Chapter IV - Christian Science Versus Spiritualism
Poor post-mortem evidence
81:1
There is not so much evidence to prove intercommuni-
There is not so much evidence to prove intercommuni-
cation between the so-called dead and the living, as there
is to show the sick that matter suffers and has
sensation; yet this latter evidence is destroyed by
Mind-science. If Spiritualists understood the
Science of being, their belief in mediumship would vanish.
No proof of immortality
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At the very best and on its own theories, spiritualism
At the very best and on its own theories, spiritualism
can only prove that certain individuals have a continued
existence after death and maintain their affili-
ation with mortal flesh; but this fact affords
no certainty of everlasting life. A man's assertion that
he is immortal no more proves him to be so, than the op-
posite assertion, that he is mortal, would prove immor-
tality a lie. Nor is the case improved when alleged spirits
teach immortality. Life, Love, Truth, is the only proof
of immortality.
Mind's manifestations immortal
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Man in the likeness of God as revealed in Science can-
Man in the likeness of God as revealed in Science can-
not help being immortal. Though the grass seemeth to
wither and the flower to fade, they reappear.
Erase the figures which express number, silence
the tones of music, give to the worms the body
called man, and yet the producing, governing, divine
Principle lives on, – in the case of man as truly as in
the case of numbers and of music, – despite the so-called
laws of matter, which define man as mortal. Though
the inharmony resulting from material sense hides the
harmony of Science, inharmony cannot destroy the divine
Principle of Science. In Science, man's immortality de-
pends upon that of God, good, and follows as a necessary
consequence of the immortality of good.
Reading thoughts
81:31
That somebody, somewhere, must have known the
That somebody, somewhere, must have known the
deceased person, supposed to be the communicator, is
82:1
evident, and it is as easy to read distant thoughts as near.
evident, and it is as easy to read distant thoughts as near.
We think of an absent friend as easily as we do of one
present. It is no more difficult to read the
absent mind than it is to read the present.
Chaucer wrote centuries ago, yet we still read his thought
in his verse. What is classic study, but discernment of
the minds of Homer and Virgil, of whose personal exist-
ence we may be in doubt?
Impossible intercommunion
82:9
If spiritual life has been won by the departed, they
If spiritual life has been won by the departed, they
cannot return to material existence, because different
states of consciousness are involved, and one
person cannot exist in two different states of
consciousness at the same time. In sleep we
do not communicate with the dreamer by our side despite
his physical proximity, because both of us are either un-
conscious or are wandering in our dreams through differ-
ent mazes of consciousness.
82:18
In like manner it would follow, even if our departed
In like manner it would follow, even if our departed
friends were near us and were in as conscious a state of
existence as before the change we call death, that their
state of consciousness must be different from ours. We
are not in their state, nor are they in the mental realm
in which we dwell. Communion between them and
ourselves would be prevented by this difference. The
mental states are so unlike, that intercommunion is as
impossible as it would be between a mole and a human
being. Different dreams and different awakenings be-
token a differing consciousness. When wandering in
Australia, do we look for help to the Esquimaux in their
snow huts?
82:31
In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a
In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a
greater development of power, it is wise earnestly to