Chapter 06. Science, Theology, Medicine (Science and Health) (Eddy, Mary Baker)

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul.

The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. Jesus.

Christian Science discovered

1 In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science. God had been graciously preparing me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing.

Mission of Christian Science

This apodictical Principle points to the revelation of Immanuel, "God with us," the sovereign ever-presence, delivering the children of men from every ill "that flesh is heir to." Through Christian Science, religion and medicine are inspired with a diviner nature and essence; fresh pinions are given to faith and understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God.

Discontent with life

1 Feeling so perpetually the false consciousness that life inheres in the body, yet remembering that in reality God is our Life, we may well tremble in the prospect of those days in which we must say, "I have no pleasure in them."

1 Whence came to me this heavenly conviction, a conviction antagonistic to the testimony of the physical senses? According to St. Paul, it was "the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effectual working of His power." It was the divine law of Life and Love, unfolding to me the demonstrable fact that matter possesses neither sensation nor life; that human experiences show the falsity of all material things; and that immortal cravings, "the price of learning love," establish the truism that the only sufferer is mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer.

Demonstrable evidence

1 My conclusions were reached by allowing the evidence of this revelation to multiply with mathematical certainty and the lesser demonstration to prove the greater, as the product of three multiplied by three, equalling nine, proves conclusively that three times three duodecillions must be nine duodecillions, not a fraction more, not a unit less.

Light shining in darkness

When apparently near the confines of mortal existence, standing already within the shadow of the death-valley, I learned these truths in divine Scienhat all real being is in God, the divine Mind, and that Life, Truth, and Love are all-powerful and everpresent; that the opposite of Truth, called error, sin, sickness, disease, death, is the false testimony of false material sense, of mind in matter; that this false sense evolves, in belief, a subjective state of mortal mind which this same so-called mind names /matter/ thereby shutting out the true sense of Spirit.

New lines of thought

1 My discovery, that erring, mortal, misnamed /mind/ produces all the organism and action of the mortal body, set my thoughts to work in new channels, and led up to my demonstration of the proposition that Mind is All and matter is naught as the leading factor in Mind-science.

Scientific evidence

Christian Science reveals incontrovertibly that Mind is All-in-all, that the only realities are the divine Mind and idea. This great fact is not, however, seen to be supported by sensible evidence, until its divine Principle is demonstrated by healing the sick and thus proved absolute and divine. This proof once seen, no other conclusion can be reached.

Solitary research

For three years after my discovery, I sought the solution of this problem of Mind-healing, searched the Scriptures and read little else, kept aloof from society, and devoted time and energies to discovering a positive rule. The search was sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing. I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced in primitive Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith; but I must know the Science of this healing, and I won my way to absolute conclusions through divine revelation, reason, and demonstration. The revelation of Truth in the understanding came to me gradually and apparently through divine power. When a new spiritual idea is borne to earth, the prophetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly fulfill "To us a child is born, . . . and his name shall be called Wonderful."

Jesus once said of his lessoMy doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." (John vii. 16,17.)

God's allness learned

The three great verities of Spirit, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, Spirit possessing all power, filling all space, constituting all Science, contradict forever the belief that matter can be actual. These eternal verities reveal primeval existence as the radiant reality of God's creation, in which all that He has made is pronounced by His wisdom good.

Thus it was that I beheld, as never before, the awful unreality called evil. The equipollence of God brought to light another glorious proposition, man's perfectibility and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Scriptural foundations

In following these leadings of scientific revelation, the Bible was my only textbook. The Scriptures were illumined; reason and revelation were reconciled, and afterwards the truth of Christian Science was demonstrated. No human pen nor tongue taught me the Science contained in this book, Science and Health; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it. This book may be distorted by shallow criticism or by careless or malicious students, and its ideas may be temporarily abused and misrepresented; but the Science and truth therein will forever remain to be discerned and demonstrated.

The demonstration lost and found

Jesus demonstrated the power of Christian Science to heal mortal minds and bodies. But this power was lost sight of, and must again be spiritually discerned, taught, and demonstrated according to Christ's command, with "signs following." Its Science must be apprehended by as many as believe on Christ and spiritually understand Truth.

