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

 

245:1
The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the
benefits of destroying that illusion, are illustrated in a
sketch from the history of an English woman, published
in the London medical magazine called The Lancet.
Perpetual youth
245:5
Disappointed in love in her early years, she became
insane and lost all account of time. Believing that she
was still living in the same hour which parted
her from her lover, taking no note of years,
she stood daily before the window watching for her
lover's coming. In this mental state she remained young.
Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no
older. Some American travellers saw her when she was
seventy-four, and supposed her to be a young woman.
She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but
youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her
age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that
she must be under twenty.
245:18
This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful
hint, upon which a Franklin might work with more cer-
tainty than when he coaxed the enamoured lightning
from the clouds. Years had not made her old, because
she had taken no cognizance of passing time nor thought
of herself as growing old. The bodily results of her belief
that she was young manifested the influence of such a be-
lief. She could not age while believing herself young, for
the mental state governed the physical.
245:27
Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the
foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four;
and the primary of that illustration makes it plain that
decrepitude is not according to law, nor is it a necessity of
nature, but an illusion.
Man reflects God
245:32
The infinite never began nor will it ever end. Mind
246:1
and its formations can never be annihilated. Man is not
a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and
sorrow, sickness and health, life and death.
Life and its faculties are not measured by
calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal
likeness of their Maker. Man is by no means a material
germ rising from the imperfect and endeavoring to reach
Spirit above his origin. The stream rises no higher than
its source.
246:10
The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and
gives ugliness to age. The radiant sun of virtue and truth
coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, un-
dimmed by a declining sun. As the physical and mate-
rial, the transient sense of beauty fades, the radiance of
Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with bright
and imperishable glories.
Undesirable records
246:17
Never record ages. Chronological data are no part
of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are
so many conspiracies against manhood and
womanhood. Except for the error of meas-
uring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man
would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and
still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise. Man,
governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and
grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty,
and holiness.
True life eternal
246:27
Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the
demonstration thereof. Life and goodness are immortal.
Let us then shape our views of existence into
loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather
than into age and blight.
246:32
Acute and chronic beliefs reproduce their own types.
247:1
The acute belief of physical life comes on at a remote
period, and is not so disastrous as the chronic belief.
Eyes and teeth renewed
247:3
I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost,
sight and teeth. A woman of eighty-five, whom I knew,
had a return of sight. Another woman at
ninety had new teeth, incisors, cuspids, bi-
cuspids, and one molar. One man at sixty
had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth without
a decaying cavity.
Eternal beauty
247:10
Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty
of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as
mortal belief. Custom, education, and fashion
form the transient standards of mortals. Im-
mortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its
own, – the radiance of Soul. Immortal men and women
are models of spiritual sense, drawn by perfect Mind
and reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness
which transcend all material sense.
The divine loveliness
247:19
Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Be-
ing possesses its qualities before they are perceived hu-
manly. Beauty is a thing of life, which
dwells forever in the eternal Mind and re-
flects the charms of His goodness in expression, form,
outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal
with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches
the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with
starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness.
247:28
The embellishments of the person are poor substitutes
for the charms of being, shining resplendent and eternal
over age and decay.
247:31
The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and
more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure
248:1
in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious free-
dom of spiritual harmony.
Love's endowment
248:3
Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon
its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less
than beautiful. Men and women of riper
years and larger lessons ought to ripen into
health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness
or gloom. Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal
freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images
of thought and destroying the woes of sense which each
day brings to a nearer tomb.
Mental sculpture
248:12
The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in
order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors,
working at various forms, moulding and chisel-
ing thought. What is the model before mortal
mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering?
Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you repro-
ducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious
sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all
mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding
it before your gaze continually. The result is that you
are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life‑
work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline
and deformity of matter models.
Perfect models
248:25
To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right
direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect
models in thought and look at them continually,
or we shall never carve them out in grand and
noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice,
health, holiness, love – the kingdom of heaven – reign
within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until
they finally disappear.
249:1
Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on
sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive
ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that
one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.
Renewed selfhood
249:5
Let the "male and female" of God's creating appear.
Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into
newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor
material power as able to destroy. Let us re-
joice that we are subject to the divine "powers that be."
Such is the true Science of being. Any other theory of
Life, or God, is delusive and mythological.
