Chapter 09. Creation (Science and Health) (Eddy, Mary Baker)

Your throne is established of old You are from everlasting. PSALMS.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. Paul.

Inadequate theories of creation

ETERNAL Truth is changing the universe. As mortals drop off their mental swaddling-clothes, thought expands into expression. "Let there be light," is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love, changing chaos into order and discord into the music of the spheres. The mythical human theories of creation, anciently classified as the higher criticism, sprang from cultured scholars in Rome and in Greece, but they afforded no foundation for accurate views of creation by the divine Mind.

Finite views of Deity

Mortal man has made a covenant with his eyes to belittle Deity with human conceptions. In league with material sense, mortals take limited views of all things. That God is corporeal or material, no man should affirm.

The human form, or physical finiteness, cannot be made the basis of any true idea of the infinite Godhead. Eye hasnot seen Spirit, nor hasear heard His voice.

No material creation

Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal. All things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the creator. Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man.

Tritheism impossible

The theory of three persons in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I AM. "Hear, O Israhe Lord our God is one Lord."

No divine corporeality

The everlasting I AM is not bounded nor compressed within the narrow limits of physical humanity, nor can He be understood aright through mortal concepts. The precise form of God must be of small importance in comparison with the sublime question, What is infinite Mind or divine Love?

Who is it that demands our obedience? He who, in the language of Scripture, "doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say to Him, What doest You?"

No form nor physical combination is adequate to represent infinite Love. A finite and material sense of God leads to formalism and narrowness; it chills the spirit of Christianity.

Limitless Mind

A limitless Mind cannot proceed from physical limitations. Finiteness cannot present the idea or the vastness of infinity. A mind originating from a finite or material source must be limited and finite. Infinite Mind is the creator, and creation is the infinite image or idea emanating from this Mind. If Mind is within and without all things, then all is Mind; and this definition is scientific.

Matter is not substance

If matter, so-called, is substance, then Spirit, matter's unlikeness, must be shadow; and shadow cannot produce substance. The theory that Spirit is not the only substance and creator is pantheistic heterodoxy, which ultimates in sickness, sin, and death; it is the belief in a bodily soul and a material mind, a soul governed by the body and a mind in matter. This belief is shallow pantheism.

Mind creates His own likeness in ideas, and the substance of an idea is very far from being the supposed substance of non-intelligent matter. Hence the Father Mind is not the father of matter. The material senses and human conceptions would translate spiritual ideas into material beliefs, and would say that an anthropomorphic God, instead of infinite Principle, in other words, divine Love, is the father of the rain, "who hasbegotten the drops of dew," who bringeth forth "Mazzaroth in his season," and guideth "Arcturus with his sons."

Inexhaustible divine Love

Finite mind manifests all sorts of errors, and thus proves the material theory of mind in matter to be the antipode of Mind. Who hasfound finite life or love sufficient to meet the demands of human want and woe, to still the desires, to satisfy the aspirations? Infinite Mind cannot be limited to a finite form, or Mind would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible Love, eternal Life, omnipotent Truth.

Infinite physique impossible

It would require an infinite form to contain infinite Mind. Indeed, the phrase /infinite form/ involves a contradiction of terms. Finite man cannot be the image and likeness of the infinite God. A mortal, corporeal, or finite conception of God cannot embrace the glories of limitless, incorporeal Life and Love. Hence the unsatisfied human craving for something better, higher, holier, than is afforded by a material belief in a physical God and man. The insufficiency of this belief to supply the true idea proves the falsity of material belief.

Infinity's reflection

Man is more than a material form with a mind inside, which must escape from its environments in order to be immortal. Man reflects infinity, and this reflection is the true idea of God.

God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis. Mind manifests all that exists in the infinitude of Truth. We know no more of man as the true divine image and likeness, than we know of God.

The infinite Principle is reflected by the infinite idea and spiritual individuality, but the material so-called senses have no cognizance of either Principle or its idea. The human capacities are enlarged and perfected in proportion as humanity gains the true conception of man and God.