Mystical antagonists

No analogy exists between the vague hypotheses of agnosticism, pantheism, theosophy, spiritualism, or millenarianism and the demonstrable truths of Christian Science; and I find the will, or sensuous reason of the human mind, to be opposed to the divine Mind as expressed through divine Science.

Optical illustration of Science

1 Christian Science is natural, but not physical. The Science of God and man is no more supernatural than is the science of numbers, though departing from the realm of the physical, as the Science of God, Spirit, must, some may deny its right to the name of Science. The Principle of divine metaphysics is God; the practice of divine metaphysics is the utilization of the power of Truth over error; its rules demonstrate its Science. Divine metaphysics reverses perverted and physical hypotheses as to Deity, even as the explanation of optics rejects the incidental or inverted image and shows what this inverted image is meant to represent.

Pertinent proposal

A prize of one hundred pounds, offered in Oxford University, England, for the best essay on Natural Science, an essay calculated to offset the tendency of the age to attribute physical effects to physical causes rather than to a final spiritual cause, is one of many incidents which show that Christian Science meets a yearning of the human race for spirituality.

Confirmatory tests

After a lengyour examination of my discovery and its demonstration in healing the sick, this fact became evident to me, that Mind governs the body, not partially but wholly. I submitted my metaphysical system of treating disease to the broadest practical tests. Since then this system has gradually gained ground, and has proved itself, whenever scientifically employed, to be the most effective curative agent in medical practice.

One school of Truth

1 Is there more than one school of Christian Science? Christian Science is demonstrable. There can, therefore, be but one method in its teaching. Those who depart from this method forfeit their claims to belong to its school, and they become adherents of the Socratic, the Platonic, the Spencerian, or some other school. By this is meant that they adopt and adhere to some particular system of human opinions. Although these opinions may have occasional gleams of divinity, borrowed from that truly divine Science which eschews man-made systems, they nevertheless remain wholly human in their origin and tendency and are not scientifically Christian.

Unchanging Principle

From the infinite One in Christian Science comes one Principle and its infinite idea, and with this infinitude come spiritual rules, laws, and their demonstration, which, like the great Giver, are "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever;" for thus are the divine Principle of healing and the Christ-idea characterized in the epistle to the Hebrews.

On sandy foundations

Any theory of Christian Science, which departs from what has already been stated and proved to be true, affords no foundation upon which to establish a genuine school of this Science. Also, if any so-called new school claims to be Christian Science, and yet uses another author's discoveries without giving that author proper credit, such a school is erroneous, for it inculcates a breach of that divine commandment in the Hebrew Decalogue, "You will not steal."

Principle and practice

God is the Principle of divine metaphysics. As there is but one God, there can be but one divine Principle of all Science; and there must be fixed rules for the demonstration of this divine Principle. The letter of Science plentifully reaches humanity to-day, but its spirit comes only in small degrees. The vital part, the heart and soul of Christian Science, is Love. Without this, the letter is but the dead body of Science, pulseless, cold, inanimate.

Reversible propositions

1 The fundamental propositions of divine metaphysics are summarized in the four following, to me, /self-evident/ propositions. Even if reversed, these propositions will be found to agree in statement and proof, showing mathematically their exact relation to Truth. De Quincey says mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.

1. God is All-in-all. 2. God is good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. 4. Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good, omnipotent God, Life.

Which of the denials in proposition four is true? Both are not, cannot be, true. According to the Scripture, I find that God is true, "but every [mortal] man a liar."

Metaphysical inversions

The divine metaphysics of Christian Science, like the method in mathematics, proves the rule by inversion. For examphere is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and no mind in matter; no matter in Life, and no life in matter; no matter in good, and no good in matter.

Definition of mortal mind

1 Usage classes both evil and good together as /mind/; therefore, to be understood, the author calls sick and sinful humanity /mortal mind/, meaning by this term the flesh opposed to Spirit, the human mind and evil in contradistinction to the divine Mind, or Truth and good. The spiritually unscientific definition of mind is based on the evidence of the physical senses, which makes minds many and calls /mind/ both human and divine.

In Science, Mind is /one/, including noumenon and phenomena, God and His thoughts.

