287:18 nor is error the offshoot of Mind. Evil calls itself some- thing, when it is nothing. It saith, “I am man, but I am not the image and likeness of God;” whereas the Scrip- 287:21 tures declare that man was made in God’s likeness.
Error unveiled
Error is false, mortal belief; it is illusion, without spir- itual identity or foundation, and it has no real existence. 287:24 The supposition that life, substance, and in- telligence are _in_ matter, or _of_ it, is an error. Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the 287:27 objective supposition of Spirit’s opposite. The five mate- rial senses testify to truth and error as united in a mind both good and evil. Their false evidence will finally 287:30 yield to Truth, – to the recognition of Spirit and of the spiritual creation.
Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The state- 288:1 ment that _Truth is real_ necessarily includes the correlated statement, that _error, Truth’s unlikeness, is unreal_.
The great conflict
288:3 The suppositional warfare between truth and error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spir- itual senses and the testimony of the material 288:6 senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the un- derstanding of divine Love.
288:9 Superstition and understanding can never combine. When the final physical and moral effects of Christian Science are fully apprehended, the conflict between truth 288:12 and error, understanding and belief, Science and material sense, foreshadowed by the prophets and inaugurated by Jesus, will cease, and spiritual harmony reign. The 288:15 lightnings and thunderbolts of error may burst and flash till the cloud is cleared and the tumult dies away in the distance. Then the raindrops of divinity refresh the 288:18 earth. As St. Paul says: “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (of Spirit).
The chief stones in the temple
The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are 288:21 to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God, good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and 288:24 cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no ma- terial life, and no death.
The Christ-element
288:27 Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses. The Christ-element in the Messiah made him 288:30 the Way-shower, Truth and Life.
The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have learned from error, and man’s real existence as a child 289:1 of God comes to light. Truth demonstrated is eternal life. Mortal man can never rise from the temporal _debris_ 289:3 of error, belief in sin, sickness, and death, until he learns that God is the only Life. The belief that life and sensa- tion are in the body should be overcome by the under- 289:6 standing of what constitutes man as the image of God. Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh.
Wickedness is not man
A wicked mortal is not the idea of God. He is little 289:9 else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin, lust, hatred, envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life 289:12 and life’s idea, Truth and Truth’s idea, never make men sick, sinful, or mortal.
Death but an illusion
The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still 289:15 overcomes death proves the “king of terrors” to be but a mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this 289:18 shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe there is no death-process.
289:21 The belief that matter has life results, by the universal law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree, and flower are supposed to die; but the fact remains, 289:24 that God’s universe is spiritual and immortal.
Spiritual offspring
The spiritual fact and the material belief of things are contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the 289:27 material must be untrue. Life is not in matter. Therefore it cannot be said to pass out of mat- ter. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Spirit and 289:30 all things spiritual are the real and eternal.
Man is not the offspring of flesh, but of Spirit, – of Life, not of matter. Because Life is God, Life must be 290:1 eternal, self-existent. Life is the everlasting I AM, the Be- ing who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.
Death no advantage
290:3 If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man’s being are not in the least understood before what is termed death overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher spir- 290:6 itually in the scale of existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as be- fore the transition, still seeking happiness through a ma- 290:9 terial, instead of through a spiritual sense of life, and from selfish and inferior motives. That Life or Mind is finite and physical or is manifested through brain and nerves, 290:12 is false. Hence Truth comes to destroy this error and its effects, – sickness, sin, and death. To the spiritual class, relates the Scripture: “On such the second death 290:15 hath no power.”
Future purification
If the change called _death_ destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the mo- 290:18 ment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so. Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be un- 290:21 righteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, re- moves all ignorance and sin.
Sin is punished
The sin and error which possess us at the instant of 290:24 death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the death of these errors. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes thus only 290:27 when he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain in the act, does not thereby forsake sin. He is no more spiritual for believing that his body died and learning that 290:30 his cruel mind died not. His thoughts are no purer until evil is disarmed by good. His body is as material as his mind, and _vice versa_.
291:1 The suppositions that sin is pardoned while unfor- saken, that happiness can be genuine in the midst of 291:3 sin, that the so-called death of the body frees from sin, and that God’s pardon is aught but the destruction of sin, – these are grave mistakes. We know that all will 291:6 be changed “in the twinkling of an eye,” when the last trump shall sound; but this last call of wisdom cannot come till mortals have already yielded to each lesser call 291:9 in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to glorified being.
Salvation and probation
291:12 Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a local- ity, but a divine state of Mind in which all the 291:15 manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in posses- 291:18 sion of “the mind of the Lord,” as the Scripture says.
“In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.” So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been 291:21 transformed into the popular proverb, “As the tree falls, so it must lie.” As man falleth asleep, so shall he awake. As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be 291:24 after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needed change. Mind never becomes dust. No resur- rection from the grave awaits Mind or Life, for the grave 291:27 has no power over either.
Day of judgment
No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment- day of wisdom comes hourly and continually, 291:30 even the judgment by which mortal man is di- vested of all material error. As for spiritual error there is none.
292:1 When the last mortal fault is destroyed, then the final trump will sound which will end the battle of Truth with 292:3 error and mortality; “but of that day and hour, knoweth no man.” Here prophecy pauses. Divine Science alone can compass the heights and depths of being and reveal 292:6 the infinite.
Primitive error
Truth will be to us “the resurrection and the life” only as it destroys all error and the belief that Mind, the only 292:9 immortality of man, can be fettered by the body, and Life be controlled by death. A sin- ful, sick, and dying mortal is not the likeness of God, the 292:12 perfect and eternal.
Matter is the primitive belief of mortal mind, because this so-called mind has no cognizance of Spirit. To 292:15 mortal mind, matter is substantial, and evil is real. The so-called senses of mortals are material. Hence the so-called life of mortals is dependent on 292:18 matter.
Explaining the origin of material man and mortal mind, Jesus said: “Why do ye not understand my speech? 292:21 Even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil [evil], and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode 292:24 not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
Immortal man
292:27 This carnal material mentality, misnamed _mind_, is mortal. Therefore man would be annihilated, were it not for the spiritual real man’s indissoluble 292:30 connection with his God, which Jesus brought to light. In his resurrection and ascension, Jesus showed that a mortal man is not the real essence of manhood, and 293:1 that this unreal material mortality disappears in presence of the reality.
Elementary electricity
293:3 Electricity is not a vital fluid, but the least material form of illusive consciousness, – the material mindless- ness, which forms no link between matter and 293:6 Mind, and which destroys itself. Matter and mortal mind are but different strata of human belief. The grosser substratum is named matter or body; the more 293:9 ethereal is called mind. This so-called mind and body is the illusion called a mortal, a mind in matter. In reality and in Science, both strata, mortal mind and mortal body, 293:12 are false representatives of man.
The material so-called gases and forces are counter- feits of the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency 293:15 is Truth, whose attraction is Love, whose adhesion and cohesion are Life, perpetuating the eternal facts of being. Electricity is the sharp surplus of materiality which coun- 293:18 terfeits the true essence of spirituality or truth, – the great difference being that electricity is not intelligent, while spiritual truth is Mind.
The counterfeit forces
293:21 There is no vapid fury of mortal mind – expressed in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity – and this so-called mind is self-destroyed. 293:24 The manifestations of evil, which counterfeit divine justice, are called in the Scriptures, “The anger of the Lord.” In reality, they show the self-destruction 293:27 of error or matter and point to matter’s opposite, the strength and permanency of Spirit. Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal har- 293:30 mony, the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil.
Instruments of error
The five physical senses are the avenues and instru- 294:1 ments of human error, and they correspond with error. These senses indicate the common human belief, that life, 294:3 substance, and intelligence are a unison of matter with Spirit. This is pantheism, and carries within itself the seeds of all error.
294:6 If man is both mind and matter, the loss of one finger would take away some quality and quantity of the man, for matter and man would be one.