Individual permanency

Mortals have a very imperfect sense of the spiritual man and of the infinite range of his thought. To him belongs eternal Life. Never born and never dying, it were impossible for man, under the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his high estate.

God's man discerned

Through spiritual sense you can discern the heart of divinity, and thus begin to comprehend in Science the generic term /man. /Man is not absorbed in Deity, and man cannot lose his individuality, for he reflects eternal Life; nor is he an isolated, solitary idea, for he represents infinite Mind, the sum of all substance.

In divine Science, man is the true image of God. The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought-models would allow, thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying. The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea, perfect God and perfect man, as the basis of thought and demonstration.

The divine image not lost

If man was once perfect but has now lost his perfection, then mortals have never beheld in man the reflex image of God. The /lost/ image is no image. The true likeness cannot be lost in divine reflection. Understanding this, Jesus saBe ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Immortal models

Mortal thought transmits its own images, and forms its offspring after human illusions. God, Spirit, works spiritually, not materially. Brain or matter never formed a human concept. Vibration is not intelligence; hence it is not a creator. Immortal ideas, pure, perfect, and enduring, are transmitted by the divine Mind through divine Science, which corrects error with truth and demands spiritual thoughts, divine concepts, to the end that they may produce harmonious results.

Deducing one's conclusions as to man from imperfection instead of perfection, one can no more arrive at the true conception or understanding of man, and make himself like it, than the sculptor can perfect his outlines from an imperfect model, or the painter can depict the form and face of Jesus, while holding in thought the character of Judas.

Spiritual discovery

The conceptions of mortal, erring thought must give way to the ideal of all that is perfect and eternal. Through many generations human beliefs will be attaining diviner conceptions, and the immortal and perfect model of God's creation will finally be seen as the only true conception of being.

Science reveals the possibility of achieving all good, and sets mortals at work to discover what God has already done; but distrust of one's ability to gain the goodness desired and to bring out better and higher results, often hampers the trial of one's wings and ensures failure at the outset.

Requisite change of our ideals

Mortals must change their ideals in order to improve their models. A sick body is evolved from sick thoughts. Sickness, disease, and death proceed from fear. Sensualism evolves bad physical and moral conditions.

Selfishness and sensualism are educated in mortal mind by the thoughts ever recurring to one's self, by conversation about the body, and by the expectation of perpetual pleasure or pain from it; and this education is at the expense of spiritual growth. If we array thought in mortal vestures, it must lose its immortal nature.

Thoughts are things

If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain; for Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit, we find its opposite, matter. Now reverse this action. Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.

Unreality of pain

The effect of mortal mind on health and happiness is seen in thf one turns away from the body with such absorbed interest as to forget it, the body experiences no pain. Under the strong impulse of a desire to perform his part, a noted actor was accustomed night after night to go upon the stage and sustain his appointed task, walking about as actively as the youngest member of the company. This old man was so lame that he hobbled every day to the theatre, and sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken, a signal which made him as oblivious of physical infirmity as if he had inhaled chloroform, though he was in the full possession of his so-called senses.

Immutable identity of man

Detach sense from the body, or matter, which is only a form of human belief, and you may learn the meaning of God, or good, and the nature of the immutable and immortal. Breaking away from the mutations of time and sense, you will neither lose the solid objects and ends of life nor your own identity. Fixing your gaze on the realities supernal, you will rise to the spiritual consciousness of being, even as the bird which has burst from the egg and preens its wings for a skyward flight.

Forgetfulness of self

We should forget our bodies in remembering good and the human race. Good demands of man every hour, in which to work out the problem of being. Consecration to good does not lessen man's dependence on God, but heightens it. Neither does consecration diminish man's obligations to God, but shows the paramount necessity of meeting them. Christian Science takes naught from the perfection of God, but it ascribes to Him the entire glory. By putting "off the old man with his deeds," mortals "put on immortality."

We cannot fathom the nature and quality of God's creation by diving into the shallows of mortal belief. We must reverse our feeble flutterings our efforts to find life and truth in matter and rise above the testimony of the material senses, above the mortal to the immortal idea of God. These clearer, higher views inspire the Godlike man to reach the absolute centre and circumference of his being.