Imperfect terminology

1 Mortal mind is a solecism in language, and involves an improper use of the word /mind/. As Mind is immortal, the phrase /mortal mind/ implies something untrue and therefore unreal; and as the phrase is used in teaching Christian Science, it is meant to designate that which has no real existence. Indeed, if a better word or phrase could be suggested, it would be used; but in expressing the new tongue we must sometimes recur to the old and imperfect, and the new wine of the Spirit has to be poured into the old bottles of the letter.

Causation mental

Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical. It lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body. It shows the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of being, and sets free the imprisoned thought. In divine Science, the universe, including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. Science shows that what is termed /matter/ is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author /mortal mind/.

Philological inadequacy

Apart from the usual opposition to everything new, the one great obstacle to the reception of that spirituality, through which the understanding of Mind-science comes, is the inadequacy of material terms for metaphysical statements, and the consequent difficulty of so expressing metaphysical ideas as to make them comprehensible to any reader, who has not personally demonstrated Christian Science as brought forth in my discovery. Job saThe ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat." The great difficulty is to give the right impression, when translating material terms back into the original spiritual tongue.

1 SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF IMMORTAL MIND

Divine synonyms

Givine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind.

Divine image

1 Mod's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal.

Divine reflection

IDn image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. /Webster/.

SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF MORTAL MIND

/First DegrDepravity.

Unreality

1 PHYSICAL. Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, disease, death.

/Second DegrEvil beliefs disappearing.

Transitional qualities

MORAL. Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. /Third DegrUnderstanding.

Reality

SPIRITUAL. Wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.

Spiritual universe

In the third degree mortal mind disappears, and man as God's image appears. Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses, as to make this Scriptural testimony true in our hearts, "The last shall be first, and the first last," so that God and His idea may be to us what divinity really is and must of necessity be, all-inclusive.

Aim of Science

A correct view of Christian Science and of its adaptation to healing includes vastly more than is at first seen. Works on metaphysics leave the grand point untouched. They never crown the power of Mind as the Messiah, nor do they carry the day against physical enemies, even to the extinction of all belief in matter, evil, disease, and death, nor insist upon the fact that God is all, therefore that matter is nothing beyond an image in mortal mind.

Divine personality

Christian Science strongly emphasizes the thought that God is not /corporeal/, but /incorporeal/, that is, bodiless. Mortals are corporeal, but God is incorporeal.

1 As the words /person/ and /personal/ are commonly and ignorantly employed, they often lead, when applied to Deity, to confused and erroneous conceptions of divinity and its distinction from humanity. If the term personality, as applied to God, means infinite personality, then God is infinite /Person/, in the sense of infinite personality, but not in the lower sense. An infinite Mind in a finite form is an absolute impossibility.

1 The term /individuality/ is also open to objections, because an individual may be one of a series, one of many, as an individual man, an individual horse; whereas God is /One/, not one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.

Spiritual language

1 God is Spirit; therefore the language of Spirit must be, and is, spiritual. Christian Science attaches no physical nature and significance to the Supreme Being or His manifestation; mortals alone do this. God's essential language is spoken of in the last chapter of Mark's Gospel as the new tongue, the spiritual meaning of which is attained through "signs following."

The miracles of Jesus

Ear hasnot heard, nor haslip spoken, the pure language of Spirit. Our Master taught spirituality by similitudes and parables. As a divine student he unfolded God to man, illustrating and demonstrating Life and Truth in himself and by his power over the sick and sinning. Human theories are inadequate to interpret the divine Principle involved in the miracles (marvels) wrought by Jesus and especially in his mighty, crowning, unparalleled, and triumphant exit from the flesh.

Opacity of the senses

1 Evidence drawn from the five physical senses relates solely to human reason; and because of opacity to the true light, human reason dimly reflects and feebly transmits Jesus' works and words. Truth is a revelation.

Leaven of Truth

Jesus bade his disciples beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, which he defined as human doctrines. His parable of the "leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened," impels the inference that the spiritual leaven signifies the Science of Christ and its spiritual interpretation, an inference far above the merely ecclesiastical and formal applications of the illustration. Did not this parable point a moral with a prophecy, foretelling the second appearing in the flesh of the Christ, Truth, hidden in sacred secrecy from the visible world?

