Chapter XIV - Recapitulation
Error only ephemeral
485:1
Answer. – If error is necessary to define or to reveal
Answer. – If error is necessary to define or to reveal
Truth, the answer is yes; but not otherwise. Material
sense is an absurd phrase, for matter has no
sensation. Science declares that Mind, not
matter, sees, hears, feels, speaks. Whatever contradicts
this statement is the false sense, which ever betrays
mortals into sickness, sin, and death. If the unimpor-
tant and evil appear, only soon to disappear because
of their uselessness or their iniquity, then these ephem-
eral views of error ought to be obliterated by Truth.
Why malign Christian Science for instructing mortals how
to make sin, disease, and death appear more and more
unreal?
Scientific translations
485:14
Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not
Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not
to thwart the spiritual ultimate of all things, but come
naturally into Spirit through better health and
morals and as the result of spiritual growth.
Not death, but the understanding of Life, makes man im-
mortal. The belief that life can be in matter or soul in
body, and that man springs from dust or from an egg,
is the result of the mortal error which Christ, or Truth,
destroys by fulfilling the spiritual law of being, in which
man is perfect, even as the "Father which is in heaven
is perfect." If thought yields its dominion to other
powers, it cannot outline on the body its own beautiful
images, but it effaces them and delineates foreign agents,
called disease and sin.
Material beliefs
485:28
The heathen gods of mythology controlled war and
The heathen gods of mythology controlled war and
agriculture as much as nerves control sensation or
muscles measure strength. To say that
strength is in matter, is like saying that the
power is in the lever. The notion of any life or intelli-
486:1
gence in matter is without foundation in fact, and you
gence in matter is without foundation in fact, and you
can have no faith in falsehood when you have learned
falsehood's true nature.
Sense versus Soul
486:4
Suppose one accident happens to the eye, another to
Suppose one accident happens to the eye, another to
the ear, and so on, until every corporeal sense is quenched.
What is man's remedy? To die, that he may
regain these senses? Even then he must gain
spiritual understanding and spiritual sense in order to
possess immortal consciousness. Earth's preparatory
school must be improved to the utmost. In reality man
never dies. The belief that he dies will not establish his
scientific harmony. Death is not the result of Truth but
of error, and one error will not correct another.
Death an error
486:14
Jesus proved by the prints of the nails, that his body
Jesus proved by the prints of the nails, that his body
was the same immediately after death as before. If death
restores sight, sound, and strength to man,
then death is not an enemy but a better friend
than Life. Alas for the blindness of belief, which makes
harmony conditional upon death and matter, and yet
supposes Mind unable to produce harmony! So long
as this error of belief remains, mortals will continue mor-
tal in belief and subject to chance and change.
Permanent sensibility
486:23
Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are
Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are
eternal. They cannot be lost. Their reality and immor-
tality are in Spirit and understanding, not in
matter, – hence their permanence. If this
were not so, man would be speedily annihilated. If the
five corporeal senses were the medium through which
to understand God, then palsy, blindness, and deafness
would place man in a terrible situation, where he would
be like those "having no hope, and without God in the
world;" but as a matter of fact, these calamities often