The true sense

Job saI have heard of You by the hearing of the eut now mine eye sees You." Mortals will echo Job's thought, when the supposed pain and pleasure of matter cease to predominate. They will then drop the false estimate of life and happiness, of joy and sorrow, and attain the bliss of loving unselfishly, working patiently, and conquering all that is unlike God. Starting from a higher standpoint, one rises spontaneously, even as light emits light without effort; for "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Mind only the cause

The foundation of mortal discord is a false sense of man's origin. To begin rightly is to end rightly. Every concept which seems to begin with the brain begins falsely. Divine Mind is the only cause or Principle of existence. Cause does not exist in matter, in mortal mind, or in physical forms.

Human egotism

Mortals are egotists. They believe themselves to be independent workers, personal authors, and even privileged originators of something which Deity would not or could not create. The creations of mortal mind are material. Immortal spiritual man alone represents the truth of creation.

Mortal man a mis-creator

When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven. Carnal beliefs defraud us. They make man an involuntary hypocrite, producing evil when he would create good, forming deformity when he would outline grace and beauty, injuring those whom he would bless. He becomes a general mis-creator, who believes he is a semi-god. His "touch turns hope to dust, the dust we all have trod." He might say in Bible languaThe good that I would, I do nut the evil which I would not, /that I do./"

No new creation

There can be but one creator, who has created all. Whatever seems to be a new creation, is but the discovery of some distant idea of Truth; else it is a new multiplication or self-division of mortal thought, as when some finite sense peers from its cloister with amazement and attempts to pattern the infinite.

The multiplication of a human and mortal sense of persons and things is not creation. A sensual thought, like an atom of dust thrown into the face of spiritual immensity, is dense blindness instead of a scientific eternal consciousness of creation.

Mind's true camera

The fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth, are the fleeting concepts of the human mind. They have their day before the permanent facts and their perfection in Spirit appear. The crude creations of mortal thought must finally give place to the glorious forms which we sometimes behold in the camera of divine Mind, when the mental picture is spiritual and eternal. Mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms, if they would gain the true sense of things. Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind? We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being.

Self-completeness

As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible. When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness.

Spiritual proofs of existence

Spirit and its formations are the only realities of being. Matter disappears under the microscope of Spirit. Sin is unsustained by Truth, and sickness and death were overcome by Jesus, who proved them to be forms of error. Spiritual living and blessedness are the only evidences, by which we can recognize true existence and feel the unspeakable peace which comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love.

When we learn the way in Christian Science and recognize man's spiritual being, we shall behold and understand God's creation, all the glories of earth and heaven and man.

Godward gravitation

The universe of Spirit is peopled with spiritual beings, and its government is divine Science. Man is the offspring, not of the lowest, but of the highest qualities of Mind. Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged. Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual, they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite, in order that sin and mortality may be put off.

This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace.

Mortal birth and death

The senses represent birth as untimely and death as irresistible, as if man were a weed growing apace or a flower withered by the sun and nipped by untimely frosts; but this is true only of a mortal, not of a man in God's image and likeness. The truth of being is perennial, and the error is unreal and obsolete.

Blessings from pain

Who that has felt the loss of human peace has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy? The aspiration after heavenly good comes even before we discover what belongs to wisdom and Love. The loss of earthly hopes and pleasures brightens the ascending path of many a heart. The pains of sense quickly inform us that the pleasures of sense are mortal and that joy is spiritual.

Decapitation of error

The pains of sense are salutary, if they wrench away false pleasurable beliefs and transplant the affections from sense to Soul, where the creations of God are good, "rejoicing the heart." Such is the sword of Science, with which Truth decapitates error, materiality giving place to man's higher individuality and destiny.

Uses of adversity

Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth. Friends will betray and enemies will slander, until the lesson is sufficient to exalt you; for "man's extremity is God's opportunity." The author has experienced the foregoing prophecy and its blessings. Thus He teaches mortals to lay down their fleshliness and gain spirituality. This is done through self-abnegation. Universal Love is the divine way in Christian Science.

