Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter III - Marriage

 

64:1
Want of uniform justice is a crying evil caused by the
selfishness and inhumanity of man. Our forefathers
exercised their faith in the direction taught by the Apostle
James, when he said: "Pure religion and undefiled before
God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and
widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted
from the world."
Benevolence hindered
64:8
Pride, envy, or jealousy seems on most occasions to
be the master of ceremonies, ruling out primitive Chris-
tianity. When a man lends a helping hand
to some noble woman, struggling alone with
adversity, his wife should not say, "It is never well to
interfere with your neighbor's business." A wife is
sometimes debarred by a covetous domestic tyrant from
giving the ready aid her sympathy and charity would
afford.
Progressive development
64:17
Marriage should signify a union of hearts. Further-
more, the time cometh of which Jesus spake, when he
declared that in the resurrection there should
be no more marrying nor giving in marriage,
but man would be as the angels. Then shall Soul re-
joice in its own, in which passion has no part. Then
white-robed purity will unite in one person masculine wis-
dom and feminine love, spiritual understanding and per-
petual peace.
64:26
Until it is learned that God is the Father of all, mar-
riage will continue. Let not mortals permit a disregard
of law which might lead to a worse state of society than
now exists. Honesty and virtue ensure the stability of
the marriage covenant. Spirit will ultimately claim its
own, – all that really is, – and the voices of physical
sense will be forever hushed.
Blessing of Christ
65:1
Experience should be the school of virtue, and human
happiness should proceed from man's highest nature.
May Christ, Truth, be present at every bridal
altar to turn the water into wine and to give to
human life an inspiration by which man's spiritual and
eternal existence may be discerned.
Righteous foundations
65:7
If the foundations of human affection are consistent
with progress, they will be strong and enduring. Divorces
should warn the age of some fundamental error
in the marriage state. The union of the sexes
suffers fearful discord. To gain Christian Science and its
harmony, life should be more metaphysically regarded.
Powerless promises
65:13
The broadcast powers of evil so conspicuous to-day
show themselves in the materialism and sensualism of
the age, struggling against the advancing
spiritual era. Beholding the world's lack of
Christianity and the powerlessness of vows to make home
happy, the human mind will at length demand a higher
affection.
Transition and reform
65:20
There will ensue a fermentation over this as over many
other reforms, until we get at last the clear straining of
truth, and impurity and error are left among
the lees. The fermentation even of fluids is
not pleasant. An unsettled, transitional stage is never
desirable on its own account. Matrimony, which was once
a fixed fact among us, must lose its present slippery foot-
ing, and man must find permanence and peace in a more
spiritual adherence.
65:29
The mental chemicalization, which has brought con-
jugal infidelity to the surface, will assuredly throw off
this evil, and marriage will become purer when the scum
is gone.
66:1
Thou art right, immortal Shakespeare, great poet of
humanity:
66:3
Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
Salutary sorrow
66:6
Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff, –
a broken reed, which pierces the heart. We do not
half remember this in the sunshine of joy
and prosperity. Sorrow is salutary. Through
great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are
proofs of God's care. Spiritual development germi-
nates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes,
but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher
joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each suc-
cessive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine
goodness and love.
66:17
Amidst gratitude for conjugal felicity, it is well to re-
member how fleeting are human joys. Amidst conjugal
infelicity, it is well to hope, pray, and wait patiently on
divine wisdom to point out the path.
Patience is wisdom
66:21
Husbands and wives should never separate if there
is no Christian demand for it. It is better to await the
logic of events than for a wife precipitately
to leave her husband or for a husband to
leave his wife. If one is better than the other, as must
always be the case, the other pre-eminently needs good
company. Socrates considered patience salutary under
such circumstances, making his Xantippe a discipline for
his philosophy.
The gold and dross
66:30
Sorrow has its reward. It never leaves us
where it found us. The furnace separates
the gold from the dross that the precious metal may
67:1
be graven with the image of God. The cup our Father
hath given, shall we not drink it and learn the lessons
He teaches?
Weathering the storm
67:4
When the ocean is stirred by a storm, then the clouds
lower, the wind shrieks through the tightened shrouds,
and the waves lift themselves into mountains.
We ask the helmsman: "Do you know your
course? Can you steer safely amid the storm?" He
answers bravely, but even the dauntless seaman is not
sure of his safety; nautical science is not equal to the
Science of Mind. Yet, acting up to his highest under-
standing, firm at the post of duty, the mariner works on
and awaits the issue. Thus should we deport ourselves
on the seething ocean of sorrow. Hoping and work-
ing, one should stick to the wreck, until an irresistible
propulsion precipitates his doom or sunshine gladdens
the troubled sea.
