Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter X - Science Of Being

 

Modern evangel
272:1
sent?" If sent, how shall they preach, convert, and heal
multitudes, except the people hear?
Spirituality of Scripture
272:3
The spiritual sense of truth must be gained before
Truth can be understood. This sense is assimilated only
as we are honest, unselfish, loving, and meek.
In the soil of an "honest and good heart" the
seed must be sown; else it beareth not much fruit, for the
swinish element in human nature uproots it. Jesus said:
"Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures." The spiritual
sense of the Scriptures brings out the scientific sense, and
is the new tongue referred to in the last chapter of Mark's
Gospel.
272:13
Jesus' parable of "the sower" shows the care our
Master took not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts
the spiritual teachings which dulness and grossness could
not accept. Reading the thoughts of the people, he said:
"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast
ye your pearls before swine."
Unspiritual contrasts
272:19
It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization
of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce
of material existence; it is chastity and purity,
in contrast with the downward tendencies
and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity,
which really attest the divine origin and operation of Chris-
tian Science. The triumphs of Christian Science are re-
corded in the destruction of error and evil, from which are
propagated the dismal beliefs of sin, sickness, and death.
God the Principle of all
272:28
The divine Principle of the universe must interpret the
universe. God is the divine Principle of all that repre-
sents Him and of all that really exists. Chris-
tian Science, as demonstrated by Jesus, alone
reveals the natural, divine Principle of Science.
273:1
Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and death are
contrary to God, and cannot emanate from Him. There
is no material truth. The physical senses can take no
cognizance of God and spiritual Truth. Human belief
has sought out many inventions, but not one of them
can solve the problem of being without the divine Prin-
ciple of divine Science. Deductions from material hy-
potheses are not scientific. They differ from real Science
because they are not based on the divine law.
Science versus sense
273:10
Divine Science reverses the false testimony of the ma-
terial senses, and thus tears away the foun-
dations of error. Hence the enmity between
Science and the senses, and the impossibility
of attaining perfect understanding till the errors of sense
are eliminated.
273:16
The so-called laws of matter and of medical science have
never made mortals whole, harmonious, and immortal.
Man is harmonious when governed by Soul. Hence the
importance of understanding the truth of being, which
reveals the laws of spiritual existence.
Spiritual law the only law
273:21
God never ordained a material law to annul the spiritual
law. If there were such a material law, it would oppose
the supremacy of Spirit, God, and impugn the
wisdom of the creator. Jesus walked on the
waves, fed the multitude, healed the sick, and raised the
dead in direct opposition to material laws. His acts were
the demonstration of Science, overcoming the false claims
of material sense or law.
Material knowledge illusive
273:29
Science shows that material, conflicting mortal opin-
ions and beliefs emit the effects of error at all times, but
this atmosphere of mortal mind cannot be destructive to
morals and health when it is opposed promptly and per-
274:1
sistently by Christian Science. Truth and Love antidote
this mental miasma, and thus invigorate and sustain ex-
istence. Unnecessary knowledge gained from
the five senses is only temporal, – the concep-
tion of mortal mind, the offspring of sense, not
of Soul, Spirit, – and symbolizes all that is evil and
perishable. Natural science, as it is commonly called, is
not really natural nor scientific, because it is deduced from
the evidence of the material senses. Ideas, on the con-
trary, are born of Spirit, and are not mere inferences
drawn from material premises.
Five senses deceptive
274:12
The senses of Spirit abide in Love, and they demon-
strate Truth and Life. Hence Christianity and the Sci-
ence which expounds it are based on spiritual
understanding, and they supersede the so‑
called laws of matter. Jesus demonstrated this great
verity. When what we erroneously term the five physical
senses are misdirected, they are simply the manifested
beliefs of mortal mind, which affirm that life, substance,
and intelligence are material, instead of spiritual. These
false beliefs and their products constitute the flesh, and
the flesh wars against Spirit.
Impossible partnership
274:23
Divine Science is absolute, and permits no half-way
position in learning its Principle and rule – establishing
it by demonstration. The conventional firm,
called matter and mind, God never formed.
Science and understanding, governed by the unerring and
eternal Mind, destroy the imaginary copartnership, matter
and mind, formed only to be destroyed in a manner and
at a period as yet unknown. This suppositional partner-
ship is already obsolete, for matter, examined in the light
of divine metaphysics, disappears.
Spirit the starting-point
275:1
Matter has no life to lose, and Spirit never dies. A
partnership of mind with matter would ignore omnipres-
ent and omnipotent Mind. This shows that
matter did not originate in God, Spirit, and is
not eternal. Therefore matter is neither substantial, living,
nor intelligent. The starting-point of divine Science is
that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other
might nor Mind, – that God is Love, and therefore He
is divine Principle.