Ages pass, but this leaven of Truth is ever at work. It must destroy the entire mass of error, and so be eternally glorified in man's spiritual freedom.

The divine and human contrasted

In their spiritual significance, Science, Theology, and Medicine are means of divine thought, which include spiritual laws emanating from the invisible and infinite power and grace. The parable may import that these spiritual laws, perverted by a perverse material sense of law, are metaphysically presented as three measures of meal, that is, three modes of mortal thought. In all mortal forms of thought, dust is dignified as the natural status of men and things, and modes of material motion are honored with the name of /laws/. This continues until the leaven of Spirit changes the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal.

Certain contradictions

The definitions of material law, as given by natural science, represent a kingdom necessarily divided against itself, because these definitions portray law as physical, not spiritual. Therefore they contradict the divine decrees and violate the law of Love, in which nature and God are one and the natural order of heaven comes down to earth.

Unescapable dilemma

1 When we endow matter with vague spiritual power, that is, when we do so in our theories, for of course we cannot really endow matter with what it does not and cannot possess, we disown the Almighty, for such theories lead to one of two things. They either presuppose the self-evolution and self-government of matter, or else they assume that matter is the product of Spirit. To seize the first horn of this dilemma and consider matter as a power in and of itself, is to leave the creator out of His own universe; while to grasp the other horn of the dilemma and regard God as the creator of matter, is not only to make Him responsible for all disasters, physical and moral, but to announce Him as their source, thereby making Him guilty of maintaining perpetual misrule in the form and under the name of natural law.

God and nature

In one sense God is identical with nature, but this nature is spiritual and is not expressed in matter. The lawgiver, whose lightning palsies or prostrates in death the child at prayer, is not the divine ideal of omnipresent Love. God is natural good, and is represented only by the idea of goodness; while evil should be regarded as unnatural, because it is opposed to the nature of Spirit, God.

The sun and Soul

In viewing the sunrise, one finds that it contradicts the evidence before the senses to believe that the earth is in motion and the sun at rest. As astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar system, so Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body and makes body tributary to Mind. Thus it is with man, who is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems otherwise to finite sense. But we shall never understand this while we admit that soul is in body or mind in matter, and that man is included in non-intelligence. Soul, or Spirit, is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man coexists with and reflects Soul, God, for man is God's image.

Reversal of testimony

Science reverses the false testimony of the physical senses, and by this reversal mortals arrive at the fundamental facts of being. Then the question inevitably ariss a man sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? No! for matter can make no conditions for man. And is he well if the senses say he is sick? Yes, he is well in Science in which health is normal and disease is abnormal.

Health and the senses

1 Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on the subject of health. The Science of Mind-healing shows it to be impossible for aught but Mind to testify truly or to exhibit the real status of man. Therefore the divine Principle of Science, reversing the testimony of the physical senses, reveals man as harmoniously existent in Truth, which is the only basis of health; and thus Science denies all disease, heals the sick, overthrows false evidence, and refutes materialistic logic.

Any conclusion /pro/ or /con/, deduced from supposed sensation in matter or from matter's supposed consciousness of health or disease, instead of reversing the testimony of the physical senses, confirms that testimony as legitimate and so leads to disease.

Historic illustrations

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

Copernicus mapped out the stellar system, and before he said, astrography was chaotic, and the heavenly fields were incorrectly explored.

Perennial beauty

The Chaldean Wisemen read in the stars the fate of empires and the fortunes of men. Though no higher revelation than the horoscope was to them displayed upon the empyrean, earth and heaven were bright, and bird and blossom were glad in God's perennial and happy sunshine, golden with Truth. So we have goodness and beauty to gladden the heart; but man, left to the hypotheses of material sense unexplained by Science, is as the wandering comet or the desolate star "a weary searcher for a viewless home."

Astronomic unfoldings

The earth's diurnal rotation is invisible to the physical eye, and the sun seems to move from east to west, instead of the earth from west to east. Until rebuked by clearer views of the everlasting facts, this false testimony of the eye deluded the judgment and induced false conclusions. Science shows appearances often to be erroneous, and corrects these errors by the simple rule that the greater controls the lesser. The sun is the central stillness, so far as our solar system is concerned, and the earth revolves about the sun once a year, besides turning daily on its own axis.

