Mary Baker Eddy

“ The false evidence of material sense contrasts strikingly with the testimony of Spirit. Material sense lifts its voice with the arrogance of reality and says:
I am wholly dishonest, and no man knoweth it. I can cheat, lie, commit adultery, rob, murder, and I elude Testimony of sense detection by smooth-tongued villainy. Animal in propensity, deceitful in sentiment, fraudulent in purpose, I mean to make my short span of life one gala day. What a nice thing is sin! How sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits! The world is my kingdom. I am enthroned in the gorgeousness of matter. ”

“ Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream? There cannot be, since whatever appears to be a mortal man is a mortal dream. Take away the mortal mind, and matter has no more sense as a man than it has as a tree. But the spiritual, real man is immortal. Upon this stage of existence goes on the dance of mortal mind. Mortal thoughts chase one another like snowflakes, and drift to the ground. Science reveals Life as not being at the mercy of death, nor will Science admit that happiness is ever the sport of circumstance. ”

“ Any attempt to heal mortals with erring mortal mind, instead of resting on the omnipotence of the divine Dangerous knowledge Mind, must prove abortive. Committing the bare process of mental healing to frail mortals, untaught and unrestrained by Christian Science, is like putting a sharp knife into the hands of a blind man or a raging maniac, and turning him loose in the crowded streets of a city. Whether animated by malice or ignorance, a false practitioner will work mischief, and ignorance is more harmful than wilful wickedness, when the latter is distrusted and thwarted in its incipiency. ”

“ Music is the rhythm of head and heart. 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.
Before human knowledge dipped to its depths into a so false sense of things, — into belief in material origins which discard the one Mind and true source of being, — it is possible that the impressions from Truth were as distinct as sound, and that they came as sound to the primitive prophets. If the medium of hearing is wholly spiritual, it is normal and indestructible. ”

“ There can be but one creator, who has created all. Whatever seems to be a new creation, is but the discovery No new creation 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. ”

“ Then, if an individual is sick, why treat the body alone and administer a dose of despair to the mind? Why declare that the body is diseased, and picture this disease to the mind, rolling it under the tongue as a sweet morsel and holding it before the thought of both physician and patient? We should understand that the cause of disease obtains in the mortal human mind, and its cure comes from the immortal divine Mind. We should prevent the images of disease from taking form in thought, and we should efface the outlines of disease already formulated in the minds of mortals. ”

“ Thus the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error.
The human thought must free itself from self-imposed materiality and bondage. It should no longer Spiritual freedom ask of the head, heart, or lungs: What are man's prospects for life? Mind is not helpless. Intelligence is not mute before non-intelligence.
By its own volition, not a blade of grass springs up, not a spray buds within the vale, not a leaf unfolds its fair outlines, not a flower starts from its cloistered cell. ”

“ The divine Principle and idea constitute spiritual harmony, — heaven and eternity. In the universe of Truth, Spiritual harmony matter is unknown. No supposition of error enters there. Divine Science, the Word of God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, “God is All-in-all,” and the light of ever-present Love illumines the universe. Hence the eternal wonder, — that infinite space is peopled with God's ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms. ”

“ But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind is All and reproduces all — as Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the product. The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all.
Genesis i. 12. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. ”

“ If sin, sickness, and death were understood as nothingness, they would disappear. As vapor melts before the sun, so evil would vanish before the reality of good. One must hide the other. How important, then, to choose good as the reality! Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else. God's being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Like the archpriests of yore, man is free “to enter into the holiest,” — the realm of God.
Material sense never helps mortals to understand Spirit, God. ”

“ The senses represent birth as untimely and death as irresistible, as if man were a weed growing apace or a Mortal birth and death 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.
Who that has felt the loss of human peace has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy? The aspiration after Blessings from pain heavenly good comes even before we discover what belongs to wisdom and Love. ”

“ As the children of Israel were guided triumphantly through the Red Sea, the dark ebbing and flowing tides Spiritual guidance of human fear, — as they were led through the wilderness, walking wearily through the great desert of human hopes, and anticipating the promised joy, — so shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God. Stately Science pauses not, but moves before them, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, leading to divine heights. ”

“ The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony.
Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less Love's endowment than beautiful. Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom. ”

