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Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
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480:1When the substance of Spirit appears in Christian Science, the nothingness of matter is recognized. Where 3the spirit of God is, and there is no place where God is not, evil becomes nothing, the opposite of the something of Spirit. If there is no spiritual reflection, then 6there remains only the darkness of vacuity and not a trace of heavenly tints.
Nerves are an element of the belief that there is sensa9tion in matter, whereas matter is devoid of sensation.
Harmony
from Spirit
Consciousness, as well as action, is governed by Mind, is in God, the origin and gov12ernor of all that Science reveals. Material sense has its realm apart from Science in the unreal. Harmonious action proceeds from Spirit, God. Inharmony has no 15Principle; its action is erroneous and presupposes man to be in matter. Inharmony would make matter the cause as well as the effect of intelligence, or Soul, thus 18attempting to separate Mind from God.
Man is not God, and God is not man. Again, God, or good, never made man capable of sin. It is the oppo21
Evil
non-existent
site of good that is, evil which seems to make men capable of wrong-doing.
Hence, evil is but an illusion, and it has no real basis. Evil is a 24false belief. God is not its author. The supposititious parent of evil is a lie.
The Bible declares: All things were made by Him 27[the divine Word]; and without Him was not anything
Vapor and
nothingness
made that was made.
This is the eternal verity of divine Science. If sin, sickness, and 30death were understood as nothingness, they would disappear. As vapor melts before the sun, so evil would vanish before the reality of good. One must hide the 481:1other. How important, then, to choose good as the reality! Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing 3else. God’s being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Like the archpriests of yore, man is 6free to enter into the holiest,the realm of God.
Material sense never helps mortals to understand Spirit, God. Through spiritual sense only, man com9
The fruit
forbidden
prehends and loves Deity.
The various contradictions of the Science of Mind by the material senses do not change the unseen Truth, which re12mains forever intact. The forbidden fruit of knowledge, against which wisdom warns man, is the testimony of error, declaring existence to be at the mercy of death, 15and good and evil to be capable of commingling. This is the significance of the Scripture concerning this tree of the knowledge of good and evil,this growth of 18material belief, of which it is said: In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Human hypotheses first assume the reality of sickness, sin, and death, and 21then assume the necessity of these evils because of their admitted actuality. These human verdicts are the procurers of all discord.
24If Soul sins, it must be mortal. Sin has the elements of self-destruction. It cannot sustain itself. If sin is
Sense and
pure Soul
supported, God must uphold it, and this is 27impossible, since Truth cannot support error.
Soul is the divine Principle of man and never sins, hence the immortality of Soul. In Science we learn that 30it is material sense, not Soul, which sins; and it will be found that it is the sense of sin which is lost, and not a sinful soul. When reading the Scriptures, the substitu482:1tion of the word sense for soul gives the exact meaning in a majority of cases.
3Human thought has adulterated the meaning of the word soul through the hypothesis that soul is both an evil
Soul
defined
and a good intelligence, resident in matter.
6The proper use of the word soul can always be gained by substituting the word God, where the deific meaning is required. In other cases, use the word sense, 9and you will have the scientific signification. As used in Christian Science, Soul is properly the synonym of Spirit, or God; but out of Science, soul is identical with 12sense, with material sensation.
Question. Is it important to understand these explanations in order to heal the sick?
15Answer. It is, since Christ is the wayand the truth casting out all error. Jesus called himself the
Sonship
of Jesus
Son of man,but not the son of Joseph.
As 18woman is but a species of the genera, he was literally the Son of Man. Jesus was the highest human concept of the perfect man. He was inseparable from 21Christ, the Messiah, the divine idea of God outside the flesh. This enabled Jesus to demonstrate his control over matter. Angels announced to the Wisemen of 24old this dual appearing, and angels whisper it, through faith, to the hungering heart in every age.
Sickness is part of the error which Truth casts out. 27Error will not expel error. Christian Science is the law
Sickness
erroneous
of Truth, which heals the sick on the basis of the one Mind or God.
It can heal in no 30other way, since the human, mortal mind so-called is not a healer, but causes the belief in disease.
483:1Then comes the question, how do drugs, hygiene, and animal magnetism heal? It may be affirmed that they 3
True healing
transcendent
do not heal, but only relieve suffering temporarily, exchanging one disease for another.
We classify disease as error, which nothing but Truth or 6Mind can heal, and this Mind must be divine, not human. Mind transcends all other power, and will ultimately supersede all other means in healing. In order to heal by 9Science, you must not be ignorant of the moral and spiritual demands of Science nor disobey them. Moral ignorance or sin affects your demonstration, and hinders its 12approach to the standard in Christian Science.
