Section 1

The Bible

8Make me to hear joy and gladness;

10Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

11Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

12Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

1The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord.

9A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.

23Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

26Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.

27Turn not to the right hand nor to the left:

5Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.

8For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.

9I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesby Mary Baker Eddy

Because Life is God, Life must be eternal, self-existent.

Life is deathless. Life is the origin and ultimate of man, never attainable through death, but gained by walking in the pathway of Truth both before and after that which is called death.

Man walks in the direction towards which he looks, and where his treasure is, there will his heart be also. If our hopes and affections are spiritual, they come from above, not from beneath, and they bear as of old the fruits of the Spirit.

Every step towards goodness is a departure from materiality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit.

Goodness attains the demonstration of Truth.

We all must learn that Life is God. Ask yourself: Am I living the life that approaches the supreme good?

Earth’s preparatory school must be improved to the utmost.

Section 2

The Bible

1I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.

21And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:

22And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

23And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:

24And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.

5By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.

1Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding.

10receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many.

11I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths.

12When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.

13Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life.

Science and Health

If Enoch’s perception had been confined to the evidence before his material senses, he could never have “walked with God,” nor been guided into the demonstration of life eternal.

When it is learned that the spiritual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions of Mind to man, then being will be understood and found to be harmonious.

Mortals need not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to glorified being.

Salvation
and
probation

Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of “the mind of the Lord,” as the Scripture says.

The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

The way is straight and narrow, which leads to the understanding that God is the only Life.

Section 3

The Bible

1In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.

5Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.

8And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy:

15My times are in thy hand:

9And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee:

11Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.

24And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

25And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.

26And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

27And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

28And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

29And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.

30And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

Science and Health

Every mortal at some period, here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God.

Wrestling
of Jacob

Jacob was alone, wrestling with error, — struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains, — when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science. Then said the spiritual evangel: “Let me go, for the day breaketh;” that is, the light of Truth and Love dawns upon thee. But the patriarch, perceiving his error and his need of help, did not loosen his hold upon this glorious light until his nature was transformed.

Israel the
new name

The result of Jacob’s struggle thus appeared. He had conquered material error with the understanding of Spirit and of spiritual power. This changed the man. He was no longer called Jacob, but Israel, — a prince of God, or a soldier of God, who had fought a good fight.

Scientific
purgation

Progress is born of experience. It is the ripening of mortal man, through which the mortal is dropped for the immortal. Either here or hereafter, suffering or Science must destroy all illusions regarding life and mind, and regenerate material sense and self. The old man with his deeds must be put off.

Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense until the Science of being is reached.

Exalted
thought

Through divine Science, Spirit, God, unites understanding to eternal harmony. The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress.

Section 4

The Bible

1Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee.

2Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily.

12thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.

1In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order;

2Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, saying,

3I beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.

4And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying,

5Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee:

14The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.

17I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.

Science and Health

Consistent prayer is the desire to do right. Prayer means that we desire to walk and will walk in the light so far as we receive it, even though with bleeding footsteps, and that waiting patiently on the Lord, we will leave our real desires to be rewarded by Him.

Our footsteps
heavenward

The discoverer of Christian Science finds the path less difficult when she has the high goal always before her thoughts, than when she counts her footsteps in endeavoring to reach it. When the destination is desirable, expectation speeds our progress. The struggle for Truth makes one strong instead of weak, resting instead of wearying one. If the belief in death were obliterated, and the understanding obtained that there is no death, this would be a “tree of life,” known by its fruits.

When it is learned that disease cannot destroy life, and that mortals are not saved from sin or sickness by death, this understanding will quicken into newness of life. It will master either a desire to die or a dread of the grave, and thus destroy the great fear that besets mortal existence.

Guarding
the door

Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.

No death
nor inaction

The dream of death must be mastered by Mind here or hereafter. Thought will waken from its own material declaration, “I am dead,” to catch this trumpet-word of Truth, “There is no death, no inaction, diseased action, overaction, nor reaction.”

Section 5

The Bible

1Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

2And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

12I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

46And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum.

47When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judæa into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death.

48Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.

49The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die.

50Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.

51And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth.

52Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.

53So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his whole house.

Science and Health

Vision
opening

Life is real, and death is the illusion. A demonstration of the facts of Soul in Jesus’ way resolves the dark visions of material sense into harmony and immortality. Man’s privilege at this supreme moment is to prove the words of our Master: “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”

Death but
an illusion

The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still 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 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.

Steadfast and
calm trust

When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious — as Life eternally is — can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not.

Death is not a stepping-stone to Life, immortality, and bliss.

God, divine good, does not kill a man in order to give him eternal Life, for God alone is man’s life. God is at once the centre and circumference of being.

Section 6

The Bible

1Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

3For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

5And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

6After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once;

57thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

3he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

9And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.

20And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.

Science and Health

Life eternal
and present

“This is life eternal,” says Jesus, — is, not shall be; and then he defines everlasting life as a present knowledge of his Father and of himself, — the knowledge of Love, Truth, and Life.

Spiritual
ascension

Jesus’ unchanged physical condition after what seemed to be death was followed by his exaltation above all material conditions; and this exaltation explained his ascension, and revealed unmistakably a probationary and progressive state beyond the grave. Jesus was “the way;” that is, he marked the way for all men.

The present
immortality

We must hold forever the consciousness of existence, and sooner or later, through Christ and Christian Science, we must master sin and death. The evidence of man’s immortality will become more apparent, as material beliefs are given up and the immortal facts of being are admitted.

Careful
guidance

We must begin, however, with the more simple demonstrations of control, and the sooner we begin the better. The final demonstration takes time for its accomplishment. When walking, we are guided by the eye. We look before our feet, and if we are wise, we look beyond a single step in the line of spiritual advancement.

Truth and Love enlighten the understanding, in whose “light shall we see light;” and this illumination is reflected spiritually by all who walk in the light and turn away from a false material sense.

Patience
and final
perfection

Individuals are consistent who, watching and praying, can “run, and not be weary; . . . walk, and not faint,” who gain good rapidly and hold their position, or attain slowly and yield not to discouragement.

When we wait patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs our path.