The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right. The opposite persecutions of material sense, aiding evil with evil, would deceive the very elect.

Beatific presence

Mortals must follow Jesus' sayings and his demonstrations, which dominate the flesh. Perfect and infinite Mind enthroned is heaven. The evil beliefs which originate in mortals are hell. Man is the idea of Spirit; he reflects the beatific presence, illuming the universe with light. Man is deathless, spiritual. He is above sin or frailty. He does not cross the barriers of time into the vast forever of Life, but he coexists with God and the universe.

The infinitude of God

Every object in material thought will be destroyed, but the spiritual idea, whose substance is in Mind, is eternal. The offspring of God start not from matter or ephemeral dust. They are in and of Spirit, divine Mind, and so forever continue. God is one. The allness of Deity is His oneness. Generically man is one, and specifically man means all men.

It is generally conceded that God is Father, eternal, selfcreated, infinite. If this is so, the forever Father must have had children prior to Adam. The great I AM made all "that was made." Hence man and the spiritual universe coexist with God.

Christian Scientists understand that, in a religious sense, they have the same authority for the appellative mother, as for that of brother and sister. Jesus sa "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."

Waymarks to eternal Truth

When examined in the light of divine Science, mortals present more than is detected upon the surface, since inverted thoughts and erroneous beliefs must be counterfeits of Truth. Thought is borrowed from a higher source than matter, and by reversal, errors serve as waymarks to the one Mind, in which all error disappears in celestial Truth. The robes of Spirit are "white and glistering," like the raiment of Christ. Even in this world, therefore, "let your garments be always white." "Blessed is the man that endureth [overcomes] temptatior when he is tried, [proved faithful], he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord haspromised to them that love him." (James i. 12.)

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life, . . . That which we have seen and heard declare we to you, that ye also may have fellowship with and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. JOHN, First Epistle.

Here I stand. I can do no otherwise; so help me God! Amen! MARTIN LUTHER.

Materialistic challenge

In the material world, thought has brought to light with great rapidity many useful wonders. With like activity have thought's swift pinions been rising towards the realm of the real, to the spiritual cause of those lower things which give impulse to inquiry. Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind as the cause of every effect. Materialistic hypotheses challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat. In this revolutionary period, like the shepherd-boy with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath.

Confusion confounded

In this final struggle for supremacy, semi-metaphysical systems afford no substantial aid to scientific metaphysics, for their arguments are based on the false testimony of the material senses as well as on the facts of Mind. These semi-metaphysical systems are one and all pantheistic, and savor of Pandemonium, a house divided against itself.

From first to last the supposed coexistence of Mind and matter and the mingling of good and evil have resulted from the philosophy of the serpent. Jesus' demonstrations sift the chaff from the wheat, and unfold the unity and the reality of good, the unreality, the nothingness, of evil.

Divine metaphysics

Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike. The first is error; the latter is truth. Metaphysics is above physics, and matter does not enter into metaphysical premises or conclusions. The categories of metaphysics rest on one basis, the divine Mind. Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul.

These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual consciousness, and they have this, advantage over the objects and thoughts of material sense, they are good and eternal.

Biblical foundations

The testimony of the material senses is neither absolute nor divine. I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teachings of Jesus, of his apostles, of the prophets, and on the testimony of the Science of Mind. Other foundations there are none. All other systems systems based wholly or partly on knowledge gained through the material senses are reeds shaken by the wind, not houses built on the rock.

Rejected theories

The theories I combat are the1) that all is matter; (2) that matter originates in Mind, and is as real as Mind, possessing intelligence and life. The first theory, that matter is everything, is quite as reasonable as the second, that Mind and matter coexist and cooperate. One only of the following statements can be tr1) that everything is matter; (2) that everything is Mind. Which one is it?

Matter and Mind are opposites. One is contrary to the other in its very nature and essence; hence both cannot be real. If one is real, the other must be unreal. Only by understanding that there is but one power, not two powers, matter and Mind, are scientific and logical conclusions reached. Few deny the hypothesis that intelligence, apart from man and matter, governs the universe; and it is generally admitted that this intelligence is the eternal Mind or divine principle, Love.

