Science, Understood, Translates Matter (the ‘Beast’ of Revelation) Into Mind
“Science Understood” contains references to the following writings of Mary Baker Eddy: Mis. Wr. – Miscellaneous Writings; S.& H. – Science and Health With Key To The Scriptures; Hea: Christian Healing; Peo. – People’s Idea of God.
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The complete text of:
Science, Understood, Translates Matter (The ‘Beast, of Revelation) Into Mind
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Notes of a meeting held by
Herbert W. Eustace, C.S.B.
in Berkeley, California
August 23, 1936.
(Mis. Wr. 25: 12)
“He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” (John 14:12)
Do we believe this statement? Getting rid of a false sense of matter is the only way we are going to find the answer. What does this going “unto the Father” mean? The Father is Spirit; then going unto the Father must mean going from a finite matter basis, to an infinite Spirit basis.
Do you think that matter as matter can accomplish anything? Can matter move your hand, or is it Mind that moves it? You would not know you had a hand if it did not come to you as consciousness, as Mind. You can not conceive of it as matter. You can not deal with matter as matter. Mind can not go outside its own realm of mentality. In Jeremiah we read, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” (17:5)
Now consider Mrs. Eddy’s statement in her original work, Science of Man: “Matter held as shadow is the idea of God, but matter held as substance is a belief and error.”
You know that a shadow, followed back, always leads you to what it is shadowing forth and brings you to its own original substance. It can never appear without an origin. It can not be present through any inherent quality of its own.
Then follow matter back; this reverses and clears up the mistake of thinking it has life, intelligence or substance of itself, and leads you to what it truly is, “the idea of God,” for “Matter held as shadow is the idea of God.”
It was this that Jesus was foretelling and foreshadowing when he said, “I go unto my Father.” Here the “I” was no longer entertaining a false sense of its origin as matter-held-as-substance.
Again Mrs. Eddy writes, “Let us have a clearing up of abstractions.”
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(Mis. Wr. 174:6) What is meant by abstractions? What is the greatest abstraction to you? If I asked you what was the most concrete thing to you, you would probably answer, “Matter.” Thereby you would imply that Spirit to you was the abstraction. But matter is the abstraction. Let us understand, then, what matter really is. “Clearing up” means understanding.
With all our development, is not matter the puzzle of the ages? Material scientists now declare matter to be a “mathematical formula.” Does that tell you any more about it? Matter is the greatest abstraction of all. We are getting to the point where human belief is nearing the only conclusion it can reach, and that is that “Matter is an error of statement.” (S. & H. 277:26) When Science and Health made that declaration, it gave the world a correct definition of matter and opened the way for a clearing up of abstractions.
The abstraction attaches to matter, not to Spirit. Matter is not a thing to be discarded; it is a false sense entertained which, when reversed, is found to be the idea of God.
In Miscellaneous Writings we read, “Let us open our affections to the Principle that moves all in harmony,-from the falling of a sparrow to the rolling of a world.” (174:10) Does this last statement seem contradictory? Does Mind cognize the falling of a sparrow? What could be more insignificant than a sparrow that is gone? “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” (Matt. 10: 29) Mind holds within its isness the imperishable verity of this least shadow of its presence as well as the greatest manifestation.
Then Mrs. Eddy goes on with this query-she is asking herself just as you must ask yourself, “What is the kingdom of heaven?” And she gives this answer, “The abode of Spirit, the realm of the real. No matter is there, no night is there-nothing that maketh or worketh a lie.”
Then she asks herself again, “Is this kingdom afar off? No; it is ever-present here. The first to declare against this kingdom is matter.” When Mrs. Eddy made this statement, did she mean matter as it is usually conceived of or was she thinking of it as “a misstatement of Mind”? (Mis. Wr. 174:2) It could only have been in the latter sense. Here matter is lifted into the realm of mentality where it can be handled. You could not cognize matter as matter. Neither could matter as matter “declare against” anything. It always requires mentality “to declare.” Destroying the false sense of matter is the only way that we are going to find the kingdom of heaven as a present reality and “have a clearing up of abstractions.” Matter held-as-shadow is spiritual.