249:12
Mind is not the author of matter, and the creator of
ideas is not the creator of illusions. Either there is no
omnipotence, or omnipotence is the only power. God is
the infinite, and infinity never began, will never end, and
includes nothing unlike God. Whence then is soulless
matter?
Illusive dreams
249:18
Life is, like Christ, "the same yesterday, and to-day,
and forever." Organization and time have nothing to do
with Life. You say, "I dreamed last night."
What a mistake is that! The I is Spirit. God
never slumbers, and His likeness never dreams. Mortals
are the Adam dreamers.
249:24
Sleep and apathy are phases of the dream that life, sub-
stance, and intelligence are material. The mortal night-
dream is sometimes nearer the fact of being than are the
thoughts of mortals when awake. The night-dream has
less matter as its accompaniment. It throws off some
material fetters. It falls short of the skies, but makes its
mundane flights quite ethereal.
Philosophical blunders
249:31
Man is the reflection of Soul. He is the direct oppo-
site of material sensation, and there is but one Ego. We
250:1
run into error when we divide Soul into souls, multiply
Mind into minds and suppose error to be mind, then mind
to be in matter and matter to be a lawgiver,
unintelligence to act like intelligence, and mor-
tality to be the matrix of immortality.
Spirit the one Ego
250:6
Mortal existence is a dream; mortal existence has no
real entity, but saith "It is I." Spirit is the Ego which
never dreams, but understands all things;
which never errs, and is ever conscious; which
never believes, but knows; which is never born and
never dies. Spiritual man is the likeness of this Ego.
Man is not God, but like a ray of light which comes from
the sun, man, the outcome of God, reflects God.
Mortal existence a dream
250:14
Mortal body and mind are one, and that one is called
man; but a mortal is not man, for man is immortal. A
mortal may be weary or pained, enjoy or suffer,
according to the dream he entertains in sleep.
When that dream vanishes, the mortal finds himself
experiencing none of these dream-sensations. To the
observer, the body lies listless, undisturbed, and sensa-
tionless, and the mind seems to be absent.
250:22
Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking
dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream?
There cannot be, since whatever appears to be a mortal
man is a mortal dream. Take away the mortal mind,
and matter has no more sense as a man than it has as
a tree. But the spiritual, real man is immortal.
250:28
Upon this stage of existence goes on the dance of mortal
mind. Mortal thoughts chase one another like snowflakes,
and drift to the ground. Science reveals Life as not being
at the mercy of death, nor will Science admit that happi-
ness is ever the sport of circumstance.
Error self-destroyed
251:1
Error is not real, hence it is not more imperative
as it hastens towards self-destruction. The so-called
belief of mortal mind apparent as an abscess
should not grow more painful before it suppu-
rates neither should a fever become more severe before
it ends.
Illusion of death
251:7
Fright is so great at certain stages of mortal belief
as to drive belief into new paths. In the illusion of
death, mortals wake to the knowledge of two
facts: (1) that they are not dead; (2) that
they have but passed the portals of a new belief. Truth
works out the nothingness of error in just these ways.
Sickness, as well as sin, is an error that Christ, Truth,
alone can destroy.
Mortal mind's disappearance
251:15
We must learn how mankind govern the body, –
whether through faith in hygiene, in drugs, or in will‑
power. We should learn whether they govern
the body through a belief in the necessity of
sickness and death, sin and pardon, or govern
it from the higher understanding that the divine Mind
makes perfect, acts upon the so-called human mind
through truth, leads the human mind to relinquish all
error, to find the divine Mind to be the only Mind,
and the healer of sin, disease, death. This process of
higher spiritual understanding improves mankind until
error disappears, and nothing is left which deserves to
perish or to be punished.
Spiritual ignorance
251:28
Ignorance, like intentional wrong, is not Science.
Ignorance must be seen and corrected before we can at-
tain harmony. Inharmonious beliefs, which
rob Mind, calling it matter, and deify their
own notions, imprison themselves in what they create.
252:1
They are at war with Science, and as our Master said,
"If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom
cannot stand."
252:4
Human ignorance of Mind and of the recuperative
energies of Truth occasions the only skepticism regard-
ing the pathology and theology of Christian Science.