Mortal verdict
294:9 The belief that matter thinks, sees, or feels is not more real than the belief that matter enjoys and suffers. This mortal belief, misnamed _man_, is error, saying: 294:12 “Matter has intelligence and sensation. Nerves feel. Brain thinks and sins. The stomach can make a man cross. Injury can cripple and matter can kill man.” 294:15 This verdict of the so-called material senses victimizes mortals, taught, as they are by physiology and pathology, to revere false testimony, even the errors that are destroyed 294:18 by Truth through spiritual sense and Science.
Mythical pleasure
The lines of demarcation between immortal man, repre- senting Spirit, and mortal man, representing the error that 294:21 life and intelligence are in matter, show the pleasures and pains of matter to be myths, and human belief in them to be the father of mythology, in 294:24 which matter is represented as divided into intelligent gods. Man’s genuine selfhood is recognizable only in what is good and true. Man is neither self-made nor made by 294:27 mortals. God created man.
The inebriate believes that there is pleasure in intoxica- tion. The thief believes that he gains something by steal- 294:30 ing, and the hypocrite that he is hiding himself. The Science of Mind corrects such mistakes, for Truth demon- strates the falsity of error.
Severed members
295:1 The belief that a severed limb is aching in the old loca- tion, the sensation seeming to be in nerves which 295:3 are no longer there, is an added proof of the un- reliability of physical testimony.
Mortals unlike immortals
God creates and governs the universe, including man. 295:6 The universe is filled with spiritual ideas, which He evolves, and they are obedient to the Mind that makes them. Mortal mind would trans- 295:9 form the spiritual into the material, and then recover man’s original self in order to escape from the mortality of this error. Mortals are not like immortals, 295:12 created in God’s own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the real sense of being, perfect and 295:15 forever intact, will appear.
Goodness transparent
The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the 295:18 glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that 295:21 one which has lost much materiality – much error – in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides 295:24 the sun.
Brainology a myth
All that is called mortal thought is made up of error. The theoretical mind is matter, named _brain_, or _mate_- 295:27 _rial consciousness_, the exact opposite of real Mind, or Spirit. Brainology teaches that mortals are created to suffer and die. It further 295:30 teaches that when man is dead, his immortal soul is resurrected from death and mortality. Thus error the- orizes that spirit is born of matter and returns to mat- 296:1 ter, and that man has a resurrection from dust; whereas Science unfolds the eternal verity, that man is the spiritual, 296:3 eternal reflection of God.
Scientific purgation
Progress is born of experience. It is the ripening of mortal man, through which the mortal is dropped for 296:6 the immortal. Either here or hereafter, suf- fering or Science must destroy all illusions regarding life and mind, and regenerate material sense 296:9 and self. The old man with his deeds must be put off. Nothing sensual or sinful is immortal. The death of a false material sense and of sin, not the death of organic 296:12 matter, is what reveals man and Life, harmonious, real, and eternal.
The so-called pleasures and pains of matter perish, 296:15 and they must go out under the blaze of Truth, spiritual sense, and the actuality of being. Mortal belief must lose all satisfaction in error and sin in order to part with 296:18 them.
Whether mortals will learn this sooner or later, and how long they will suffer the pangs of destruction, de- 296:21 pends upon the tenacity of error.
Mixed testimony
The knowledge obtained from the corporeal senses leads to sin and death. When the evidence of Spirit 296:24 and matter, Truth and error, seems to com- mingle, it rests upon foundations which time is wearing away. Mortal mind judges by the testimony 296:27 of the material senses, until Science obliterates this false testimony. An improved belief is one step out of error, and aids in taking the next step and in understanding 296:30 the situation in Christian Science.
Belief an autocrat
Mortal belief is a liar from the beginning, not deserving power. It says to mortals, “You are wretched!” and they 297:1 think they are so; and nothing can change this state, until the belief changes. Mortal belief says, “You are happy!” 297:3 and mortals are so; and no circumstance can alter the situation, until the belief on this sub- ject changes. Human belief says to mortals, “You are 297:6 sick!” and this testimony manifests itself on the body as sickness. It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into 297:9 the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the physical condition.
Self-improvement
297:12 Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real to this false belief, and the human conscious- 297:15 ness rises higher. Thus the reality of being is attained and man found to be immortal. The only fact concerning any material concept is, that it is neither 297:18 scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and dis- solution.
Faith higher than belief
Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is 297:21 a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual evidence, contradicting the testimony of mate- rial sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the 297:24 ever-present, is becoming understood. Human thoughts have their degrees of comparison. Some thoughts are better than others. A belief in Truth is better than a 297:27 belief in error, but no mortal testimony is founded on the divine rock. Mortal testimony can be shaken. Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual under- 297:30 standing, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine.
A mortal belief fulfils its own conditions. Sickness, 298:1 sin, and death are the vague realities of human conclu- sions. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of divine 298:3 Science. They dawn in faith and glow full-orbed in spiritual understanding. As a cloud hides the sun it cannot extinguish, so false belief silences for a while the 298:6 voice of immutable harmony, but false belief cannot de- stroy Science armed with faith, hope, and fruition.
Truth’s witness
What is termed material sense can report only a mor- 298:9 tal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can bear witness only to Truth. To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected 298:12 by Christian Science.
Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, in- volves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, real- 298:15 ity. Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and death, never 298:18 reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal. When the real is attained, which is announced by Science, joy is no longer a trembler, nor is hope a cheat. Spirit- 298:21 ual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs. Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense 298:24 of being.
Thought-angels
Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial 298:27 visitants, flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their indi- 298:30 vidualism may be. Human conjecture confers upon angels its own forms of thought, marked with superstitious out- lines, making them human creatures with suggestive 299:1 feathers; but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more reality than has the sculptor’s thought when he carves 299:3 his “Statue of Liberty,” which embodies his concep- tion of an unseen quality or condition, but which has no physical antecedent reality save in the artist’s own ob- 299:6 servation and “chambers of imagery.”
Our Angelic messengers
My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried 299:9 its fondest earthly hopes. With white fin- gers they point upward to a new and glo- rified trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys. Angels 299:12 are God’s representatives. These upward-soaring beings never lead towards self, sin, or materiality, but guide to the divine Principle of all good, whither every real indi- 299:15 viduality, image, or likeness of God, gathers. By giving earnest heed to these spiritual guides they tarry with us, and we entertain “angels unawares.”
Knowledge and Truth
299:18 Knowledge gained from material sense is figuratively represented in Scripture as a tree, bearing the fruits of sin, sickness, and death. Ought we not then 299:21 to judge the knowledge thus obtained to be untrue and dangerous, since “the tree is known by his fruit”?
299:24 Truth never destroys God’s idea. Truth is spiritual, eternal substance, which cannot destroy the right reflec- tion. Corporeal sense, or error, may seem to hide Truth, 299:27 health, harmony, and Science, as the mist obscures the sun or the mountain; but Science, the sunshine of Truth, will melt away the shadow and reveal the celestial 299:30 peaks.
Old and new man
If man were solely a creature of the material senses, he would have no eternal Principle and would be mutable 300:1 and mortal. Human logic is awry when it attempts to draw correct spiritual conclusions regarding life from 300:3 matter. Finite sense has no true apprecia- tion of infinite Principle, God, or of His infi- nite image or reflection, man. The mirage, which makes 300:6 trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image of God.
300:9 So far as the scientific statement as to man is under- stood, it can be proved and will bring to light the true reflection of God – the real man, or the _new_ man (as 300:12 St. Paul has it).
The tares and wheat
The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the im- 300:15 mutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existent. These opposite qualities are the tares 300:18 and wheat, which never really mingle, though (to mortal sight) they grow side by side until the harvest; then, Sci- ence separates the wheat from the tares, through the real- 300:21 ization of God as ever present and of man as reflecting the divine likeness.
The divine reflection
Spirit is God, Soul; therefore Soul is not in matter. If 300:24 Spirit were in matter, God would have no representative, and matter would be identical with God. The theory that soul, spirit, intelligence, in- 300:27 habits matter is taught by the schools. This theory is unscientific. The universe reflects and expresses the di- vine substance or Mind; therefore God is seen only in the 300:30 spiritual universe and spiritual man, as the sun is seen in the ray of light which goes out from it. God is re- vealed only in that which reflects Life, Truth, Love, – 301:1 yea, which manifests God’s attributes and power, even as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror, repeats 301:3 the color, form, and action of the person in front of the mirror.
