Chapter 14: 'Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy

Chapter XIV

Recapitulation

For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon

line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little. – ISAIAH.

465:1
THIS chapter is from the first edition of the author's

class-book, copyrighted in 1870. After much labor

and increased spiritual understanding, she revised that

treatise for this volume in 1875. Absolute Christian

Science pervades its statements, to elucidate scientific

metaphysics.

465:7
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

465:8
Question. – What is God?

Answer. – God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite

Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.

465:11
Question. – Are these terms synonymous?

Answer. – They are. They refer to one absolute God.

They are also intended to express the nature, essence, and

wholeness of Deity. The attributes of God are justice,

mercy, wisdom, goodness, and so on.

465:16
Question. – Is there more than one God or Principle?

Answer. – There is not. Principle and its idea is one,

and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-

466:1
present Being, and His reflection is man and the universe.

Omni is adopted from the Latin adjective signifying all.

Hence God combines all-power or potency, all-science

or true knowledge, all-presence. The varied manifesta-

tions of Christian Science indicate Mind, never matter,

and have one Principle.

Real versus unreal

466:7
Question. – What are spirits and souls?

Answer. – To human belief, they are personalities

constituted of mind and matter, life and death, truth and

error, good and evil; but these contrasting

pairs of terms represent contraries, as Chris-

tian Science reveals, which neither dwell together nor

assimilate. Truth is immortal; error is mortal. Truth

is limitless; error is limited. Truth is intelligent; error

is non-intelligent. Moreover, Truth is real, and error is

unreal. This last statement contains the point you will

most reluctantly admit, although first and last it is the

most important to understand.

Mankind redeemed

466:19
The term souls or spirits is as improper as the term

gods. Soul or Spirit signifies Deity and nothing else.

There is no finite soul nor spirit. Soul or

Spirit means only one Mind, and cannot be

rendered in the plural. Heathen mythology and Jewish

theology have perpetuated the fallacy that intelligence,

soul, and life can be in matter; and idolatry and ritualism

are the outcome of all man-made beliefs. The Science

of Christianity comes with fan in hand to separate the

chaff from the wheat. Science will declare God aright,

and Christianity will demonstrate this declaration and

its divine Principle, making mankind better physically,

morally, and spiritually.

Two chief commands

467:1
Question. – What are the demands of the Science of

Soul?

Answer. – The first demand of this Science is, "Thou

shalt have no other gods before me." This me is Spirit.

Therefore the command means this: Thou shalt

have no intelligence, no life, no substance, no

truth, no love, but that which is spiritual. The second

is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

It should be thoroughly understood that all men have one

Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love.

Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this fact

becomes apparent, war will cease and the true brother-

hood of man will be established. Having no other gods,

turning to no other but the one perfect Mind to guide

him, man is the likeness of God, pure and eternal, hav-

ing that Mind which was also in Christ.

Soul not confined in body

467:17
Science reveals Spirit, Soul, as not in the body, and

God as not in man but as reflected by man. The greater

cannot be in the lesser. The belief that the

greater can be in the lesser is an error that

works ill. This is a leading point in the Science of Soul,

that Principle is not in its idea. Spirit, Soul, is not

confined in man, and is never in matter. We reason im-

perfectly from effect to cause, when we conclude that

matter is the effect of Spirit; but a priori reasoning

shows material existence to be enigmatical. Spirit gives

the true mental idea. We cannot interpret Spirit, Mind,

through matter. Matter neither sees, hears, nor feels.

Sinlessness of Mind, Soul

467:29
Reasoning from cause to effect in the Science of Mind,

we begin with Mind, which must be under-

stood through the idea which expresses it and

cannot be learned from its opposite, matter. Thus we

468:1
arrive at Truth, or intelligence, which evolves its own

unerring idea and never can be coordinate with human

illusions. If Soul sinned, it would be mortal, for sin is

mortality's self, because it kills itself. If Truth is im-

mortal, error must be mortal, because error is unlike

Truth. Because Soul is immortal, Soul cannot sin, for

sin is not the eternal verity of being.

468:8
Question. – What is the scientific statement of being?

Answer. – There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor sub-

stance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite

manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal

Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and

eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is

God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore

man is not material; he is spiritual.

Spiritual synonyms

468:16
Question. – What is substance?