You will be afraid as long as you accept matter as matter, as long as you conceive of it as something apart from Mind, for you will be dealing with the absence of Mind, Life-and is this not dealing
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with death? Paul declared that it was “through fear of death” that men had been “all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Heb. 2:15)
Science and Health declares, “As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good.” (103: 18) And again, “Mortal mind and body combine as one, and the nearer matter approaches its final statement,-animate error called nerves, brain, mind,-the more prolific it is likely to become in sin and disease beliefs.” (409: 4)
Each individual must understand for himself. You are the only one who could have a false sense of another. But is there really another, or is it your misinterpretation of God? Matter must be translated back “into its original language, which is Mind.” (Hea. 7:8) Who is the only one dealing with all that means consciousness to you? It is you, yourself. Is it not, then, an individual problem?
How could you heal the body if you think in terms of matter as such? If the kingdom of heaven is here and you are in it, with what must you be dealing? MIND. Understanding what matter is, explains what body is-clears it up by translating it back into its original meaning, Mind. In reality is not the whole belief of death the attempt to get rid of matter? If matter is but the negative of Mind, how can you get rid of a false sense of matter by dying?
Thinking Christian Scientists are determined to understand matter not as substance, but as that which shadows forth the presence of Mind. If you do that, could you conceive of heaven as something afar off? Some place you are going to as an eventual clearing up of abstractions?
Do you act in your thinking as though you were in the kingdom of heaven right now? That is simply translating the negative into its positive language. There is no other way honestly to acknowledge the fact that the kingdom of heaven is right here. If you do not do this, you are planning for death. If heaven is not present this moment and every moment-with you in it-you are headed for a funeral. The only thing that can stop you from seeing that you are in the kingdom of heaven now, is a wrong interpretation of matter, and dying will not clear this up.
This “clearing up of abstractions” is a most important essential. Abstractions need to be cleared up-the false interpretation of matter. Start immediately to acknowledge to yourself that the kingdom of God is not afar off, not something to be attained by death, but is obtained by instant understanding.
Do you want the kingdom of heaven? Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven
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is at hand.” (Matt. 4: 17) Do you not repeat these words, and yet do you think you can have this kingdom right at hand as long as you acknowledge matter-as-substance? But when matter is held as shadow, then you have Mind as All-in-all. Then you begin to have this kingdom as ever-present here, your conscious oneness with Mind.
But this can never be obtained as long as matter is held as substance, as something in and of itself. As surely as you do this, you will be wanting to move on. As long as matter suggests a false sense of being, you will be looking “into darkness for light.” (Mis. Wr. 174: 27) You alone give it power.
Jesus saw this truth with regard to matter. He saw that the time would come when all would acknowledge Mind as the source of all that appears as matter, for he said, “Greater works than these shall ye do; because I go unto my Father.”
Seeing matter as that which shadows forth Mind, “translates matter into its original language, which is Mind, and gives the spiritual instead of the material signification.” (Hea. 7:8) Do you think this is spiritualizing matter? Of course it is. How else are you going to find the kingdom of God right here? You acknowledge that you are dealing with matter all around you, that all this consciousness comes as a sense of matter. Then matter is not a thing, but a sense. “Matter is a misstatement of Mind.” (Mis. Wr. 174:2) This going on dealing with matter-as-substance is all the error there is. Get rid of matter as a false statement.
Are you not finding as you unfold that you are upsetting one theory after another? “Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear,-this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony.” (S.&H. 324:2) Give up the idea that spiritualizing matter is a mistake. Only as matter is spiritualized, as it is seen as shadowing forth Mind, does it disappear as “an error of statement,” as shadowing forth death.