Few persons comprehend what Christian Science 301:6 means by the word _reflection._ To himself, mortal and material man seems to be substance, but his sense of substance involves error and therefore is material, 301:9 temporal.
On the other hand, the immortal, spiritual man is really substantial, and reflects the eternal substance, or Spirit, 301:12 which mortals hope for. He reflects the divine, which constitutes the only real and eternal entity. This reflection seems to mortal sense transcendental, because the spiritual 301:15 man’s substantiality transcends mortal vision and is re- vealed only through divine Science.
Inverted images and ideas
As God is substance and man is the divine image and 301:18 likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only the substance of good, the substance of Spirit, not matter. The belief that man has any other 301:21 substance, or mind, is not spiritual and breaks the First Commandment, Thou shalt have one God, one Mind. Mortal man seems to himself to be material sub- 301:24 stance, while man is “image” (idea). Delusion, sin, dis- ease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the 301:27 focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down.
301:30 This falsity presupposes soul to be an unsubstantial dweller in material forms, and man to be material instead of spiritual. Immortality is not bounded by mortality. 302:1 Soul is not compassed by finiteness. Principle is not to be found in fragmentary ideas.
Identity not lost
302:3 The material body and mind are temporal, but the real man is spiritual and eternal. The identity of the real man is not lost, but found through this 302:6 explanation; for the conscious infinitude of existence and of all identity is thereby discerned and re- mains unchanged. It is impossible that man should lose 302:9 aught that is real, when God is all and eternally his. The notion that mind is in matter, and that the so-called pleas- ures and pains, the birth, sin, sickness, and death of 302:12 matter, are real, is a mortal belief; and this belief is all that will ever be lost.
Definition of man
Continuing our definition of _man_, let us remember that 302:15 harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and is always beyond and above the mortal illu- sion of any life, substance and intelligence 302:18 as existent in matter. This statement is based on fact, not fable. The Science of being reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul, or Mind, 302:21 of the spiritual man is God, the divine Principle of all being, and because this real man is governed by Soul instead of sense, by the law of Spirit, not by the so-called 302:24 laws of matter.
God is Love. He is therefore the divine, infinite Prin- ciple, called Person or God. Man’s true consciousness 302:27 is in the mental, not in any bodily or personal likeness to Spirit. Indeed, the body presents no proper likeness of divinity, though mortal sense would fain have us so 302:30 believe.
Mental propagation
Even in Christian Science, reproduction by Spirit’s individual ideas is but the reflection of the creative power 303:1 of the divine Principle of those ideas. The reflection, through mental manifestation, of the multitudinous 303:3 forms of Mind which people the realm of the real is controlled by Mind, the Principle governing the reflection. Multiplication of God’s chil- 303:6 dren comes from no power of propagation in matter, it is the reflection of Spirit.
The minutiae of lesser individualities reflect the one di- 303:9 vine individuality and are comprehended in and formed by Spirit, not by material sensation. Whatever reflects Mind, Life, Truth, and Love, is spiritually conceived and 303:12 brought forth; but the statement that man is conceived and evolved both spiritually and materially, or by both God and man, contradicts this eternal truth. All the 303:15 vanity of the ages can never make both these contraries true. Divine Science lays the axe at the root of the illu- sion that life, or mind, is formed by or is in the material 303:18 body, and Science will eventually destroy this illusion through the self-destruction of all error and the beatified understanding of the Science of Life.
Error defined
303:21 The belief that pain and pleasure, life and death, holi- ness and unholiness, mingle in man, – that mortal, material man is the likeness of God 303:24 and is himself a creator, – is a fatal error.
Man’s entity spiritual
God, without the image and likeness of Himself, would be a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed. He would be 303:27 without a witness or proof of His own na- ture. Spiritual man is the image or idea of God, an idea which cannot be lost nor sep- 303:30 arated from its divine Principle. When the evidence before the material senses yielded to spiritual sense, the apostle declared that nothing could alienate him from 304:1 God, from the sweet sense and presence of Life and Truth.
Man inseparable from Love
304:3 It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and good- ness. Understanding this, Paul said: “Nei- 304:6 ther death, nor life, . . . nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from 304:9 the love of God.” This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into 304:12 sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man – governed 304:15 by God, his perfect Principle – is sinless and eternal.
Harmony natural
Harmony is produced by its Principle, is controlled by it and abides with it. Divine Principle is the Life 304:18 of man. Man’s happiness is not, therefore, at the disposal of physical sense. Truth is not contaminated by error. Harmony in man is as beautiful 304:21 as in music, and discord is unnatural, unreal.
The science of music governs tones. If mortals caught harmony through material sense, they would lose har- 304:24 mony, if time or accident robbed them of material sense. To be master of chords and discords, the science of music must be understood. Left to the decisions 304:27 of material sense, music is liable to be misappre- hended and lost in confusion. Controlled by belief, instead of understanding, music is, must be, imper- 304:30 fectly expressed. So man, not understanding the Sci- ence of being, – thrusting aside his divine Principle as incomprehensible, – is abandoned to conjectures, left in 305:1 the hands of ignorance, placed at the disposal of illusions, subjected to material sense which is discord. A discon- 305:3 tented, discordant mortal is no more a _man_ than discord is music.
Human reflection
A picture in the camera or a face reflected in the mirror 305:6 is not the original, though resembling it. Man, in the likeness of his Maker, reflects the central light of being, the invisible God. As there is no cor- 305:9 poreality in the mirrored form, which is but a reflection, so man, like all things real, reflects God, his divine Prin- ciple, not in a mortal body.
305:12 Gender also is a quality, not of God, but a character- istic of mortal mind. The verity that God’s image is not a creator, though he reflects the creation of Mind, God, 305:15 constitutes the underlying reality of reflection. “Then answered Jesus and said unto them: Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he 305:18 seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”
Inverted images
The inverted images presented by the senses, the de- 305:21 flections of matter as opposed to the Science of spirit- ual reflection, are all unlike Spirit, God. In the illusion of life that is here to-day and 305:24 gone to-morrow, man would be wholly mortal, were it not that Love, the divine Principle that obtains in divine Science, destroys all error and brings immor- 305:27 tality to light. Because man is the reflection of his Maker, he is not subject to birth, growth, maturity, de- cay. These mortal dreams are of human origin, not 305:30 divine.
Jewish traditions
The Sadducees reasoned falsely about the resurrec- tion, but not so blindly as the Pharisees, who believed 306:1 error to be as immortal as Truth. The Pharisees thought that they could raise the spiritual from the material. They 306:3 would first make life result in death, and then resort to death to reproduce spiritual life. Jesus taught them how death was to be overcome by 306:6 spiritual Life, and demonstrated this beyond cavil.
Divinity not childless
Life demonstrates Life. The immortality of Soul makes man immortal. If God, who is Life, were parted for a 306:9 moment from His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be 306:12 childless, – no Father.
If Life or Soul and its representative, man, unite for a period and then are separated as by a law of divorce to 306:15 be brought together again at some uncertain future time and in a manner unknown, – and this is the general religious opinion of mankind, – we are left without a 306:18 rational proof of immortality. But man cannot be sep- arated for an instant from God, if man reflects God. Thus Science proves man’s existence to be intact.
Thought-forms
306:21 The myriad forms of mortal thought, made manifest as matter, are not more distinct nor real to the mate- rial senses than are the Soul-created forms 306:24 to spiritual sense, which cognizes Life as per- manent. Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses, Science, still enthroned, is unfolding 306:27 to mortals the immutable, harmonious, divine Principle, – is unfolding Life and the universe, ever present and eternal.
306:30 God’s man, spiritually created, is not material and mortal.
The serpent’s whisper
The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, 307:1 the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter. 307:3 This pantheistic error, or so-called _serpent_, in- sists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, “Ye shall be as gods;” that is, I will make error as real 307:6 and eternal as Truth.