Divine synonyms
275:10
To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science,
you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle
of all that really is. Spirit, Life, Truth, Love,
combine as one, – and are the Scriptural names
for God. All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, im-
mortality, cause, and effect belong to God. These are
His attributes, the eternal manifestations of the infinite
divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His
wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life
but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows.
The divine completeness
275:20
Divine metaphysics, as revealed to spiritual understand-
ing, shows clearly that all is Mind, and that Mind is
God, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience,
– that is, all power, all presence, all Science.
Hence all is in reality the manifestation of Mind.
275:25
Our material human theories are destitute of Science.
The true understanding of God is spiritual. It robs the
grave of victory. It destroys the false evidence that mis-
leads thought and points to other gods, or other so-called
powers, such as matter, disease, sin, and death, superior
or contrary to the one Spirit.
275:31
Truth, spiritually discerned, is scientifically understood.
It casts out error and heals the sick.
Universal brotherhood
276:1
Having one God, one Mind, unfolds the power that
heals the sick, and fulfils these sayings of Scripture, "I
am the Lord that healeth thee," and "I have
found a ransom." When the divine precepts
are understood, they unfold the foundation of fellowship,
in which one mind is not at war with another, but all have
one Spirit, God, one intelligent source, in accordance with
the Scriptural command: "Let this Mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus." Man and his Maker
are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness
is cognizant only of the things of God.
276:12
The realization that all inharmony is unreal brings
objects and thoughts into human view in their true light,
and presents them as beautiful and immortal. Harmony
in man is as real and immortal as in music. Discord is
unreal and mortal.
Perfection requisite
276:17
If God is admitted to be the only Mind and Life,
there ceases to be any opportunity for sin and death.
When we learn in Science how to be perfect
even as our Father in heaven is perfect,
thought is turned into new and healthy channels, –
towards the contemplation of things immortal and away
from materiality to the Principle of the universe, includ-
ing harmonious man.
276:25
Material beliefs and spiritual understanding never
mingle. The latter destroys the former. Discord is the
nothingness named error. Harmony is the somethingness
named Truth.
Like evolving like
276:29
Nature and revelation inform us that like produces
like. Divine Science does not gather grapes
from thorns nor figs from thistles. Intelli-
gence never produces non-intelligence; but matter is
277:1
ever non-intelligent and therefore cannot spring from
intelligence. To all that is unlike unerring and eternal
Mind, this Mind saith, "Thou shalt surely die;" and else-
where the Scripture says that dust returns to dust. The
non-intelligent relapses into its own unreality. Matter
never produces mind. The immortal never produces the
mortal. Good cannot result in evil. As God Himself is
good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be im-
mortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal
error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirit-
uality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and can-
not be the outcome of an infinite God, good.
277:13
Natural history presents vegetables and animals as
preserving their original species, – like reproducing like.
A mineral is not produced by a vegetable nor the man
by the brute. In reproduction, the order of genus and
species is preserved throughout the entire round of nature.
This points to the spiritual truth and Science of being.
Error relies upon a reversal of this order, asserts that
Spirit produces matter and matter produces all the ills
of flesh, and therefore that good is the origin of evil.
These suppositions contradict even the order of material
so-called science.
Material error
277:24
The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit
is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine, – it is
a human concept. Matter is an error of state-
ment. This error in the premise leads to errors
in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters.
Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immor-
tal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phe-
nomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always
erroneous.
Substance versus supposition
278:1
Is Spirit the source or creator of matter? Science re-
veals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter.
Divine metaphysics explains away matter.
Spirit is the only substance and consciousness
recognized by divine Science. The material
senses oppose this, but there are no material senses, for
matter has no mind. In Spirit there is no matter, even
as in Truth there is no error, and in good no evil. It is
a false supposition, the notion that there is real substance‑
matter, the opposite of Spirit. Spirit, God, is infinite,
all. Spirit can have no opposite.
One cause supreme
278:12
That matter is substantial or has life and sensation, is
one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a
supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence,
as we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the
consciousness of matter. The admission that there can
be material substance requires another admission, –
namely, that Spirit is not infinite and that matter is self‑
creative, self-existent, and eternal. From this it would
follow that there are two eternal causes, warring forever
with each other; and yet we say that Spirit is supreme
and all-presence.
278:23
The belief of the eternity of matter contradicts the
demonstration of life as Spirit, and leads to the conclu-
sion that if man is material, he originated in matter and
must return to dust, – logic which would prove his an-
nihilation.
