Science And Philosophy
From Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy
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Men give counsel; but they give not the wisdom to
profit by it. To ask wisdom of God, is the beginning of
30 wisdom.
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1 Meekness, moderating human desire, inspires wisdom
and procures divine power. Human lives are yet un-
carved,—in the rough marble, encumbered with crude,
rude fragments, and awaiting the hammering, chiselling,
5 and transfiguration from His hand.
Great only as good, because fashioned divinely, were
those unpretentious yet colossal characters, Paul and
Jesus. Theirs were modes of mind cast in the moulds
of Christian Science: Paul’s, by the supremely natural
10 transforming power of Truth; and the character of
Jesus, by his original scientific sonship with God. Phi-
losophy never has produced, nor can it reproduce, these
stars of the first magnitude—fixed stars in the heavens
of Soul. When shall earth be crowned with the true
15 knowledge of Christ?
When Christian Science has melted away the cloud of
false witnesses; and the dews of divine grace, fall-
ing upon the blighted flowers of fleeting joys, shall
lift every thought-leaflet Spiritward; and “Israel after
20 the flesh,” who partaketh of its own altars, shall be
no more,—then, “the Israel according to Spirit”
shall fill earth with the divine energies, understanding,
and ever-flowing tides of spiritual sensation and consciousness.
25 When mortal mind is silenced by the “still, small voice”
of Truth that regenerates philosophy and logic; and
Jesus, as the true idea of Him, is heard as of yore saying
to sensitive ears and dark disciples, “I came from the
Father,” “Before Abraham was, I am,” coexistent and
30 coeternal with God,—and this idea is understood,—
then will the earth be filled with the true knowledge of
Christ. No advancing modes of human mind made
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1 Jesus; rather was it their subjugation, and the pure
heart that sees God.
When the belief in material origin, mortal mind, sen-
sual conception, dissolves through self-imposed suffering,
5 and its substances are found substanceless,—then its
miscalled life ends in death, and death itself is swallowed
up in Life,—spiritual Life, whose myriad forms are
neither material nor mortal.
When every form and mode of evil disappear to hu-
10 man thought, and mollusk and radiate are spiritual con-
cepts testifying to one creator,—then, earth is full of
His glory, and Christian Science has overshadowed all
human philosophy, and being is understood in startling
contradiction of human hypotheses; and Socrates, Plato,
15 Kant, Locke, Berkeley, Tyndall, Darwin, and Spencer
sit at the feet of Jesus.
To this great end, Paul admonished, “Let us lay aside
every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before
20 us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our
faith.” So shall mortals soar to final freedom, and rest
from the subtlety of speculative wisdom and human
woe.
God is the only Mind, and His manifestation is the
25 spiritual universe, including man and all eternal indi-
viduality. God, the only substance and divine Principle
of creation, is by no means a creative partner in the firm
of error, named matter, or mortal mind. He elucidates
His own idea, wherein Principle and idea, God and man,
30 are not one, but are inseparable as cause and effect. If
one, who could say which that “one” was?
His ways are not as our ways. The divine modes
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1 and manifestations are not those of the material senses;
for instance, intelligent matter, or mortal mind, material
birth, growth, and decay: they are the forever-existing
realities of divine Science; wherein God and man are
5 perfect, and man’s reason is at rest in God’s wisdom,—
who comprehends and reflects all real mode, form, indi-
viduality, identity.
Scholastic dogma has made men blind. Christ’s logos
gives sight to these blind, ears to these deaf, feet to these
10 lame,—physically, morally, spiritually. Theologians
make the mortal mistake of believing that God, having
made all, made evil; but the Scriptures declare that all
that He made was good. Then, was evil part and parcel
of His creation?
15 Philosophy hypothetically regards creation as its own
creator, puts cause into effect, and out of nothing would
create something, whose noumenon is mortal mind,
with its phenomenon matter,—an evil mind already
doomed, whose modes are material manifestations of
20 evil, and that continually, until self-extinguished by
suffering!
Here revelation must come to the rescue of mortals,
to remove this mental millstone that is dragging them
downward, and refute erring reason with the spiritual
25 cosmos and Science of Soul. We all must find shelter
from the storm and tempest in the tabernacle of Spirit.
Truth is won through Science or suffering: O vain mor-
tals! which shall it be? And suffering has no reward,
except when it is necessary to prevent sin or reform
30 the sinner. And pleasure is no crime except when it
strengthens the influence of bad inclinations or lessens
the activities of virtue. The more nearly an erring so-
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1 called mind approaches purity, the more conscious it
becomes of its own unreality, and of the great reality of
divine Mind and true happiness.
The “ego” that claims selfhood in error, and passes
5 from molecule and monkey up to man, is no ego, but is
simply the supposition that the absence of good is mind
and makes men,—when its greatest flatterer, identifica-
tion, is piqued by Him who compensateth vanity with
nothingness, dust with dust!
10 The mythology of evil and mortality is but the ma-
terial mode of a suppositional mind; while the immortal
modes of Mind are spiritual, and pass through none of
the changes of matter, or evil. Truth said, and said from
the beginning, “Let us [Spirit] make man perfect;” and
15 there is no other Maker: a perfect man would not desire
to make himself imperfect, and God is not chargeable
with imperfection. His modes declare the beauty of holi-
ness, and His manifold wisdom shines through the visible
world in glimpses of the eternal verities. Even through
20 the mists of mortality is seen the brightness of His
coming.