Prophetic ignorance

The prophets of old looked for something higher than the systems of their times; hence their foresight of the new dispensation of Truth. But they knew not what would be the precise nature of the teaching and demonstration of God, divine Mind, in His more infinite meanings, the demonstration which was to destroy sin, sickness, and death, establish the definition of omnipotence, and maintain the Science of Spirit.

The pride of priesthood is the prince of this world. It has nothing in Christ. Meekness and charity have divine authority. Mortals think wickedly; consequently they are wicked. They think sickly thoughts, and so become sick. If sin makes sinners, Truth and Love alone can unmake them. If a sense of disease produces suffering and a sense of ease antidotes suffering, disease is mental, not material. Hence the fact that the human mind alone suffers, is sick, and that the divine Mind alone heals.

The life of Christ Jesus was not miraculous, but it was indigenous to his spirituality, the good soil wherein the seed of Truth springs up and bears much fruit. Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God. Neither emasculation, illusion, nor insubordination exists in divine Science.

Jesus instructed his disciples whereby to heal the sick through Mind instead of matter. He knew that the philosophy, Science, and proof of Christianity were in Truth, casting out all inharmony.

Studious disciples

In Latin the word rendered /disciple/ signifies student; and the word indicates that the power of healing was not a supernatural gift to those learners, but the result of their cultivated spiritual understanding of the divine Science, which their Master demonstrated by healing the sick and sinning. Hence the universal application of his sayiNeither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me [understand me] through their word."

New Testament basis

Our Master said, "But the Comforter . . . shall teach you all things." When the Science of Christianity appears, it will lead you into all truth. The Sermon on the Mount is the essence of this Science, and the eternal life, not the death of Jesus, is its outcome.

Modern evangel

Those, who are willing to leave their nets or to cast them on the right side for Truth, have the opportunity now, as aforetime, to learn and to practise Christian healing. The Scriptures contain it. The spiritual import of the Word imparts this power. But, as Paul says, "How shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?" If sent, how shall they preach, convert, and heal multitudes, except the people hear?

Spirituality of Scripture

The spiritual sense of truth must be gained before Truth can be understood. This sense is assimilated only as we are honest, unselfish, loving, and meek. In the soil of an "honest and good heart" the seed must be sown; else it beareth not much fruit, for the swinish element in human nature uproots it. Jesus sa2 "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures." The spiritual sense of the Scriptures brings out the scientific sense, and is the new tongue referred to in the last chapter of Mark's Gospel.

Jesus' parable of "the sower" shows the care our Master took not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts the spiritual teachings which dulness and grossness could not accept. Reading the thoughts of the people, he sa "Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."

Unspiritual contrasts

It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce of material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, which really attest the divine origin and operation of Christian Science. The triumphs of Christian Science are recorded in the destruction of error and evil, from which are propagated the dismal beliefs of sin, sickness, and death.

God the Principle of all

The divine Principle of the universe must interpret the universe. God is the divine Principle of all that represents Him and of all that really exists. Christian Science, as demonstrated by Jesus, alone reveals the natural, divine Principle of Science.

Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and death are contrary to God, and cannot emanate from Him. There is no /material/ truth. The physical senses can take no cognizance of God and spiritual Truth. Human belief has sought out many inventions, but not one of them can solve the problem of being without the divine Principle of divine Science. Deductions from material hypotheses are not scientific. They differ from real Science because they are not based on the divine law.

Science versus sense

Divine Science reverses the false testimony of the material senses, and thus tears away the foundations of error. Hence the enmity between Science and the senses, and the impossibility of attaining perfect understanding till the errors of sense are eliminated.

The so-called laws of matter and of medical science have never made mortals whole, harmonious, and immortal. Man is harmonious when governed by Soul. Hence the importance of understanding the truth of being, which reveals the laws of spiritual existence.

