Mary Baker Eddy - Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

The senses of Spirit are without pain and forever at peace. Nothing can hide from them the beauty of all things, the might and permanence of Truth. What a transient support is mortal joy, when the power of light and lens may end with a wound on the retina! But mortals can never lose the sight or sense of what is real.

The Spirit's eye need not be subordinate to geometric altitudes. Whatever is governed by God is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of Intelligence and Life.

We should never inquire into bodily condition, structure, or economy, if we followed the command of our Master, “Take no thought for the body;” but we should be masters of the body, dictate terms to it, and form and control it with Truth.

The compounded minerals, or aggregate substances that compose the earth, the relations constituent masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolutions of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance when we remember they must all give place to the spiritual fact, by the translation of man and the universe from matter back to Spirit. Proportionately as this is done, will both man and the universe be found harmonious and eternal.

Material substances, geological calculations, all the paraphernalia of speculative theories (based on the hypothesis of Life and Intelligence located in matter) will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of Spirit.

There is but one way to heaven, — harmony, — and Jesus showed us this way. Know no other reality than God and His reflection, no other consciousness of Life's demands, and rise superior to sin, sickness, and death — the so-called pains or pleasures of matter.

The notion of getting to heaven through the death of the body that never had Life, is to fancy that a second error will remedy the first; and that the illusion that Life is in matter may be cancelled by another illusion, that death takes Life out of matter. Spirit evolves all that is real. Form, outline, and color are ideas that Mind has expressed, and they never leave their spiritual and immortal basis for one transient and material.

When Columbus gave freer breath to the globe, ignorance and superstition chained the honest limbs of the brave old navigator, and disgrace and starvation stared him in the face; but sterner still had been his fate, if that discovery had undermined the favorite inclinations of sensualism.

Neither age nor accident interferes with the senses of Soul, and there are no other real senses. It is self-evident that body has neither sense nor sensation of its own, that there is no oblivion of Soul or its faculties. Is Soul lost through sin? Then being and immortality are lost, with the faculties of seeing and hearing. But being cannot be lost while man exists.

Knowing that Soul and all its faculties are forever manifested through man, the Master healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the lame, bringing to light the action of the Eternal Mind on the erring mortal mind and body, to give a better understanding and harmony of being. He healed the sick and destroyed sin, by one and the same metaphysical process.

If it be true that nerves have sensation, that the eyes see and the ears hear, that matter has intelligence, then, when the body is dematerialized, those faculties must depart, and are not immortal as Mind; whereas the fact remains, that only through dematerialization can these faculties be immortal.

The material senses and Adam (represented in the Scriptures as formed from dust) are figurative and return to dust, to the nothingness of a belief disavowed. They go out as they came in, for they are still the error, and not the Truth of being. When the spiritual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions of Mind to mortals, then being will be understood, and found to be harmonious.

We bow down to matter, and entertain finite thoughts of God, even as does the pagan idolater. We fear and obey what we consider a material body, more than we do a spiritual God. Modern knowledge, like the original tree of knowledge, multiplies our pains. Our illusions would rob God and slay man; and then would spread their table with cannibal titbits, giving thanks meanwhile.

Scripture informs us that “with God all things are possible;” but common theories practically deny this, and make healing the sick possible only through matter. Our theories may be false, but the Scripture is true. Christianity is not dishonest, but other religions may be.

The attempts to conciliate society, and gain dominion over mankind, are weaknesses of the world. He that leaves all for Truth has left popularity and gained Christianity, but the material belief is slow to acknowledge what the spiritual fact includes.

The cross is the central emblem of history, and the loadstar to the demonstration of Christian healing, whereby sin and sickness are destroyed. History repeats itself; the sects that endured the lash of their predecessors, in their turn bestow it upon those who are in advance of themselves.

We worship spiritually only as we worship less materially. Spiritual worship is Christianity; material worship is idolatry. Judaism and ritualism are but types and shadows of true worship. “The true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth.”

The substance of all devotion is the demonstration of Love. Our Master said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” We cannot fill vessels already full. They must first be emptied. Let us empty ourselves of error. When the sun shines, let us not hug closely our tatters about us.

To empty mortal mind of error is to pour in Truth through the floodgates of Science. The Christianity that Jesus introduced was not a creed or an observance. nor a special gift from a personal Jehovah; but it was the demonstration of a Divine Principle, casting out error and healing the sick, not merely in the name of Christ, or Truth, but in demonstration thereof.

The uselessness of drugs, the emptiness of knowledge, the nothingness of matter and its imaginary laws, are apparent as we rise from the rubbish of belief to the acquisition and demonstration of spiritual understanding. In the silent sanctuary of Soul are voices of solemn import, but we heed them not. When the supposed pleasures and pains of sense pass away, that is a sign of the burial of error and the resurrection to spiritual understanding.

Anciently the followers of Christ, or Truth, measured Christianity by its power over sickness, sin, and death; but modern religions omit all but one of these claims, — the power over sin. We must seek the undivided garment, the whole of Christianity, as our first proof of Science, for that alone gives it. This limited volume can do but little justice to so mighty a theme, for systematic teaching, and the student's own experience in practice, are requisite for its comprehension. Some individuals assimilate Truth more rapidly than others; but I never graduated a single student (obedient to my directions) who did not heal the sick, and add continually to his store of understanding and success.

If the student goes away to practise those teachings only in part, dividing his interests between God and Mammon, and substituting his own views for mine, he will reap what he has sown, and perhaps call me a hard master. Whoever would demonstrate the healing of Christian Science must abide by my rules; heed every statement, and advance from the rudiments laid down. There is nothing difficult or toilsome in this task, when the way is pointed out, but sincerity and earnestness alone win the prize.

Christian Science is not an exception to the general rule, that there is no excellence without labor in a direct line. One cannot scatter fire, and at the same time defeat the enemy. To pursue other vocations, and at the same time advance rapidly in the demonstration of this Science, is not possible.