Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter XIV - Recapitulation

 

The sole governor
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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
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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
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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.
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The relations of God and man, divine Principle and
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.)
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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
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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-
482:1
tion of the word sense for soul gives the exact meaning in
a majority of cases.
Soul defined
482:3
Human thought has adulterated the meaning of the
word soul through the hypothesis that soul is both an evil
and a good intelligence, resident in matter.
The proper use of the word soul can always
be gained by substituting the word God, where the deific
meaning is required. In other cases, use the word sense,
and you will have the scientific signification. As used
in Christian Science, Soul is properly the synonym of
Spirit, or God; but out of Science, soul is identical with
sense, with material sensation.
Sonship of Jesus
482:13
Question. – Is it important to understand these ex-
planations in order to heal the sick?
Answer. – It is, since Christ is "the way" and the
truth casting out all error. Jesus called himself "the
Son of man," but not the son of Joseph. As
woman is but a species of the genera, he was
literally the Son of Man. Jesus was the highest human
concept of the perfect man. He was inseparable from
Christ, the Messiah, – the divine idea of God outside
the flesh. This enabled Jesus to demonstrate his con-
trol over matter. Angels announced to the Wisemen of
old this dual appearing, and angels whisper it, through
faith, to the hungering heart in every age.
Sickness erroneous
482:26
Sickness is part of the error which Truth casts out.
Error will not expel error. Christian Science is the law
of Truth, which heals the sick, on the basis
of the one Mind or God. It can heal in no
other way, since the human, mortal mind so-called is not
a healer, but causes the belief in disease.
True healing transcendent
483:1
Then comes the question, how do drugs, hygiene, and
animal magnetism heal? It may be affirmed that they
do not heal, but only relieve suffering tempo-
rarily, exchanging one disease for another.
We classify disease as error, which nothing but Truth or
Mind can heal, and this Mind must be divine, not human.
Mind transcends all other power, and will ultimately su-
persede all other means in healing. In order to heal by
Science, you must not be ignorant of the moral and spir-
itual demands of Science nor disobey them. Moral igno-
rance or sin affects your demonstration, and hinders its
approach to the standard in Christian Science.
Terms adopted by the author
483:13
After the author's sacred discovery, she affixed the
name "Science" to Christianity, the name "error" to
corporeal sense, and the name "substance" to
Mind. Science has called the world to battle
over this issue and its demonstration, which
heals the sick, destroys error, and reveals the universal
harmony. To those natural Christian Scientists, the an-
cient worthies, and to Christ Jesus, God certainly revealed
the spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute letter.
Science the way
483:22
Because the Science of Mind seems to bring into dis-
honor the ordinary scientific schools, which wrestle with
material observations alone, this Science has
met with opposition; but if any system honors
God, it ought to receive aid, not opposition, from all think-
ing persons. And Christian Science does honor God as
no other theory honors Him, and it does this in the way
of His appointing, by doing many wonderful works
through the divine name and nature. One must fulfil
one's mission without timidity or dissimulation, for to be
well done, the work must be done unselfishly. Christianity
484:1
will never be based on a divine Principle and so found to
be unerring, until its absolute Science is reached. When
this is accomplished, neither pride, prejudice, bigotry,
nor envy can wash away its foundation, for it is built upon
the rock, Christ.
Mindless methods
484:6
Question. – Does Christian Science, or metaphysical
healing, include medication, material hygiene, mesmer-
ism, hypnotism, theosophy, or spiritualism?
Answer. – Not one of them is included in it. In di-
vine Science, the supposed laws of matter yield to the
law of Mind. What are termed natural
science and material laws are the objective
states of mortal mind. The physical universe expresses
the conscious and unconscious thoughts of mortals.
Physical force and mortal mind are one. Drugs and
hygiene oppose the supremacy of the divine Mind.
Drugs and inert matter are unconscious, mindless. Cer-
tain results, supposed to proceed from drugs, are really
caused by the faith in them which the false human con-
sciousness is educated to feel.
Animal magnetism error
484:21
Mesmerism is mortal, material illusion. Animal mag-
netism is the voluntary or involuntary action of error
in all its forms; it is the human antipode
of divine Science. Science must triumph
over material sense, and Truth over error, thus putting
an end to the hypotheses involved in all false theories
and practices.
Error only ephemeral
484:28
Question. – Is materiality the concomitant of spirit-
uality, and is material sense a necessary preliminary to
the understanding and expression of Spirit?
485:1
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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