Spiritual law the only law

God never ordained a material law to annul the spiritual law. If there were such a material law, it would oppose the supremacy of Spirit, God, and impugn the wisdom of the creator. Jesus walked on the waves, fed the multitude, healed the sick, and raised the dead in direct opposition to material laws. His acts were the demonstration of Science, overcoming the false claims of material sense or law.

Material knowledge illusory

Science shows that material, conflicting mortal opinions and beliefs emit the effects of error at all times, but this atmosphere of mortal mind cannot be destructive to morals and health when it is opposed promptly and persistently by Christian Science. Truth and Love antidote this mental miasma, and thus invigorate and sustain existence. Unnecessary knowledge gained from the five senses is only temporal, the conception of mortal mind, the offspring of sense, not of Soul, Spirit, and symbolizes all that is evil and perishable. /Natural science/, as it is commonly called, is not really natural nor scientific, because it is deduced from the evidence of the material senses. Ideas, on the contrary, are born of Spirit, and are not mere inferences drawn from material premises.

Five senses deceptive

The senses of Spirit abide in Love, and they demonstrate Truth and Life. Hence Christianity and the Science which expounds it are based on spiritual understanding, and they supersede the socalled laws of matter. Jesus demonstrated this great verity. When what we erroneously term the five physical senses are misdirected, they are simply the manifested beliefs of mortal mind, which affirm that life, substance, and intelligence are material, instead of spiritual. These false beliefs and their products constitute the flesh, and the flesh wars against Spirit.

Impossible partnership

Divine Science is absolute, and permits no half-way position in learning its Principle and rule establishing it by demonstration. The conventional firm, called matter and mind, God never formed. Science and understanding, governed by the unerring and eternal Mind, destroy the imaginary copartnership, matter and mind, formed only to be destroyed in a manner and at a period as yet unknown. This suppositional partnership is already obsolete, for matter, examined in the light of divine metaphysics, disappears.

Spirit the starting-point

Matter has no life to lose, and Spirit never dies. A partnership of mind with matter would ignore omnipresent and omnipotent Mind. This shows that matter did not originate in God, Spirit, and is not eternal. Therefore matter is neither substantial, living, nor intelligent. The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle.

Divine synonyms

To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is. Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, combine as one, and are the Scriptural names for God. All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God. These are His attributes, the eternal manifestations of the infinite divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows.

The divine completeness

Divine metaphysics, as revealed to spiritual understanding, shows clearly that all is Mind, and that Mind is God, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, that is, all power, all presence, all Science. Hence all is in reality the manifestation of Mind.

Our material human theories are destitute of Science. The true understanding of God is spiritual. It robs the grave of victory. It destroys the false evidence that misleads thought and points to other gods, or other so-called powers, such as matter, disease, sin, and death, superior or contrary to the one Spirit.

Truth, spiritually discerned, is scientifically understood. It casts out error and heals the sick.

Universal brotherhood

Having one God, one Mind, unfolds the power that heals the sick, and fulfils these sayings of Scripture, "I am the Lord that healeth you," and "I have found a ransom." When the divine precepts are understood, they unfold the foundation of fellowship, in which one mind is not at war with another, but all have one Spirit, God, one intelligent source, in accordance with the Scriptural commaLet this Mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God.

The realization that all inharmony is unreal brings objects and thoughts into human view in their true light, and presents them as beautiful and immortal. Harmony in man is as real and immortal as in music. Discord is unreal and mortal.

Perfection requisite

If God is admitted to be the only Mind and Life, there ceases to be any opportunity for sin and death. When we learn in Science how to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, thought is turned into new and healthy channels, towards the contemplation of things immortal and away from materiality to the Principle of the universe, including harmonious man.

Material beliefs and spiritual understanding never mingle. The latter destroys the former. Discord is the /nothingness/ named error. Harmony is the /somethingness/ named Truth.

Like evolving like

Nature and revelation inform us that like produces like. Divine Science does not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles. Intelligence never produces non-intelligence; but matter is ever non-intelligent and therefore cannot spring from intelligence. To all that is unlike unerring and eternal Mind, this Mind says, "You will surely die;" and elsewhere the Scripture says that dust returns to dust. The non-intelligent relapses into its own unreality. Matter never produces mind. The immortal never produces the mortal. Good cannot result in evil. As God Himself is good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be immortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirituality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and cannot be the outcome of an infinite God, good.