Evil still affirms itself to be mind, and declares that there is more than one intelligence or God. It says: 307:9 “There shall be lords and gods many. I declare that God makes evil minds and evil spirits, and that I aid Him. Truth shall change sides and be unlike Spirit. I will 307:12 put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem to have life as much as God, Spirit, who _is_ the only life.”
Bad results from error
This error has proved itself to be error. Its life is found 307:15 to be not Life, but only a transient, false sense of an ex- istence which ends in death. Error charges its lie to Truth and says: “The Lord knows 307:18 it. He has made man mortal and material, out of mat- ter instead of Spirit.” Thus error partakes of its own nature and utters its own falsities. If we regard matter 307:21 as intelligent, and Mind as both good and evil, every sin or supposed material pain and pleasure seems normal, a part of God’s creation, and so weighs against our course 307:24 Spiritward.
Higher statutes
Truth has no beginning. The divine Mind is the Soul of man, and gives man dominion over all things. Man 307:27 was not created from a material basis, nor bidden to obey material laws which Spirit never made; his province is in spiritual statutes, in the higher 307:30 law of Mind.
The great question
Above error’s awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: “Adam, where art thou? Conscious- 308:1 ness, where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou 308:3 in the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandment?” Until the lesson is learned that God is the only Mind gov- 308:6 erning man, mortal belief will be afraid as it was in the beginning, and will hide from the demand, “Where art thou?” This awful demand, “Adam, where art thou?” 308:9 is met by the admission from the head, heart, stomach, blood, nerves, etc.: “Lo, here I am, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion, a blend- 308:12 ing of false claims, false pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and death.”
The Soul-inspired patriarchs heard the voice of Truth, 308:15 and talked with God as consciously as man talks with man.
Wrestling of Jacob
Jacob was _alone_, wrestling with error, – struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence 308:18 as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains, – when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, 308:21 or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science. Then said 308:24 the spiritual evangel: “Let me go, for the day breaketh;” that is, the light of Truth and Love dawns upon thee. But the patriarch, perceiving his error and his need 308:27 of help, did not loosen his hold upon this glorious light until his nature was transformed. When Jacob was asked, “What is thy name?” he straightway answered; 308:30 and then his name was changed to Israel, for “as a prince” had he prevailed and had “power with God and with men.” Then Jacob questioned his deliverer, “Tell me, 309:1 I pray thee, _thy_ name;” but this appellation was withheld, for the messenger was not a corporeal being, but a name- 309:3 less, incorporeal impartation of divine Love to man, which, to use the word of the Psalmist, _restored _his Soul, – gave him the spiritual sense of being and rebuked his material 309:6 sense.
Israel the new name
The result of Jacob’s struggle thus appeared. He had conquered material error with the understanding of Spirit 309:9 and of spiritual power. This changed the man. He was no longer called Jacob, but Israel, – a prince of God, or a soldier of God, who had fought 309:12 a good fight. He was to become the father of those, who through earnest striving followed his demonstration of the power of Spirit over the material senses; and the children 309:15 of earth who followed his example were to be called the children of Israel, until the Messiah should rename them. If these children should go astray, and forget that Life 309:18 is God, good, and that good is not in elements which are not spiritual, – thus losing the divine power which heals the sick and sinning, – they were to be brought back 309:21 through great tribulation, to be renamed in Christian Science and led to deny material sense, or mind in matter, even as the gospel teaches.
Life never structural
309:24 The Science of being shows it to be impossible for in- finite Spirit or Soul to be in a finite body or for man to have an intelligence separate from his Maker. 309:27 It is a self-evident error to suppose that there can be such a reality as organic animal or vegetable life, when such so-called life always ends in death. Life is 309:30 never for a moment extinct. Therefore it is never struc- tural nor organic, and is never absorbed nor limited by its own formations.
Thought seen as substance
310:1 The artist is not in his painting. The picture is the artist’s thought objectified. The human belief fancies 310:3 that it delineates thought on matter, but what is matter? Did it exist prior to thought? Matter is made up of supposititious mortal mind-force; 310:6 but all might is divine Mind. Thought will finally be understood and seen in all form, substance, and color, but without material accompaniments. The potter is not in 310:9 the clay; else the clay would have power over the potter. God is His own infinite Mind, and expresses all.
The central intelligence
Day may decline and shadows fall, but darkness flees 310:12 when the earth has again turned upon its axis. The sun is not affected by the revolution of the earth. So Science reveals Soul as God, untouched 310:15 by sin and death, – as the central life and intelligence around which circle harmoniously all things in the sys- tems of Mind.
Soul imperishable
310:18 Soul changeth not. We are commonly taught that there is a human soul which sins and is spiritually lost, – that soul may be lost, and yet be immortal. If 310:21 Soul could sin, Spirit, Soul, would be flesh in- stead of Spirit. It is the belief of the flesh and of mate- rial sense which sins. If Soul sinned, Soul would die. 310:24 Sin is the element of self-destruction, and spiritual death is oblivion. If there was sin in Soul, the annihilation of Spirit would be inevitable. The only Life is Spirit, and 310:27 if Spirit should lose Life as God, good, then Spirit, which has no other existence, would be annihilated.
Mind is God, and God is not seen by material sense, 310:30 because Mind is Spirit, which material sense cannot dis- cern. There is neither growth, maturity, nor decay in Soul. These changes are the mutations of material sense, 311:1 the varying clouds of mortal belief, which hide the truth of being.
311:3 What we term mortal mind or carnal mind, dependent on matter for manifestation, is not Mind. God is Mind: all that Mind, God, is, or hath made, is good, and He 311:6 made all. Hence evil is not made and is not real.
Sin only of the flesh
Soul is immortal because it is Spirit, which has no ele- ment of self-destruction. Is man lost spiritually? No, 311:9 he can only lose a sense material. All sin is of the flesh. It cannot be spiritual. Sin exists here or hereafter only so long as the illusion of mind in 311:12 matter remains. It is a sense of sin, and not a sinful soul, which is lost. Evil is destroyed by the sense of good.
Soul impeccable
Through false estimates of soul as dwelling in sense 311:15 and of mind as dwelling in matter, belief strays into a sense of temporary loss or absence of soul, spir- itual truth. This state of error is the mortal 311:18 dream of life and substance as existent in matter, and is directly opposite to the immortal reality of being. So long as we believe that soul can sin or that immortal Soul is in 311:21 mortal body, we can never understand the Science of be- ing. When humanity does understand this Science, it will become the law of Life to man, – even the higher law 311:24 of Soul, which prevails over material sense through har- mony and immortality.
The objects cognized by the physical senses have not 311:27 the reality of substance. They are only what mortal belief calls them. Matter, sin, and mortality lose all supposed consciousness or claim to life or existence, as 311:30 mortals lay off a false sense of life, substance, and intelli- gence. but the spiritual, eternal man is not touched by these phases of mortality.
Sense-dreams
312:1 How true it is that whatever is learned through material sense must be lost because such so-called knowledge is 312:3 reversed by the spiritual facts of being in Science. That which material sense calls intangible, is found to be substance. What to material 312:6 sense seems substance, becomes nothingness, as the sense- dream vanishes and reality appears.
The senses regard a corpse, not as man, but simply as 312:9 matter. People say, “Man is dead;” but this death is the departure of a mortal’s mind, not of matter. The matter is still there. The belief of that mortal that he 312:12 must die occasioned his departure; yet you say that matter has caused his death.
Vain ecstasies
People go into ecstasies over the sense of a corporeal 312:15 Jehovah, though with scarcely a spark of love in their hearts; yet God _is_ love, and without Love, God, immortality cannot appear. Mortals try 312:18 to believe without understanding Truth; yet God _is_ Truth. Mortals claim that death is inevitable; but man’s eternal Principle is ever-present life. Mortals believe in 312:21 a finite personal God; while God is infinite Love, which must be unlimited.
Man-made theories
Our theories are based on finite premises, which can- 312:24 not penetrate beyond matter. A personal sense of God and of man’s capabilities necessarily limits faith and hinders spiritual understanding. It 312:27 divides faith and understanding between matter and Spirit, the finite and the infinite, and so turns away from the intelligent and divine healing Principle to the inanimate 312:30 drug.
