Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures Part 11

No me-diums.h.i.+p

It is a grave mistake to suppose that matter is any part 73:27 of the reality of intelligent existence, or that Spirit and matter, intelligence and non-intelligence, can commune together. This error Science will 73:30 destroy. The sensual cannot be made the mouthpiece of the spiritual, nor can the finite become the channel of the infinite. There is no communication between so- 74:1 called material existence and spiritual life which is not subject to death.

Opposing conditions

74:3 To be on communicable terms with Spirit, persons must be free from organic bodies; and their return to a mate- rial condition, after having once left it, would 74:6 be as impossible as would be the restoration to its original condition of the acorn, already absorbed into a sprout which has risen above the soil. The seed 74:9 which has germinated has a new form and state of exist- ence. When here or hereafter the belief of life in matter is extinct, the error which has held the belief dissolves 74:12 with the belief, and never returns to the old condition.

No correspondence nor communion can exist between persons in such opposite dreams as the belief of having 74:15 died and left a material body and the belief of still living in an organic, material body.

Bridgeless division

The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect, 74:18 is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to fraternize with or control the worm. Such a backward transformation is impossible in 74:21 Science. Darkness and light, infancy and manhood, sickness and health, are opposites, - different beliefs, which never blend. Who will say that infancy can utter 74:24 the ideas of manhood, that darkness can represent light, that we are in Europe when we are in the opposite hemi- sphere? There is no bridge across the gulf which divides 74:27 two such opposite conditions as the spiritual, or incor- poreal, and the physical, or corporeal.

In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, 74:30 never a return to positions outgrown. The so-called dead and living cannot commune together, for they are in separate states of existence, or consciousness.

Unscientific invest.i.ture

75:1 This simple truth lays bare the mistaken a.s.sumption that man dies as matter but comes to life as spirit. The 75:3 so-called dead, in order to reappear to those still in the existence cognized by the physical senses, would need to be tangible and material, - to have 75:6 a material invest.i.ture, - or the material senses could take no cognizance of the so-called dead.

Spiritualism would transfer men from the spiritual sense 75:9 of existence back into its material sense. This gross mate- rialism is scientifically impossible, since to infinite Spirit there can be no matter.

Raising the dead

75:12 Jesus said of Lazarus: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Jesus restored Lazarus by the understanding that 75:15 Lazarus had never died, not by an admis- sion that his body had died and then lived again. Had Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his 75:18 body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have resuscitated it.

75:21 When you can waken yourself or others out of the belief that all must die, you can then exercise Jesus' spiritual power to reproduce the presence of those who have thought 75:24 they died, - but not otherwise.

Vision of the dying

There is one possible moment, when those living on the earth and those called dead, can commune together, and 75:27 that is the moment previous to the transition, - the moment when the link between their op- posite beliefs is being sundered. In the vestibule through 75:30 which we pa.s.s from one dream to another dream, or when we awake from earth's sleep to the grand verities of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of those 76:1 who have gone before. The ones departing may whisper this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the 76:3 hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes open only to that wonder, forgets all else and breathes aloud his rapture.

Real Life is G.o.d

76:6 When being is understood, Life will be recognized as neither material nor finite, but as infinite, - as G.o.d, universal good; and the belief that life, or 76:9 mind, was ever in a finite form, or good in evil, will be destroyed. Then it will be understood that Spirit never entered matter and was therefore never 76:12 raised from matter. When advanced to spiritual being and the understanding of G.o.d, man can no longer com- mune with matter; neither can he return to it, any more 76:15 than a tree can return to its seed. Neither will man seem to be corporeal, but he will be an individual conscious- ness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter.

76:18 Suffering, sinning, dying beliefs are unreal. When divine Science is universally understood, they will have no power over man, for man is immortal and lives by 76:21 divine authority.

Immaterial pleasure

The sinless joy, - the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness 76:24 without a single bodily pleasure or pain, - const.i.tutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual. This state of existence 76:27 is scientific and intact, - a perfection discernible only by those who have the final understanding of Christ in divine Science. Death can never hasten this state of 76:30 existence, for death must be overcome, not submitted to, before immortality appears.

The recognition of Spirit and of infinity comes not 77:1 suddenly here or hereafter. The pious Polycarp said: "I cannot turn at once from good to evil." Neither do 77:3 other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth at a single bound.