Answer. – Substance is that which is eternal and inca-

pable of discord and decay. Truth, Life, and Love are

substance, as the Scriptures use this word in

Hebrews: "The substance of things hoped

for, the evidence of things not seen." Spirit, the synonym

of Mind, Soul, or God, is the only real substance. The

spiritual universe, including individual man, is a com-

pound idea, reflecting the divine substance of Spirit.

Eternity of Life

468:25
Question. – What is Life?

Answer. – Life is divine Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit.

Life is without beginning and without end.

Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of

Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases in

proportion as the other is recognized. Time is finite;

469:1
eternity is forever infinite. Life is neither in nor of mat-

ter. What is termed matter is unknown to Spirit, which

includes in itself all substance and is Life eternal. Mat-

ter is a human concept. Life is divine Mind. Life is not

limited. Death and finiteness are unknown to Life. If

Life ever had a beginning, it would also have an ending.

469:7
Question. – What is intelligence?

Answer. – Intelligence is omniscience, omnipresence,

and omnipotence. It is the primal and eternal quality

of infinite Mind, of the triune Principle, – Life, Truth,

and Love, – named God.

True sense of infinitude

469:12
Question. – What is Mind?

Answer. – Mind is God. The exterminator of error

is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and

that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind

– called devil or evil – is not Mind, is not

Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality. There

can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and

if mortals claimed no other Mind and accepted no other,

sin would be unknown. We can have but one Mind, if

that one is infinite. We bury the sense of infinitude,

when we admit that, although God is infinite, evil has a

place in this infinity, for evil can have no place, where all

space is filled with God.

The sole governor

469:25
We lose the high signification of omnipotence, when

after admitting that God, or good, is omnipresent and

has all-power, we still believe there is another

power, named evil. This belief that there

is more than one mind is as pernicious to divine theology

as are ancient mythology and pagan idolatry. With

470:1
one Father, even God, the whole family of man would

be brethren; and with one Mind and that God, or good,

the brotherhood of man would consist of Love and Truth,

and have unity of Principle and spiritual power which

constitute divine Science. The supposed existence of

more than one mind was the basic error of idolatry. This

error assumed the loss of spiritual power, the loss of the

spiritual presence of Life as infinite Truth without an

unlikeness, and the loss of Love as ever present and

universal.

The divine standard of perfection

470:11
Divine Science explains the abstract statement that

there is one Mind by the following self-evident propo-

sition: If God, or good, is real, then evil, the

unlikeness of God, is unreal. And evil can

only seem to be real by giving reality to the

unreal. The children of God have but one Mind. How

can good lapse into evil, when God, the Mind of man,

never sins? The standard of perfection was originally

God and man. Has God taken down His own standard,

and has man fallen?

Indestructible relationship

470:21
God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle

of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection,

man, remains perfect. Man is the expression

of God's being. If there ever was a moment

when man did not express the divine perfec-

tion, then there was a moment when man did not express

God, and consequently a time when Deity was unex-

pressed – that is, without entity. If man has lost per-

fection, then he has lost his perfect Principle, the divine

Mind. If man ever existed without this perfect Principle

or Mind, then man's existence was a myth.

470:32
The relations of God and man, divine Principle and

471:1
idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows

no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine

order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He cre-

ates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged

in its eternal history.

Celestial evidence

471:6
The unlikeness of Truth, – named error, – the op-

posite of Science, and the evidence before the five cor-

poreal senses, afford no indication of the grand

facts of being; even as these so-called senses

receive no intimation of the earth's motions or of the

science of astronomy, but yield assent to astronomical

propositions on the authority of natural science.

471:13
The facts of divine Science should be admitted, –

although the evidence as to these facts is not supported

by evil, by matter, or by material sense, – because the

evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by

spiritual sense. Man is, and forever has been, God's re-

flection. God is infinite, therefore ever present, and

there is no other power nor presence. Hence the spirit-

uality of the universe is the only fact of creation. "Let

God be true, but every [material] man a liar."

The test of experience

471:22
Question. – Are doctrines and creeds a benefit to man?

Answer. – The author subscribed to an orthodox

creed in early youth, and tried to adhere to it until she

caught the first gleam of that which inter-

prets God as above mortal sense. This

view rebuked human beliefs, and gave the spiritual im-

port, expressed through Science, of all that proceeds

from the divine Mind. Since then her highest creed has

been divine Science, which, reduced to human apprehen-

sion, she has named Christian Science. This Science

472:1
teaches man that God is the only Life, and that this Life

is Truth and Love; that God is to be understood, adored,

and demonstrated; that divine Truth casts out supposi-

tional error and heals the sick.