The one anointed
Jesus’ spiritual origin and his demonstration of divine Principle richly endowed him and entitled him to sonship 313:1 in Science. He was the son of a virgin. The term Christ Jesus, or Jesus the Christ (to give the full and 313:3 proper translation of the Greek), may be ren- dered “Jesus the anointed,” Jesus the God- crowned or the divinely royal man, as it is said of him in 313:6 the first chapter of Hebrews: –
Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee With the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
313:9 With this agrees another passage in the same chapter, which refers to the Son as “the brightness of His [God’s] glory, and the express [expressed] image of His person 313:12 [infinite Mind].” It is noteworthy that the phrase “ex- press image” in the Common Version is, in the Greek Testament, _character_. Using this word in its higher mean- 313:15 ing, we may assume that the author of this remarkable epistle regarded Christ as the Son of God, the royal reflection of the infinite; and the cause given for the ex- 313:18 altation of Jesus, Mary’s son, was that he “loved right- eousness and hated iniquity.” The passage is made even clearer in the translation of the late George R. 313:21 Noyes, D.D.: “Who, being a brightness from His glory, and an image of His being.”
Jesus the Scientist
Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that 313:24 ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause. To accommodate himself to imma- 313:27 ture ideas of spiritual power, – for spirituality was pos sessed only in a limited degree even by his disciples, – Jesus called the body, which by spiritual power he 313:30 raised from the grave, “flesh and bones.” To show that the substance of himself was Spirit and the body 314:1 no more perfect because of death and no less material until the ascension (his further spiritual exaltation), 314:3 Jesus waited until the mortal or fleshly sense had re- linquished the belief of substance-matter, and spiritual sense had quenched all earthly yearnings. Thus he found 314:6 the eternal Ego, and proved that he and the Father were inseparable as God and His reflection or spiritual man. Our Master gained the solution of being, demonstrating 314:9 the existence of but one Mind without a second or equal.
The bodily resurrection
The Jews, who sought to kill this man of God, showed plainly that their material views were the parents of their 314:12 wicked deeds. When Jesus spoke of repro- ducing his body, – knowing, as he did, that Mind was the builder, – and said, “Destroy this temple, 314:15 and in three days I will raise it up,” they thought that he meant their material temple instead of his body. To such materialists, the real man seemed a spectre, unseen and 314:18 unfamiliar, and the body, which they laid in a sepulchre, seemed to be substance. This materialism lost sight of the true Jesus; but the faithful Mary saw him, and he 314:21 presented to her, more than ever before, the true idea of Life and substance.
Opposition of materialists
Because of mortals’ material and sinful belief, the 314:24 spiritual Jesus was imperceptible to them. The higher his demonstration of divine Science carried the problem of being, and the more dis- 314:27 tinctly he uttered the demands of its divine Principle, Truth and Love, the more odious he became to sinners and to those who, depending on doctrines and material 314:30 laws to save them from sin and sickness, were submis- sive to death as being in supposed accord with the inevitable law of life. Jesus proved them wrong by 315:1 his resurrection, and said: “Whosoever liveth and be- lieveth in me shall never die.”
Hebrew theology
315:3 That saying of our Master, “I and my Father are one,” separated him from the scholastic theology of the rabbis. His better understanding of God was a rebuke 315:6 to them. He knew of but one Mind and laid no claim to any other. He knew that the Ego was Mind instead of body and that matter, sin, and evil were not 315:9 Mind; and his understanding of this divine Science brought upon him the anathemas of the age.
The true sonship
The opposite and false views of the people hid from 315:12 their sense Christ’s sonship with God. They could not discern his spiritual existence. Their carnal minds were at enmity with it. Their thoughts 315:15 were filled with mortal error, instead of with God’s spirit- ual idea as presented by Christ Jesus. The likeness of God we lose sight of through sin, which beclouds the spir- 315:18 itual sense of Truth; and we realize this likeness only when we subdue sin and prove man’s heritage, the liberty of the sons of God.
Immaculate conception
315:21 Jesus’ spiritual origin and understanding enabled him to demonstrate the facts of being, – to prove irrefutably how spiritual Truth destroys material error, 315:24 heals sickness, and overcomes death. The divine conception of Jesus pointed to this truth and pre- sented an illustration of creation. The history of Jesus 315:27 shows him to have been more spiritual than all other earthly personalities.
Jesus as mediator
Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it seemed 315:30 to mortal view), being conceived by a human mother, Jesus was the mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error. Explaining and demonstrat- 316:1 ing the way of divine Science, he became the way of salvation to all who accepted his word. From him mor- 316:3 tals may learn how to escape from evil. The real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal 316:6 selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship. Christ, Truth, was demonstrated through Jesus to prove the power of 316:9 Spirit over the flesh, – to show that Truth is made manifest by its effects upon the human mind and body, healing sickness and destroying sin.
Spiritual government
316:12 Jesus represented Christ, the true idea of God. Hence the warfare between this spiritual idea and perfunctory religion, between spiritual clear-sightedness 316:15 and the blindness of popular belief, which led to the conclusion that the spiritual idea could be killed by crucifying the flesh. The Christ-idea, or the Christ- 316:18 man, rose higher to human view because of the crucifixion, and thus proved that truth was the master of death. Christ presents the indestructible man, whom Spirit cre- 316:21 ates, constitutes, and governs. Christ illustrates that blending with God, his divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth.
Deadness in sin
316:24 The spiritual idea of God, as presented by Jesus, was scourged in person, and its Principle was rejected. That man was accounted a criminal who could 316:27 prove God’s divine power by healing the sick, casting out evils, spiritualizing materialistic beliefs, and raising the dead, – those dead in trespasses and 316:30 sins, satisfied with the flesh, resting on the basis of mat- ter, blind to the possibilities of Spirit and its correla- tive truth.
317:1 Jesus uttered things which had been “secret from the foundation of the world,” – since material knowledge 317:3 usurped the throne of the creative divine Principle, insisted on the might of matter, the force of falsity, the insignifi- cance of spirit, and proclaimed an anthropomorphic God.
The cup of Jesus
317:6 Whosoever lives most the life of Jesus in this age and declares best the power of Christian Science, will drink of his Master’s cup. Resistance to 317:9 Truth will haunt his steps, and he will in- cur the hatred of sinners, till “wisdom is justified of her children.” These blessed benedictions rest upon 317:12 Jesus’ followers: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;” “Lo, I am with you alway,” – that is, not only in all time, but in _all ways_ 317:15 and conditions.
The individuality of man is no less tangible because it is spiritual and because his life is not at the mercy of 317:18 matter. The understanding of his spiritual individuality makes man more real, more formidable in truth, and en- ables him to conquer sin, disease, and death. Our Lord 317:21 and Master presented himself to his disciples after his resurrection from the grave, as the self-same Jesus whom they had loved before the tragedy on Calvary.
Material skepticism
317:24 To the materialistic Thomas, looking for the ideal Saviour in matter instead of in Spirit and to the testi- mony of the material senses and the body, 317:27 more than to Soul, for an earnest of immor- tality, – to him Jesus furnished the proof that he was unchanged by the crucifixion. To this dull and doubt- 317:30 ing disciple Jesus remained a fleshly reality, so long as the Master remained an inhabitant of the earth. Noth- ing but a display of matter could make existence real 318:1 to Thomas. For him to believe in matter was no task, but for him to conceive of the substantiality of Spirit – 318:3 to know that nothing can efface Mind and immortality, in which Spirit reigns – was more difficult.
What the senses originate
Corporeal senses define diseases as realities; but the 318:6 Scriptures declare that God made all, even while the cor- poreal senses are saying that matter causes disease and the divine Mind cannot or will 318:9 not heal it. The material senses originate and support all that is material, untrue, selfish, or debased. They would put soul into soil, life into limbo, and doom 318:12 all things to decay. We must silence this lie of material sense with the truth of spiritual sense. We must cause the error to cease that brought the belief of sin and death 318:15 and would efface the pure sense of omnipotence.
