Mary Baker Eddy

Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896


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made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1]

      ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind is

      understood and demonstrated? He alone knows these

      wonders who is departing from the thraldom of the

      senses and accepting spiritual truth—that which blesses [5]

      its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal of

      sorrow.

      Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is a

      revolutionary struggle. We already have had two in

      this nation; and they began and ended in a contest for [10]

      the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometh

      a third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, and

      the attainment of heaven.

      The scientific sense of being which establishes har-

      mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15]

      feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,

      of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive

      free, opening the doors for them that are bound.

      He who turns to the body for evidence, bases his con-

      clusions on mortality, on imperfection; but Science saith

      to man, “God hath all-power.” [20]

      The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but one

      power, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,

      but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-

      cluding sin and disease. [25]

      If God is All, and God is good, it follows that all

      must be good; and no other power, law, or intelligence

      can exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion in

      Science, and the facts that disprove the evidence of the

      senses. [30]

      God is individual Mind. This one Mind and His

      individuality comprise the elements of all forms and

      [pg 102]

      individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of [1]

      Christ, the ideal man.

      A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographers

      and scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,

      an unlimited man—a theory to me inconceivable. If [5]

      the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in a

      limited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and the

      infinite forever finite.

      In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.

      His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person- [10]

      ality. His being is individual, but not physical.

      God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-

      versal and primitive. His character admits of no degrees

      of comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In His

      individuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother [15]

      God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.

      God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed in

      modes above the human. His chastisements are the

      manifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternal

      Mind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots [20]

      out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Human

      pity often brings pain.

      Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-

      stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-

      rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the [25]

      subjective state of mortal and material thought.

      Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-

      tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with this

      sense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmasters

      it, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that “one [30]

      on God's side is a majority.”

      Science defines omnipresence as universality, that which

      [pg 103]

      precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes- [1]

      timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,

      and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, is

      substance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; for

      one is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate [5]

      and predicate of being.

      Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such as

      sin, disease, and death, mortals virtually name substance;

      but these are the substance of things not hoped for. For

      lack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: [10]

      “The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for who

      knoweth the substance of good?” In Science, form and

      individuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-

      vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mind

      as tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. [15]

      Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,

      the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not the

      temporal.

      Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortal

      man, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker [20]

      of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derived

      from the human, either as mind or body, hides the actual

      power, presence, and individuality of God.

      Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sense

      could discern it, was like that of other men; but Science [25]

      exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divine

      ideal, his spiritual individuality that reflected the Im-

      manuel, or “God with us.” This God was not outlined.

      He was too mighty for that. He was eternal Life, infinite

      Truth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind, [30]

      therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-

      ture, “I am a God at hand, saith the Lord.” Even while

      [pg 104]

      his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual [1]