Chapter XI - Some Objections Answered
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Christ has not yet come; the Christian believes that
Christ has not yet come; the Christian believes that
Christ is God. Here Christian Science intervenes, ex-
plains these doctrinal points, cancels the disagreement,
and settles the question. Christ, as the true spiritual idea,
is the ideal of God now and forever, here and everywhere.
The Jew who believes in the First Commandment is a
monotheist; he has one omnipresent God. Thus the Jew
unites with the Christian's doctrine that God is come and
is present now and forever. The Christian who believes
in the First Commandment is a monotheist. Thus he
virtually unites with the Jew's belief in one God, and
recognizes that Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself
declared, but is the Son of God. This declaration of
Jesus, understood, conflicts not at all with another of his
sayings: "I and my Father are one," – that is, one in
quality, not in quantity. As a drop of water is one with
the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God
and man, Father and son, are one in being. The Scrip-
ture reads: "For in Him we live, and move, and have
our being."
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I have revised Science and Health only to give a
I have revised Science and Health only to give a
clearer and fuller expression of its original meaning. Spir-
itual ideas unfold as we advance. A human perception of
divine Science, however limited, must be correct in order
to be Science and subject to demonstration. A germ of in-
finite Truth, though least in the kingdom of heaven is the
higher hope on earth, but it will be rejected and reviled
until God prepares the soil for the seed. That which
when sown bears immortal fruit, enriches mankind only
when it is understood, – hence the many readings given
the Scriptures, and the requisite revisions of Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures.
Chapter XII
Christian Science Practice
Why art thou cast down, O my soul [sense]?
And why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him,
Who is the health of my countenance and my God. – PSALMS.
And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they
cast out devils: they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up
serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;
they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. – JESUS.
A gospel narrative
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IT is related in the seventh chapter of Luke's Gospel
IT is related in the seventh chapter of Luke's Gospel
that Jesus was once the honored guest of a certain
Pharisee, by name Simon, though he was quite unlike
Simon the disciple. While they were at meat, an unusual
incident occurred, as if to interrupt the scene
of Oriental festivity. A "strange woman"
came in. Heedless of the fact that she was debarred from
such a place and such society, especially under the stern
rules of rabbinical law, as positively as if she were a Hin-
doo pariah intruding upon the household of a high-caste
Brahman, this woman (Mary Magdalene, as she has
since been called) approached Jesus. According to the
custom of those days, he reclined on a couch with his
head towards the table and his bare feet away from it.
It was therefore easy for the Magdalen to come behind