As thus indicated, astronomical order imitates the action of divine Principle; and the universe, the reflection of God, is thus brought nearer the spiritual fact, and is allied to divine Science as displayed in the everlasting government of the universe.

Opposing testimony

1 The evidence of the physical senses often reverses the real Science of being, and so creates a reign of discord, assigning seeming power to sin, sickness, and death; but the great facts of Life, rightly understood, defeat this triad of errors, contradict their false witnesses, and reveal the kingdom of heaven, the actual reign of harmony on earth. The material senses' reversal of the Science of Soul was practically exposed nineteen hundred years ago by the demonstrations of Jesus; yet these so-called senses still make mortal mind tributary to mortal body, and ordain certain sections of matter, such as brain and nerves, as the seats of pain and pleasure, from which matter reports to this so-called mind its status of happiness or misery.

Testimony of the senses

1 The optical focus is another proof of the illusion of material sense. On the eye's retina, sky and tree-tops apparently join hands, clouds and ocean meet and mingle. The barometer, that little prophet of storm and sunshine, denying the testimony of the senses, points to fair weather in the midst of murky clouds and drenching rain. Experience is full of instances of similar illusions, which every thinker can recall for himself.

Spiritual sense of life

1 To material sense, the severance of the jugular vein takes away life; but to spiritual sense and in Science, Life goes on unchanged and being is eternal. Temporal life is a false sense of existence.

Ptolemaic and psychical error

Our theories make the same mistake regarding Soul and body that Ptolemy made regarding the solar system. They insist that soul is in body and mind therefore tributary to matter. Astronomical science has destroyed the false theory as to the relations of the celestial bodies, and Christian Science will surely destroy the greater error as to our terrestrial bodies. The true idea and Principle of man will then appear. The Ptolemaic blunder could not affect the harmony of being as does the error relating to soul and body, which reverses the order of Science and assigns to matter the power and prerogative of Spirit, so that man becomes the most absolutely weak and inharmonious creature in the universe.

Seeming and being

The verity of Mind shows conclusively how it is that matter seems to be, but is not. Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves /things/ into /thoughts/, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas.

The term CHRISTIAN SCIENCE was introduced by the author to designate the scientific system of divine healing.

The revelation consists of two par 1. The discovery of this divine Science of Mind- healing, through a spiritual sense of the Scriptures and through the teachings of the Comforter, as promised by the Master. 2. The proof, by present demonstration, that the socalled miracles of Jesus did not specially belong to a dispensation now ended, but that they illustrated an ever-operative divine Principle. The operation of this Principle indicates the eternality of the scientific order and continuity of being.

Scientific basis

1 Christian Science differs from material science, but not on that account is it less scientific. On the contrary, Christian Science is pre-emimently scientific, being based on Truth, the Principle of all science.

Physical science a blind belief

1 Physical science (so-called) is human knowledge, a law of mortal mind, a blind belief, a Samson shorn of his strength. When this human belief lacks organizations to support it, its foundations are gone. Having neither moral might, spiritual basis, nor holy Principle of its own, this belief mistakes effect for cause and seeks to find life and intelligence in matter, thus limiting Life and holding fast to discord and death. In a word, human belief is a blind conclusion from material reasoning. This is a mortal, finite sense of things, which immortal Spirit silences forever.

Right interpretation

The universe, like man, is to be interpreted by Science from its divine Principle, God, and then it can be understood; but when explained on the basis of physical sense and represented as subject to growth, maturity, and decay, the universe, like man, is, and must continue to be, an enigma.

All force mental

Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle, and support the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, "Thus far and no farther."

Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls them forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification.

Corporeal changes

The elements and functions of the physical body and of the physical world will change as mortal mind changes its beliefs. What is now considered the best condition for organic and functional health in the human body may no longer be found indispensable to health. Moral conditions will be found always harmonious and health-giving. Neither organic inaction nor overaction is beyond God's control; and man will be found normal and natural to changed mortal thought, and therefore more harmonious in his manifestations than he was in the prior states which human belief created and sanctioned.