Spiritual power
67:18
The notion that animal natures can possibly give force
to character is too absurd for consideration, when we
remember that through spiritual ascendency
our Lord and Master healed the sick, raised
the dead, and commanded even the winds and waves to
obey him. Grace and Truth are potent beyond all other
means and methods.
67:25
The lack of spiritual power in the limited demonstration
of popular Christianity does not put to silence the labor
of centuries. Spiritual, not corporeal, consciousness is
needed. Man delivered from sin, disease, and death
presents the true likeness or spiritual ideal.
Basis of true religion
67:30
Systems of religion and medicine treat of physical pains
and pleasures, but Jesus rebuked the suffering from any
such cause or effect. The epoch approaches when the
68:1
understanding of the truth of being will be the basis of
true religion. At present mortals progress slowly for
fear of being thought ridiculous. They are
slaves to fashion, pride, and sense. Some-
time we shall learn how Spirit, the great architect, has
created men and women in Science. We ought to weary
of the fleeting and false and to cherish nothing which
hinders our highest selfhood.
68:9
Jealousy is the grave of affection. The presence of
mistrust, where confidence is due, withers the flowers
of Eden and scatters love's petals to decay. Be not
in haste to take the vow "until death do us part."
Consider its obligations, its responsibilities, its rela-
tions to your growth and to your influence on other
lives.
Insanity and agamogenesis
68:16
I never knew more than one individual who believed
in agamogenesis; she was unmarried, a lovely charac-
ter, was suffering from incipient insanity, and
a Christian Scientist cured her. I have named
her case to individuals, when casting my bread upon
the waters, and it may have caused the good to ponder
and the evil to hatch their silly innuendoes and lies, since
salutary causes sometimes incur these effects. The per-
petuation of the floral species by bud or cell-division is
evident, but I discredit the belief that agamogenesis
applies to the human species.
God's creation intact
68:27
Christian Science presents unfoldment, not accretion;
it manifests no material growth from molecule to mind,
but an impartation of the divine Mind to man
and the universe. Proportionately as human
generation ceases, the unbroken links of eternal, har-
monious being will be spiritually discerned; and man,
69:1
not of the earth earthly but coexistent with God, will
appear. The scientific fact that man and the universe
are evolved from Spirit, and so are spiritual, is as fixed in
divine Science as is the proof that mortals gain the sense
of health only as they lose the sense of sin and disease.
Mortals can never understand God's creation while believ-
ing that man is a creator. God's children already created
will be cognized only as man finds the truth of being.
Thus it is that the real, ideal man appears in proportion
as the false and material disappears. No longer to marry
or to be "given in marriage" neither closes man's con-
tinuity nor his sense of increasing number in God's in-
finite plan. Spiritually to understand that there is but
one creator, God, unfolds all creation, confirms the Scrip-
tures, brings the sweet assurance of no parting, no pain,
and of man deathless and perfect and eternal.
69:17
If Christian Scientists educate their own offspring
spiritually, they can educate others spiritually and not
conflict with the scientific sense of God's creation. Some
day the child will ask his parent: "Do you keep the First
Commandment? Do you have one God and creator, or
is man a creator?" If the father replies, "God creates
man through man," the child may ask, "Do you teach
that Spirit creates materially, or do you declare that
Spirit is infinite, therefore matter is out of the ques-
tion?" Jesus said, "The children of this world marry,
and are given in marriage: But they which shall be ac-
counted worthy to obtain that world, and the resur-
rection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in
marriage."
Chapter IV
Christian Science Versus Spiritualism
And when they shall say unto you,
Seek unto them that have familiar spirits,
And unto wizards that peep and that mutter;
Should not a people seek unto their God? – ISAIAH.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never
see death. Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a
devil. – JOHN.
The infinite one Spirit
70:1
MORTAL existence is an enigma. Every day is a
mystery. The testimony of the corporeal senses
cannot inform us what is real and what is delusive, but
the revelations of Christian Science unlock the treasures
of Truth. Whatever is false or sinful can
never enter the atmosphere of Spirit. There
is but one Spirit. Man is never God, but spiritual man,
made in God's likeness, reflects God. In this scientific
reflection the Ego and the Father are inseparable. The
supposition that corporeal beings are spirits, or that there
are good and evil spirits, is a mistake.
Real and unreal identity
70:12
The divine Mind maintains all identities, from a blade
of grass to a star, as distinct and eternal. The
questions are: What are God's identities?
What is Soul? Does life or soul exist in the thing
formed?
71:1
Nothing is real and eternal, – nothing is Spirit, – but
God and His idea. Evil has no reality. It is neither
person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion
of material sense.