Did they not say of the man Jesus, “By our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God”? And yet “His earthly mission was to translate substance into its original meaning, Mind.” (Mis. Wr. 74:16) In other words, find himself as Mind, not matter.
The whole of evil comes not from spiritualizing matter, but from materializing Spirit, making that substance which is shadow, and so having a negation of Mind to deal with. Then why should the demand to translate matter back into its “original language, which is Mind,” be questioned? “Let us have a clearing up of abstractions. Let us come into the presence of Him who removeth all iniquities, and healeth all our diseases.” (Mis. Wr. 174:6)
Mind’s isness is its allness. There is nothing outside of it and this is
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its purity. Purity has no element outside of itself. You express spirituality and can not cognize what is outside of Spirit. “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation.” Why? “For God is All-in-all.” (S.&H. 468:10)
“Let us attach our sense of Science to what touches the religious sentiment within man.” (Mis. Wr. 174:8) What is meant here by the word religious? It is sometimes said that a man does his work religiously. Does that not mean that he does it with exactness? He does not vary, he does not deviate from it, he keeps right at it, does it rightly; and it is in this sense that Mrs. Eddy uses the word in this quotation, “Let us attach our sense of Science to what touches the religious sentiment within man.”
Exactness takes in all that is moral. God is not moral. He is morality itself. You could not have immorality unless you broke the First Commandment. Every quality of God is a moral quality. That which is, that which is purity and exactness, shuts out all unlike itself.
The religious sentiment is that element or quality which turns to exactness. Some cases of straying from the truth are due to constant lack of exactness. Exactness includes within itself all exactness, and therefore it does not tolerate any inexactness, any impurity, anything apart from Mind.
The “clearing up of abstractions,” then, is being exact, having every thing clear as to what Mind means in its all inclusiveness.
Do you not seem to be constantly dealing with matter? Does not matter seem to be all-in-all to you? But Mind is the All-in-all. How can you say that Mind is All-in-all unless you see that “Matter held as shadow is the idea of God”?
Unenlightened Christian Scientists think that matter is some thing to be wiped out. How can you wipe out a thing or heal a thing? You do not obliterate ignorance. You see truth just where the ignorance seems to be.
If you erase 2 X 2 = 5, you have nothing left. The Christian Scientist who attempts to blot out matter, except by seeing it as the shadow of Mind, and so gaining its true sense, finds in the end he has nothing left, and so thinks the undertaker a good thing.
Do you think there was anything possible to Jesus which is not possible to you? How could infinite Spirit have any favorites-giving to one and withholding from another? How could Jesus have had a monopoly upon the infinite blessings of God’s presence?
In the early morning on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus had fish prepared for his disciples as they came ashore. Where did the fish com from? They were just as much matter as those you are dealing with today. The difference consists in the spirit Jesus entertained about them.
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When Jesus fed the multitude, he took the five loaves, he did not reject them, there was something here. “He looked up to heaven,and blessed and brake the loaves.” (Mark 6:41) Now these loaves were just as much matter as the table before us. But Jesus “looked up to heaven.” He followed the shadow back to its original substance, Mind. He took all the faith, all the confidence, all the dependence which was being attached to bread back to Mind and knew Mind to be all-presence, all-substance, All-in-all.
This was the purification of thought, the baptism of Spirit, relinquishing all for Mind. If Jesus had thought in terms of “loaves” as did the multitude there would have been no feast, no fragments. The trouble with us is that we do not follow the shadow back to its substance, we are not confident that we are dealing with Mind alone, and willing to leave the outline to the wisdom of God.
Do you think there is any difference between correcting 2 X 2 = 5 or a sick body? Body can be known only as of consciousness, God-as perfect body, and it is just as much thought as is 2 X 2 = 4. The thing that makes you think that body is material is the false concept you entertain of its origin. Then take it to its true origin. You could not cognize it except as mental. Can you deal with it if you are thinking of matter as matter: as substance, as a thing? As matter, a thing could not get outside of its own limited outline. Everything that comes to you comes as consciousness.
