Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures Part 36

242:30 The finger-posts of divine Science show the way our Master trod, and require of Christians the proof which he gave, instead of mere profession. We may hide 243:1 spiritual ignorance from the world, but we can never succeed in the Science and demonstration of spiritual 243:3 good through ignorance or hypocrisy.

Ancient and modern miracles

The divine Love, which made harmless the poisonous viper, which delivered men from the boiling oil, from 243:6 the fiery furnace, from the jaws of the lion, can heal the sick in every age and triumph over sin and death. It crowned the demon- 243:9 strations of Jesus with unsurpa.s.sed power and love. But the same "Mind ... which was also in Christ Jesus"

must always accompany the letter of Science in order to 243:12 confirm and repeat the ancient demonstrations of prophets and apostles. That those wonders are not more com- monly repeated to-day, arises not so much from lack of 243:15 desire as from lack of spiritual growth.

Mental telegraphy

The clay cannot reply to the potter. The head, heart, lungs, and limbs do not inform us that they are dizzy, 243:18 diseased, consumptive, or lame. If this in- formation is conveyed, mortal mind conveys it. Neither immortal and unerring Mind nor matter, 243:21 the inanimate substratum of mortal mind, can carry on such telegraphy; for G.o.d is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," and matter has neither intelligence nor 243:24 sensation.

Annihilation of error

Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hatred. Life has no partners.h.i.+p 243:27 with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except G.o.d.

Deformity and perfection

243:30 Sickness, sin, and death are not the fruits of Life.

They are inharmonies which Truth destroys. Perfection does not animate imperfection. Inasmuch as G.o.d is 244:1 good and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is 244:3 not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error.

Divine Science reveals these grand facts. On their basis Jesus demonstrated Life, never 244:6 fearing nor obeying error in any form.

If we were to derive all our conceptions of man from what is seen between the cradle and the grave, happi- 244:9 ness and goodness would have no abiding-place in man, and the worms would rob him of the flesh; but Paul writes: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 244:12 made me free from the law of sin and death."

Man never less than man

Man undergoing birth, maturity, and decay is like the beasts and vegetables, - subject to laws of decay. If 244:15 man were dust in his earliest stage of exist- ence, we might admit the hypothesis that he returns eventually to his primitive condition; 244:18 but man was never more nor less than man.

If man flickers out in death or springs from matter into being, there must be an instant when G.o.d is without His 244:21 entire manifestation, - when there is no full reflection of the infinite Mind.

Man not evolved

Man in Science is neither young nor old. He has 244:24 neither birth nor death. He is not a beast, a vegetable, nor a migratory mind. He does not pa.s.s from matter to Mind, from the mortal to the im- 244:27 mortal, from evil to good, or from good to evil. Such admissions cast us headlong into darkness and dogma.

Even Shakespeare's poetry pictures age as infancy, as 244:30 helplessness and decadence, instead of a.s.signing to man the everlasting grandeur and immortality of development, power, and prestige.

245:1 The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the benefits of destroying that illusion, are ill.u.s.trated in a 245:3 sketch from the history of an English woman, published in the London medical magazine called The Lancet.

Perpetual youth

Disappointed in love in her early years, she became 245:6 insane and lost all account of time. Believing that she was still living in the same hour which parted her from her lover, taking no note of years, 245:9 she stood daily before the window watching for her lover's coming. In this mental state she remained young.

Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no 245:12 older. Some American travellers saw her when she was seventy-four, and supposed her to be a young woman.

She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but 245:15 youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that she must be under twenty.

245:18 This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful hint, upon which a Franklin might work with more cer- tainty than when he coaxed the enamoured lightning 245:21 from the clouds. Years had not made her old, because she had taken no cognizance of pa.s.sing time nor thought of herself as growing old. The bodily results of her belief 245:24 that she was young manifested the influence of such a be- lief. She could not age while believing herself young, for the mental state governed the physical.

245:27 Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four; and the primary of that ill.u.s.tration makes it plain that 245:30 decrepitude is not according to law, nor is it a necessity of nature, but an illusion.

Man reflects G.o.d

The infinite never began nor will it ever end. Mind 246:1 and its formations can never be annihilated. Man is not a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and 246:3 sorrow, sickness and health, life and death.

Life and its faculties are not measured by calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal 246:6 likeness of their Maker. Man is by no means a material germ rising from the imperfect and endeavoring to reach Spirit above his origin. The stream rises no higher than 246:9 its source.

The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and gives ugliness to age. The radiant sun of virtue and truth 246:12 coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, un- dimmed by a declining sun. As the physical and mate- rial, the transient sense of beauty fades, the radiance of 246:15 Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with bright and imperishable glories.

Undesirable records

Never record ages. Chronological data are no part 246:18 of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood. Except for the error of meas- 246:21 uring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise. Man, 246:24 governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty, and holiness.

True life eternal

246:27 Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the demonstration thereof. Life and goodness are immortal.

Let us then shape our views of existence into 246:30 loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather than into age and blight.

Acute and chronic beliefs reproduce their own types.

247:1 The acute belief of physical life comes on at a remote period, and is not so disastrous as the chronic belief.

Eyes and teeth renewed

247:3 I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost, sight and teeth. A woman of eighty-five, whom I knew, had a return of sight. Another woman at 247:6 ninety had new teeth, incisors, cuspids, bi- cuspids, and one molar. One man at sixty had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth without 247:9 a decaying cavity.

Eternal beauty

Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things pa.s.ses away, fading and fleeting as 247:12 mortal belief. Custom, education, and fas.h.i.+on form the transient standards of mortals. Im- mortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its 247:15 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 247:18 which transcend all material sense.

The divine loveliness

Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Be- ing possesses its qualities before they are perceived hu- 247:21 manly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and re- flects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, 247:24 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 247:27 starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness.

The embellishments of the person are poor subst.i.tutes for the charms of being, s.h.i.+ning resplendent and eternal 247:30 over age and decay.

The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure 248:1 in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious free- dom of spiritual harmony.

Love's endowment

248:3 Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful. Men and women of riper 248:6 years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom. Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal 248:9 freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images of thought and destroying the woes of sense which each day brings to a nearer tomb.

Mental sculpture

248:12 The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chisel- 248:15 ing thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering?

Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you repro- 248:18 ducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding 248:21 it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life- work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline 248:24 and deformity of matter models.

Perfect models

To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect 248:27 models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and n.o.ble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, 248:30 health, holiness, love - the kingdom of heaven - reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.

249:1 Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive 249:3 ideals; and so let us have one G.o.d, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.

Renewed selfhood

Let the "male and female" of G.o.d's creating appear.

249:6 Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us re- 249:9 joice that we are subject to the divine "powers that be."