches that

mortals are created to suffer and die. It further

teaches that when man is dead, his immortal soul is

resurrected from death and mortality. Thus error the-

orizes that spirit is born of matter and returns to mat-

296:1
ter, and that man has a resurrection from dust; whereas

Science unfolds the eternal verity, that man is the spiritual,

eternal reflection of God.

Scientific purgation

296:4
Progress is born of experience. It is the ripening of

mortal man, through which the mortal is dropped for

the immortal. Either here or hereafter, suf-

fering or Science must destroy all illusions

regarding life and mind, and regenerate material sense

and self. The old man with his deeds must be put off.

Nothing sensual or sinful is immortal. The death of a

false material sense and of sin, not the death of organic

matter, is what reveals man and Life, harmonious, real,

and eternal.

296:14
The so-called pleasures and pains of matter perish,

and 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

them.

296:19
Whether mortals will learn this sooner or later, and

how long they will suffer the pangs of destruction, de-

pends upon the tenacity of error.

Mixed testimony

296:22
The knowledge obtained from the corporeal senses

leads to sin and death. When the evidence of Spirit

and matter, Truth and error, seems to com-

mingle, it rests upon foundations which time

is wearing away. Mortal mind judges by the testimony

of 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

the situation in Christian Science.

Belief an autocrat

296:31
Mortal belief is a liar from the beginning, not deserving

power. It says to mortals, "You are wretched!" and they

297:1
think they are so; and nothing can change this state, until

the belief changes. Mortal belief says, "You are happy!"

and 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

sick!" 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

the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change

in either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the

physical condition.

Self-improvement

297:12
Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change the

evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real

to this false belief, and the human conscious-

ness 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

scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and dis-

solution.

Faith higher than belief

297:20
Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is

a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual

evidence, contradicting the testimony of mate-

rial sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the

ever-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

belief 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-

standing, human thought has little relation to the actual

or divine.

297:32
A mortal belief fulfils its own conditions. Sickness,

298:1
sin, and death are the vague realities of human conclu-

sions. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of divine

Science. 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

voice of immutable harmony, but false belief cannot de-

stroy Science armed with faith, hope, and fruition.

Truth's witness

298:8
What is termed material sense can report only a mor-

tal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can

bear witness only to Truth. To material sense,

the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected

by Christian Science.

298:13
Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, in-

volves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, real-

ity. 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

reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal.

When the real is attained, which is announced by Science,

joy is no longer a trembler, nor is hope a cheat. Spirit-

ual 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

of being.

Thought-angels

298:25
Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving

animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial

visitants, flying on spiritual, not material,

pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God,

winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their indi-

vidualism may be. Human conjecture confers upon angels

its own forms of thought, marked with superstitious out-

lines, making them human creatures with suggestive

299:1
feathers; but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more

reality than has the sculptor's thought when he carves

his "Statue of Liberty," which embodies his concep-

tion of an unseen quality or condition, but which has

no physical antecedent reality save in the artist's own ob-

servation and "chambers of imagery."

Our Angelic messengers

299:7
My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door

of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried

its 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

are 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-

viduality, image, or likeness of God, gathers. By giving

earnest heed to these spiritual guides they tarry with us,

and we entertain "angels unawares."

Knowledge and Truth

299:18
Knowledge gained from material sense is figuratively

represented in Scripture as a tree, bearing the fruits of

sin, sickness, and death. Ought we not then

to judge the knowledge thus obtained to be

untrue and dangerous, since "the tree is known by his

fruit"?

299:24
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,

health, harmony, and Science, as the mist obscures the

sun or the mountain; but Science, the sunshine of Truth,

will melt away the shadow and reveal the celestial

peaks.

Old and new man

299:31
If man were solely a creature of the material senses,

he would have no eternal Principle and would be mutable

300:1
and mortal. Human logic is awry when it attempts

to draw correct spiritual conclusions regarding life from

matter. Finite sense has no true apprecia-

tion of infinite Principle, God, or of His infi-

nite image or reflection, man. The mirage, which makes

trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates

the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image

of God.

300:9
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

St. Paul has it).

The tares and wheat

300:13
The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and

real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the im-

mutable and perfect. The inharmonious and

self-destructive never touch the harmonious

and self-existent. These opposite qualities are the tares

and 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-

ization of God as ever present and of man as reflecting

the divine likeness.

The divine reflection

300:23
Spirit is God, Soul; therefore Soul is not in matter. If

Spirit were in matter, God would have no representative,

and matter would be identical with God.

The theory that soul, spirit, intelligence, in-

habits 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

spiritual 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, –

301:1
yea, which manifests God's attributes and power, even

as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror, repeats

the color, form, and action of the person in front of the

mirror.

301:5
Few persons comprehend what Christian Science

means 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,

temporal.

301:10
On the other hand, the immortal, spiritual man is really

substantial, and reflects the eternal substance, or Spirit,

which 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

man's substantiality transcends mortal vision and is re-

vealed only through divine Science.

Inverted images and ideas

301:17
As God is substance and man is the divine image and

likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only

the substance of good, the substance of Spirit,

not matter. The belief that man has any other

substance, 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-

stance, 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

focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image

of Mind and substance with everything turned upside

down.

301:30
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.

302:1
Soul is not compassed by finiteness. Principle is not to

be found in fragmentary ideas.

Identity not lost

302:3
The material body and mind are temporal, but the

real man is spiritual and eternal. The identity of the

real man is not lost, but found through this

explanation; for the conscious infinitude of

existence and of all identity is thereby discerned and re-

mains unchanged. It is impossible that man should lose

aught 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

matter, are real, is a mortal belief; and this belief is all

that will ever be lost.