Second death

Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense 77:6 until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its own self-destruction both here and hereafter, for mortal mind creates its own physical con- 77:9 ditions. Death will occur on the next plane of existence as on this, until the spiritual understanding of Life is reached. Then, and not until then, will it be demon- 77:12 strated that "the second death hath no power."

A dream vanis.h.i.+ng

The period required for this dream of material life, embracing its so-called pleasures and pains, to vanish 77:15 from consciousness, "knoweth no man ...

neither the Son, but the Father." This period will be of longer or shorter duration according to the 77:18 tenacity of error. Of what advantage, then, would it be to us, or to the departed, to prolong the material state and so prolong the illusion either of a soul inert or of a sinning, 77:21 suffering sense, - a so-called mind fettered to matter.

Progress and purgatory

Even if communications from spirits to mortal con- sciousness were possible, such communications would 77:24 grow beautifully less with every advanced stage of existence. The departed would gradually rise above ignorance and materiality, and Spiritualists 77:27 would outgrow their beliefs in material spiritualism.

Spiritism consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling that of blighted buds, - to a wretched purgatory, where 77:30 the chances of the departed for improvement narrow into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of matter.

Unnatural deflections

78:1 The decaying flower, the blighted bud, the gnarled oak, the ferocious beast, - like the discords of disease, sin, 78:3 and death, - are unnatural. They are the fal- sities of sense, the changing deflections of mor- tal mind; they are not the eternal realities of Mind.

Absurd oracles

78:6 How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and hastening to death, and that at the same time we are communing with immortality!

78:9 If the departed are in rapport with mor- tality, or matter, they are not spiritual, but must still be mortal, sinning, suffering, and dying. Then why 78:12 look to them - even were communication possible - for proofs of immortality, and accept them as oracles? Com- munications gathered from ignorance are pernicious in 78:15 tendency.

Spiritualism with its material accompaniments would destroy the supremacy of Spirit. If Spirit pervades all 78:18 s.p.a.ce, it needs no material method for the transmission of messages. Spirit needs no wires nor electricity in order to be omnipresent.

Spirit intangible

78:21 Spirit is not materially tangible. How then can it communicate with man through electric, material effects?

How can the majesty and omnipotence of 78:24 Spirit be lost? G.o.d is not in the medley where matter cares for matter, where spiritism makes many G.o.ds, and hypnotism and electricity are claimed 78:27 to be the agents of G.o.d's government.

Spirit blesses man, but man cannot "tell whence it cometh." By it the sick are healed, the sorrowing are 78:30 comforted, and the sinning are reformed. These are the effects of one universal G.o.d, the invisible good dwelling in eternal Science.

Thought regarding death

79:1 The act of describing disease - its symptoms, locality, and fatality - is not scientific. Warning people against 79:3 death is an error that tends to frighten into death those who are ignorant of Life as G.o.d.

Thousands of instances could be cited of health restored 79:6 by changing the patient's thoughts regarding death.

Fallacious hypotheses

A scientific mental method is more sanitary than the use of drugs, and such a mental method produces perma- 79:9 nent health. Science must go over the whole ground, and dig up every seed of error's sow- ing. Spiritualism relies upon human beliefs and hy- 79:12 potheses. Christian Science removes these beliefs and hypotheses through the higher understanding of G.o.d, for Christian Science, resting on divine Principle, not on ma- 79:15 terial personalities, in its revelation of immortality, intro- duces the harmony of being.

Jesus cast out evil spirits, or false beliefs. The Apostle 79:18 Paul bade men have the Mind that was in the Christ.

Jesus did his own work by the one Spirit. He said: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." He never de- 79:21 scribed disease, so far as can be learned from the Gospels, but he healed disease.

Mistaken methods

The unscientific pract.i.tioner says: "You are ill. Your 79:24 brain is overtaxed, and you must rest. Your body is weak, and it must be strengthened. You have nervous prostration, and must be treated for it."

79:27 Science objects to all this, contending for the rights of in- telligence and a.s.serting that Mind controls body and brain.

Divine strength

Mind-science teaches that mortals need "not be weary 79:30 in well doing." It dissipates fatigue in doing good. Giving does not impoverish us in the service of our Maker, neither does withholding enrich us.

80:1 We have strength in proportion to our apprehension of the truth, and our strength is not lessened by giving 80:3 utterance to truth. A cup of coffee or tea is not the equal of truth, whether for the inspiration of a sermon or for the support of bodily endurance.

A denial of immortality

80:6 A communication purporting to come from the late Theodore Parker reads as follows: "There never was, and there never will be, an immortal spirit."