Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures Part 43

Error is false, mortal belief; it is illusion, without spir- itual ident.i.ty or foundation, and it has no real existence.

287:24 The supposition that life, substance, and in- telligence are _in_ matter, or _of_ it, is an error.

Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the 287:27 objective supposition of Spirit's opposite. The five mate- rial senses testify to truth and error as united in a mind both good and evil. Their false evidence will finally 287:30 yield to Truth, - to the recognition of Spirit and of the spiritual creation.

Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The state- 288:1 ment that _Truth is real_ necessarily includes the correlated statement, that _error, Truth's unlikeness, is unreal_.

The great conflict

288:3 The suppositional warfare between truth and error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spir- itual senses and the testimony of the material 288:6 senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the un- derstanding of divine Love.

288:9 Superst.i.tion and understanding can never combine.

When the final physical and moral effects of Christian Science are fully apprehended, the conflict between truth 288:12 and error, understanding and belief, Science and material sense, foreshadowed by the prophets and inaugurated by Jesus, will cease, and spiritual harmony reign. The 288:15 lightnings and thunderbolts of error may burst and flash till the cloud is cleared and the tumult dies away in the distance. Then the raindrops of divinity refresh the 288:18 earth. As St. Paul says: "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of G.o.d" (of Spirit).

The chief stones in the temple

The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are 288:21 to be found in the following postulates: that Life is G.o.d, good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and 288:24 cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no ma- terial life, and no death.

The Christ-element

288:27 Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses.

The Christ-element in the Messiah made him 288:30 the Way-shower, Truth and Life.

The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have learned from error, and man's real existence as a child 289:1 of G.o.d comes to light. Truth demonstrated is eternal life. Mortal man can never rise from the temporal _debris_ 289:3 of error, belief in sin, sickness, and death, until he learns that G.o.d is the only Life. The belief that life and sensa- tion are in the body should be overcome by the under- 289:6 standing of what const.i.tutes man as the image of G.o.d.

Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh.

Wickedness is not man

A wicked mortal is not the idea of G.o.d. He is little 289:9 else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin, l.u.s.t, hatred, envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life 289:12 and life's idea, Truth and Truth's idea, never make men sick, sinful, or mortal.

Death but an illusion

The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still 289:15 overcomes death proves the "king of terrors" to be but a mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this 289:18 shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe there is no death-process.

289:21 The belief that matter has life results, by the universal law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree, and flower are supposed to die; but the fact remains, 289:24 that G.o.d's universe is spiritual and immortal.

Spiritual offspring

The spiritual fact and the material belief of things are contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the 289:27 material must be untrue. Life is not in matter.

Therefore it cannot be said to pa.s.s out of mat- ter. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Spirit and 289:30 all things spiritual are the real and eternal.

Man is not the offspring of flesh, but of Spirit, - of Life, not of matter. Because Life is G.o.d, Life must be 290:1 eternal, self-existent. Life is the everlasting I AM, the Be- ing who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.

Death no advantage

290:3 If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man's being are not in the least understood before what is termed death overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher spir- 290:6 itually in the scale of existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as be- fore the transition, still seeking happiness through a ma- 290:9 terial, instead of through a spiritual sense of life, and from selfish and inferior motives. That Life or Mind is finite and physical or is manifested through brain and nerves, 290:12 is false. Hence Truth comes to destroy this error and its effects, - sickness, sin, and death. To the spiritual cla.s.s, relates the Scripture: "On such the second death 290:15 hath no power."

Future purification

If the change called _death_ destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the mo- 290:18 ment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so. Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be un- 290:21 righteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, re- moves all ignorance and sin.

Sin is punished

The sin and error which possess us at the instant of 290:24 death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the death of these errors. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes thus only 290:27 when he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain in the act, does not thereby forsake sin. He is no more spiritual for believing that his body died and learning that 290:30 his cruel mind died not. His thoughts are no purer until evil is disarmed by good. His body is as material as his mind, and _vice versa_.