Jesus saw that this false sense of matter-held-as-substance would finally give place to the true sense of matter-held-as-shadow. Jesus gave the laboratory experiment. That was his mission. He foresaw that the scientific explanation of his experiment would be left to the “Comforter,” which appeared in the Revelator’s vision as the “little book.” Today we have its scientific elucidation in Science and Health, and this is destined to win all mankind.
There is not one thing to change or be destroyed. You recognize that there is something operating as Mind, as consciousness to you. Then you translate that something back into Mind. “‘The new tongue’ is the spiritual meaning as opposed to the material. It is the language of Soul instead of the senses; it translates matter into its original language, which is Mind, and gives the spiritual instead of the material significance.” (Hea. 7:10)
Why accept a sick this or a sick that, when matter in its true sense, rightly understood, is the presence of Mind? Why not clear up these abstractions and be in the kingdom of heaven now and see matter shadowing forth Mind?
Is not this understanding of the true sense of matter, seeing Spirit as All-in-all, the ushering in of the kingdom of heaven on earth? Is it not this
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infinite freedom and opportunity that is feebly symbolized by the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid.
This Chamber, as calculated by Pyramid mathematicians, is chronologically to be entered September 15-16 of this year, following a number of years of severe depression as typified by the low passage leading to it. This King’s Chamber portrays the last message carried by this “Miracle in Stone” down through the ages to the present day. Surely it will prove the truth of the symbolism by which it has sometimes been designated “The Hall of the Judgments of the Nations.” The judgment of matter by Spirit.
Mrs. Eddy asks the question, “Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true ideal of Life and recover his own individuality?” (Mis. Wr. 104:28) Do you think it possible to be individual when held by a false sense of body as matter? Jesus said, in substance, to those who persecuted him, “All right, take my body and do with it as you please.” His confidence in the truth proved his body to be spiritual, perfect and indestructible. Is your body different in any way from his? His power lay in the sense he entertained about body. Does the sense you entertain about body differ from the sense Jesus entertained?
If so, why? “Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true ideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I will love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of God wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which appeals intelligently to the facts of man’s spirituality, individuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discords of this material personality.” (Mis. Wr. 104:28) Consider carefully the expression, “disdain the fears,” have an utter contempt for them. But how can you expect to have implicit faith to disdain fear if you surrender your individuality?
How can you “recover your individuality”? How can you preserve it and keep it? By understanding what you are dealing with every moment. “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” (Mal. 3:10)
Lift the veil. See all in the kingdom of Spirit now where not a single thing is withheld from you.
The whole attack that is being made in the world today is upon individuality. Even in this, the most enlightened country in the world, it is the same. If any effort is made that touches your individuality, it is simply
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pure devil, the one evil; because individuality and Science are the same for Science means exact knowledge, isness, and that means man’s oneness with Being, God, in other words his individuality.
The oneness of man with his Principle is his individuality. If it could be touched, it would destroy Christianity. To believe this you need only to look at Russia. She did away with individuality-regimenting her people and what did that try to do to Christianity? Christianity demands that you “Work out your own salvation.” (Phil. 2:12)
America is the highest expression of individuality. All this subtle attempt appearing as relief, pensioning-having something done for you, is the attempt to turn man from looking unreservedly to God. It is the stuff the mediumship of priestcraft is made of, only in this case it is the mediumship of political priestcraft.
Communism, Naziism, Fascism, Kemalism, etc., together with the New Deal, are all for the one purpose of eventually destroying individualism.
In this country, the attack upon individuality comes in a more subtle form, cloaking itself under the guise of benevolence. Had it not been for the Supreme Court of the United States might we not be regimented today, marching under bureaucratic commands from Washington? Be on your guard if something intrudes itself between you and God. Present methods of relief, old age pensions, etc., are all forms of this effort to supplant God, and in the end would have all looking to Washington instead of to Mind. To person instead of to Principle.