Natural history presents vegetables and animals as preserving their original species, like reproducing like. A mineral is not produced by a vegetable nor the man by the brute. In reproduction, the order of genus and species is preserved throughout the entire round of nature. This points to the spiritual truth and Science of being. Error relies upon a reversal of this order, asserts that Spirit produces matter and matter produces all the ills of flesh, and therefore that good is the origin of evil. These suppositions contradict even the order of material so-called science.

Material error

The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine, it is a human concept. Matter is an error of statement. This error in the premise leads to errors in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters. Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immortal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous.

Substance /versus/ supposition

Is Spirit the source or creator of matter? Science reveals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter. Divine metaphysics explains away matter. Spirit is the only substance and consciousness recognized by divine Science. The material senses oppose this, but there are no material senses, for matter has no mind. In Spirit there is no matter, even as in Truth there is no error, and in good no evil. It is a false supposition, the notion that there is real substancematter, the opposite of Spirit. Spirit, God, is infinite, all. Spirit can have no opposite.

One cause supreme

That matter is substantial or has life and sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, as we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter. The admission that there can be material substance requires another admission, namely, that Spirit is not infinite and that matter is selfcreative, self-existent, and eternal. From this it would follow that there are two eternal causes, warring forever with each other; and yet we say that Spirit is supreme and all-presence.

The belief of the eternity of matter contradicts the demonstration of life as Spirit, and leads to the conclusion that if man is material, he originated in matter and must return to dust, logic which would prove his annihilation.

Substance is Spirit

All that we term sin, sickness, and death is a mortal belief. We define matter as error, because it is the opposite of life, substance, and intelligence. Matter, with its mortality, cannot be substantial if Spirit is substantial and eternal. Which ought to be substance to us, the erring, changing, and dying, the mutable and mortal, or the unerring, immutable, and immortal? A New Testament writer plainly describes faith, a quality of mind, as "the /substance/ of things hoped for."

Material mortality

The doom of matter establishes the conclusion that matter, slime, or protoplasm never originated in the immortal Mind, and is therefore not eternal. Matter is neither created by Mind nor for the manifestation and support of Mind.

Spiritual tangibility

Ideas are tangible and real to immortal consciousness, and they have the advantage of being eternal. Spirit and matter can neither coexist nor cooperate, and one can no more create the other than Truth can create error, or /vice versa/.

In proportion as the belief disappears that life and intelligence are in or of matter, the immortal facts of being are seen, and their only idea or intelligence is in God. Spirit is reached only through the understanding and demonstration of eternal Life and Truth and Love.

Pantheistic tendencies

Every system of human philosophy, doctrine, and medicine is more or less infected with the pantheistic belief that there is mind in matter; but this belief contradicts alike revelation and right reasoning. A logical and scientific conclusion is reached only through the knowledge that there are not two bases of being, matter and mind, but one alone, Mind.

Pantheism, starting from a material sense of God, seeks cause in effect, Principle in its idea, and life and intelligence in matter.

The things of God are beautiful

In the infinitude of Mind, matter must be unknown. Symbols and elements of discord and decay are not products of the infinite, perfect, and eternal /All/. From Love and from the light and harmony which are the abode of Spirit, only reflections of good can come. All things beautiful and harmless are ideas of Mind. Mind creates and multiplies them, and the product must be mental.

Finite belief can never do justice to Truth in any direction. Finite belief limits all things, and would compress Mind, which is infinite, beneath a skull bone. Such belief can neither apprehend nor worship the infinite; and to accommodate its finite sense of the divisibility of Soul and substance, it seeks to divide the one Spirit into persons and souls.

Belief in many gods

Through this error, human belief comes to have "gods many and lords many." Moses declared as Jehovah's first command of the TThou shalt have no other gods before me!" But behold the zeal of belief to establish the opposite error of many minds. The argument of the serpent in the allegory, "Ye shall be as gods," urges through every avenue the belief that Soul is in body, and that infinite Spirit, and Life, is in finite forms.