After the author’s sacred discovery, she affixed the name Scienceto Christianity, the name errorto 15
Terms
adopted by
the author
corporeal sense, and the name substanceto Mind.
Science has called the world to battle over this issue and its demonstration, which 18heals the sick, destroys error, and reveals the universal harmony. To those natural Christian Scientists, the ancient worthies, and to Christ Jesus, God certainly revealed 21the spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute letter.
Because the Science of Mind seems to bring into dishonor the ordinary scientific schools, which wrestle with 24
Science
the way
material observations alone, this Science has met with opposition; but if any system honors God, it ought to receive aid, not opposition, from all think27ing persons.
And Christian Science does honor God as no other theory honors Him, and it does this in the way of His appointing, by doing many wonderful works 30through the divine name and nature. One must fulfil one’s mission without timidity or dissimulation, for to be well done, the work must be done unselfishly. Christianity 484:1will never be based on a divine Principle and so found to be unerring, until its absolute Science is reached. When 3this is accomplished, neither pride, prejudice, bigotry, nor envy can wash away its foundation, for it is built upon the rock, Christ.
6Question. Does Christian Science, or metaphysical healing, include medication, material hygiene, mesmerism, hypnotism, theosophy, or spiritualism?
9Answer. Not one of them is included in it. In divine Science, the supposed laws of matter yield to the
Mindless
methods
law of Mind.
What are termed natural 12science and material laws are the objective states of mortal mind. The physical universe expresses the conscious and unconscious thoughts of mortals. 15Physical force and mortal mind are one. Drugs and hygiene oppose the supremacy of the divine Mind. Drugs and inert matter are unconscious, mindless. Cer18tain results, supposed to proceed from drugs, are really caused by the faith in them which the false human consciousness is educated to feel.
21Mesmerism is mortal, material illusion. Animal magnetism is the voluntary or involuntary action of error
Animal
magnetism error
in all its forms; it is the human antipode 24of divine Science.
Science must triumph over material sense, and Truth over error, thus putting an end to the hypotheses involved in all false theories 27and practices.
Question. Is materiality the concomitant of spirituality, and is material sense a necessary preliminary to 30the understanding and expression of Spirit?
485:1Answer. If error is necessary to define or to reveal Truth, the answer is yes; but not otherwise. Material 3sense
Error only
ephemeral
is an absurd phrase, for matter has no sensation.
Science declares that Mind, not matter, sees, hears, feels, speaks. Whatever contradicts 6this statement is the false sense, which ever betrays mortals into sickness, sin, and death. If the unimportant and evil appear, only soon to disappear because 9of their uselessness or their iniquity, then these ephemeral views of error ought to be obliterated by Truth. Why malign Christian Science for instructing mortals how 12to make sin, disease, and death appear more and more unreal?
Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not 15to thwart the spiritual ultimate of all things, but come
Scientific
translations
naturally into Spirit through better health and morals and as the result of spiritual growth.
18Not death, but the understanding of Life, makes man immortal. The belief that life can be in matter or soul in body, and that man springs from dust or from an egg, 21is the result of the mortal error which Christ, or Truth, destroys by fulfilling the spiritual law of being, in which man is perfect, even as the Father which is in heaven 24is perfect. If thought yields its dominion to other powers, it cannot outline on the body its own beautiful images, but it effaces them and delineates foreign agents, 27called disease and sin.
The heathen gods of mythology controlled war and agriculture as much as nerves control sensation or 30
Material
beliefs
muscles measure strength.
To say that strength is in matter, is like saying that the power is in the lever. The notion of any life or intelli486:1gence in matter is without foundation in fact, and you can have no faith in falsehood when you have learned 3falsehood’s true nature.
Suppose one accident happens to the eye, another to the ear, and so on, until every corporeal sense is quenched. 6
Sense versus
Soul
What is man’s remedy? To die, that he may regain these senses? Even then he must gain spiritual understanding and spiritual sense in order to 9possess immortal consciousness. Earth’s preparatory school must be improved to the utmost. In reality man never dies. The belief that he dies will not establish his 12scientific harmony. Death is not the result of Truth but of error, and one error will not correct another.
Jesus proved by the prints of the nails, that his body 15was the same immediately after death as before. If death
Death
an error
restores sight, sound, and strength to man, then death is not an enemy but a better friend 18than Life.