Substance is Spirit
278:28
All that we term sin, sickness, and death is a mortal
belief. We define matter as error, because it is the oppo-
site of life, substance, and intelligence. Mat-
ter, with its mortality, cannot be substantial
if Spirit is substantial and eternal. Which ought to
279:1
be substance to us, – the erring, changing, and dying,
the mutable and mortal, or the unerring, immutable,
and immortal? A New Testament writer plainly de-
scribes faith, a quality of mind, as "the substance of things
hoped for."
Material mortality
279:6
The doom of matter establishes the conclusion that
matter, slime, or protoplasm never originated
in the immortal Mind, and is therefore not
eternal. Matter is neither created by Mind nor for the
manifestation and support of Mind.
Spiritual tangibility
279:11
Ideas are tangible and real to immortal consciousness,
and they have the advantage of being eternal.
Spirit and matter can neither coexist nor co-
operate, and one can no more create the other than
Truth can create error, or vice versa.
279:16
In proportion as the belief disappears that life and in-
telligence are in or of matter, the immortal facts of
being are seen, and their only idea or intelligence is
in God. Spirit is reached only through the understand-
ing and demonstration of eternal Life and Truth and
Love.
Pantheistic tendencies
279:22
Every system of human philosophy, doctrine, and
medicine is more or less infected with the pantheistic
belief that there is mind in matter; but this
belief contradicts alike revelation and right
reasoning. A logical and scientific conclusion is reached
only through the knowledge that there are not two
bases of being, matter and mind, but one alone, –
Mind.
279:30
Pantheism, starting from a material sense of God,
seeks cause in effect, Principle in its idea, and life and
intelligence in matter.
The things of God are beautiful
280:1
In the infinitude of Mind, matter must be unknown.
Symbols and elements of discord and decay are not prod-
ucts of the infinite, perfect, and eternal All.
From Love and from the light and harmony
which are the abode of Spirit, only reflections
of good can come. All things beautiful and harmless are
ideas of Mind. Mind creates and multiplies them, and
the product must be mental.
280:9
Finite belief can never do justice to Truth in any direc-
tion. Finite belief limits all things, and would compress
Mind, which is infinite, beneath a skull bone. Such be-
lief can neither apprehend nor worship the infinite; and
to accommodate its finite sense of the divisibility of Soul
and substance, it seeks to divide the one Spirit into per-
sons and souls.
Belief in many gods
280:16
Through this error, human belief comes to have "gods
many and lords many." Moses declared as Jehovah's
first command of the Ten: "Thou shalt have
no other gods before me!" But behold the
zeal of belief to establish the opposite error of many
minds. The argument of the serpent in the allegory, "Ye
shall be as gods," urges through every avenue the belief
that Soul is in body, and that infinite Spirit, and Life, is
in finite forms.
Sensationless body
280:25
Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient
material form, man has a sensationless body; and God,
the Soul of man and of all existence, being
perpetual in His own individuality, harmony,
and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities
in man, – through Mind, not matter. The only excuse
for entertaining human opinions and rejecting the Science
of being is our mortal ignorance of Spirit, – ignorance
281:1
which yields only to the understanding of divine Science,
the understanding by which we enter into the kingdom
of Truth on earth and learn that Spirit is infinite and
supreme. Spirit and matter no more commingle than
light and darkness. When one appears, the other dis-
appears.
God and His image
281:7
Error presupposes man to be both mind and matter.
Divine Science contradicts the corporeal senses, rebukes
mortal belief, and asks: What is the Ego,
whence its origin and what its destiny? The
Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God; the Ego-man
is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine
Principle.
281:14
The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is
infinite individuality, which supplies all form and come-
liness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual
spiritual man and things.
281:18
The mind supposed to exist in matter or beneath a
skull bone is a myth, a misconceived sense and false
conception as to man and Mind. When we put off the
false sense for the true, and see that sin and mortality
have neither Principle nor permanency, we shall learn
that sin and mortality are without actual origin or right-
ful existence. They are native nothingness, out of which
error would simulate creation through a man formed from
dust.
The true new idea
281:27
Divine Science does not put new wine into old bottles,
Soul into matter, nor the infinite into the finite. Our
false views of matter perish as we grasp
the facts of Spirit. The old belief must be
cast out or the new idea will be spilled, and the in-
spiration, which is to change our standpoint, will be
282:1
lost. Now, as of old, Truth casts out evils and heals
the sick.
Figures of being
282:3
The real Life, or Mind, and its opposite, the so-called
material life and mind, are figured by two geometrical
symbols, a circle or sphere and a straight
line. The circle represents the infinite with-
out beginning or end; the straight line represents the
finite, which has both beginning and end. The sphere
represents good, the self-existent and eternal individuality
or Mind; the straight line represents evil, a belief in
a self-made and temporary material existence. Eternal
Mind and temporary material existence never unite in
figure or in fact.
