Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures Part 31

The compounded minerals or aggregated substances composing the earth, the relations which const.i.tuent 209:18 ma.s.ses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolutions of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance, when we remember 209:21 that they all must give place to the spiritual fact by the translation of man and the universe back into Spirit. In proportion as this is done, man and the universe will be 209:24 found harmonious and eternal.

Material substances or mundane formations, astro- nomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of specu- 209:27 lative theories, based on the hypothesis of material law or life and intelligence resident in matter, will ulti- mately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of 209:30 Spirit.

Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to un- derstand G.o.d. It shows the superiority of faith by works 210:1 over faith in words. Its ideas are expressed only in "new tongues;" and these are interpreted by the translation of 210:3 the spiritual original into the language which human thought can comprehend.

Jesus' disregard of matter

The Principle and proof of Christianity are discerned 210:6 by spiritual sense. They are set forth in Jesus' demon- strations, which show - by his healing the sick, casting out evils, and destroying death, 210:9 "the last enemy that shall be destroyed," - his disregard of matter and its so-called laws.

Knowing that Soul and its attributes were forever manifested through man, the Master healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the lame, thus bringing to light the scientific action of the 210:15 divine Mind on human minds and bodies and giving a better understanding of Soul and salvation. Jesus healed sickness and sin by one and the same metaphysical 210:18 process.

Mind not mortal

The expression _mortal mind_ is really a solecism, for Mind is immortal, and Truth pierces the error of mortality 210:21 as a sunbeam penetrates the cloud. Because, in obedience to the immutable law of Spirit, this so-called mind is self-destructive, I name it mortal.

210:24 Error soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind.

Matter mindless

What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say, "I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well." It is the so- 210:27 called mortal mind which voices this and ap- pears to itself to make good its claim. To mortal sense, sin and suffering are real, but immortal 210:30 sense includes no evil nor pestilence. Because immortal sense has no error of sense, it has no sense of error; there fore it is without a destructive element.

211:1 If brain, nerves, stomach, are intelligent, - if they talk to us, tell us their condition, and report how they feel, - 211:3 then Spirit and matter, Truth and error, commingle and produce sickness and health, good and evil, life and death; and who shall say whether Truth or error is the 211:6 greater?

Matter sensationless

The sensations of the body must either be the sensa- tions of a so-called mortal mind or of matter. Nerves 211:9 are not mind. Is it not provable that Mind is not _mortal_ and that matter has no sensation?

Is it not equally true that matter does not appear in the 211:12 spiritual understanding of being?

The sensation of sickness and the impulse to sin seem to obtain in mortal mind. When a tear starts, does not 211:15 this so-called mind produce the effect seen in the lachry- mal gland? Without mortal mind, the tear could not appear; and this action shows the nature of all so-called 211:18 material cause and effect.

It should no longer be said in Israel that "the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set 211:21 on edge." Sympathy with error should disappear. The transfer of the thoughts of one erring mind to another, Science renders impossible.

Nerves painless

211:24 If it is true that nerves have sensation, that matter has intelligence, that the material organism causes the eyes to see and the ears to hear, then, when the body 211:27 is dematerialized, these faculties must be lost, for their immortality is not in Spirit; whereas the fact is that only through dematerialization and spiritualiza- 211:30 tion of thought can these faculties be conceived of as immortal.

Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure. We 212:1 suffer or enjoy in our dreams, but this pain or pleasure is not communicated through a nerve. A tooth which has 212:3 been extracted sometimes aches again in belief, and the pain seems to be in its old place. A limb which has been amputated has continued in belief to pain the owner. If 212:6 the sensation of pain in the limb can return, can be pro- longed, why cannot the limb reappear?

Why need pain, rather than pleasure, come to this mor- 212:9 tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut 212:12 off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, not in matter.

212:15 Reverse the process; take away this so-called mind instead of a piece of the flesh, and the nerves have no sensation.

Human falsities

Mortals have a modus of their own, undirected and un- 212:18 sustained by G.o.d. They produce a rose through seed and soil, and bring the rose into contact with the olfactory nerves that they may smell it. In 212:21 legerdemain and credulous frenzy, mortals believe that unseen spirits produce the flowers. G.o.d alone makes and clothes the lilies of the field, and this He does by 212:24 means of Mind, not matter.