Sickness as discord
Is the sick man sinful above all others? No! but so far as he is discordant, he is not the image of God. 318:18 Weary of their material beliefs, from which comes so much suffering, invalids grow more spiritual, as the error – or belief that life is in matter – 318:21 yields to the reality of spiritual Life.
The Science of Mind denies the error of sensation in matter, and heals with Truth. Medical science treats 318:24 disease as though disease were real, therefore right, and attempts to heal it with matter. If disease is right it is wrong to heal it. Material methods are temporary, and 318:27 are not adapted to elevate mankind.
The governor is not subjected to the governed. In Science man is governed by God, divine Principle, as 318:30 numbers are controlled and proved by His laws. Intelli- gence does not originate in numbers, but is manifested through them. The body does not include soul, but man- 319:1 ifests mortality, a false sense of soul. The delusion that there is life in matter has no kinship with the Life supernal.
Unscientific introspection
319:3 Science depicts disease as error, as matter _versus_ Mind, and error reversed as subserving the facts of health. To calculate one’s life-prospects 319:6 from a material basis, would infringe upon spiritual law and misguide human hope. Having faith in the divine Principle of Health and spiritually under- 319:9 standing God, sustains man under all circumstances; whereas the lower appeal to the general faith in material means (commonly called nature) must yield to the all- 319:12 might of infinite Spirit.
Throughout the infinite cycles of eternal existence, Spirit and matter neither concur in man nor in the universe.
God the only Mind
319:15 The varied doctrines and theories which presuppose life and intelligence to exist in matter are so many ancient and modern mythologies. Mystery, miracle, 319:18 sin, and death will disappear when it becomes fairly understood that the divine Mind controls man and man has no Mind but God.
Scriptures misinterpreted
319:21 The divine Science taught in the original language of the Bible came through inspiration, and needs inspi- ration to be understood. Hence the misappre- 319:24 hension of the spiritual meaning of the Bible, and the misinterpretation of the Word in some instances by uninspired writers, who only wrote 319:27 down what an inspired teacher had said. A misplaced word changes the sense and misstates the Science of the Scriptures, as, for instance, to name Love as merely 319:30 an attribute of God; but we can by special and proper capitalization speak of the love of Love, meaning by that what the beloved disciple meant in one of his epistles, 320:1 when he said, “God is love.” Likewise we can speak of the truth of Truth and of the life of Life, for Christ plainly 320:3 declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Interior meaning
Metaphors abound in the Bible, and names are often expressive of spiritual ideas. The most distinguished 320:6 theologians in Europe and America agree that the Scriptures have both a spiritual and lit- eral meaning. In Smith’s Bible Dictionary it is said: 320:9 “The spiritual interpretation of Scripture must rest upon both the literal and moral;” and in the learned article on Noah in the same work, the familiar text, 320:12 Genesis vi. 3, “And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh,” is quoted as follows, from the original Hebrew: “And Jehovah 320:15 said, My spirit shall not forever rule [or be humbled] in men, seeing that they are [or, in their error they are] but flesh.” Here the original text declares plainly the 320:18 spiritual fact of being, even man’s eternal and harmo- nious existence as image, idea, instead of matter (how- ever transcendental such a thought appears), and avers 320:21 that this fact is not forever to be humbled by the belief that man is flesh and matter, for according to that error man is mortal.
Job, on the resurrection
320:24 The one important interpretation of Scripture is the spiritual. For example, the text, “In my flesh shall I see God,” gives a profound idea of the di- 320:27 vine power to heal the ills of the flesh, and encourages mortals to hope in Him who healeth all our diseases; whereas this passage is continually quoted 320:30 as if Job intended to declare that even if disease and worms destroyed his body, yet in the latter days he should stand in celestial perfection before Elohim, still clad 321:1 in material flesh, – an interpretation which is just the op- posite of the true, as may be seen by studying the book 321:3 of Job. As Paul says, in his first epistle to the Corin- thians, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”
Fear of the serpent overcome
321:6 The Hebrew Lawgiver, slow of speech, despaired of making the people understand what should be revealed to him. When, led by wisdom to cast down his 321:9 rod, he saw it become a serpent, Moses fled be- fore it; but wisdom bade him come back and handle the serpent, and then Moses’ fear departed. In 321:12 this incident was seen the actuality of Science. Matter was shown to be a belief only. The serpent, evil, under wisdom’s bidding, was destroyed through understanding 321:15 divine Science, and this proof was a staff upon which to lean. The illusion of Moses lost its power to alarm him, when he discovered that what he apparently saw was really 321:18 but a phase of mortal belief.
Leprosy healed
It was scientifically demonstrated that leprosy was a creation of mortal mind and not a condition of matter, 321:21 when Moses first put his hand into his bosom and drew it forth white as snow with the dread disease, and presently restored his hand to its natural con- 321:24 dition by the same simple process. God had lessened Moses’ fear by this proof in divine Science, and the in- ward voice became to him the voice of God, which said: 321:27 “It shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign.” And so it was in the coming 321:30 centuries, when the Science of being was demonstrated by Jesus, who showed his students the power of Mind by changing water into wine, and taught them how to handle 322:1 serpents unharmed, to heal the sick and cast out evils in proof of the supremacy of Mind.
Standpoints changed
322:3 When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over 322:6 sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his 322:9 capabilities revealed. It is highly important – in view of the immense work to be accomplished before this recog- nition of divine Science can come – to turn our thoughts 322:12 towards divine Principle, that finite belief may be pre- pared to relinquish its error.
Saving the inebriate
Man’s wisdom finds no satisfaction in sin, since God 322:15 has sentenced sin to suffer. The necromancy of yester- day foreshadowed the mesmerism and hypno- tism of to-day. The drunkard thinks he enjoys 322:18 drunkenness, and you cannot make the inebriate leave his besottedness, until his physical sense of pleasure yields to a higher sense. Then he turns from his cups, as 322:21 the startled dreamer who wakens from an incubus in- curred through the pains of distorted sense. A man who likes to do wrong – finding pleasure in it and refraining 322:24 from it only through fear of consequences – is neither a temperate man nor a reliable religionist.
Uses of suffering
The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life 322:27 of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to learn Life 322:30 in divine Science. Without this process of weaning, “Canst thou by searching find out God?” It is easier to desire Truth than to rid one’s self of error. Mortals 323:1 may seek the understanding of Christian Science, but they will not be able to glean from Christian Science the facts 323:3 of being without striving for them. This strife consists in the endeavor to forsake error of every kind and to pos- sess no other consciousness but good.
A bright outlook
323:6 Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, we are helped onward in the march towards righteousness, peace, and purity, which are the landmarks 323:9 of Science. Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause, – wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and concep- 323:12 tion unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.
Need and supply
In order to apprehend more, we must put into prac- tice what we already know. We must recollect that 323:15 Truth is demonstrable when understood, and that good is not understood until demonstrated. If “faithful over a few things,” we shall be made rulers 323:18 over many; but the one unused talent decays and is lost. When the sick or the sinning awake to realize their need of what they have not, they will be receptive of divine 323:21 Science, which gravitates towards Soul and away from material sense, removes thought from the body, and ele- vates even mortal mind to the contemplation of some- 323:24 thing better than disease or sin. The true idea of God gives the true understanding of Life and Love, robs the grave of victory, takes away all sin and the delusion that 323:27 there are other minds, and destroys mortality.
Childlike receptivity
The effects of Christian Science are not so much seen as felt. It is the “still, small voice” of Truth 323:30 uttering itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to it and going up higher. Willingness to become as a little child and 324:1 to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks 324:3 and joy to see them disappear, – this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress. “Blessed are the 324:6 pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
Narrow pathway
Unless the harmony and immortality of man are be- coming more apparent, we are not gaining the true idea 324:9 of God; and the body will reflect what gov- erns it, whether it be Truth or error, understanding or belief, Spirit or matter. Therefore 324:12 “acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace.” Be watchful, sober, and vigilant. The way is straight and narrow, which leads to the understanding that God 324:15 is the only Life. It is a warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either here or hereafter, – certainly before we can reach the goal 324:18 of Spirit, or life in God.
