Science & Health - Key to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddy

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СКАЧАТЬ discord, but governs harmoniously the universe and man.

      Arctic regions, the sunny tropics, the everlasting hills, the winged winds, mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers, and glorious heavens, — all declare the mighty supremacy of Mind. In the order of Science, wherein the Principle is not in matter which it governs, all is one grand concord. Change this statement, — suppose Mind to be in matter, or Soul in body, — and you lose the keynote of being, and there will be discord continually.

      The head is supposed to say, “I am pained;” the stomach, “I am nauseated;” the liver, “I am morbid;” and the body, “I am ill.” The physical reports of sickness may combine with the physical reports of sin, and say, “I am malice, lust, appetite, envy, hate;” and what renders both cures difficult is, that the human mind is the sinner, disinclined to correct his own faults, and believing that the body can be sick independent of this mind, and that the Divine Mind has no jurisdiction over it.

      Why pray for the recovery of the sick, if you are without faith in God's willingness and ability to heal? Believing in that, why substitute drugs for Almighty power, or employ a doctor to go contrary to His will?

      The Scripture says, “In Him we live, move, and have our being.” What then is this implied power, independent of God, that causes disease and cures it, — what is it but an error of belief, and a law of mortal mind, wrong in every sense, embracing all sin, sickness, and death. It is the very antipodes of Immortal Mind and spiritual law. It is unlike the character of God, good, to make man sick, and then leave him to heal himself, — for Spirit to produce disease, and leave the remedy with matter.

      God can no more produce sickness than good can end in evil, or health occasion disease. Good never made sin for an experiment, or caused a result by first constituting that which produced it, and then punishing the sin it made possible. Evil is not supreme, good is not helpless; nor is a law of matter primary, and a law of Spirit secondary.

      Body is not first, and Soul last, nor is evil mightier than good. The Science of Being repudiates self-evident impossibilities, or the amalgamation of Truth and error in cause or effect. It separates the tares and wheat in time of harvest.

      The clay cannot reply to the potter. The head, heart, lungs, and limbs do not inform us that they are dizzy, diseased, consumptive, or lame. If this information is given, mortal mind has given it. Neither immortal and unerring Mind, nor so-called matter, — the inanimate substratum of mortal mind, — can carry on such telegraphy; for God is too pure to behold iniquity.

      Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hate, and Life no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to aught unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.

      Sickness, sin, death, are not the true and good; they are the false and erroneous, that Truth never created. Perfection is not the life of imperfection. Because God is good, and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity. Therefore it was not produced in Truth, but is illusion, the mirage of error. Divine Science reveals this grand fact. On its basis Jesus demonstrated Life, by overcoming sin, sickness, and death, never yielding them obedience.

      There is but one primal Cause; therefore there can be no effect from any other cause; and there can be no actual reality in anything which proceeds not from this great and only Cause. Sin, sickness, and death are not the Science of Being. They are the fruits of error, and show the absence of the real.

      The scientific fact is the spiritual fact of all things. The spiritual fact, duplicated in the action of man as well as the universe, presents harmony, the ideal of Truth. If scientific fact be inverted, the opposite discord appears, which bears no resemblance to reality. The only evidence of this appearing is obtained from the material senses, that afford no evidence of God, Spirit, or spiritual creation. They define all things materially, and have only a finite and personal sense of Deity.

      This so-called mind acts against itself, and is self-destructive, in obedience to the immutable law of Spirit. Hence those words of our Master, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” Error “soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind.”

      What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say, “I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well.” It is mortal mind that speaks thus, and which appears to fulfil its own statement. To mortal sense, sin and suffering continue unto the end; but immortal sense includes no evil or pestilence. Because it has no error of sense, and no sense of error, it is immortal.

      If God makes man sick, sickness must be good; and its opposite, health, must be evil; for all that He makes is good, and will stand forever. The transgression of a law of mortal mind brings the belief of sickness. The remedy is Truth, not matter. If the transgression of God's law produces sickness, it is right to be sick; and we cannot if we would, and should not if we could, annul the decrees of Wisdom.

      If sickness is real, it belongs to Truth and Immortality. If true, it is a part of Truth; and would you attempt, with drugs or without them, to destroy a quality or condition of Truth? But if sickness or sin is illusion, — and waking from this mortal dream will bring to light health, holiness, and immortality, — then this awakening is Christ, or Truth, casting out error, and healing the sick. This is the salvation that cometh through the Divine Principle demonstrated by Jesus.

      The sculptor turns from the marble to his model, to perfect his conceptions. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiselling our thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have we not accepted the material model? and are we not reproducing it, aided in our work by vicious sculptors of hideous forms? Do we not hear, from all mankind, of the imperfect model? Is the world not holding it before our gaze continually? The result is, that we follow those lower patterns, limit our life-work, and adopt, into our own experience, the angular outline and deformity of mortal models.

      To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk there. We must form perfect models in thought, and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let harmony, health, unselfishness, goodness, mercy, and justice form the mind-pictures, and sin, sickness, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.

      Does Wisdom make blunders to be afterwards rectified by man? Does a law of God produce sickness, and man put that law under his feet by healing that sickness? To my understanding, the sick are never really healed by drugs, hygiene, or any material method. These merely evade the question. They are soothing syrups to put children to sleep, satisfy mortal belief, and lull its fears.

      We think we are healed when a disease disappears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never thoroughly healed until this liability is removed. Mortal mind, being the remote and exciting cause of all suffering, the cause must be renovated through Science, or sense will get the victory.

      Unless every ill is met aright, and fairly overcome by Truth, it is never conquered. If God destroys not sin, sickness, and death, they are not destroyed to mortal mind, but are immortal. What God cannot do, man need not attempt. If God heals not the sick, it is because He cannot or will not. In either case lesser attempts would be hopeless, for no power equals the Infinite.

      Upon this stage of existence goes on the dance of belief. Mortal thoughts chase each other like snowflakes drifting to the ground. Science has revealed that Life is not at the mercy of death, nor happiness the sport of circumstance. Error becomes more imperative as it hastens towards self-destruction. This action of mortal mind on the body is illustrated when an abscess grows more painful before it bursts and ends with suppuration, or a fever becomes more severe before it abates.

      The fright is so great, at certain stages of mortal belief, as to destroy that belief. СКАЧАТЬ