Section 1

The Bible

24God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

25Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

28For in him we live, and move, and have our being;

1now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

6bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;

7Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.

22Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people:

8there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.

Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesby Mary Baker Eddy

Spirit imparts the understanding which uplifts consciousness and leads into all truth.

Original
reflected

God’s ideas reflect the immortal, unerring, and infinite. The mortal, erring, and finite are human beliefs, which apportion to themselves a task impossible for them, that of distinguishing between the false and the true.

The finite must yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal.

Mortal thought does not at once catch the higher meaning, and can do so only as thought is educated up to spiritual apprehension.

SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF IMMORTAL MIND

Divine
synonyms

God: Divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind.

Divine
image

Man: God’s spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal.

Divine
reflection

Idea: An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. — Webster.

Every object in material thought will be destroyed, but the spiritual idea, whose substance is in Mind, is eternal.

Waymarks
to eternal
Truth

When examined in the light of divine Science, mortals present more than is detected upon the surface, since inverted thoughts and erroneous beliefs must be counterfeits of Truth. Thought is borrowed from a higher source than matter, and by reversal, errors serve as waymarks to the one Mind, in which all error disappears in celestial Truth.

Section 2

The Bible

8I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.

23Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee.

17For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

19Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

20Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

21Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

50Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

53For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

23For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

Science and Health

The real man is spiritual and immortal, but the mortal and imperfect so-called “children of men” are counterfeits from the beginning, to be laid aside for the pure reality. This mortal is put off, and the new man or real man is put on, in proportion as mortals realize the Science of man and seek the true model.

Definition of
mortal mind

Usage classes both evil and good together as mind; therefore, to be understood, the author calls sick and sinful humanity mortal mind, — meaning by this term the flesh opposed to Spirit, the human mind and evil in contradistinction to the divine Mind, or Truth and good. The spiritually unscientific definition of mind is based on the evidence of the physical senses, which makes minds many and calls mind both human and divine.

Imperfect
terminology

As Mind is immortal, the phrase mortal mind implies something untrue and therefore unreal; and as the phrase is used in teaching Christian Science, it is meant to designate that which has no real existence.

SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF MORTAL MIND

First Degree: Depravity.

Unreality

Physical. Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, disease, death.

Mental
sculpture

What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you reproducing 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 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 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 models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives.

When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven.

Mortality is finally swallowed up in immortality.

Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood.

Section 3

The Bible

1Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.

7for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.

8And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

1In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

2Above it stood the seraphims:

3And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

5Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

6Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

7And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

14Thus saith the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel;

21This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.

18we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Science and Health

The Old Testament assigns to the angels, God’s divine messages, different offices.

Angels. God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality.

These angels deliver us from the depths. Truth and Love come nearer in the hour of woe, when strong faith or spiritual strength wrestles and prevails through the understanding of God.

Truth makes a new creature, in whom old things pass away and “all things are become new.” Passions, selfishness, false appetites, hatred, fear, all sensuality, yield to spirituality, and the superabundance of being is on the side of God, good.

Second Degree: Evil beliefs disappearing.

Transitional
qualities

Moral. Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance.

Mortals are not like immortals, created in God’s own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the real sense of being, perfect and forever intact, will appear.

Goodness
transparent

The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality — much error — in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun.

Section 4

The Bible

10The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

35And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

22And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.

23And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught.

24And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.

25After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.

Science and Health

Vision
opening

A demonstration of the facts of Soul in Jesus’ way resolves the dark visions of material sense into harmony and immortality.

In divine Science, man is the true image of God. The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought-models would allow, — thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying.

Christ, as the true spiritual idea, is the ideal of God now and forever, here and everywhere.

Christ
the great
physician

When Christ changes a belief of sin or of sickness into a better belief, then belief melts into spiritual understanding, and sin, disease, and death disappear.

Third Degree: Understanding.

Reality

Spiritual. Wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.

In the third degree mortal mind disappears, and man as God’s image appears.

Immortal ideas, pure, perfect, and enduring, are transmitted by the divine Mind through divine Science, which corrects error with truth and demands spiritual thoughts, divine concepts, to the end that they may produce harmonious results.

We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being.

Self-
completeness

As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible. When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness.

Section 5

The Bible

2Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

9Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,

10But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel:

23the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

11And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.

12Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her.

13And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.

14And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.

15And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.

16And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people.

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

Science and Health

Jesus said (John viii. 51), “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” That statement is not confined to spiritual life, but includes all the phenomena of existence. Jesus demonstrated this, healing the dying and raising the dead.

The Christ
treatment

Jesus never asked if disease were acute or chronic, and he never recommended attention to laws of health, never gave drugs, never prayed to know if God were willing that a man should live. He understood man, whose Life is God, to be immortal, and knew that man has not two lives, one to be destroyed and the other to be made indestructible.

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.

To be immortal, we must forsake the mortal sense of things, turn from the lie of false belief to Truth, and gather the facts of being from the divine Mind.

Not death, but the understanding of Life, makes man immortal.

Scientific
finalities

The admission to one’s self that man is God’s own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea. This conviction shuts the door on death, and opens it wide towards immortality.

Section 6

The Bible

10Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people.

11Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.

12And they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord:

15I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.

Science and Health

The divine Principle and idea constitute spiritual harmony, — heaven and eternity.

Spiritual
harmony

Divine Science, the Word of God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, “God is All-in-all,” and the light of ever-present Love illumines the universe. Hence the eternal wonder, — that infinite space is peopled with God’s ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms.

The perfect and immortal are the eternal likeness of their Maker.

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