Paul’s enlightenment
Paul was not at first a disciple of Jesus but a perse- cutor of Jesus’ followers. When the truth first appeared 324:21 to him in Science, Paul was made blind, and his blindness was felt; but spiritual light soon enabled him to follow the example and teach- 324:24 ings of Jesus, healing the sick and preaching Christian- ity throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even in imperial Rome.
324:27 Paul writes, “If Christ [Truth] be not risen, then is our preaching vain.” That is, if the idea of the suprem- acy of Spirit, which is the true conception of being, 324:30 come not to your thought, you cannot be benefited by what I say.
Abiding in Life
Jesus said substantially, “He that believeth in me 325:1 shall not see death.” That is, he who perceives the true idea of Life loses his belief in death. He who has 325:3 the true idea of good loses all sense of evil, and by reason of this is being ushered into the undying realities of Spirit. Such a one abideth in Life, – 325:6 life obtained not of the body incapable of supporting life, but of Truth, unfolding its own immortal idea. Jesus gave the true idea of being, which results in infinite bless- 325:9 ings to mortals.
Indestructible being
In Colossians (iii. 4) Paul writes: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear [be manifested], then shall ye also 325:12 appear [be manifested] with him in glory.” When spiritual being is understood in all its perfection, continuity, and might, then shall man be found 325:15 in God’s image. The absolute meaning of the apostolic words is this: Then shall man be found, in His likeness, perfect as the Father, indestructible in Life, “hid with 325:18 Christ in God,” – with Truth in divine Love, where human sense hath not seen man.
Consecration required
Paul had a clear sense of the demands of Truth upon 325:21 mortals physically and spiritually, when he said: “Pre- sent your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, ac- ceptable unto God, which is your reasonable 325:24 service.” But he, who is begotten of the beliefs of the flesh and serves them, can never reach in this world the divine heights of our Lord. The time cometh when 325:27 the spiritual origin of man, the divine Science which ushered Jesus into human presence, will be understood and demonstrated.
325:30 When first spoken in any age, Truth, like the light, “shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” A false sense of life, substance, and mind 326:1 hides the divine possibilities, and conceals scientific demonstration.
Loving God supremely
326:3 If we wish to follow Christ, Truth, it must be in the way of God’s appointing. Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.” 326:6 He, who would reach the source and find the divine remedy for every ill, must not try to climb the hill of Science by some other road. All nature teaches God’s 326:9 love to man, but man cannot love God supremely and set his whole affections on spiritual things, while loving the material or trusting in it more than in the spiritual.
326:12 We must forsake the foundation of material systems, however time-honored, if we would gain the Christ as our only Saviour. Not partially, but fully, the great 326:15 healer of mortal mind is the healer of the body.
The purpose and motive to live aright can be gained now. This point won, you have started as you should. 326:18 You have begun at the numeration-table of Christian Science, and nothing but wrong intention can hinder your advancement. Working and praying with true motives, 326:21 your Father will open the way. “Who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the truth?”
Conversion of Saul
Saul of Tarsus beheld the way – the Christ, or Truth 326:24 – only when his uncertain sense of right yielded to a spiritual sense, which is always right. Then the man was changed. Thought assumed a 326:27 nobler outlook, and his life became more spiritual. He learned the wrong that he had done in persecuting Chris- tians, whose religion he had not understood, and in hu- 326:30 mility he took the new name of Paul. He beheld for the first time the true idea of Love, and learned a lesson in divine Science.
327:1 Reform comes by understanding that there is no abid- ing pleasure in evil, and also by gaining an affection for 327:3 good according to Science, which reveals the immortal fact that neither pleasure nor pain, appetite nor passion, can exist in or of matter, while divine Mind can and does 327:6 destroy the false beliefs of pleasure, pain, or fear and all the sinful appetites of the human mind.
Image of the beast
What a pitiful sight is malice, finding pleasure in re- 327:9 venge! Evil is sometimes a man’s highest conception of right, until his grasp on good grows stronger. Then he loses pleasure in wickedness, and it 327:12 becomes his torment. The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease sinning. There is no other way. Sin is the image of the beast to be effaced by the sweat of agony. 327:15 It is a moral madness which rushes forth to clamor with midnight and tempest.
Peremptory demands
To the physical senses, the strict demands of Christian 327:18 Science seem peremptory; but mortals are has- tening to learn that Life is God, good, and that evil has in reality neither place nor power in the human or 327:21 the divine economy.
Moral courage
Fear of punishment never made man truly honest. Moral courage is requisite to meet the wrong and to 327:24 proclaim the right. But how shall we re- form the man who has more animal than moral courage, and who has not the true idea of good? 327:27 Through human consciousness, convince the mortal of his mistake in seeking material means for gaining hap- piness. Reason is the most active human faculty. Let 327:30 that inform the sentiments and awaken the man’s dor- mant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense 328:1 and the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal. Then he not only will 328:3 be saved, but _is_ saved.
Final destruction of error
Mortals suppose that they can live without goodness, when God is good and the only real Life. What is the 328:6 result? Understanding little about the divine Principle which saves and heals, mortals get rid of sin, sickness, and death only in belief. These errors 328:9 are not thus really destroyed, and must therefore cling to mortals until, here or hereafter, they gain the true un- derstanding of God in the Science which destroys human 328:12 delusions about Him and reveals the grand realities of His allness.
Promise perpetual
This understanding of man’s power, when he is 328:15 equipped by God, has sadly disappeared from Christian history. For centuries it has been dormant, a lost element of Christianity. Our missionaries 328:18 carry the Bible to India, but can it be said that they explain it practically, as Jesus did, when hundreds of persons die there annually from serpent-bites? Under- 328:21 standing spiritual law and knowing that there is no mate- rial law, Jesus said: “These signs shall follow them that believe, . . . they shall take up serpents, and if they 328:24 drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” It were well had Christendom believed and obeyed this 328:27 sacred saying.
Jesus’ promise is perpetual. Had it been given only to his immediate disciples, the Scriptural passage would 328:30 read you, not _they_. The purpose of his great life-work extends through time and includes universal humanity. Its Principle is infinite, reaching beyond the pale of a 329:1 single period or of a limited following. As time moves on, the healing elements of pure Christianity will be fairly 329:3 dealt with; they will be sought and taught, and will glow in all the grandeur of universal goodness.
Imitation of Jesus
A little leaven leavens the whole lump. A little under- 329:6 standing of Christian Science proves the truth of all that I say of it. Because you cannot walk on the water and raise the dead, you have no right to 329:9 question the great might of divine Science in these direc- tions. Be thankful that Jesus, who was the true demon- strator of Science, did these things, and left his example for 329:12 us. In Science we can use only what we understand. We must prove our faith by demonstration.
One should not tarry in the storm if the body is freez- 329:15 ing, nor should he remain in the devouring flames. Un- til one is able to prevent bad results, he should avoid their occasion. To be discouraged, is to resemble a pupil in 329:18 addition, who attempts to solve a problem of Euclid, and denies the rule of the problem because he fails in his first effort.
Error destroyed, not pardoned
329:21 There is no hypocrisy in Science. Principle is impera- tive. You cannot mock it by human will. Science is a divine demand, not a human. Always right, 329:24 its divine Principle never repents, but main- tains the claim of Truth by quenching error. The pardon of divine mercy is the destruction of error. If 329:27 men understood their real spiritual source to be all bless- edness, they would struggle for recourse to the spiritual and be at peace; but the deeper the error into which mor- 329:30 tal mind is plunged, the more intense the opposition to spirituality, till error yields to Truth.
The hopeful outlook
Human resistance to divine Science weakens in pro- 330:1 portion as mortals give up error for Truth and the un- derstanding of being supersedes mere belief. Until the 330:3 author of this book learned the vastness of Christian Science, the fixedness of mortal illu- sions, and the human hatred of Truth, she cherished 330:6 sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with immiediate and universal acceptance.
When the following platform is understood and the 330:9 letter and the spirit bear witness, the infallibility of divine metaphysics will be demonstrated.