Opposite symbols
282:14
A straight line finds no abiding-place in a curve, and a
curve finds no adjustment to a straight line. Similarly,
matter has no place in Spirit, and Spirit has
no place in matter. Truth has no home in
error, and error has no foothold in Truth. Mind cannot
pass into non-intelligence and matter, nor can non-intel-
ligence become Soul. At no point can these opposites
mingle or unite. Even though they seem to touch, one
is still a curve and the other a straight line.
282:23
There is no inherent power in matter; for all that is
material is a material, human, mortal thought, always
governing itself erroneously.
282:26
Truth is the intelligence of immortal Mind. Error is
the so-called intelligence of mortal mind.
Truth is not inverted
282:28
Whatever indicates the fall of man or the opposite of
God or God's absence, is the Adam-dream, which is neither
Mind nor man, for it is not begotten of the
Father. The rule of inversion infers from
error its opposite, Truth; but Truth is the light which
283:1
dispels error. As mortals begin to understand Spirit,
they give up the belief that there is any true existence
apart from God.
Source of all life and action
283:4
Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no
inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious
action. Mind is the same Life, Love, and wis-
dom "yesterday, and to-day, and forever."
Matter and its effects – sin, sickness, and
death – are states of mortal mind which act, react, and
then come to a stop. They are not facts of Mind. They
are not ideas, but illusions. Principle is absolute. It
admits of no error, but rests upon understanding.
283:13
But what say prevalent theories? They insist that
Life, or God, is one and the same with material life so‑
called. They speak of both Truth and error as mind,
and of good and evil as spirit. They claim that to be
life which is but the objective state of material sense, –
such as the structural life of the tree and of material
man, – and deem this the manifestation of the one Life,
God.
Spiritual structure
283:21
This false belief as to what really constitutes life so
detracts from God's character and nature, that the true
sense of His power is lost to all who cling to
this falsity. The divine Principle, or Life, can-
not be practically demonstrated in length of days, as it
was by the patriarchs, unless its Science be accurately
stated. We must receive the divine Principle in the under-
standing, and live it in daily life; and unless we so do, we
can no more demonstrate Science, than we can teach and
illustrate geometry by calling a curve a straight line or a
straight line a sphere.
283:32
Are mentality, immortality, consciousness, resident in
284:1
matter? It is not rational to say that Mind is infinite,
but dwells in finiteness, – in matter, – or that matter is
infinite and the medium of Mind.
Mind never limited
284:4
If God were limited to man or matter, or if the infinite
could be circumscribed within the finite, God would be
corporeal, and unlimited Mind would seem
to spring from a limited body; but this is an
impossibility. Infinite Mind can have no starting-point,
and can return to no limit. It can never be in bonds,
nor be fully manifested through corporeality.
Material recognition impossible
284:11
Is God's image or likeness matter, or a mortal, sin,
sickness, and death? Can matter recognize Mind?
Can infinite Mind recognize matter? Can the
infinite dwell in the finite or know aught un-
like the infinite? Can Deity be known through
the material senses? Can the material senses, which re-
ceive no direct evidence of Spirit, give correct testimony
as to spiritual life, truth, and love?
284:19
The answer to all these questions must forever be in
the negative.
Our physical insensibility to Spirit
284:21
The physical senses can obtain no proof of God. They
can neither see Spirit through the eye nor hear it through
the ear, nor can they feel, taste, or smell Spirit.
Even the more subtile and misnamed ma-
terial elements are beyond the cognizance
of these senses, and are known only by the effects com-
monly attributed to them.
284:28
According to Christian Science, the only real senses
of man are spiritual, emanating from divine Mind.
Thought passes from God to man, but neither sensation
nor report goes from material body to Mind. The in-
tercommunication is always from God to His idea, man.
285:1
Matter is not sentient and cannot be cognizant of good
or of evil, of pleasure or of pain. Man's individu-
ality is not material. This Science of being obtains not
alone hereafter in what men call Paradise, but here
and now; it is the great fact of being for time and
eternity.
The human counterfeit
285:7
What, then, is the material personality which suffers,
sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness
of God, but man's counterfeit, the inverted
likeness, the unlikeness called sin, sickness,
and death. The unreality of the claim that a mortal is
the true image of God is illustrated by the opposite na-
tures of Spirit and matter, Mind and body, for one is
intelligence while the other is non-intelligence.
Material misconceptions
285:15
Is God a physical personality? Spirit is not physical.