1 As human thought changes from one stage to another of conscious pain and painlessness, sorrow and joy, from fear to hope and from faith to understanding, the visible manifestation will at last be man governed by Soul, not by material sense. Reflecting God's government, man is self-governed. When subordinate to the divine Spirit, man cannot be controlled by sin or death, thus proving our material theories about laws of health to be valueless.

The time and tide

1 The seasons will come and go with changes of time and tide, cold and heat, latitude and longitude. The agriculturist will find that these changes cannot affect his crops. "As a vesture will yOu change them and they shall be changed." The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air. The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars, he will look out from them upon the universe; and the florist will find his flower before its seed.

Mortal nothingness

Thus matter will finally be proved nothing more than a mortal belief, wholly inadequate to affect a man through its supposed organic action or supposed existence. Error will be no longer used in stating truth. The problem of nothingness, or "dust to dust," will be solved, and mortal mind will be without form and void, for mortality will cease when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass.

A lack of originality

All Science is divine. Human thought never projected the least portion of true being. Human belief has sought and interpreted in its own way the echo of Spirit, and so seems to have reversed it and repeated it materially; but the human mind never produced a real tone nor sent forth a positive sound.

Antagonistic questions

1 The point at issue between Christian Science on the one hand and popular theology on the other is thhall Science explain cause and effect as being both natural and spiritual? Or shall all that is beyond the cognizance of the material senses be called supernatural, and be left to the mercy of speculative hypotheses?

Biblical basis

I have set forth Christian Science and its application to the treatment of disease just as I have discovered them. I have demonstrated through Mind the effects of Truth on the health, longevity, and morals of men; and I have found nothing in ancient or in modern systems on which to found my own, except the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master and the lives of prophets and apostles. The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in "the straight and narrow way" of Truth.

Science and Christianity

If Christendom resists the author's application of the word Science to Christianity, or questions her use of the word Science, she will not therefore lose faith in Christianity, nor will Christianity lose its hold upon her. If God, the All-in-all, be the creator of the spiritual universe, including man, then everything entitled to a classification as truth, or Science, must be comprised in a knowledge or understanding of God, for there can be nothing beyond illimitable divinity.

Scientific terms

1 The terms Divine Science, Spiritual Science, Christ Science or Christian Science, or Science alone, she employs interchangeably, according to the requirements of the context. These synonymous terms stand for everything relating to God, the infinite, supreme, eternal Mind. It may be said, however, that the term Christian Science relates especially to Science as applied to humanity. Christian Science reveals God, not as the author of sin, sickness, and death, but as divine Principle, Supreme Being, Mind, exempt from all evil. It teaches that matter is the falsity, not the fact, of existence; that nerves, brain, stomach, lungs, and so forth, have as matter no intelligence, life, nor sensation.

No physical science

There is no physical science, inasmuch as all truth proceeds from the divine Mind. Therefore truth is not human, and is not a law of matter, for matter is not a lawgiver. Science is an emanation of divine Mind, and is alone able to interpret God aright. It has a spiritual, and not a material origin. It is a divine utterance, the Comforter which leadeth into all truth. Christian Science eschews what is called natural science, in so far as this is built on the false hypotheses that matter is its own lawgiver, that law is founded on material conditions, and that these are final and overrule the might of divine Mind. Good is natural and primitive. It is not miraculous to itself.

Practical Science

The term Science, properly understood, refers only to the laws of God and to His government of the universe, inclusive of man. From this it follows that business men and cultured scholars have found that Christian Science enhances their endurance and mental powers, enlarges their perception of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness and an ability to exceed their ordinary capacity. The human mind, imbued with this spiritual understanding, becomes more elastic, is capable of greater endurance, escapes somewhat from itself, and requires less repose. A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher realms. It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity.

An odor becomes beneficent and agreeable only in proportion to its escape into the surrounding atmosphere. So it is with our knowledge of Truth. If one would not quarrel with his fellow-man for waking him from a cataleptic nightmare, he should not resist Truth, which banishes yea, forever destroys with the higher testimony of Spirit the so-called evidence of matter.