God's law destroys evil

472:5
The way which leads to Christian Science is straight

and narrow. God has set His signet upon Science, mak-

ing it coordinate with all that is real and only

with that which is harmonious and eternal.

Sickness, sin, and death, being inharmonious, do not

originate in God nor belong to His government. His

law, rightly understood, destroys them. Jesus furnished

proofs of these statements.

Evanescent materiality

472:13
Question. – What is error?

Answer. – Error is a supposition that pleasure and

pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in mat-

ter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's

faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth.

Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal

because untrue. It is that which seemeth to be and is not.

If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should

have a self-evident absurdity – namely, erroneous truth.

Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

Unrealities that seem real

472:23
Question. – Is there no sin?

Answer. – All reality is in God and His creation, har-

monious and eternal. That which He creates is good,

and He makes all that is made. Therefore

the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is

the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring

belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not

true, because they are not of God. We learn in Christian

473:1
Science that all inharmony of mortal mind or body is illu-

sion, possessing neither reality nor identity though seeming

to be real and identical.

Christ the ideal Truth

473:4
The Science of Mind disposes of all evil. Truth, God,

is not the father of error. Sin, sickness, and death are

to be classified as effects of error. Christ

came to destroy the belief of sin. The God‑

principle is omnipresent and omnipotent. God is every-

where, and nothing apart from Him is present or has

power. Christ is the ideal Truth, that comes to heal

sickness and sin through Christian Science, and attributes

all power to God. Jesus is the name of the man who,

more than all other men, has presented Christ, the true

idea of God, healing the sick and the sinning and destroy-

ing the power of death. Jesus is the human man, and

Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of Jesus the

Christ.

Jesus not God

473:18
In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced

the teaching and practice of Christianity, affording the

proof of Christianity's truth and love; but to

reach his example and to test its unerring Sci-

ence according to his rule, healing sickness, sin, and

death, a better understanding of God as divine Prin-

ciple, Love, rather than personality or the man Jesus, is

required.

Jesus not understood

473:26
Jesus established what he said by demonstration,

thus making his acts of higher importance than his

words. He proved what he taught. This

is the Science of Christianity. Jesus proved

the Principle, which heals the sick and casts out error,

to be divine. Few, however, except his students un-

derstood in the least his teachings and their glorious

474:1
proofs, – namely, that Life, Truth, and Love (the Prin-

ciple of this unacknowledged Science) destroy all error,

evil, disease, and death.

Miracles rejected

474:4
The reception accorded to Truth in the early Chris-

tian era is repeated to-day. Whoever introduces the

Science of Christianity will be scoffed at and

scourged with worse cords than those which

cut the flesh. To the ignorant age in which it first

appears, Science seems to be a mistake, – hence the

misinterpretation and consequent maltreatment which

it receives. Christian marvels (and marvel is the sim-

ple meaning of the Greek word rendered miracle in the

New Testament) will be misunderstood and misused

by many, until the glorious Principle of these marvels is

gained.

Divine fulfilment

474:16
If sin, sickness, and death are as real as Life, Truth,

and Love, then they must all be from the same source;

God must be their author. Now Jesus came

to destroy sin, sickness, and death yet the

Scriptures aver, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

Is it possible, then, to believe that the evils which Jesus

lived to destroy are real or the offspring of the divine

will?

Truth destroys falsity

474:24
Despite the hallowing influence of Truth in the de-

struction of error, must error still be immortal? Truth

spares all that is true. If evil is real, Truth

must make it so; but error, not Truth, is

the author of the unreal, and the unreal vanishes,

while all that is real is eternal. The apostle says that

the mission of Christ is to "destroy the works of the

devil." Truth destroys falsity and error, for light and

darkness cannot dwell together. Light extinguishes the

475:1
darkness, and the Scripture declares that there is "no

night there." To Truth there is no error, – all is Truth.

To infinite Spirit there is no matter, – all is Spirit, divine

Principle and its idea.

Fleshly factors unreal

475:5
Question. – What is man?