The Townsend Plan has intrigued many earnest Christian Scientists. Could it function except on the basis of dying to make room for others? Then is it not based on death? If the ten million first qualified do not die, where would there be room for the succeeding eligible millions? If a plan is based on death, is it worth a moment’s consideration
I have been asked if I did not think the Townsend Plan might be God’s way of working out the old age financial problem. Jesus gave the true illustration of God’s way. He was the way, the truth and the life. Did he not have everything? He had the supper prepared for his disciples, he had the money for the taxes from the fish’s mouth and he fed the multitude by means of Mind, not by governmental largess. “Let us have a clearing up of abstractions” and “give to Mind the glory, honor, dominion, and power everlastingly due its holy name.” (S. & H. 143:29) If we did that would we not have the answer?
If people can not be taken care of here, can they be taken care of hereafter? Is there any difference between here and hereafter? “Let us come into the presence of Him who removeth all iniquities, and healeth all our diseases.” Why do we not come into this presence NOW? How could it
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be easier to get your daily bread hereafter? We are responsible for all delusions because we do not clear up these abstractions.
You ask, “What about teachers’ pensions?”
A pension you have earned is somewhat different. It has been taken off your salary and is ostensibly a saving plan. However, do not forget that all public pension plans must eventually declare, “Excuse me if you are going to live forever. You will have to die within a reasonable length of time or we can not continue in business.” All these devices undermine your “implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which appeals intelligently to the facts of man’s spirituality, individuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discords of this material personality.” All they offer is included in the belief of material personality-belief in matter as substance.
You are not afraid of losing the multiplication table because it is pure Mind. If matter is seen simply as an error of statement and not an error of thing, then you would quickly correct this error and be done with it. “Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, and you destroy their existence.” (Mis. Wr. 105:28) How could matter act as a thing? How could nonintelligence have something the matter with it.
You must answer with your whole heart for the faith that is within you. No longer think of matter-held-as-substance, of matter as matter, as a negative unreversed, but of matter-held-as-shadow; then you will be in the kingdom now, in the “abode of Spirit, the realm of the real.” (Mis. Wr. 174:16)
On the point of individuality, we must see that it is guarded at every angle. The subtle attacks upon individuality will become greater. It is marvelous that when it was so crudely attempted as in the N.R.A. and other New Deal regimentations, that the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers did not arise spontaneously and unanimously and repudiate it. The South, too, even bowed its knee in spite of its cherished doctrine of States’ Rights.
Each one must be on guard. How could American business men and women have consented to such a thing? Having all your actions dictated? One towering character was not influenced. Henry Ford stood right out against it. It came with such a subtle appeal that most business men and women forgot the rock whence they were hewn and ran to anything that promised an easier way than individual initiative and fortitude. They should not have forgotten their individual rights. However, the Supreme Court of the United States was not deceived.
Some feel that should Mr. Roosevelt be reelected and, in the course of the next few years, two or three members of the Supreme Court should die, they might be replaced by those who would be subservient to the demand of the President. Do you accept the hypnotic suggestion that when on the
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Supreme Bench, whoever is appointed would not act under the guidance of God? What is the Supreme Court and Who in the one Mind guiding that Court? The office is far bigger than the person filling it.
When fear says that if Mr. Roosevelt should be reelected, things will go wrong and become still more un-American, we must remember what the office of President of the United States of America is, that the office is too big to be debased. Because Mind is All-in-all, then Mind is all there is to the President, to the Supreme Court, to the Congress.
The way is clear. We are not waiting on person or circumstance. We are in the kingdom of God now. How few it would take to bring in the millennium if those few were of one Mind! Mrs. Eddy declared in one of her classes, “We, today, in this class-room, are enough to convert the world if we are of one Mind.” (Mis. Wr. 279:27) “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:19, 20)
Then let us discern “the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold.” (S. & H. 585:11) Let us replace matter with Spirit, translate material personality back into Mind, relinquish fear and be at peace.
