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

 

Personal identity
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-
226:1
can slavery was abolished in our land. That was only
prophetic of further steps towards the banishment of a
world-wide slavery, found on higher planes of existence
and under more subtle and depraving forms.
Liberty's crusade
226:5
The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was
still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of
this new crusade sounded the keynote of uni-
versal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledg-
ment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding
that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken
from the human mind and that its freedom be won, not
through human warfare, not with bayonet and blood, but
through Christ's divine Science.
Cramping systems
226:14
God has built a higher platform of human rights, and
He has built it on diviner claims. These claims are not
made through code or creed, but in demonstra-
tion of "on earth peace, good-will toward men."
Human codes, scholastic theology, material medicine and
hygiene, fetter faith and spiritual understanding. Divine
Science rends asunder these fetters, and man's birthright
of sole allegiance to his Maker asserts itself.
226:22
I saw before me the sick, wearing out years of servi-
tude to an unreal master in the belief that the body gov-
erned them, rather than Mind.
House of bondage
226:25
The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the
sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of
their own beliefs and from the educational
systems of the Pharaohs, who to-day, as of
yore, hold the children of Israel in bondage. I saw be-
fore me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilder-
ness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting
Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land
227:1
of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of
man are fully known and acknowledged.
Higher law ends bondage
227:3
I saw that the law of mortal belief included all error,
and that, even as oppressive laws are disputed and mor-
tals are taught their right to freedom, so the
claims of the enslaving senses must be de-
nied and superseded. The law of the divine Mind must
end human bondage, or mortals will continue unaware
of man's inalienable rights and in subjection to hope-
less slavery, because some public teachers permit
an ignorance of divine power, – an ignorance that
is the foundation of continued bondage and of human
suffering.
Native freedom
227:14
Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to fore-
see the doom of all oppression. Slavery is not the legiti-
mate state of man. God made man free.
Paul said, "I was free born." All men should
be free. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is lib-
erty." Love and Truth make free, but evil and error
lead into captivity.
Standard of liberty
227:21
Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and
cries: "Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sick-
ness, sin, and death!" Jesus marked out the
way. Citizens of the world, accept the "glori-
ous liberty of the children of God," and be free! This
is your divine right. The illusion of material sense, not
divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs,
crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and de-
faced the tablet of your being.
227:30
If God had instituted material laws to govern man,
disobedience to which would have made man ill, Jesus
would not have disregarded those laws by healing in
228:1
direct opposition to them and in defiance of all material
conditions.
No fleshly heredity
228:3
The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncra-
sies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact
of being were learned, – namely, that nothing
inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God.
Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin the-
ories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the
right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly
ills will disappear.
God-given dominion
228:11
The enslavement of man is not legitimate. It will
cease when man enters into his heritage of freedom, his
God-given dominion over the material senses.
Mortals will some day assert their freedom in
the name of Almighty God. Then they will control their
own bodies through the understanding of divine Science.
Dropping their present beliefs, they will recognize har-
mony as the spiritual reality and discord as the material
unreality.
228:20
If we follow the command of our Master, "Take no
thought for your life," we shall never depend on bodily
conditions, structure, or economy, but we shall be masters
of the body, dictate its terms, and form and control it with
Truth.
Priestly pride humbled
228:25
There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence has
all-power, and to acknowledge any other power is to dis-
honor God. The humble Nazarene overthrew
the supposition that sin, sickness, and death
have power. He proved them powerless. It should have
humbled the pride of the priests, when they saw the dem-
onstration of Christianity excel the influence of their dead
faith and ceremonies.
229:1
If Mind is not the master of sin, sickness, and death,
they are immortal, for it is already proved that mat-
ter has not destroyed them, but is their basis and
support.
No union of opposites
229:5
We should hesitate to say that Jehovah sins or suffers;
but if sin and suffering are realities of being, whence did
they emanate? God made all that was made,
and Mind signifies God, – infinity, not finity.
Not far removed from infidelity is the belief which
unites such opposites as sickness and health, holiness
and unholiness, calls both the offspring of spirit, and
at the same time admits that Spirit is God, – vir-
tually declaring Him good in one instance and evil in
another.
Self-constituted law
229:15
By universal consent, mortal belief has constituted
itself a law to bind mortals to sickness, sin, and death.
This customary belief is misnamed material
law, and the individual who upholds it is mis-
taken in theory and in practice. The so-called law of
mortal mind, conjectural and speculative, is made void
by the law of immortal Mind, and false law should be
trampled under foot.
Sickness from mortal mind
229:23
If God causes man to be sick, sickness must be good,
and its opposite, health, must be evil, for all that He
makes is good and will stand forever. If the
transgression of God's law produces sickness, it
is right to be sick; and we cannot if we would, and should
not if we could, annul the decrees of wisdom. It is the
transgression of a belief of mortal mind, not of a law of
matter nor of divine Mind, which causes the belief of sick-
ness. The remedy is Truth, not matter, – the truth that
disease is unreal.
230:1
If sickness is real, it belongs to immortality; if true,
it is a part of Truth. Would you attempt with drugs,
or without, to destroy a quality or condition of Truth?
But if sickness and sin are illusions, the awakening from
this mortal dream, or illusion, will bring us into health,
holiness, and immortality. This awakening is the for-
ever coming of Christ, the advanced appearing of Truth,
which casts out error and heals the sick. This is the sal-
vation which comes through God, the divine Principle,
Love, as demonstrated by Jesus.