The belief that a material body is man is a false con-
ception of man. The time has come for a
finite conception of the infinite and of a ma-
terial body as the seat of Mind to give place
to a diviner sense of intelligence and its manifestations,
to the better understanding that Science gives of the
Supreme Being, or divine Principle, and idea.
Salvation is through reform
285:23
By interpreting God as a corporeal Saviour but not as
the saving Principle, or divine Love, we shall continue
to seek salvation through pardon and not
through reform, and resort to matter instead
of Spirit for the cure of the sick. As mortals
reach, through knowledge of Christian Science, a higher
sense, they will seek to learn, not from matter, but from
the divine Principle, God, how to demonstrate the Christ,
Truth, as the healing and saving power.
285:32
It is essential to understand, instead of believe, what
286:1
relates most nearly to the happiness of being. To seek
Truth through belief in a human doctrine is not to un-
derstand the infinite. We must not seek the immutable
and immortal through the finite, mutable, and mortal,
and so depend upon belief instead of demonstration, for
this is fatal to a knowledge of Science. The understand-
ing of Truth gives full faith in Truth, and spiritual un-
derstanding is better than all burnt offerings.
286:9
The Master said, "No man cometh unto the Father
[the divine Principle of being] but by me," Christ,
Life, Truth, Love; for Christ says, "I am the way."
Physical causation was put aside from first to
last by this original man, Jesus. He knew that the
divine Principle, Love, creates and governs all that
is real.
Goodness a portion of God
286:16
In the Saxon and twenty other tongues good is the term
for God. The Scriptures declare all that He
made to be good, like Himself, – good in
Principle and in idea. Therefore the spiritual
universe is good, and reflects God as He is.
Spiritual thoughts
286:21
God's thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance
and Life. Material and temporal thoughts are human,
involving error, and since God, Spirit, is the
only cause, they lack a divine cause. The
temporal and material are not then creations of Spirit.
They are but counterfeits of the spiritual and eternal.
Transitory thoughts are the antipodes of everlasting
Truth, though (by the supposition of opposite qualities)
error must also say, "I am true." But by this saying
error, the lie, destroys itself.
286:31
Sin, sickness, and death are comprised in human ma-
terial belief, and belong not to the divine Mind. They
287:1
are without a real origin or existence. They have neither
Principle nor permanence, but belong, with all that is
material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which
simulates the creations of Truth. All creations of Spirit
are eternal; but creations of matter must return to dust.
Error supposes man to be both mental and material.
Divine Science contradicts this postulate and maintains
man's spiritual identity.
Divine allness
287:9
We call the absence of Truth, error. Truth and error
are unlike. In Science, Truth is divine, and the infinite
God can have no unlikeness. Did God, Truth,
create error? No! "Doth a fountain send
forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" God
being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent
or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence?
How can there be more than all?
287:17
Neither understanding nor truth accompanies error,
nor is error the offshoot of Mind. Evil calls itself some-
thing, when it is nothing. It saith, "I am man, but I am
not the image and likeness of God;" whereas the Scrip-
tures declare that man was made in God's likeness.
Error unveiled
287:22
Error is false, mortal belief; it is illusion, without spir-
itual identity or foundation, and it has no real existence.
The supposition that life, substance, and in-
telligence are in matter, or of it, is an error.
Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the
objective supposition of Spirit's opposite. The five mate-
rial senses testify to truth and error as united in a mind
both good and evil. Their false evidence will finally
yield to Truth, – to the recognition of Spirit and of the
spiritual creation.
287:32
Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The state-
288:1
ment that Truth is real necessarily includes the correlated
statement, that error, Truth's unlikeness, is unreal.
The great conflict
288:3
The suppositional warfare between truth and error is
only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spir-
itual senses and the testimony of the material
senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and
flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the un-
derstanding of divine Love.
Superstition and understanding can never combine.
When the final physical and moral effects of Christian
Science are fully apprehended, the conflict between truth
and error, understanding and belief, Science and material
sense, foreshadowed by the prophets and inaugurated
by Jesus, will cease, and spiritual harmony reign. The
lightnings and thunderbolts of error may burst and flash
till the cloud is cleared and the tumult dies away in the
distance. Then the raindrops of divinity refresh the
earth. As St. Paul says: "There remaineth therefore
a rest to the people of God" (of Spirit).
The chief stones in the temple
288:20
The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are
to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God,
good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not
to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and
cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject
to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no ma-
terial life, and no death.
The Christ-element
288:27
Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal
man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses.
The Christ-element in the Messiah made him
the Way-shower, Truth and Life.
288:31
The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have
learned from error, and man's real existence as a child
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