Eternal man recognized
252:7
When false human beliefs learn even a little of their
own falsity, they begin to disappear. A knowledge of
error and of its operations must precede that
understanding of Truth which destroys error,
until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears,
and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit,
is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his
Maker.
252:15
The false evidence of material sense contrasts strikingly
with the testimony of Spirit. Material sense lifts its voice
with the arrogance of reality and says:
Testimony of sense
252:18
I am wholly dishonest, and no man knoweth it. I can
cheat, lie, commit adultery, rob, murder, and I elude
detection by smooth-tongued villainy. Ani-
mal in propensity, deceitful in sentiment,
fraudulent in purpose, I mean to make my short span
of life one gala day. What a nice thing is sin! How
sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits! The world
is my kingdom. I am enthroned in the gorgeousness
of matter. But a touch, an accident, the law of God,
may at any moment annihilate my peace, for all my
fancied joys are fatal. Like bursting lava, I expand but
to my own despair, and shine with the resplendency of
consuming fire.
252:31
Spirit, bearing opposite testimony, saith:
Testimony of Soul
252:32
I am Spirit. Man, whose senses are spiritual, is my
253:1
likeness. He reflects the infinite understanding, for I am
Infinity. The beauty of holiness, the perfection of being,
imperishable glory, – all are Mine, for I am
God. I give immortality to man, for I am
Truth. I include and impart all bliss, for I am Love.
I give life, without beginning and without end, for I am
Life. I am supreme and give all, for I am Mind. I am
the substance of all, because I AM THAT I AM.
Heaven-bestowed prerogative
253:9
I hope, dear reader, I am leading you into the under-
standing of your divine rights, your heaven-bestowed har-
mony, – that, as you read, you see there is no
cause (outside of erring, mortal, material sense
which is not power) able to make you sick or
sinful; and I hope that you are conquering this false sense.
Knowing the falsity of so-called material sense, you can
assert your prerogative to overcome the belief in sin, dis-
ease, or death.
Right endeavor possible
253:18
If you believe in and practise wrong knowingly, you
can at once change your course and do right. Matter can
make no opposition to right endeavors against
sin or sickness, for matter is inert, mindless.
Also, if you believe yourself diseased, you can
alter this wrong belief and action without hindrance from
the body.
253:25
Do not believe in any supposed necessity for sin, dis-
ease, or death, knowing (as you ought to know) that God
never requires obedience to a so-called material law, for
no such law exists. The belief in sin and death is de-
stroyed by the law of God, which is the law of Life in-
stead of death, of harmony instead of discord, of Spirit
instead of the flesh.
Patience and final perfection
253:32
The divine demand, "Be ye therefore perfect," is sci-
254:1
entific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are
indispensable. Individuals are consistent who, watching
and praying, can "run, and not be weary; . . .
walk, and not faint," who gain good rapidly
and hold their position, or attain slowly and
yield not to discouragement. God requires perfection,
but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought
and the victory won. To stop eating, drinking, or being
clothed materially before the spiritual facts of existence
are gained step by step, is not legitimate. When we wait
patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs
our path. Imperfect mortals grasp the ultimate of spir-
itual perfection slowly; but to begin aright and to con-
tinue the strife of demonstrating the great problem of
being, is doing much.
254:16
During the sensual ages, absolute Christian Science
may not be achieved prior to the change called death,
for we have not the power to demonstrate what we do
not understand. But the human self must be evangel-
ized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly
to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material,
and to work out the spiritual which determines the out-
ward and actual.
254:24
If you venture upon the quiet surface of error and are
in sympathy with error, what is there to disturb the waters?
What is there to strip off error's disguise?
The cross and crown
254:27
If you launch your bark upon the ever-agitated but
healthful waters of truth, you will encounter storms.
Your good will be evil spoken of. This is the
cross. Take it up and bear it, for through it
you win and wear the crown. Pilgrim on earth, thy home
is heaven; stranger, thou art the guest of God.
Chapter IX
Creation
Thy throne is established of old:
Thou art from everlasting. – PSALMS.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have
the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. – PAUL.
Inadequate theories of creation
255:1
ETERNAL Truth is changing the universe. As mor-
tals drop off their mental swaddling-clothes, thought
expands into expression. "Let there be light,"
is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love,
changing chaos into order and discord into the
music of the spheres. The mythical human theories of
creation, anciently classified as the higher criticism, sprang
from cultured scholars in Rome and in Greece, but they
afforded no foundation for accurate views of creation by
the divine Mind.