There may appear to be a great many confusing beliefs. Christian Scientists wonder why they are fettered at times, when they are earnestly looking to Mind. They should be alert and know what is confusing them. They have understood the theory about matter, but have they acted upon it? Have they been dealing with Spirit, or have they been bowing down to matter as matter?
There is one fundamental fact back of all disease.
Mr. Frederick Dixon healed a prominent physician of what was considered an incurable disease, and thereafter the two became good friends. Later in conversation Mr. Dixon put the question to him as to how much of disease he thought was attributable to lust, to venereal poison. The physician thought for a moment and then said, “About 50 per cent.” Mr. Dixon replied, “Only 50 per cent?” After another pause the doctor said, “Well, perhaps 65 per cent.” “You think only 65 per cent?” “Well, no, possibly 85 per cent.” “You would say not more than 85 per cent?” “Well, yes, 100 per cent.”
You see how reluctant mortal mind was to admit this. Why? Science and Health states that “Until the author of this book learned the vastness of Christian Science, the fixedness of mortal illusions, and the human hatred of Truth, she cherished sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with immediate and universal acceptance.”(330: 2) This doctor was
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healed and was grateful, but, even he, though knowing the fact, had to be led on to admit that material conception holds within itself the cause of all disease and death.
Are you puzzled about the cause of disease? What seems to be a conception is a mental declaration. If there is no matter-as-substance, then so-called matter is a state of mind, is a misstatement of divine Mind, of divine Life. Consequently a conception which seems to be a material conception, must have death as its basis in contradistinction to Life. It is a negative statement of the true. Mortal mind’s declaration, “I am born,” is identical with the declaration of venereal poison, “I am the origin of man.”
Every child that is born falls automatically under this false belief of law – a law of poison. It is attached to each one. Materially, a child is a statement of venereal poison. If you do not handle this suggestion, it works out the ends of death-age, decrepitude, everything that would destroy. Would you work this out in a weak, ineffectual, vacillating sort of a way, or would you face it squarely and vigorously? You are headed for a place six feet deep and six feet long unless the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” makes you “free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:2)
You are not responsible for this law. No sinner or sick man has anything to do with his sickness or sin as such. But the law of sin and death-evil suggestion, must find nothing in you, no answering chord upon which to play its tune. Your responsibility is to reverse the evil suggestion, which, when reversed, is the very presence of God.
Are you awake to this? How is the world going to be redeemed if you do not do it? Nothing but your righteousness, nothing but your rightness, nothing but your knowing, will do it. Can you do this if you keep on accepting the lie and doing the things which take you to the grave?
Christian Scientists sometimes wonder why they are so bound. “Do not think to deceive yourselves by deceiving others,” Mrs. Eddy declares, “for Wisdom will call you into judgment for all you think and act, and the tribunal before which your true position is tried and proved is the demonstration that you are able to give of healing the sick, after learning the principle upon which this is done, and the only one by which you can succeed to the most marvelous instances of cure.” (Science of Man, p. 16) Why not be honest? Do we not have to demonstrate the truth and be the living witness of what God is?
Really and earnestly to get down to business and understand what this venereal poison is, what this is which is supposed to course through the veins, through the life blood, is something that must be done-it must be faced. It is a mental poison that goes on and on until you are sufficiently
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distressed to be willing to stop thinking in terms of being born. It is something that must be handled all the time. A passing thought will not accomplish the work. Jesus said, “Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!” (Matt. 24:19) In other words, Woe unto him that believes either that he can give birth to something or was ever given birth to, was ever formed and sustained materially.
You ask, “Why do I have aches and pains?” and then you run perhaps in fear to a doctor only too often to have your fears increased, instead of turning to Mind, going into your “closet” and shutting the door and saying to yourself, “Now, what do I know about Mind?”