71:5
The identity, or idea, of all reality continues forever;
but Spirit, or the divine Principle of all, is not in Spirit's
formations. Soul is synonymous with Spirit, God, the
creative, governing, infinite Principle outside of finite form,
which forms only reflect.
Dream-lessons
71:10
Close your eyes, and you may dream that you see a
flower, – that you touch and smell it. Thus you learn
that the flower is a product of the so-called
mind, a formation of thought rather than of
matter. Close your eyes again, and you may see land-
scapes, men, and women. Thus you learn that these
also are images, which mortal mind holds and evolves
and which simulate mind, life, and intelligence. From
dreams also you learn that neither mortal mind nor
matter is the image or likeness of God, and that im-
mortal Mind is not in matter.
Found wanting
71:21
When the Science of Mind is understood, spiritualism
will be found mainly erroneous, having no scientific basis
nor origin, no proof nor power outside of
human testimony. It is the offspring of the
physical senses. There is no sensuality in Spirit. I never
could believe in spiritualism.
71:27
The basis and structure of spiritualism are alike ma-
terial and physical. Its spirits are so many corporealities,
limited and finite in character and quality. Spiritualism
therefore presupposes Spirit, which is ever infinite, to be
a corporeal being, a finite form, – a theory contrary to
Christian Science.
72:1
There is but one spiritual existence, – the Life of
which corporeal sense can take no cognizance. The
divine Principle of man speaks through immortal sense.
If a material body – in other words, mortal, material
sense – were permeated by Spirit, that body would
disappear to mortal sense, would be deathless. A con-
dition precedent to communion with Spirit is the gain of
spiritual life.
Spirits obsolete
72:9
So-called spirits are but corporeal communicators. As
light destroys darkness and in the place of darkness all
is light, so (in absolute Science) Soul, or God,
is the only truth-giver to man. Truth de-
stroys mortality, and brings to light immortality. Mortal
belief (the material sense of life) and immortal Truth
(the spiritual sense) are the tares and the wheat, which
are not united by progress, but separated.
72:17
Perfection is not expressed through imperfection.
Spirit is not made manifest through matter, the anti-
pode of Spirit. Error is not a convenient sieve through
which truth can be strained.
Scientific phenomena
72:21
God, good, being ever present, it follows in divine
logic that evil, the suppositional opposite of good, is never
present. In Science, individual good derived
from God, the infinite All-in-all, may flow
from the departed to mortals; but evil is neither com-
municable nor scientific. A sinning, earthly mortal is
not the reality of Life nor the medium through which
truth passes to earth. The joy of intercourse becomes
the jest of sin, when evil and suffering are communicable.
Not personal intercommunion but divine law is the com-
municator of truth, health, and harmony to earth and
humanity. As readily can you mingle fire and frost as
73:1
Spirit and matter. In either case, one does not support
the other.
73:3
Spiritualism calls one person, living in this world, ma-
terial, but another, who has died to-day a sinner and sup-
posedly will return to earth to-morrow, it terms a spirit.
The fact is that neither the one nor the other is infinite
Spirit, for Spirit is God, and man is His likeness.
One government
73:8
The belief that one man, as spirit, can control an-
other man, as matter, upsets both the individuality and
the Science of man, for man is image. God
controls man, and God is the only Spirit. Any
other control or attraction of so-called spirit is a mortal
belief, which ought to be known by its fruit, – the repe-
tition of evil.
73:15
If Spirit, or God, communed with mortals or controlled
them through electricity or any other form of matter, the
divine order and the Science of omnipotent, omnipresent
Spirit would be destroyed.
Incorrect theories
73:19
The belief that material bodies return to dust, hereafter
to rise up as spiritual bodies with material sensations and
desires, is incorrect. Equally incorrect is the
belief that spirit is confined in a finite, ma-
terial body, from which it is freed by death, and that, when
it is freed from the material body, spirit retains the sensa-
tions belonging to that body.
No me-diumship
73:26
It is a grave mistake to suppose that matter is any part
of the reality of intelligent existence, or that Spirit and
matter, intelligence and non-intelligence, can
commune together. This error Science will
destroy. The sensual cannot be made the mouthpiece of
the spiritual, nor can the finite become the channel of
the infinite. There is no communication between so‑
74:1
called material existence and spiritual life which is not
subject to death.
Opposing conditions
74:3
To be on communicable terms with Spirit, persons must
be free from organic bodies; and their return to a mate-
rial condition, after having once left it, would
be as impossible as would be the restoration
to its original condition of the acorn, already absorbed
into a sprout which has risen above the soil. The seed
which has germinated has a new form and state of exist-
ence. When here or hereafter the belief of life in matter
is extinct, the error which has held the belief dissolves
with the belief, and never returns to the old condition.