“ Truth and error are unlike. In Science, Truth is divine, and the infinite Divine allness God can have no unlikeness. Did God, Truth, create error? No! “Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?
Neither understanding nor truth accompanies error, nor is error the offshoot of Mind. Evil calls itself something, when it is nothing. It saith, “I am man, but I am not the image and likeness of God;” ”

“ Searching for the origin of man, who is the reflection of God, is like inquiring into the origin of God, the The origin of divinity self-existent and eternal. Only impotent error would seek to unite Spirit with matter, good with evil, immortality with mortality, and call this sham unity man, as if man were the offspring of both Mind and matter, of both Deity and humanity. Creation rests on a spiritual basis. ”

“ Know thyself, and God will supply The armor of divinity the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you. The cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity.
Through trope and metaphor, the Revelator, immortal scribe of Spirit and of a true idealism, furnishes the Pure religion enthroned mirror in which mortals may see their own image. In significant figures he depicts the thoughts which he beholds in mortal mind. Thus he rebukes the conceit of sin, and foreshadows its doom. ”

“ The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil to destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily punishing the evil-doer. If we concede the same reality to discord as to harmony, discord has as lasting a claim upon us as has harmony. If evil is as real as good, evil is also as immortal. If death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth. If pain is as real as the absence of pain, both must be immortal; and if so, harmony cannot be the law of being.
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be self-deceived. ”

“ We must form perfect Perfect models models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, so health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will dimmish until they finally disappear.
Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence. ”

“ Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Being possesses its qualities before they are perceived The divine loveliness humanly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness. ”

“ Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into Renewed selfhood newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine “powers that be.” Such is the true Science of being. Any other theory of Life, or God, is delusive and mythological.
Mind is not the author of matter, and the creator of ideas is not the creator of illusions. Either there is no omnipotence, or omnipotence is the only power. God is the infinite, and infinity never began, will never end, and is includes nothing unlike God. ”

“ Human sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the unreal. The dragon as a type We may well be astonished at sin, sickness, and death. We may well be perplexed at human fear; and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its hydra head, showing its horns in the many inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast at nothingness? The great red dragon symbolizes a lie, — the belief that substance, life, and intelligence can be material. This dragon stands for the sum total of human error. ”

“ Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood. Truth is a two-edged sword, guarding and guiding. Spiritual gateway Truth places the cherub wisdom at the gate of understanding to note the proper guests. Radiant with mercy and justice, the sword of Truth gleams afar and indicates the infinite distance between Truth and error, between the material and spiritual, — the unreal and the real.
The sun, giving light and heat to the earth, is a figure of divine Life and Love, enlightening and sustaining the Contrasted testimony universe. ”

“ Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as Eternal beauty mortal belief. Custom, education, and fashion form the transient standards of mortals. Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its own, — the radiance of Soul. Immortal men and women are models of spiritual sense, drawn by perfect Mind and reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness which transcend all material sense. ”

“ Is it not a species of infidelity to believe that so great a work as the Messiah's was done for himself or for God, Inexhaustible divine Love who needed no help from Jesus' example to preserve the eternal harmony? But mortals did need this help, and Jesus pointed the way for them. Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need. It is not well to imagine that Jesus demonstrated the divine power to heal only for a select number or for a limited period of time, since to all mankind and in every hour, divine Love supplies all good. ”

“ The Scripture, “Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many,” is literally The robe of Science fulfilled, when we are conscious of the supremacy of Truth, by which the nothingness of error is seen; and we know that the nothingness of error is in proportion to its wickedness. He that touches the hem of Christ's robe and masters his mortal beliefs, animality, and hate, rejoices in the proof of healing, — in a sweet and certain sense that God is Love. Alas for those who break faith with divine Science and fail to strangle the serpent of sin as well as of sickness! ”

“ The decaying flower, the blighted bud, the gnarled oak, the ferocious beast, — like the discords of disease, sin, Unnatural deflections and death, — are unnatural. They are the falsities of sense, the changing deflections of mortal mind; they are not the eternal realities of Mind.
How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and hastening to death, and that at the same Absurd oracles time we are communing with immortality! ”

“ Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no Annihilation of error sense of hatred. Life has no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.
Sickness, sin, and death are not the fruits of Life. They are inharmonies which Truth destroys. Perfection does not animate imperfection. Inasmuch as God is good and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is Deformity and perfection not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error. ”

“ To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle Divine synonyms 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 is but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows. ”