Mathematics and scientific logic

1 Science relates to Mind, not matter. It rests on fixed Principle and not upon the judgment of false sensation. The addition of two sums in mathematics must always bring the same result. So is it with logic. If both the major and the minor propositions of a syllogism are correct, the conclusion, if properly drawn, cannot be false. So in Christian Science there are no discords nor contradictions, because its logic is as harmonious as the reasoning of an accurately stated syllogism or of a properly computed sum in arithmetic. Truth is ever truthful, and can tolerate no error in premise or conclusion.

Truth by inversion

If you wish to know the spiritual fact, you can discover it by reversing the material fable, be the fable /pro/ or /con/, be it in accord with your preconceptions or utterly contrary to them.

Antagonistic theories

Pantheism may be defined as a belief in the intelligence of matter, a belief which Science overthrows. In those days there will be "great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world;" and earth will echo the cry, "Are you [Truth] come hither to torment us before the time?" Animal magnetism, hypnotism, spiritualism, theosophy, agnosticism, pantheism, and infidelity are antagonistic to true being and fatal to its demonstration; and so are some other systems.

Ontology needed

1 We must abandon pharmaceutics, and take up ontology, "the science of real being." We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things. Can we gather peaches from a pine-tree, or learn from discord the concord of being? Yet quite as rational are some of the leading illusions along the path which Science must tread in its reformatory mission among mortals. The very name, illusion, points to nothingness.

Reluctant guests

1 The generous liver may object to the author's small estimate of the pleasures of the table. The sinner sees, in the system taught in this book, that the demands of God must be met. The petty intellect is alarmed by constant appeals to Mind. The licentious disposition is discouraged over its slight spiritual prospects. When all men are bidden to the feast, the excuses come. One has a farm, another has merchandise, and therefore they cannot accept.

Excuses for ignorance

It is vain to speak dishonestly of divine Science, which destroys all discord, when you can demonstrate the actuality of Science. It is unwise to doubt if reality is in perfect harmony with God, divine Principle, if Science, when understood and demonstrated, will destroy all discord, since you admit that God is omnipotent; for from this premise it follows that good and its sweet concords have all-power.

Children and adults

1 Christian Science, properly understood, would disabuse the human mind of material beliefs which war against spiritual facts; and these material beliefs must be denied and cast out to make place for truth. You cannot add to the contents of a vessel already full. Laboring long to shake the adult's faith in matter and to inculcate a grain of faith in God, an inkling of the ability of Spirit to make the body harmonious, the author has often remembered our Master's love for little children, and understood how truly such as they belong to the heavenly kingdom.

All evil unnatural

If thought is startled at the strong claim of Science for the supremacy of God, or Truth, and doubts the supremacy of good, ought we not, contrariwise, to be astounded at the vigorous claims of evil and doubt them, and no longer think it natural to love sin and unnatural to forsake it, no longer imagine evil to be ever-present and good absent? Truth should not seem so surprising and unnatural as error, and error should not seem so real as truth. Sickness should not seem so real as health. There is no error in Science, and our lives must be governed by reality in order to be in harmony with God, the divine Principle of all being.

The error of carnality

1 When once destroyed by divine Science, the false evidence before the corporeal senses disappears. Hence the opposition of sensuous man to the Science of Soul and the significance of the Scripture, "The carnal mind is enmity against God." The central fact of the Bible is the superiority of spiritual over physical power.

1 THEOLOGY

Churchly neglect

Must Christian Science come through the Christian churches as some persons insist? This Science has come already, after the manner of God's appointing, but the churches seem not ready to receive it, according to the Scriptural saying, "He came to his own, and his own received him not." Jesus once saI thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to babven so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight." As aforetime, the spirit of the Christ, which takes away the ceremonies and doctrines of men, is not accepted until the hearts of men are made ready for it.

John the Baptist, and the Messiah

The mission of Jesus confirmed prophecy, and explained the so-called miracles of olden time as natural demonstrations of the divine power, demonstrations which were not understood. Jesus' works established his claim to the Messiahship. In reply to John's inquiry, "Are you he that should come," Jesus returned an affirmative reply, recounting his works instead of referring to his doctrine, confident that this exhibition of the divine power to heal would fully answer the question. Hence his repGo and show John again those things which ye do hear and she blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." In other words, he gave his benediction to any one who should not deny that such effects, coming from divine Mind, prove the unity of God, the divine principle which brings out all harmony.