No correspondence nor communion can exist between
persons in such opposite dreams as the belief of having
died and left a material body and the belief of still living
in an organic, material body.
Bridgeless division
74:17
The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect,
is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to
fraternize with or control the worm. Such
a backward transformation is impossible in
Science. Darkness and light, infancy and manhood,
sickness and health, are opposites, – different beliefs,
which never blend. Who will say that infancy can utter
the ideas of manhood, that darkness can represent light,
that we are in Europe when we are in the opposite hemi-
sphere? There is no bridge across the gulf which divides
two such opposite conditions as the spiritual, or incor-
poreal, and the physical, or corporeal.
74:29
In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step,
never a return to positions outgrown. The so-called dead
and living cannot commune together, for they are in
separate states of existence, or consciousness.
Unscientific investiture
75:1
This simple truth lays bare the mistaken assumption
that man dies as matter but comes to life as spirit. The
so-called dead, in order to reappear to those
still in the existence cognized by the physical
senses, would need to be tangible and material, – to have
a material investiture, – or the material senses could take
no cognizance of the so-called dead.
75:8
Spiritualism would transfer men from the spiritual sense
of existence back into its material sense. This gross mate-
rialism is scientifically impossible, since to infinite Spirit
there can be no matter.
Raising the dead
75:12
Jesus said of Lazarus: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth;
but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Jesus
restored Lazarus by the understanding that
Lazarus had never died, not by an admis-
sion that his body had died and then lived again. Had
Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his
body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of
belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have
resuscitated it.
75:21
When you can waken yourself or others out of the belief
that all must die, you can then exercise Jesus' spiritual
power to reproduce the presence of those who have thought
they died, – but not otherwise.
Vision of the dying
75:25
There is one possible moment, when those living on the
earth and those called dead, can commune together, and
that is the moment previous to the transition,
– the moment when the link between their op-
posite beliefs is being sundered. In the vestibule through
which we pass from one dream to another dream, or
when we awake from earth's sleep to the grand verities
of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of those
76:1
who have gone before. The ones departing may whisper
this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the
hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes
open only to that wonder, forgets all else and breathes
aloud his rapture.
Real Life is God
76:6
When being is understood, Life will be recognized as
neither material nor finite, but as infinite, – as God,
universal good; and the belief that life, or
mind, was ever in a finite form, or good in
evil, will be destroyed. Then it will be understood that
Spirit never entered matter and was therefore never
raised from matter. When advanced to spiritual being
and the understanding of God, man can no longer com-
mune with matter; neither can he return to it, any more
than a tree can return to its seed. Neither will man seem
to be corporeal, but he will be an individual conscious-
ness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter.
76:18
Suffering, sinning, dying beliefs are unreal. When
divine Science is universally understood, they will have
no power over man, for man is immortal and lives by
divine authority.
Immaterial pleasure
76:22
The sinless joy, – the perfect harmony and immortality
of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness
without a single bodily pleasure or pain, –
constitutes the only veritable, indestructible
man, whose being is spiritual. This state of existence
is scientific and intact, – a perfection discernible only
by those who have the final understanding of Christ in
divine Science. Death can never hasten this state of
existence, for death must be overcome, not submitted to,
before immortality appears.
76:32
The recognition of Spirit and of infinity comes not
77:1
suddenly here or hereafter. The pious Polycarp said:
"I cannot turn at once from good to evil." Neither do
other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth
at a single bound.
Second death
77:5
Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense
until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its
own self-destruction both here and hereafter,
for mortal mind creates its own physical con-
ditions. Death will occur on the next plane of existence
as on this, until the spiritual understanding of Life is
reached. Then, and not until then, will it be demon-
strated that "the second death hath no power."
A dream vanishing
77:13
The period required for this dream of material life,
embracing its so-called pleasures and pains, to vanish
from consciousness, "knoweth no man . . .
neither the Son, but the Father." This period
will be of longer or shorter duration according to the
tenacity of error. Of what advantage, then, would it be
to us, or to the departed, to prolong the material state and
so prolong the illusion either of a soul inert or of a sinning,
suffering sense, – a so-called mind fettered to matter.
Progress and purgatory
77:22
Even if communications from spirits to mortal con-
sciousness were possible, such communications would
grow beautifully less with every advanced stage
of existence. The departed would gradually
rise above ignorance and materiality, and Spiritualists
would outgrow their beliefs in material spiritualism.