God never inconsistent
230:11
It would be contrary to our highest ideas of God to
suppose Him capable of first arranging law and causation
so as to bring about certain evil results, and
then punishing the helpless victims of His vo-
lition for doing what they could not avoid doing. Good
is not, cannot be, the author of experimental sins. God,
good, can no more produce sickness than goodness can
cause evil and health occasion disease.
Mental narcotics
230:19
Does wisdom make blunders which must afterwards
be rectified by man? Does a law of God produce sick-
ness, and can man put that law under his feet
by healing sickness? According to Holy Writ,
the sick are never really healed by drugs, hygiene, or any
material method. These merely evade the question.
They are soothing syrups to put children to sleep, satisfy
mortal belief, and quiet fear.
The true healing
230:27
We think that we are healed when a disease disap-
pears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never
thoroughly healed until the liability to be
ill is removed. So-called mortal mind or the
mind of mortals being the remote, predisposing, and
the exciting cause of all suffering, the cause of disease
231:1
must be obliterated through Christ in divine Science, or
the so-called physical senses will get the victory.
Destruction of all evil
231:3
Unless an ill is rightly met and fairly overcome by
Truth, the ill is never conquered. If God destroys not
sin, sickness, and death, they are not de-
stroyed in the mind of mortals, but seem to
this so-called mind to be immortal. What God cannot
do, man need not attempt. If God heals not the sick,
they are not healed, for no lesser power equals the infinite
All-power; but God, Truth, Life, Love, does heal the
sick through the prayer of the righteous.
231:12
If God makes sin, if good produces evil, if truth results
in error, then Science and Christianity are helpless; but
there are no antagonistic powers nor laws, spiritual or
material, creating and governing man through perpetual
warfare. God is not the author of mortal discords.
Therefore we accept the conclusion that discords have
only a fabulous existence, are mortal beliefs which divine
Truth and Love destroy.
Superiority to sickness and sin
231:20
To hold yourself superior to sin, because God made
you superior to it and governs man, is true wisdom. To
fear sin is to misunderstand the power of Love
and the divine Science of being in man's rela-
tion to God, – to doubt His government and
distrust His omnipotent care. To hold yourself superior
to sickness and death is equally wise, and is in accordance
with divine Science. To fear them is impossible, when
you fully apprehend God and know that they are no part
of His creation.
231:30
Man, governed by his Maker, having no other Mind, –
planted on the Evangelist's statement that "all things
were made by Him [the Word of God]; and without
232:1
Him was not anything made that was made," – can
triumph over sin, sickness, and death.
Denials of divine power
232:3
Many theories relative to God and man neither make
man harmonious nor God lovable. The beliefs we com-
monly entertain about happiness and life
afford no scatheless and permanent evidence
of either. Security for the claims of harmonious and
eternal being is found only in divine Science.
232:9
Scripture informs us that "with God all things are
possible," – all good is possible to Spirit; but our prev-
alent theories practically deny this, and make healing
possible only through matter. These theories must be
untrue, for the Scripture is true. Christianity is not
false, but religions which contradict its Principle are
false.
232:16
In our age Christianity is again demonstrating the
power of divine Principle, as it did over nineteen hun-
dred years ago, by healing the sick and triumphing over
death. Jesus never taught that drugs, food, air, and ex-
ercise could make a man healthy, or that they could de-
stroy human life; nor did he illustrate these errors by his
practice. He referred man's harmony to Mind, not to
matter, and never tried to make of none effect the sen-
tence of God, which sealed God's condemnation of sin,
sickness, and death.
Signs following
232:26
In the sacred sanctuary of Truth are voices of sol-
emn import, but we heed them not. It is only when the
so-called pleasures and pains of sense pass
away in our lives, that we find unquestion-
able signs of the burial of error and the resurrection to
spiritual life.
Profession and proof
232:32
There is neither place nor opportunity in Science for error
233:1
of any sort. Every day makes its demands upon us for
higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power.
These proofs consist solely in the destruction
of sin, sickness, and death by the power of
Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of
progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law de-
mands of us only what we can certainly fulfil.
Perfection gained slowly
233:8
In the midst of imperfection, perfection is seen and
acknowledged only by degrees. The ages must slowly
work up to perfection. How long it must be
before we arrive at the demonstration of scien-
tific being, no man knoweth, – not even "the
Son but the Father;" but the false claim of error con-
tinues its delusions until the goal of goodness is assidu-
ously earned and won.
Christ's mission
233:16
Already the shadow of His right hand rests upon the
hour. Ye who can discern the face of the sky, – the
sign material, – how much more should ye
discern the sign mental, and compass the de-
struction of sin and sickness by overcoming the thoughts
which produce them, and by understanding the spiritual
idea which corrects and destroys them. To reveal this
truth was our Master's mission to all mankind, including
the hearts which rejected him.
Efficacy of truth
233:25
When numbers have been divided according to a fixed
rule, the quotient is not more unquestionable than the
scientific tests I have made of the effects of
truth upon the sick. The counter fact rela-
tive to any disease is required to cure it. The utterance
of truth is designed to rebuke and destroy error. Why
should truth not be efficient in sickness, which is solely
the result of inharmony?
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