Finite views of Deity
255:11
Mortal man has made a covenant with his eyes to be-
little Deity with human conceptions. In league
with material sense, mortals take limited views
of all things. That God is corporeal or material, no man
should affirm.
255:16
The human form, or physical finiteness, cannot be
made the basis of any true idea of the infinite Godhead.
Eye hath not seen Spirit, nor hath ear heard His voice.
No material creation
256:1
Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must
yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of ac-
tion, thought rises from the material sense to
the spiritual, from the scholastic to the in-
spirational, and from the mortal to the immortal. All
things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the
creator. Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and
Mother of the universe, including man.
Tritheism impossible
256:9
The theory of three persons in one God (that is, a per-
sonal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polythe-
ism, rather than the one ever-present I AM.
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord."
No divine corporeality
256:13
The everlasting I AM is not bounded nor compressed
within the narrow limits of physical humanity, nor can
He be understood aright through mortal con-
cepts. The precise form of God must be of
small importance in comparison with the sublime ques-
tion, What is infinite Mind or divine Love?
256:19
Who is it that demands our obedience? He who, in
the language of Scripture, "doeth according to His will
in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the
earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him,
What doest Thou?"
256:24
No form nor physical combination is adequate to rep-
resent infinite Love. A finite and material sense of God
leads to formalism and narrowness; it chills the spirit of
Christianity.
Limitless Mind
256:28
A limitless Mind cannot proceed from physical limita-
tions. Finiteness cannot present the idea or the vast-
ness of infinity. A mind originating from a
finite or material source must be limited and
finite. Infinite Mind is the creator, and creation is the
257:1
infinite image or idea emanating from this Mind. If
Mind is within and without all things, then all is Mind;
and this definition is scientific.
Matter is not substance
257:4
If matter, so-called, is substance, then Spirit, matter's
unlikeness, must be shadow; and shadow cannot produce
substance. The theory that Spirit is not the
only substance and creator is pantheistic het-
erodoxy, which ultimates in sickness, sin, and death; it is
the belief in a bodily soul and a material mind, a soul
governed by the body and a mind in matter. This be-
lief is shallow pantheism.
257:12
Mind creates His own likeness in ideas, and the sub-
stance of an idea is very far from being the supposed sub-
stance of non-intelligent matter. Hence the Father Mind
is not the father of matter. The material senses and
human conceptions would translate spiritual ideas into
material beliefs, and would say that an anthropomorphic
God, instead of infinite Principle, – in other words, divine
Love, – is the father of the rain, "who hath begotten the
drops of dew," who bringeth "forth Mazzaroth in his sea-
son," and guideth "Arcturus with his sons."
Inexhaustible divine Love
257:22
Finite mind manifests all sorts of errors, and thus
proves the material theory of mind in matter to be the
antipode of Mind. Who hath found finite life
or love sufficient to meet the demands of human
want and woe, – to still the desires, to satisfy the aspira-
tions? Infinite Mind cannot be limited to a finite form,
or Mind would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible
Love, eternal Life, omnipotent Truth.
Infinite physique impossible
257:30
It would require an infinite form to contain infinite
Mind. Indeed, the phrase infinite form involves a con-
tradiction of terms. Finite man cannot be the image and
258:1
likeness of the infinite God. A mortal, corporeal, or
finite conception of God cannot embrace the glories of
limitless, incorporeal Life and Love. Hence
the unsatisfied human craving for something
better, higher, holier, than is afforded by a
material belief in a physical God and man. The insuffi-
ciency of this belief to supply the true idea proves the
falsity of material belief.
Infinity's reflection
258:9
Man is more than a material form with a mind inside,
which must escape from its environments in
order to be immortal. Man reflects infinity,
and this reflection is the true idea of God.
258:13
God expresses in man the infinite idea forever develop-
ing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from
a boundless basis. Mind manifests all that exists in
the infinitude of Truth. We know no more of man as
the true divine image and likeness, than we know of
God.
258:19
The infinite Principle is reflected by the infinite idea
and spiritual individuality, but the material so-called senses
have no cognizance of either Principle or its idea. The
human capacities are enlarged and perfected in propor-
tion as humanity gains the true conception of man and
God.