Answer. – Man is not matter; he is not made up of

brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The

Scriptures inform us that man is made in

the image and likeness of God. Matter is

not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so

unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and be-

cause he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so under-

stood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of

Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of

God, including all right ideas; the generic term for

all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious

identity of being as found in Science, in which man is

the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal;

that which has no separate mind from God; that which

has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which

possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his

own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker.

475:23
And God said: "Let us make man in our image, after

our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish

of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,

and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that

creepeth upon the earth."

Man unfallen

475:28
Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The

real man cannot depart from holiness, nor

can God, by whom man is evolved, engender

the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not

476:1
God's man. Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals.

They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil,

which declares that man begins in dust or as a material

embryo. In divine Science, God and the real man are

inseparable as divine Principle and idea.

Mortals are not immortals

476:6
Error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed.

Error will cease to claim that soul is in body, that life

and intelligence are in matter, and that

this matter is man. God is the Principle of

man, and man is the idea of God. Hence man is not

mortal nor material. Mortals will disappear, and im-

mortals, or the children of God, will appear as the only

and eternal verities of man. Mortals are not fallen chil-

dren of God. They never had a perfect state of being,

which may subsequently be regained. They were, from

the beginning of mortal history, "conceived in sin and

brought forth in iniquity." Mortality is finally swallowed

up in immortality. Sin, sickness, and death must dis-

appear to give place to the facts which belong to immortal

man.

Imperishable identity

476:21
Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual

status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood.

Remember that the Scriptures say of mortal

man: "As for man, his days are as grass: as

a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind

passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall

know it no more."

The kingdom within

476:28
When speaking of God's children, not the children of

men, Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you;"

that is, Truth and Love reign in the real

man, showing that man in God's image is

unfallen and eternal. Jesus beheld in Science the per-

477:1
fect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal

man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour

saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man

healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom

of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy.

Man is not a material habitation for Soul; he is himself

spiritual. Soul, being Spirit, is seen in nothing imperfect

nor material.

Material body never God's idea

477:9
Whatever is material is mortal. To the five corporeal

senses, man appears to be matter and mind united; but

Christian Science reveals man as the idea of

God, and declares the corporeal senses to be

mortal and erring illusions. Divine Science

shows it to be impossible that a material body, though

interwoven with matter's highest stratum, misnamed

mind, should be man, – the genuine and perfect man,

the immortal idea of being, indestructible and eternal.

Were it otherwise, man would be annihilated.

Reflection of Spirit

477:19
Question. – What are body and Soul?

Answer. – Identity is the reflection of Spirit, the re-

flection in multifarious forms of the living Principle,

Love. Soul is the substance, Life, and intelli-

gence of man, which is individualized, but not

in matter. Soul can never reflect anything inferior to

Spirit.

Man inseparable from Spirit

477:26
Man is the expression of Soul. The Indians caught

some glimpses of the underlying reality, when

they called a certain beautiful lake "the smile

of the Great Spirit." Separated from man,

who expresses Soul, Spirit would be a nonentity; man,

divorced from Spirit, would lose his entity. But there is,

478:1
there can be, no such division, for man is coexistent with

God.

A vacant domicile

478:3
What evidence of Soul or of immortality have you

within mortality? Even according to the teachings of

natural science, man has never beheld Spirit

or Soul leaving a body or entering it. What

basis is there for the theory of indwelling spirit, except

the claim of mortal belief? What would be thought of

the declaration that a house was inhabited, and by a cer-

tain class of persons, when no such persons were ever seen

to go into the house or to come out of it, nor were they

even visible through the windows? Who can see a soul

in the body?

Harmonious functions

478:14
Question. – Does brain think, and do nerves feel, and

is there intelligence in matter?

Answer. – No, not if God is true and mortal man a

liar. The assertion that there can be pain or pleasure

in matter is erroneous. That body is most

harmonious in which the discharge of the nat-

ural functions is least noticeable. How can intelligence

dwell in matter when matter is non-intelligent and

brain-lobes cannot think? Matter cannot perform the

functions of Mind. Error says, "I am man;" but this

belief is mortal and far from actual. From beginning

to end, whatever is mortal is composed of material hu-

man beliefs and of nothing else. That only is real which

reflects God. St. Paul said, "But when it pleased God,

who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me

by His grace, . . . I conferred not with flesh and blood."

