Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter IX - Creation

 

No material creation
256:1
Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must
yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of ac-
tion, thought rises from the material sense to
the spiritual, from the scholastic to the in-
spirational, and from the mortal to the immortal. All
things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the
creator. Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and
Mother of the universe, including man.
Tritheism impossible
256:9
The theory of three persons in one God (that is, a per-
sonal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polythe-
ism, rather than the one ever-present I AM.
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord."
No divine corporeality
256:13
The everlasting I AM is not bounded nor compressed
within the narrow limits of physical humanity, nor can
He be understood aright through mortal con-
cepts. The precise form of God must be of
small importance in comparison with the sublime ques-
tion, What is infinite Mind or divine Love?
256:19
Who is it that demands our obedience? He who, in
the language of Scripture, "doeth according to His will
in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the
earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him,
What doest Thou?"
256:24
No form nor physical combination is adequate to rep-
resent infinite Love. A finite and material sense of God
leads to formalism and narrowness; it chills the spirit of
Christianity.
Limitless Mind
256:28
A limitless Mind cannot proceed from physical limita-
tions. Finiteness cannot present the idea or the vast-
ness of infinity. A mind originating from a
finite or material source must be limited and
finite. Infinite Mind is the creator, and creation is the
257:1
infinite image or idea emanating from this Mind. If
Mind is within and without all things, then all is Mind;
and this definition is scientific.
Matter is not substance
257:4
If matter, so-called, is substance, then Spirit, matter's
unlikeness, must be shadow; and shadow cannot produce
substance. The theory that Spirit is not the
only substance and creator is pantheistic het-
erodoxy, which ultimates in sickness, sin, and death; it is
the belief in a bodily soul and a material mind, a soul
governed by the body and a mind in matter. This be-
lief is shallow pantheism.
257:12
Mind creates His own likeness in ideas, and the sub-
stance of an idea is very far from being the supposed sub-
stance of non-intelligent matter. Hence the Father Mind
is not the father of matter. The material senses and
human conceptions would translate spiritual ideas into
material beliefs, and would say that an anthropomorphic
God, instead of infinite Principle, – in other words, divine
Love, – is the father of the rain, "who hath begotten the
drops of dew," who bringeth "forth Mazzaroth in his sea-
son," and guideth "Arcturus with his sons."
Inexhaustible divine Love
257:22
Finite mind manifests all sorts of errors, and thus
proves the material theory of mind in matter to be the
antipode of Mind. Who hath found finite life
or love sufficient to meet the demands of human
want and woe, – to still the desires, to satisfy the aspira-
tions? Infinite Mind cannot be limited to a finite form,
or Mind would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible
Love, eternal Life, omnipotent Truth.
Infinite physique impossible
257:30
It would require an infinite form to contain infinite
Mind. Indeed, the phrase infinite form involves a con-
tradiction of terms. Finite man cannot be the image and
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