291:1 The suppositions that sin is pardoned while unfor- saken, that happiness can be genuine in the midst of 291:3 sin, that the so-called death of the body frees from sin, and that G.o.d's pardon is aught but the destruction of sin, - these are grave mistakes. We know that all will 291:6 be changed "in the twinkling of an eye," when the last trump shall sound; but this last call of wisdom cannot come till mortals have already yielded to each lesser call 291:9 in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to glorified being.

Salvation and probation

291:12 Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a local- ity, but a divine state of Mind in which all the 291:15 manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in posses- 291:18 sion of "the mind of the Lord," as the Scripture says.

"In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be." So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been 291:21 transformed into the popular proverb, "As the tree falls, so it must lie." As man falleth asleep, so shall he awake. As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be 291:24 after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needed change. Mind never becomes dust. No resur- rection from the grave awaits Mind or Life, for the grave 291:27 has no power over either.

Day of judgment

No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment- day of wisdom comes hourly and continually, 291:30 even the judgment by which mortal man is di- vested of all material error. As for spiritual error there is none.

292:1 When the last mortal fault is destroyed, then the final trump will sound which will end the battle of Truth with 292:3 error and mortality; "but of that day and hour, knoweth no man." Here prophecy pauses. Divine Science alone can compa.s.s the heights and depths of being and reveal 292:6 the infinite.

Primitive error

Truth will be to us "the resurrection and the life" only as it destroys all error and the belief that Mind, the only 292:9 immortality of man, can be fettered by the body, and Life be controlled by death. A sin- ful, sick, and dying mortal is not the likeness of G.o.d, the 292:12 perfect and eternal.

Matter is the primitive belief of mortal mind, because this so-called mind has no cognizance of Spirit. To 292:15 mortal mind, matter is substantial, and evil is real. The so-called senses of mortals are material.

Hence the so-called life of mortals is dependent on 292:18 matter.

Explaining the origin of material man and mortal mind, Jesus said: "Why do ye not understand my speech?

292:21 Even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil [evil], and the l.u.s.ts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode 292:24 not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

Immortal man

292:27 This carnal material mentality, misnamed _mind_, is mortal. Therefore man would be annihilated, were it not for the spiritual real man's indissoluble 292:30 connection with his G.o.d, which Jesus brought to light. In his resurrection and ascension, Jesus showed that a mortal man is not the real essence of manhood, and 293:1 that this unreal material mortality disappears in presence of the reality.

Elementary electricity

293:3 Electricity is not a vital fluid, but the least material form of illusive consciousness, - the material mindless- ness, which forms no link between matter and 293:6 Mind, and which destroys itself. Matter and mortal mind are but different strata of human belief. The grosser substratum is named matter or body; the more 293:9 ethereal is called mind. This so-called mind and body is the illusion called a mortal, a mind in matter. In reality and in Science, both strata, mortal mind and mortal body, 293:12 are false representatives of man.

The material so-called gases and forces are counter- feits of the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency 293:15 is Truth, whose attraction is Love, whose adhesion and cohesion are Life, perpetuating the eternal facts of being.

Electricity is the sharp surplus of materiality which coun- 293:18 terfeits the true essence of spirituality or truth, - the great difference being that electricity is not intelligent, while spiritual truth is Mind.

The counterfeit forces

293:21 There is no vapid fury of mortal mind - expressed in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, b.e.s.t.i.a.l ferocity - and this so-called mind is self-destroyed.

293:24 The manifestations of evil, which counterfeit divine justice, are called in the Scriptures, "The anger of the Lord." In reality, they show the self-destruction 293:27 of error or matter and point to matter's opposite, the strength and permanency of Spirit. Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal har- 293:30 mony, the entireness of G.o.d, good, and the nothingness of evil.

Instruments of error

The five physical senses are the avenues and instru- 294:1 ments of human error, and they correspond with error.

These senses indicate the common human belief, that life, 294:3 substance, and intelligence are a unison of matter with Spirit. This is pantheism, and carries within itself the seeds of all error.

294:6 If man is both mind and matter, the loss of one finger would take away some quality and quant.i.ty of the man, for matter and man would be one.