Individual permanency
258:25
Mortals have a very imperfect sense of the spiritual
man and of the infinite range of his thought. To him
belongs eternal Life. Never born and
never dying, it were impossible for man, under
the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his
high estate.
God's man discerned
258:31
Through spiritual sense you can discern the heart of
divinity, and thus begin to comprehend in Science the
259:1
generic term man. Man is not absorbed in Deity, and
man cannot lose his individuality, for he re-
flects eternal Life; nor is he an isolated, soli-
tary idea, for he represents infinite Mind, the sum of all
substance.
259:6
In divine Science, man is the true image of God. The
divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who
threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted
their lives higher than their poor thought-models would
allow, – thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick,
sinning, and dying. The Christlike understanding of
scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Prin-
ciple and idea, – perfect God and perfect man, – as the
basis of thought and demonstration.
The divine image not lost
259:15
If man was once perfect but has now lost his perfection,
then mortals have never beheld in man the reflex image
of God. The lost image is no image. The
true likeness cannot be lost in divine reflection.
Understanding this, Jesus said: "Be ye there-
fore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect."
Immortal models
259:22
Mortal thought transmits its own images, and forms
its offspring after human illusions. God, Spirit, works
spiritually, not materially. Brain or matter
never formed a human concept. Vibration is
not intelligence; hence it is not a creator. Immortal
ideas, pure, perfect, and enduring, are transmitted by
the divine Mind through divine Science, which corrects
error with truth and demands spiritual thoughts, divine
concepts, to the end that they may produce harmonious
results.
259:32
Deducing one's conclusions as to man from imperfec-
260:1
tion instead of perfection, one can no more arrive at the
true conception or understanding of man, and make him-
self like it, than the sculptor can perfect his outlines from
an imperfect model, or the painter can depict the form
and face of Jesus, while holding in thought the character
of Judas.
Spiritual discovery
260:7
The conceptions of mortal, erring thought must give
way to the ideal of all that is perfect and eternal. Through
many generations human beliefs will be attain-
ing diviner conceptions, and the immortal and
perfect model of God's creation will finally be seen as
the only true conception of being.
260:13
Science reveals the possibility of achieving all good,
and sets mortals at work to discover what God has already
done; but distrust of one's ability to gain the goodness
desired and to bring out better and higher results, often
hampers the trial of one's wings and ensures failure at the
outset.
Requisite change of our ideals
260:19
Mortals must change their ideals in order to improve
their models. A sick body is evolved from
sick thoughts. Sickness, disease, and death
proceed from fear. Sensualism evolves bad
physical and moral conditions.
260:24
Selfishness and sensualism are educated in mortal
mind by the thoughts ever recurring to one's self, by
conversation about the body, and by the expectation of
perpetual pleasure or pain from it; and this education
is at the expense of spiritual growth. If we array
thought in mortal vestures, it must lose its immortal
nature.
Thoughts are things
260:31
If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain; for
Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit,
261:1
we find its opposite, matter. Now reverse this action.
Look away from the body into Truth and Love,
the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and
immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the endur-
ing, the good, and the true, and you will bring these
into your experience proportionably to their occupancy
of your thoughts.
Unreality of pain
261:8
The effect of mortal mind on health and happiness is
seen in this: If one turns away from the body with such
absorbed interest as to forget it, the body
experiences no pain. Under the strong im-
pulse of a desire to perform his part, a noted actor was
accustomed night after night to go upon the stage and
sustain his appointed task, walking about as actively
as the youngest member of the company. This old man
was so lame that he hobbled every day to the theatre, and
sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken, – a signal
which made him as oblivious of physical infirmity as if
he had inhaled chloroform, though he was in the full pos-
session of his so-called senses.
Immutable identity of man
261:21
Detach sense from the body, or matter, which is only
a form of human belief, and you may learn the meaning
of God, or good, and the nature of the immu-
table and immortal. Breaking away from the
mutations of time and sense, you will neither
lose the solid objects and ends of life nor your own iden-
tity. Fixing your gaze on the realities supernal, you will
rise to the spiritual consciousness of being, even as the bird
which has burst from the egg and preens its wings for a
skyward flight.
Forgetfulness of self
261:31
We should forget our bodies in remembering good and
the human race. Good demands of man every hour, in
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