Spiritism consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling
that of blighted buds, – to a wretched purgatory, where
the chances of the departed for improvement narrow
into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of
matter.
Unnatural deflections
78:1
The decaying flower, the blighted bud, the gnarled oak,
the ferocious beast, – like the discords of disease, sin,
and death, – are unnatural. They are the fal-
sities of sense, the changing deflections of mor-
tal mind; they are not the eternal realities of Mind.
Absurd oracles
78:6
How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing
out life and hastening to death, and that at the same
time we are communing with immortality!
If the departed are in rapport with mor-
tality, or matter, they are not spiritual, but must still
be mortal, sinning, suffering, and dying. Then why
look to them – even were communication possible – for
proofs of immortality, and accept them as oracles? Com-
munications gathered from ignorance are pernicious in
tendency.
78:16
Spiritualism with its material accompaniments would
destroy the supremacy of Spirit. If Spirit pervades all
space, it needs no material method for the transmission
of messages. Spirit needs no wires nor electricity in order
to be omnipresent.
Spirit intangible
78:21
Spirit is not materially tangible. How then can it
communicate with man through electric, material effects?
How can the majesty and omnipotence of
Spirit be lost? God is not in the medley
where matter cares for matter, where spiritism makes
many gods, and hypnotism and electricity are claimed
to be the agents of God's government.
78:28
Spirit blesses man, but man cannot "tell whence
it cometh." By it the sick are healed, the sorrowing are
comforted, and the sinning are reformed. These are the
effects of one universal God, the invisible good dwelling
in eternal Science.
Thought regarding death
79:1
The act of describing disease – its symptoms, locality,
and fatality – is not scientific. Warning people against
death is an error that tends to frighten into
death those who are ignorant of Life as God.
Thousands of instances could be cited of health restored
by changing the patient's thoughts regarding death.
Fallacious hypotheses
79:7
A scientific mental method is more sanitary than the
use of drugs, and such a mental method produces perma-
nent health. Science must go over the whole
ground, and dig up every seed of error's sow-
ing. Spiritualism relies upon human beliefs and hy-
potheses. Christian Science removes these beliefs and
hypotheses through the higher understanding of God, for
Christian Science, resting on divine Principle, not on ma-
terial personalities, in its revelation of immortality, intro-
duces the harmony of being.
79:17
Jesus cast out evil spirits, or false beliefs. The Apostle
Paul bade men have the Mind that was in the Christ.
Jesus did his own work by the one Spirit. He said: "My
Father worketh hitherto, and I work." He never de-
scribed disease, so far as can be learned from the Gospels,
but he healed disease.
Mistaken methods
79:23
The unscientific practitioner says: "You are ill. Your
brain is overtaxed, and you must rest. Your body is
weak, and it must be strengthened. You have
nervous prostration, and must be treated for it."
Science objects to all this, contending for the rights of in-
telligence and asserting that Mind controls body and brain.
Divine strength
79:29
Mind-science teaches that mortals need "not be weary
in well doing." It dissipates fatigue in doing
good. Giving does not impoverish us in the
service of our Maker, neither does withholding enrich us.
80:1
We have strength in proportion to our apprehension of
the truth, and our strength is not lessened by giving
utterance to truth. A cup of coffee or tea is not the equal
of truth, whether for the inspiration of a sermon or for
the support of bodily endurance.
A denial of immortality
80:6
A communication purporting to come from the late
Theodore Parker reads as follows: "There never was,
and there never will be, an immortal spirit."
Yet the very periodical containing this sen-
tence repeats weekly the assertion that spirit-communica-
tions are our only proofs of immortality.
Mysticism unscientific
80:12
I entertain no doubt of the humanity and philanthropy
of many Spiritualists, but I cannot coincide with their
views. It is mysticism which gives spiritual-
ism its force. Science dispels mystery and
explains extraordinary phenomena; but Science never
removes phenomena from the domain of reason into the
realm of mysticism.
Physical falsities
80:19
It should not seem mysterious that mind, without the
aid of hands, can move a table, when we already know
that it is mind-power which moves both table
and hand. Even planchette – the French toy
which years ago pleased so many people – attested the con-
trol of mortal mind over its substratum, called matter.
80:25
It is mortal mind which convulses its substratum, matter.
These movements arise from the volition of human belief,
but they are neither scientific nor rational. Mortal mind
produces table-tipping as certainly as table-setting, and
believes that this wonder emanates from spirits and elec-
tricity. This belief rests on the common conviction that
mind and matter cooperate both visibly and invisibly,
hence that matter is intelligent.
< Previous  |  Next >

  from page    for    pages

  for    from    to  



View & Search Options