Sensationless body

Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, the Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man, through Mind, not matter. The only excuse for entertaining human opinions and rejecting the Science of being is our mortal ignorance of Spirit, ignorance which yields only to the understanding of divine Science, the understanding by which we enter into the kingdom of Truth on earth and learn that Spirit is infinite and supreme. Spirit and matter no more commingle than light and darkness. When one appears, the other disappears.

God and His image

Error presupposes man to be both mind and matter. Divine Science contradicts the corporeal senses, rebukes mortal belief, and ashat is the Ego, whence its origin and what its destiny? The Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God; the Ego-man is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle.

The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is infinite individuality, which supplies all form and comeliness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things.

The mind supposed to exist in matter or beneath a skull bone is a myth, a misconceived sense and false conception as to man and Mind. When we put off the false sense for the true, and see that sin and mortality have neither Principle nor permanency, we shall learn that sin and mortality are without actual origin or rightful existence. They are native nothingness, out of which error would simulate creation through a man formed from dust.

The true new idea

Divine Science does not put new wine into old bottles, Soul into matter, nor the infinite into the finite. Our false views of matter perish as we grasp the facts of Spirit. The old belief must be cast out or the new idea will be spilled, and the inspiration, which is to change our standpoint, will be lost. Now, as of old, Truth casts out evils and heals the sick.

Figures of being

The real Life, or Mind, and its opposite, the so-called material life and mind, are figured by two geometrical symbols, a circle or sphere and a straight line. The circle represents the infinite without beginning or end; the straight line represents the finite, which has both beginning and end. The sphere represents good, the self-existent and eternal individuality or Mind; the straight line represents evil, a belief in a self-made and temporary material existence. Eternal Mind and temporary material existence never unite in figure or in fact.

Opposite symbols

A straight line finds no abiding-place in a curve, and a curve finds no adjustment to a straight line. Similarly, matter has no place in Spirit, and Spirit has no place in matter. Truth has no home in error, and error has no foothold in Truth. Mind cannot pass into non-intelligence and matter, nor can non-intelligence become Soul. At no point can these opposites mingle or unite. Even though they seem to touch, one is still a curve and the other a straight line.

There is no inherent power in matter; for all that is material is a material, human, mortal thought, always governing itself erroneously.

Truth is the intelligence of immortal Mind. Error is the so-called intelligence of mortal mind.

Truth is not inverted

Whatever indicates the fall of man or the opposite of God or God's absence, is the Adam-dream, which is neither Mind nor man, for it is not begotten of the Father. The rule of inversion infers from error its opposite, Truth; but Truth is the light which dispels error. As mortals begin to understand Spirit, they give up the belief that there is any true existence apart from God.

Source of all life and action

Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action. Mind is the same Life, Love, and wisdom "yesterday, and to-day, and forever." Matter and its effects sin, sickness, and death are states of mortal mind which act, react, and then come to a stop. They are not facts of Mind. They are not ideas, but illusions. Principle is absolute. It admits of no error, but rests upon understanding.

But what say prevalent theories? They insist that Life, or God, is one and the same with material life socalled. They speak of both Truth and error as /mind/, and of good and evil as /spirit/. They claim that to be life which is but the objective state of material sense, such as the structural life of the tree and of material man, and deem this the manifestation of the one Life, God.

Spiritual structure

This false belief as to what really constitutes life so detracts from God's character and nature, that the true sense of His power is lost to all who cling to this falsity. The divine Principle, or Life, cannot be practically demonstrated in length of days, as it was by the patriarchs, unless its Science be accurately stated. We must receive the divine Principle in the understanding, and live it in daily life; and unless we so do, we can no more demonstrate Science, than we can teach and illustrate geometry by calling a curve a straight line or a straight line a sphere.

Are mentality, immortality, consciousness, resident in matter? It is not rational to say that Mind is infinite, but dwells in finiteness, in matter, or that matter is infinite and the medium of Mind.

Mind never limited