Section 1

The Bible

1Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God:

16Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?

18For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.

22Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.

Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesby Mary Baker Eddy

No baneful
creation

Everything good or worthy, God made. Whatever is valueless or baneful, He did not make, — hence its unreality.

Nothing is real and eternal, — nothing is Spirit, — but God and His idea.

The tares
and wheat

The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the immutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existent.

Delusion, sin, disease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down.

To divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear, — this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true.

Section 2

The Bible

12For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

1the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.

2The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds:

3But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

4And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.

5And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die:

6And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

7And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;

9Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.

13And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.

12Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.

13Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins;

1Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

2Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

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

Science and Health

Though error hides behind a lie and excuses guilt, error cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error.

Retribution
and remorse

Let Truth uncover and destroy error in God’s own way, and let human justice pattern the divine.

Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood.

Absorbed in material selfhood we discern and reflect but faintly the substance of Life or Mind. The denial of material selfhood aids the discernment of man’s spiritual and eternal individuality, and destroys the erroneous knowledge gained from matter or through what are termed the material senses.

Truth’s
witness

To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected by Christian Science.

Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality. Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and death, never reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal.

Hypocrisy is fatal to religion.

A wordy prayer may afford a quiet sense of self-justification, though it makes the sinner a hypocrite.

If we feel the aspiration, humility, gratitude, and love which our words express, — this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive ourselves or others, for “there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed.”

We should examine ourselves and learn what is the affection and purpose of the heart, for in this way only can we learn what we honestly are.

Sorrow and
reformation

Sorrow for wrong-doing is but one step towards reform and the very easiest step. The next and great step required by wisdom is the test of our sincerity, — namely, reformation.

Chord and
discord

Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, — these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and permanence.

Section 3

The Bible

10Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.

13Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity:

9Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.

10And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.

3O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.

4I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.

6This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.

8O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

Science and Health

Evil not pro-
duced by God

God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God.

Deity
unchangeable

God is not moved by the breath of praise to do more than He has already done, nor can the infinite do less than bestow all good, since He is unchanging wisdom and Love.

Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.

What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds.

Trustworthy
beneficence

Christians rejoice in secret beauty and bounty, hidden from the world, but known to God. Self-forgetfulness, purity, and affection are constant prayers. Practice not profession, understanding not belief, gain the ear and right hand of omnipotence and they assuredly call down infinite blessings.

Section 4

The Bible

39And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see;

15For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

46and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimæus, the son of Timæus, sat by the highway side begging.

47And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.

48And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

50And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.

51And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.

52And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.

Science and Health

Essential
element of
Christianity

Christ, as the spiritual or true idea of God, comes now as of old, preaching the gospel to the poor, healing the sick, and casting out evils. Is it error which is restoring an essential element of Christianity, — namely, apostolic, divine healing? No; it is the Science of Christianity which is restoring it, and is the light shining in darkness, which the darkness comprehends not.

The sick, the halt, and the blind look up to Christian Science with blessings, and Truth will not be forever hidden by unjust parody from the quickened sense of the people.

Jesus strips all disguise from error, when his teachings are fully understood.

The divine
life-link

Divine Truth must be known by its effects on the body as well as on the mind, before the Science of being can be demonstrated. Hence its embodiment in the incarnate Jesus, — that life-link forming the connection through which the real reaches the unreal, Soul rebukes sense, and Truth destroys error.

Expose sin
without
believing in it

When sin or sickness — the reverse of harmony — seems true to material sense, impart without frightening or discouraging the patient the truth and spiritual understanding, which destroy disease. Expose and denounce the claims of evil and disease in all their forms, but realize no reality in them.

The sick are not healed merely by declaring there is no sickness, but by knowing that there is none.

We must forsake the foundation of material systems, however time-honored, if we would gain the Christ as our only Saviour. Not partially, but fully, the great healer of mortal mind is the healer of the body.

Working and praying with true motives, your Father will open the way. “Who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the truth?”

Section 5

The Bible

6in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

8And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness;

9the redeemed shall walk there:

1And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest,

2And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

3And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

4And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

5And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

6And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

8And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.

9And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.

10And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord.

11And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth,

12And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.

13Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem:

15But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel:

17And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.

18And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.

20And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.

11And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul:

Science and Health

Paul’s
enlightenment

When the truth first appeared to him in Science, Paul was made blind, and his blindness was felt; but spiritual light soon enabled him to follow the example and teachings of Jesus, healing the sick and preaching Christianity throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even in imperial Rome.

Conversion
of Saul

Saul of Tarsus beheld the way — the Christ, or Truth — only when his uncertain sense of right yielded to a spiritual sense, which is always right. Then the man was changed. Thought assumed a nobler outlook, and his life became more spiritual. He learned the wrong that he had done in persecuting Christians, whose religion he had not understood, and in humility he took the new name of Paul.

Spiritual
universe

Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses, as to make this Scriptural testimony true in our hearts, “The last shall be first, and the first last,” so that God and His idea may be to us what divinity really is and must of necessity be, — all-inclusive.

All things will continue to disappear, until perfection appears and reality is reached.

When we learn that error is not real, we shall be ready for progress, “forgetting those things which are behind.”

The realization that all inharmony is unreal brings objects and thoughts into human view in their true light, and presents them as beautiful and immortal.

Section 6

The Bible

5God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

21I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

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

Whatever is governed by God, is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence and Life.

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.

All the real is eternal.