A little thing may be the cause of your trouble, but what more apparently insignificant thing, (as far as being considered of vital importance) than that you were born? And yet venereal poison-being born-is the conception of the exact opposite of Mind, Life, and is itself death: a thing of life, but actually death. Why not meet this intelligently and not let anything turn you aside? Every intelligent physician has to admit what Mr. Dixon’s friend admitted-that venereal poison, being born, is fundamentally back of every ill.
Seeing that you were never begotten, that you never could begin, is the essential point. Neither could your body, which is Mind’s interpretation of Himself, have a beginning.
Then ask yourself the question, “With what am I being mentally poisoned?” There is no more substance to the body than there is to the image in the mirror. The image has no substance of itself. The moment there is a change in the object in front of the mirror, the image changes. The thing that makes the image is what you are accepting as Mind. This determines body, friend, world. What you determine Mind to be determines the image. Mind is your being. Your oneness with Mind appears as your body, your friend, your world. Could Mind, the You of you, have a stiff leg or a stiff arm?
Or a stiff heart? “And I will take the stony heart out of their flesh; and will give them an heart of flesh: That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances: and they shall be my people and I will be their God.” (Ez. 11:19, 20) The heart of stone is unwillingness to be obedient to Mind. “I am going to do what I want to do!” You must be willing to get a heart of flesh.
Destroy this miserable belief of being born and giving birth to children and worshipping them. The way to find the child of God is to have God All-in-all. You will get the sense of increasing number without attaching to it the sting of venereal poison.
You remember the true Postulates given in Science and Health as “The
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chief stones in the temple of Christian Science”: “that Life is God, good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no material life, and no death.” (288:20)
Also you remember the erroneous Postulates which Science and Health says must be “considered in order that the spiritual facts may be better apprehended.”
“That substance, life and intelligence are something apart from God.”
“That man is both mental and material.”
“That mind is both evil and good; whereas the real Mind cannot be evil nor the medium of evil, for Mind is God.”
“That matter is intelligent, and that man has a material body which is part of himself.” “That matter holds in itself the issues of life and death,-that matter is not only capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, but also capable of imparting these sensations. From the illusion implied in this last postulate arises the decomposition of mortal bodies in what is termed death.” (91:22)
Ponder these postulates and follow this whole line to its ultimate and see that the false sense of matter is all that must be corrected. You must translate “matter into its original language, which is Mind, and give the spiritual instead of the material signification.” (Hea. 7:8) Be able to say with Paul, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him.” (II Tim. 1:11)
Can we do better than faithfully and intelligently to study and live Mrs. Eddy’s prayer,-“‘Thy kingdom come’; let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin; and may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind and govern them!”
This can only be done by seeing Spirit as All-in-all whether appearing as matter-held-as-shadow, which is the idea of God; or as matter-held-as-substance, which is belief and error-the negative of Spirit which must be reversed.
And truly what is the negative of Spirit? Having used all these words have we really grasped the true meaning of the negative of Spirit? The whole purpose of this meeting will have been lost unless we clearly see and understand that what we are dealing with, every instant, in the realm of belief, is divine Mind negatively interpreted, in other words direction by malicious minds, and never matter or material things whether seemingly appearing as what is called person, place or thing. It only appears as a belief of person, place or thing merely to deceive, while all the time it is simply pure hypnotic suggestion and never anything of the corporeal senses.
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In whatever guise every erroneous sense seems to appear, it can only be successfully handled as it is recognized for what it really is, malignant animal magnetism, and taken back to its divine Source, the one All-embracing Mind, where it is “swallowed up of Life” in divine Love, as Paul expresses it, where all its maliciousness spontaneously vanishes, and the so-called victim of the illusion walks forth clothed and in his right mind.
“Then shall Christian Science again appear, to light our sepulchres with immortality.” (Peo. 8:23)
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