Definition of man

302:14
Continuing our definition of man, let us remember that

harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and

is always beyond and above the mortal illu-

sion of any life, substance and intelligence

as existent in matter. This statement is based on fact,

not fable. The Science of being reveals man as perfect,

even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul, or Mind,

of 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

laws of matter.

302:25
God is Love. He is therefore the divine, infinite Prin-

ciple, called Person or God. Man's true consciousness

is 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

believe.

Mental propagation

302:31
Even in Christian Science, reproduction by Spirit's

individual ideas is but the reflection of the creative power

303:1
of the divine Principle of those ideas. The reflection,

through mental manifestation, of the multitudinous

forms of Mind which people the realm of

the real is controlled by Mind, the Principle

governing the reflection. Multiplication of God's chil-

dren comes from no power of propagation in matter, it

is the reflection of Spirit.

303:8
The minutiae of lesser individualities reflect the one di-

vine individuality and are comprehended in and formed

by Spirit, not by material sensation. Whatever reflects

Mind, Life, Truth, and Love, is spiritually conceived and

brought 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

vanity 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

body, and Science will eventually destroy this illusion

through the self-destruction of all error and the beatified

understanding of the Science of Life.

Error defined

303:21
The belief that pain and pleasure, life and death, holi-

ness and unholiness, mingle in man, – that

mortal, material man is the likeness of God

and is himself a creator, – is a fatal error.

Man's entity spiritual

303:25
God, without the image and likeness of Himself, would

be a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed. He would be

without 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-

arated from its divine Principle. When the evidence

before the material senses yielded to spiritual sense, the

apostle declared that nothing could alienate him from

304:1
God, from the sweet sense and presence of Life and

Truth.

Man inseparable from Love

304:3
It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material

sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and good-

ness. Understanding this, Paul said: "Nei-

ther 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

the 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

sorrow, 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

by God, his perfect Principle – is sinless and eternal.

Harmony natural

304:16
Harmony is produced by its Principle, is controlled

by it and abides with it. Divine Principle is the Life

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

as in music, and discord is unnatural, unreal.

304:22
The science of music governs tones. If mortals caught

harmony through material sense, they would lose har-

mony, 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

of material sense, music is liable to be misappre-

hended and lost in confusion. Controlled by belief,

instead of understanding, music is, must be, imper-

fectly expressed. So man, not understanding the Sci-

ence of being, – thrusting aside his divine Principle as

incomprehensible, – is abandoned to conjectures, left in

305:1
the hands of ignorance, placed at the disposal of illusions,

subjected to material sense which is discord. A discon-

tented, discordant mortal is no more a man than discord

is music.

Human reflection

305:5
A picture in the camera or a face reflected in the mirror

is not the original, though resembling it. Man, in the

likeness of his Maker, reflects the central light

of being, the invisible God. As there is no cor-

poreality 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.

305:12
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,

constitutes 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

seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth,

these also doeth the Son likewise."

Inverted images

305:20
The inverted images presented by the senses, the de-

flections of matter as opposed to the Science of spirit-

ual reflection, are all unlike Spirit, God. In

the illusion of life that is here to-day and

gone 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-

tality 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

divine.

Jewish traditions

305:31
The Sadducees reasoned falsely about the resurrec-

tion, but not so blindly as the Pharisees, who believed

306:1
error to be as immortal as Truth. The Pharisees thought

that they could raise the spiritual from the material. They

would first make life result in death, and then

resort to death to reproduce spiritual life.

Jesus taught them how death was to be overcome by

spiritual Life, and demonstrated this beyond cavil.

Divinity not childless

306:7
Life demonstrates Life. The immortality of Soul makes

man immortal. If God, who is Life, were parted for a

moment from His reflection, man, during that

moment there would be no divinity reflected.

The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be

childless, – no Father.

306:13
If Life or Soul and its representative, man, unite for

a period and then are separated as by a law of divorce to

be brought together again at some uncertain future time

and in a manner unknown, – and this is the general

religious opinion of mankind, – we are left without a

rational proof of immortality. But man cannot be sep-

arated for an instant from God, if man reflects God.

Thus Science proves man's existence to be intact.

Thought-forms

306:21
The myriad forms of mortal thought, made manifest

as matter, are not more distinct nor real to the mate-

rial senses than are the Soul-created forms

to spiritual sense, which cognizes Life as per-

manent. Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the

material senses, Science, still enthroned, is unfolding

to mortals the immutable, harmonious, divine Principle,

– is unfolding Life and the universe, ever present and

eternal.

306:30
God's man, spiritually created, is not material and

mortal.

The serpent's whisper

306:32
The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream,

307:1
the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life

and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter.

This 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

and eternal as Truth.

307:7
Evil still affirms itself to be mind, and declares that

there is more than one intelligence or God. It says:

"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

put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem

to have life as much as God, Spirit, who is the only life."

Bad results from error

307:14
This error has proved itself to be error. Its life is found

to be not Life, but only a transient, false sense of an ex-

istence which ends in death. Error charges

its lie to Truth and says: "The Lord knows

it. He has made man mortal and material, out of mat-

ter instead of Spirit." Thus error partakes of its own

nature and utters its own falsities. If we regard matter

as 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

Spiritward.

Higher statutes

307:25
Truth has no beginning. The divine Mind is the Soul

of man, and gives man dominion over all things. Man

was 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

law of Mind.

The great question

307:31
Above error's awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice

of Truth still calls: "Adam, where art thou? Conscious-

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