Chapter IV - Christian Science Versus Spiritualism
Opposing conditions
74:3
To be on communicable terms with Spirit, persons must
To be on communicable terms with Spirit, persons must
be free from organic bodies; and their return to a mate-
rial condition, after having once left it, would
be as impossible as would be the restoration
to its original condition of the acorn, already absorbed
into a sprout which has risen above the soil. The seed
which has germinated has a new form and state of exist-
ence. When here or hereafter the belief of life in matter
is extinct, the error which has held the belief dissolves
with the belief, and never returns to the old condition.
No correspondence nor communion can exist between
persons in such opposite dreams as the belief of having
died and left a material body and the belief of still living
in an organic, material body.
Bridgeless division
74:17
The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect,
The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect,
is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to
fraternize with or control the worm. Such
a backward transformation is impossible in
Science. Darkness and light, infancy and manhood,
sickness and health, are opposites, – different beliefs,
which never blend. Who will say that infancy can utter
the ideas of manhood, that darkness can represent light,
that we are in Europe when we are in the opposite hemi-
sphere? There is no bridge across the gulf which divides
two such opposite conditions as the spiritual, or incor-
poreal, and the physical, or corporeal.
74:29
In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step,
In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step,
never a return to positions outgrown. The so-called dead
and living cannot commune together, for they are in
separate states of existence, or consciousness.
Unscientific investiture
75:1
This simple truth lays bare the mistaken assumption
This simple truth lays bare the mistaken assumption
that man dies as matter but comes to life as spirit. The
so-called dead, in order to reappear to those
still in the existence cognized by the physical
senses, would need to be tangible and material, – to have
a material investiture, – or the material senses could take
no cognizance of the so-called dead.
75:8
Spiritualism would transfer men from the spiritual sense
Spiritualism would transfer men from the spiritual sense
of existence back into its material sense. This gross mate-
rialism is scientifically impossible, since to infinite Spirit
there can be no matter.
Raising the dead
75:12
Jesus said of Lazarus: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth;
Jesus said of Lazarus: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth;
but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Jesus
restored Lazarus by the understanding that
Lazarus had never died, not by an admis-
sion that his body had died and then lived again. Had
Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his
body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of
belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have
resuscitated it.
75:21
When you can waken yourself or others out of the belief
When you can waken yourself or others out of the belief
that all must die, you can then exercise Jesus' spiritual
power to reproduce the presence of those who have thought
they died, – but not otherwise.
Vision of the dying
75:25
There is one possible moment, when those living on the
There is one possible moment, when those living on the
earth and those called dead, can commune together, and
that is the moment previous to the transition,
– the moment when the link between their op-
posite beliefs is being sundered. In the vestibule through
which we pass from one dream to another dream, or
when we awake from earth's sleep to the grand verities
of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of those