The deific supremacy
I. God is infinite, the only Life, substance, Spirit, or 330:12 Soul, the only intelligence of the universe, including man. Eye hath neither seen God nor His image and likeness. Neither God nor the perfect man 330:15 can be discerned by the material senses. The individ- uality of Spirit, or the infinite, is unknown, and thus a knowledge of it is left either to human conjecture or to the 330:18 revelation of divine Science.
The deific definitions
II. God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be, – Life, Truth, Love. Spirit is divine Principle, and divine 330:21 Principle is Love, and Love is Mind, and Mind is not both good and bad, for God is Mind; therefore there is in reality one Mind only, be- 330:24 cause there is one God.
Evil obsolete
III. The notion that both evil and good are real is a delusion of material sense, which Science annihilates. 330:27 Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power. As manifested by mankind it stands for a lie, nothing claiming to be something, – for lust, dishonesty, 330:30 selfishness, envy, hypocrisy, slander, hate, theft, adultery, murder, dementia, insanity, inanity, devil, hell, with all the etceteras that word includes.
Life the creator
331:1 IV. God is divine Life, and Life is no more confined to the forms which reflect it than substance is in its 331:3 shadow. If life were in mortal man or mate- rial things, it would be subject to their limi- tations and would end in death. Life is Mind, the creator 331:6 reflected in His creations. If He dwelt within what He creates, God would not be reflected but absorbed, and the Science of being would be forever lost through a mortal 331:9 sense, which falsely testifies to a beginning and an end.
Allness of Spirit
V. The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From 331:12 this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. 331:15 Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God’s universe expresses Him.
The universal cause
331:18 VI. God is individual, incorporeal. He is divine Prin- ciple, Love, the universal cause, the only creator, and there is no other self-existence. He is all- 331:21 inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else. He fills all space, and it is impossible to conceive of such omnipresence and in- 331:24 dividuality except as infinite Spirit or Mind. Hence all is Spirit and spiritual.
Divine trinity
VII. Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person 331:27 called God, – that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one, – the same in essence, though multi- 331:30 form in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spirit- ual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essen- 332:1 tial nature of the infinite. They also indicate the divine Principle of scientific being, the intelligent relation of God 332:3 to man and the universe.
Father-Mother
VIII. Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which in- dicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. 332:6 As the apostle expressed it in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet: “For we are also His offspring.”
The Son of God
332:9 IX. Jesus was born of Mary. Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speak- ing to the human consciousness. The Christ 332:12 is incorporeal, spiritual, – yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and 332:15 casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death. As Paul says: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” The corporeal 332:18 man Jesus was human.
Holy Ghost or Comforter
X. Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ is the divine idea of God – the Holy Ghost, 332:21 or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth.
Christ Jesus
XI. Jesus was the son of a virgin. He was appointed 332:24 to speak God’s word and to appear to mortals in such a form of humanity as they could understand as well as perceive. Mary’s conception of 332:27 him was spiritual, for only purity could reflect Truth and Love, which were plainly incarnate in the good and pure Christ Jesus. He expressed the highest type of 332:30 divinity, which a fleshly form could express in that age. Into the real and ideal man the fleshly element cannot enter. Thus it is that Christ illustrates the coincidence, 333:1 or spiritual agreement, between God and man in His image.
Messiah or Christ
333:3 XII. The word _Christ_ is not properly a synonym for Jesus, though it is commonly so used. Jesus was a human name, which belonged to him in common with 333:6 other Hebrew boys and men, for it is identical with the name Joshua, the renowned Hebrew leader. On the other hand, Christ is not a name so much as the divine 333:9 title of Jesus. Christ expresses God’s spiritual, eternal nature. The name is synonymous with Messiah, and al- ludes to the spirituality which is taught, illustrated, and 333:12 demonstrated in the life of which Christ Jesus was the embodiment. The proper name of our Master in the Greek was Jesus the Christ; but Christ Jesus better sig- 333:15 nifies the Godlike.
The divine Principle and idea
XIII. The advent of Jesus of Nazareth marked the first century of the Christian era, but the Christ is 333:18 without beginning of years or end of days. Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spirit- 333:21 ual idea, – the reflection of God, – has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets 333:24 caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love. The divine image, idea, or Christ was, is, and 333:27 ever will be inseparable from the divine Principle, God. Jesus referred to this unity of his spiritual identity thus: “Before Abraham was, I am;” “I and my Father are 333:30 one;” “My Father is greater than I.” The one Spirit includes all identities.
Spiritual oneness
XIV. By these sayings Jesus meant, not that the hu- 334:1 man Jesus was or is eternal, but that the divine idea or Christ was and is so and therefore antedated Abraham; 334:3 not that the corporeal Jesus was one with the Father, but that the spiritual idea, Christ, dwells forever in the bosom of the Father, God, from 334:6 which it illumines heaven and earth; not that the Father is greater than Spirit, which is God, but greater, infinitely greater, than the fleshly Jesus, whose earthly career was 334:9 brief.
The Son’s duality
XV. The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a 334:12 bodily existence. This dual personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and mate- rial, the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest 334:15 in flesh, continued until the Master’s ascension, when the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in 334:18 the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes.
Eternity of the Christ
334:21 XVI. This was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” – slain, that is, according to the testi- mony of the corporeal senses, but undying in 334:24 the deific Mind. The Revelator represents the Son of man as saying (Revelation i. 17, 18): “I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead 334:27 [not understood]; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, [Science has explained me].” This is a mystical state- ment of the eternity of the Christ, and is also a reference 334:30 to the human sense of Jesus crucified.
Infinite Spirit
XVII. Spirit being God, there is but one Spirit, for there can be but one infinite and therefore one God. 335:1 There are neither spirits many nor gods many. There is no evil in Spirit, because God is Spirit. The theory, 335:3 that Spirit is distinct from matter but must pass through it, or into it, to be individualized, would reduce God to dependency on matter, and establish 335:6 a basis for pantheism.
The only substance
XVIII. Spirit, God, has created all in and of Him- self. Spirit never created matter. There is nothing in 335:9 Spirit out of which matter could be made, for, as the Bible declares, without the Logos, the AEon or Word of God, “was not anything made 335:12 that was made.” Spirit is the only substance, the in- visible and indivisible infinite God. Things spiritual and eternal are substantial. Things material and temporal 335:15 are insubstantial.
Soul and Spirit one
XIX. Soul and Spirit being one, God and Soul are one, and this one never included in a limited mind or a 335:18 limited body. Spirit is eternal, divine. Noth- ing but Spirit, Soul, can evolve Life, for Spirit is more than all else. Because Soul is immortal, it does 335:21 not exist in mortality. Soul must be incorporeal to be Spirit, for Spirit is not finite. Only by losing the false sense of Soul can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life as 335:24 immortality brought to light.
The one divine Mind
XX. Mind is the divine Principle, Love, and can pro- duce nothing unlike the eternal Father-Mother, God. 335:27 Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspirit- ual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. Sin, sickness, 335:30 and mortality are the suppositional antipodes of Spirit, and must be contradictions of reality.
The divine Ego
XXI. The Ego is deathless and limitless, for limits 336:1 would imply and impose ignorance. Mind is the I AM, or infinity. Mind never enters the finite. Intelligence 336:3 never passes into non-intelligence, or matter. Good never enters into evil the unlimited into the limited, the eternal into the temporal, nor the im- 336:6 mortal into mortality. The divine Ego, or individuality, is reflected in all spiritual individuality from the infini- tesimal to the infinite.
The real manhood
336:9 XXII. Immortal man was and is God’s image or idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind, and immor- tal man is coexistent and coeternal with that 336:12 Mind. He has been forever in the eternal Mind, God; but infinite Mind can never be in man, but is reflected by man. The spiritual man’s consciousness 336:15 and individuality are reflections of God. They are the emanations of Him who is Life, Truth, and Love. Im- mortal man is not and never was material, but always 336:18 spiritual and eternal.
Indivisibility of the infinite
XXIII. God is indivisible. A portion of God could not enter man; neither could God’s fulness be reflected