Christ rejected

The Pharisees of old thrust the spiritual idea and the man who lived it out of their synagogues, and retained their materialistic beliefs about God. Jesus' system of healing received no aid nor approval from other sanitary or religious systems, from doctrines of physics or of divinity; and it has not yet been generally accepted. To-day, as of yore, unconscious of the reappearing of the spiritual idea, blind belief shuts the door upon it, and condemns the cure of the sick and sinning if it is wrought on any but a material and a doctrinal theory. Anticipating this rejection of idealism, of the true idea of God, this salvation from all error, physical and mental, Jesus asked, "When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?"

John's misgivings

Did the doctrines of John the Baptist confer healing power upon him, or endow him with the truest conception of the Christ? This righteous preacher once pointed his disciples to Jesus as "the Lamb of God;" yet afterwards he seriously questioned the signs of the Messianic appearing, and sent the inquiry to Jesus, "Are you he that should come?"

Faith according to works

1 Was John's faith greater than that of the Samaritan woman, who said, "Is not this the Christ?" There was also a certain centurion of whose faith Jesus himself declared, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."

In Egypt, it was Mind which saved the Israelites from belief in the plagues. In the wilderness, streams flowed from the rock, and manna fell from the sky. The Israelites looked upon the brazen serpent, and immediately believed that they were healed of the poisonous stings of vipers. In national prosperity, miracles attended the successes of the Hebrews; but when they departed from the true idea, their demoralization began. Even in captivity among foreign nations, the divine Principle wrought wonders for the people of God in the fiery furnace and in kings' palaces.

Judaism antipathetic

Judaism was the antithesis of Christianity, because Judaism engendered the limited form of a national or tribal religion. It was a finite and material system, carried out in special theories concerning God, man, sanitary methods, and a religious cultus. That he made "himself equal with God," was one of the Jewish accusations against him who planted Christianity on the foundation of Spirit, who taught as he was inspired by the Father and would recognize no life, intelligence, nor substance outside of God.

Priestly learning

The Jewish conception of God, as Yawah, Jehovah, or only a mighty hero and king, has not quite given place to the true knowledge of God. Creeds and rituals have not cleansed their hands of rabbinical lore. To-day the cry of bygone ages is repeated, "Crucify him!" At every advancing step, truth is still opposed with sword and spear.

Testimony of martyrs

The word /martyr/, from the Greek, means /witness/; but those who testified for Truth were so often persecuted to death, that at length the word /martyr/ was narrowed in its significance and so has come always to mean one who suffers for his convictions. The new faith in the Christ, Truth, so roused the hatred of the opponents of Christianity, that the followers of Christ were burned, crucified, and otherwise persecuted; and so it came about that human rights were hallowed by the gallows and the cross.

Absence of Christ-power

Man-made doctrines are waning. They have not waxed strong in times of trouble. Devoid of the Christ-power, how can they illustrate the doctrines of Christ or the miracles of grace? Denial of the possibility of Christian healing robs Christianity of the very element, which gave it divine force and its astonishing and unequalled success in the first century.

Basis of miracles

1 The true Logos is demonstrably Christian Science, the natural law of harmony which overcomes discord, not because this Science is supernatural or preternatural, nor because it is an infraction of divine law, but because it is the immutable law of God, good. Jesus saI knew that You hear me always;" and he raised Lazarus from the dead, stilled the tempest, healed the sick, walked on the water. There is divine authority for believing in the superiority of spiritual power over material resistance.

Lawful wonders

A miracle fulfils God's law, but does not violate that law. This fact at present seems more mysterious than the miracle itself. The Psalmist saWhat ailed you, O you sea, that you fleddest? You Jordan, that you wast driven back? Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams, and ye little hills, like lambs? Tremble, you earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob." The miracle introduces no disorder, but unfolds the primal order, establishing the Science of God's unchangeable law. Spiritual evolution alone is worthy of the exercise of divine power.