Immortal birthright

478:30
Mortal man is really a self-contradictory phrase, for

man is not mortal, "neither indeed can be;" man is im-

479:1
mortal. If a child is the offspring of physical sense and

not of Soul, the child must have a material, not a spirit-

ual origin. With what truth, then, could the

Scriptural rejoicing be uttered by any mother,

"I have gotten a man from the Lord"? On the con-

trary, if aught comes from God, it cannot be mortal and

material; it must be immortal and spiritual.

Matter's supposed selfhood

479:8
Matter is neither self-existent nor a product of Spirit.

An image of mortal thought, reflected on the retina, is

all that the eye beholds. Matter cannot see,

feel, hear, taste, nor smell. It is not self‑

cognizant, – cannot feel itself, see itself, nor

understand itself. Take away so-called mortal mind,

which constitutes matter's supposed selfhood, and matter

can take no cognizance of matter. Does that which we

call dead ever see, hear, feel, or use any of the physical

senses?

Chaos and darkness

479:18
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the

earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and

darkness was upon the face of the deep."

(Genesis i. 1, 2.) In the vast forever, in the

Science and truth of being, the only facts are Spirit

and its innumerable creations. Darkness and chaos

are the imaginary opposites of light, understanding,

and eternal harmony, and they are the elements of

nothingness.

Spiritual reflection

479:27
We admit that black is not a color, because it reflects

no light. So evil should be denied identity or power,

because it has none of the divine hues. Paul

says: "For the invisible things of Him, from

the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being under-

stood by the things that are made." (Romans i. 20.)

480:1
When the substance of Spirit appears in Christian Sci-

ence, the nothingness of matter is recognized. Where

the spirit of God is, and there is no place where God is

not, evil becomes nothing, – the opposite of the some-

thing of Spirit. If there is no spiritual reflection, then

there remains only the darkness of vacuity and not a trace

of heavenly tints.

Harmony from Spirit

480:8
Nerves are an element of the belief that there is sensa-

tion in matter, whereas matter is devoid of sensation.

Consciousness, as well as action, is governed

by Mind, – is in God, the origin and gov-

ernor of all that Science reveals. Material sense has

its realm apart from Science in the unreal. Harmonious

action proceeds from Spirit, God. inharmony has no

Principle; its action is erroneous and presupposes man

to be in matter. Inharmony would make matter the

cause as well as the effect of intelligence, or Soul, thus

attempting to separate Mind from God.

Evil non-existent

480:19
Man is not God, and God is not man. Again, God,

or good, never made man capable of sin. It is the oppo-

site of good – that is, evil – which seems to

make men capable of wrong-doing. Hence,

evil is but an illusion, and it has no real basis. Evil is a

false belief. God is not its author. The supposititious

parent of evil is a lie.

Vapor and nothingness

480:26
The Bible declares: "All things were made by Him

[the divine Word]; and without Him was not anything,

made that was made." This is the eternal

verity of divine Science. If sin, sickness, and

death were understood as nothingness, they would dis-

appear. As vapor melts before the sun, so evil would

vanish before the reality of good. One must hide the

481:1
other. How important, then, to choose good as the

reality! Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing

else. God's being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and

boundless bliss. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is,

there is liberty." Like the archpriests of yore, man is

free "to enter into the holiest," – the realm of God.

The fruit forbidden

481:7
Material sense never helps mortals to understand

Spirit, God. Through spiritual sense only, man com-

prehends and loves Deity. The various con-

tradictions of the Science of Mind by the ma-

terial senses do not change the unseen Truth, which re-

mains forever intact. The forbidden fruit of knowledge,

against which wisdom warns man, is the testimony of

error, declaring existence to be at the mercy of death,

and good and evil to be capable of commingling. This

is the significance of the Scripture concerning this "tree

of the knowledge of good and evil," – this growth of

material belief, of which it is said: "In the day that thou

eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Human hypotheses

first assume the reality of sickness, sin, and death, and

then assume the necessity of these evils because of their

admitted actuality. These human verdicts are the pro-

curers of all discord.

Sense and pure Soul

481:24
If Soul sins, it must be mortal. Sin has the elements

of self-destruction. It cannot sustain itself. If sin is

supported, God must uphold it, and this is

impossible, since Truth cannot support error.

Soul is the divine Principle of man and never sins, –

hence the immortality of Soul. In Science we learn that

it is material sense, not Soul, which sins; and it will be

found that it is the sense of sin which is lost, and not a

sinful soul. When reading the Scriptures, the substitu-

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