Science & Health - Key to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddy

of Divine Science point the way our Master trod, and require of Christianity the proof (rather than the profession) that he required. We may hide spiritual ignorance from the world, but can never gain the Science of spiritual Life, and its demonstration, through ignorance or hypocrisy.

      Sin is thought before it is acted. You must master it in the first instance, or it will master you in the second. Jesus declared, that to look with desire on forbidden objects is to break a moral precept. He laid great stress on the action of the human mind, unseen to the senses.

      Evil thoughts and aims reach farther and do greater harm than visible crimes. Evil thoughts, lusts, and malicious purposes, going forth, like wandering pollen, from one human mind to another, find inadvertent lodgment, unless virtue and Truth build a strong defence. Better suffer a doctor infected with small-pox to attend you, than be treated mentally by one who obeys not the Christian requirements of Science.

      Fettered by sin yourself, it is difficult to free another from the fetters of disease. With your own wrists manacled, it is hard to break another's chains. But a little leaven ferments the whole mass. A grain of Christian Science does wonders for the sick, so omnipotent is Truth; but more of Science is needed.

      If the student adheres strictly to my teachings, and does not venture to break the rules of Christian Science, he cannot fail of success in healing. It is Science to do right, and nothing short of right-doing has any claim to the name.

      The spiritual and material are at variance, from the very necessity of their oppositeness. In this world mortals are unacquainted with the reality of existence, because matter and mortality are not its realities.

      We are sometimes taught that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be but the absence of light, wherein it loses all reality. Thus it is that sickness, sin, and death (the acme of moral and physical darkness) are unreal, because they reflect no light, no God.

      Science reverses the entire evidence of the senses with divine proof. Every quality and condition of mortality is lost, swallowed up in Immortality. Immortal man is the antipodes of mortal man, in origin, existence, and his relation to God.

      Socrates, understanding the superiority and immortality of good, feared not the hemlock poison. Even the faith of his philosophy spurned timidity for the mortal body. Having sought his spiritual estate, he recognized the immortality and supremacy of Spirit, and the nothingness of matter. The ignorance and malice of the age would have killed the venerable philosopher, for his faith in Soul and his indifference to the body.

      Who shall say that man is alive to-day, but is to-morrow dead? What has touched Life, God, to such strange issues? Here theories cease, and Science rolls back the mystery and solves the problem of man. Error bites the heel of Truth, but cannot kill it. Truth bruises the head of error, and crushes it. Spirituality lays open siege to materialism. On which side are we fighting?

      The wrong done another reacts most heavily against one's self. Right adjusts the balance sooner or later. Sooner think to make evil good, than to benefit yourself by injuring others. Man's moral mercury, rising or falling, registers his healing ability.

      To “come out from the world and be separate,” as the Scriptures command, is to incur society's frown; but, more than its flatteries, society's scorn enables one to be Christian. Losing her crucifix, the Catholic girl said, “I have nothing left but Christ.” “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

      To fall away from Truth in times of persecution shows that we never understood Truth. From the bridal-chamber of Wisdom there will come the warning, “Ye cannot enter now.” Unimproved opportunities must rebuke us when we would claim suddenly the benefits of an experience that is not ours, attempting to reap the harvest we have not sown, and to enter unlawfully into the labors of others. Truth often remains unsought until, suffering severely from error, we seek this remedy for human woe.

      You say, “Toil fatigues me.” But what is this you or me? Is it muscle or mind? Which one is tired and so speaks? Without mind, could the muscles be tired? Do the muscles talk, or do you talk for them? Matter is non-intelligent. Mortal mind does the talking, and that which affirms it to be tired first made it so.

      The immortal Divine Mind is the only lawgiver. Human mind arouses mortal and discordant beliefs. The scientific and permanent remedy for fatigue is to learn the power of Mind over any illusion of weariness in matter, in which there is really no sensation, and so destroy this illusion.

      Treat a belief of sickness as you would sin, with sudden dismissal. Resist the temptation to believe in matter as superior to Spirit. The Scriptures admonish us to “run and not be weary, walk and not faint.” The meaning of that passage is not perverted in its application to moments of fatigue, for the moral and physical are one in their results. When we wake to the Truth of being, all error, pain, weakness, weariness, sorrow, sin, and death, will be unknown, and the dream be forgotten. My method of treating fatigue applies to all bodily ailments, since Mind should be, and is, supreme.

      That scientific methods are above all others is seen in their effects. When you once conquer a condition of the body through Mind, that condition recurs less frequently, and its ills diminish until they finally disappear. When the Mind once gives rest to the body, the next toil will fatigue you less, for you are working out your problem in Science; and in proportion as you understand the control Mind has over the body, will you demonstrate it.

      You would not say that a wheel is fatigued; and yet the body is just as material as the wheel. Setting aside what the human mind says of the body, it would never be weary, any more than the inanimate wheel. Understanding this great fact rests you more than hours of repose.

      We hear a sweet melody and misunderstand the science that governs it. The sick who are healed through Metaphysical Science — not comprehending the Principle of the cure — may misunderstand it, and impute their recovery to change of air or diet, not rendering to God the honor that is due. Entire immunity from suffering cannot be expected at this period of time, only some abatement of suffering and sin; but these beginnings are in the right direction.

      In mathematics we do not multiply where we should subtract, and then say the product is correct. No more can we say, in Science, that muscles give strength, that nerves give pain or pleasure, or that matter governs, and then expect that the result will be harmony. Not muscles, nerves, or bones, — but Mind determines the condition of the body.

      When this is understood we shall never affirm of the body what we do not wish to be true of it. We shall not call the body weak if we would have it strong, when we know that the belief in feebleness must obtain in the human mind before it can be made manifest on the body, and that the destruction of the illusion will be the removal of its effect. Science includes no rule of discord, but governs harmoniously the universe and man.

      Arctic regions, the sunny tropics, the everlasting hills, the winged winds, mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers, and glorious heavens, — all declare the mighty supremacy of Mind. In the order of Science, wherein the Principle is not in matter which it governs, all is one grand concord. Change this statement, — suppose Mind to be in matter, or Soul in body, — and you lose the keynote of being, and there will be discord continually.

      The head is supposed to say, “I am pained;” the stomach, “I am nauseated;” the liver, “I am morbid;” and the body, “I am ill.” The physical reports of sickness may combine with the physical reports of sin, and say, “I am malice, lust, appetite, envy, hate;” and what renders both cures difficult is, that the human mind is the sinner, disinclined to correct his own faults, and believing that the body can be sick independent of this mind, and that the Divine Mind has no jurisdiction over it.

      Why pray for the recovery of the sick, if you are without faith in God's willingness and ability to heal? Believing in that, why substitute drugs for Almighty power, or employ a doctor to go contrary to His will?

      The Scripture says, “In Him we live, move, and have our being.” What then is this implied power, independent of God, that causes disease and cures it, — what is it but an error of belief, and a law of mortal mind, wrong in every sense, embracing all sin, sickness, and death. It is the very antipodes of Immortal Mind and spiritual