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

 

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
289:1
of God comes to light. Truth demonstrated is eternal
life. Mortal man can never rise from the temporal debris
of error, belief in sin, sickness, and death, until he learns
that God is the only Life. The belief that life and sensa-
tion are in the body should be overcome by the under-
standing of what constitutes man as the image of God.
Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh.
Wickedness is not man
289:8
A wicked mortal is not the idea of God. He is little
else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin,
lust, hatred, envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life
abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life
and life's idea, Truth and Truth's idea, never make men
sick, sinful, or mortal.
Death but an illusion
289:14
The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still
overcomes death proves the "king of terrors" to be but
a mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys
with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this
shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a
mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe
there is no death-process.
289:21
The belief that matter has life results, by the universal
law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree,
and flower are supposed to die; but the fact remains,
that God's universe is spiritual and immortal.
Spiritual offspring
289:25
The spiritual fact and the material belief of things are
contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the
material must be untrue. Life is not in matter.
Therefore it cannot be said to pass out of mat-
ter. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Spirit and
all things spiritual are the real and eternal.
289:31
Man is not the offspring of flesh, but of Spirit, – of
Life, not of matter. Because Life is God, Life must be
290:1
eternal, self-existent. Life is the everlasting I AM, the Be-
ing who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.
Death no advantage
290:3
If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man's being
are not in the least understood before what is termed death
overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher spir-
itually in the scale of existence on account of
that single experience, but will remain as material as be-
fore the transition, still seeking happiness through a ma-
terial, instead of through a spiritual sense of life, and from
selfish and inferior motives. That Life or Mind is finite
and physical or is manifested through brain and nerves,
is false. Hence Truth comes to destroy this error and
its effects, – sickness, sin, and death. To the spiritual
class, relates the Scripture: "On such the second death
hath no power."
Future purification
290:16
If the change called death destroyed the belief in sin,
sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the mo-
ment of dissolution, and be forever permanent;
but this is not so. Perfection is gained only
by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be un-
righteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, re-
moves all ignorance and sin.
Sin is punished
290:23
The sin and error which possess us at the instant of
death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the
death of these errors. To be wholly spiritual,
man must be sinless, and he becomes thus only
when he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain
in the act, does not thereby forsake sin. He is no more
spiritual for believing that his body died and learning that
his cruel mind died not. His thoughts are no purer until
evil is disarmed by good. His body is as material as his
mind, and vice versa.
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
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