No miracles in Mind-methods

Because all the methods of Mind are not understood, we say the lips or hands must move in order to convey 212:27 thought, that the undulations of the air convey sound, and possibly that other methods involve so-called miracles. The realities of being, its 212:30 normal action, and the origin of all things are unseen to mortal sense; whereas the unreal and imitative move- ments of mortal belief, which would reverse the immortal 213:1 modus and action, are styled the real. Whoever con- tradicts this mortal mind supposition of reality is called 213:3 a deceiver, or is said to be deceived. Of a man it has been said, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he;" hence as a man spiritually _understandeth_, so is he in truth.

Good indefinable

213:6 Mortal mind conceives of something as either liquid or solid, and then cla.s.sifies it materially. Immortal and spiritual facts exist apart from this mortal and 213:9 material conception. G.o.d, good, is self-exist- ent and self-expressed, though indefinable as a whole.

Every step towards goodness is a departure from materi- 213:12 ality, and is a tendency towards G.o.d, Spirit. Material theories partially paralyze this attraction towards infinite and eternal good by an opposite attraction towards the 213:15 finite, temporary, and discordant.

Sound is a mental impression made on mortal belief.

The ear does not really hear. Divine Science reveals 213:18 sound as communicated through the senses of Soul - through spiritual understanding.

Music, rhythm of head and heart

Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The 213:21 rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He was a musician beyond what the world knew.

This was even more strikingly true of Beet- 213:24 hoven, who was so long hopelessly deaf. Men- tal melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede con- scious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart.

213:27 Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing either discord or harmony according as the hand, which sweeps over it, is human or divine.

213:30 Before human knowledge dipped to its depths into a false sense of things, - into belief in material origins which discard the one Mind and true source of being, - 214:1 it is possible that the impressions from Truth were as distinct as sound, and that they came as sound to the 214:3 primitive prophets. If the medium of hearing is wholly spiritual, it is normal and indestructible.

If Enoch's perception had been confined to the evidence 214:6 before his material senses, he could never have "walked with G.o.d," nor been guided into the demonstration of life eternal.

Adam and the senses

214:9 Adam, represented in the Scriptures as formed from dust, is an object-lesson for the human mind. The mate- rial senses, like Adam, originate in matter and 214:12 return to dust, - are proved non-intelligent.

They go out as they came in, for they are still the error, not the truth of being. When it is learned that the spirit- 214:15 ual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions of Mind to man, then being will be understood and found to be harmonious.

Idolatrous illusions

214:18 We bow down to matter, and entertain finite thoughts of G.o.d like the pagan idolater. Mortals are inclined to fear and to obey what they consider a material 214:21 body more than they do a spiritual G.o.d. All material knowledge, like the original "tree of knowledge,"

multiplies their pains, for mortal illusions would rob G.o.d, 214:24 slay man, and meanwhile would spread their table with cannibal tidbits and give thanks.

The senses of Soul

How transient a sense is mortal sight, when a wound on 214:27 the retina may end the power of light and lens! But the real sight or sense is not lost. Neither age nor accident can interfere with the senses of Soul, 214:30 and there are no other real senses. It is evident that the body as matter has no sensation of its own, and there is no oblivion for Soul and its faculties. Spirit's senses are with- 215:1 out pain, and they are forever at peace. Nothing can hide from them the harmony of all things and the might and 215:3 permanence of Truth.

Real being never lost

If Spirit, Soul, could sin or be lost, then being and im- mortality would be lost, together with all the faculties of 215:6 Mind; but being cannot be lost while G.o.d ex- ists. Soul and matter are at variance from the very necessity of their opposite natures. Mortals are 215:9 unacquainted with the reality of existence, because matter and mortality do not reflect the facts of Spirit.

Spiritual vision is not subordinate to geometric alti- 215:12 tudes. Whatever is governed by G.o.d, is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence and Life.

Light and darkness

215:15 We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the absence of light, at the coming of 215:18 which darkness loses the appearance of reality.

So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional absence of Life, G.o.d, and flee as phantoms of error before 215:21 truth and love.

With its divine proof, Science reverses the evidence of material sense. Every quality and condition of mortality 215:24 is lost, swallowed up in immortality. Mortal man is the antipode of immortal man in origin, in existence, and in his relation to G.o.d.

Faith of Socrates

215:27 Because he understood the superiority and immor- tality of good, Socrates feared not the hemlock poison.

Even the faith of his philosophy spurned phys- 215:30 ical timidity. Having sought man's spiritual state, he recognized the immortality of man. The igno- rance and malice of the age would have killed the vener- 216:1 able philosopher because of his faith in Soul and his in- difference to the body.

The serpent of error