Alas for the blindness of belief, which makes harmony conditional upon death and matter, and yet supposes Mind unable to produce harmony! So long 21as this error of belief remains, mortals will continue mortal in belief and subject to chance and change.
Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are 24eternal. They cannot be lost. Their reality and immor
Permanent
sensibility
tality are in Spirit and understanding, not in matter, hence their permanence.
If this 27were not so, man would be speedily annihilated. If the five corporeal senses were the medium through which to understand God, then palsy, blindness, and deafness 30would place man in a terrible situation, where he would be like those having no hope, and without God in the world;but as a matter of fact, these calamities often 487:1drive mortals to seek and to find a higher sense of happiness and existence.
3Life is deathless. Life is the origin and ultimate of man, never attainable through death, but gained by walk
Exercise
of Mind-
faculties
ing in the pathway of Truth both before and 6after that which is called death.
There is more Christianity in seeing and hearing spiritually than materially. There is more Science in the perpetual 9exercise of the Mind-faculties than in their loss. Lost they cannot be, while Mind remains. The apprehension of this gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf cen12turies ago, and it will repeat the wonder.
Question. You speak of belief. Who or what is it that believes?
15Answer. Spirit is all-knowing; this precludes the need of believing. Matter cannot believe, and Mind
Understand-
ing versus
belief
understands.
The body cannot believe. The 18believer and belief are one and are mortal. Christian evidence is founded on Science or demonstrable Truth, flowing from immortal Mind, and 21there is in reality no such thing as mortal mind. Mere belief is blindness without Principle from which to explain the reason of its hope. The belief that life is sen24tient and intelligent matter is erroneous.
The Apostle James said, Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works. 27The understanding that Life is God, Spirit, lengthens our days by strengthening our trust in the deathless reality of Life, its almightiness and immortality.
30This faith relies upon an understood Principle. This Principle makes whole the diseased, and brings out the 488:1enduring and harmonious phases of things. The result of our teachings is their sufficient confirmation. When, 3
Confirmation
by healing
on the strength of these instructions, you are able to banish a severe malady, the cure shows that you understand this teaching, and therefore you re6ceive the blessing of Truth.
The Hebrew and Greek words often translated belief differ somewhat in meaning from that conveyed by the 9
Belief and
firm trust
English verb believe; they have more the significance of faith, understanding, trust, constancy, firmness.
Hence the Scriptures often appear in 12our common version to approve and endorse belief, when they mean to enforce the necessity of understanding.
Question. Do the five corporeal senses constitute 15man?
Answer. Christian Science sustains with immortal proof the impossibility of any material sense, and defines 18
All faculties
from Mind
these so-called senses as mortal beliefs, the testimony of which cannot be true either of man or of his Maker.
The corporeal senses can take no 21cognizance of spiritual reality and immortality. Nerves have no more sensation, apart from what belief bestows upon them, than the fibres of a plant. Mind alone 24possesses all faculties, perception, and comprehension. Therefore mental endowments are not at the mercy of organization and decomposition, otherwise the very 27worms could unfashion man. If it were possible for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could reproduce them in all their perfection; but they cannot be dis30turbed nor destroyed, since they exist in immortal Mind, not in matter.
489:1The less mind there is manifested in matter the better. When the unthinking lobster loses its claw, the claw grows 3
Possibilities
of Life
again.
If the Science of Life were understood, it would be found that the senses of Mind are never lost and that matter has no sensation. Then the 6human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster’s claw, not with an artificial limb, but with the genuine one. Any hypothesis which supposes life to be in matter 9is an educated belief. In infancy this belief is not equal to guiding the hand to the mouth; and as consciousness develops, this belief goes out, yields to the reality of 12everlasting Life.
Corporeal sense defrauds and lies; it breaks all the commands of the Mosaic Decalogue to meet its own de15
Decalogue
disregarded
mands.
How then can this sense be the God-given channel to man of divine blessings or understanding? How can man, reflecting God, be de18pendent on material means for knowing, hearing, seeing? Who dares to say that the senses of man can be at one time the medium for sinning against God, at another the me21dium for obeying God? An affirmative reply would contradict the Scripture, for the same fountain sendeth not forth sweet waters and bitter.
24The corporeal senses are the only source of evil or error. Christian Science shows them to be false, be
Organic
construction
valueless
cause matter has no sensation, and no organic 27construction can give it hearing and sight nor make it the medium of Mind.
Outside the material sense of things, all is harmony. A wrong sense 30of God, man, and creation is non-sense, want of sense. Mortal belief would have the material senses sometimes good and sometimes bad. It assures mortals that there

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