We must avoid the shoals of a sensual religion or
philosophy that misguides reason and affection, and
hold fast to the Principle of Christian Science as the
25 Word that is God, Spirit, and Truth. This Word cor-
rects the philosopher, confutes the astronomer, exposes
the subtle sophist, and drives diviners mad. The Bible
is the learned man’s masterpiece, the ignorant man’s
dictionary, the wise man’s directory.
30 I foresee and foresay that every advancing epoch of so
Truth will be characterized by a more spiritual appre-
hension of the Scriptures, that will show their marked
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1 consonance with the textbook of Christian Science Mind-
healing, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.”
Interpreting the Word in the “new tongue,” whereby
the sick are healed, naturally evokes new paraphrase
5 from the world of letters. “Wait patiently on the Lord,
and He will renew your strength.” In return for indi-
vidual sacrifice, what a recompense to have healed, through
Truth, the sick and sinful, made the public your friend,
and posterity your familiar!
10 Christian Science refutes everything that is not a
postulate of the divine Principle, God. It is the soul of
divine philosophy, and there is no other philosophy. It
is not a search after wisdom, it is wisdom: it is God’s
right hand grasping the universe,—all time, space,
15 immortality, thought, extension, cause, and effect; con-
stituting and governing all identity, individuality, law,
and power. It stands on this Scriptural platform:
that He made all that was made, and it is good, reflects
the divine Mind, is governed by it; and that nothing
20 apart from this Mind, one God, is self-created or evolves
the universe.
Human hypotheses predicate matter of Spirit and
evil of good; hence these opposites must either cooperate
or quarrel throughout time and eternity,—or until
25 this impossible partnership is dissolved. If Spirit is the
lawgiver to matter, and good has the same power or
modes as evil, it has the same consciousness, and there
is no absolute good. This error, carried to its ultimate,
would either extinguish God and His modes, or give
30 reality and power to evil ad infinitum.
Christian Science rends this veil of the temple of gods,
and reproduces the divine philosophy of Jesus and Paul.
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1 This philosophy alone will bear the strain of time and
bring out the glories of eternity; for “other founda-
tion can no man lay than that is laid,” which is Christ,
Truth.
5 Human theories weighed in the balances of God are
found wanting; and their highest endeavors are to Science
what a child’s love of pictures is to art. The school whose
schoolmaster is not Christ, gets things wrong, and is ignorant
thereof.
10 If Christian Science lacked the proof of its goodness
and utility, it would destroy itself; for it rests alone on
demonstration. Its genius is right thinking and right
acting, physical and moral harmony; and the secret of
its success lies in supplying the universal need of better
15 health and better men.
Good health and a more spiritual religion form the
common want, and this want has worked out a moral
result; namely, that mortal mind is calling for what im-
mortal Mind alone can supply. If the uniform moral
20 and spiritual, as well as physical, effects of divine Science
were lacking, the demand would diminish; but it con-
tinues, and increases, which shows the real value of
Christian Science to the race. Even doctors agree that
infidelity, bigotry, or sham has never met the growing
25 wants of humanity.
As a literature, Christian metaphysics is hampered by
lack of proper terms in which to express what it means.
As a Science, it is held back by the common ignorance
of what it is and of what it does,—and more than all
30 else, by the impostors that come in its name. To be
appreciated, it must be conscientiously understood and
introduced.
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1 If the Bible and “Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures” had in our schools the time or attention that
human hypotheses consume, they would advance the
world. True, it requires more study to understand and
5 demonstrate what they teach than to learn the doctrine
of theology, philosophy, or physics, because they con-
tain and offer Science, with fixed Principle, given rule,
and unmistakable proof.
The Scriptures give the keynote of Christian Science
10 from Genesis to Revelation, and this is the prolonged
tone: “For the Lord He is God, and there is
none beside Him.” And because He is All-in-all,
He is in nothing unlike Himself; and nothing that
worketh or maketh a lie is in Him, or can be divine con-
15 sciousness.
At this date, poor jaded humanity needs to get her
eyes open to a new style of imposition in the field of
medicine and of religion, and to “beware of the leaven
of the scribes and Pharisees,” the doctrines of men, even
20 as Jesus admonished. From first to last, evil insists on
the unity of good and evil as the purpose of God; and
on drugs, electricity, and animal magnetism as modes
of medicine. To a greater or less extent, all mortal conclusions
start from this false premise, and they necessarily
25 culminate in sickness, sin, disease, and death.
Erroneous doctrines never have abated and never will
abate dishonesty, self-will, envy, and lust. To destroy
sin and its sequence, is the office of Christ, Truth,—ac-
cording to His mode of Christian Science; and this is
30 being done daily.
The false theories whose names are legion, gilded with
sophistry and what Jesus had not, namely, mere book-
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1 learning,—letter without law, gospel, or demonstration,
—have no place in Christian Science. This Science re-
quires man to be honest, just, pure; to love his neighbor
as himself, and to love God supremely.
5 Matter and evil are subjective states of error or mortal
mind. But Mind is immortal; and the fact of there
being no mortal mind, exposes the lie of suppositional
evil, showing that error is not Mind, substance, or
Life. Thus, whatever is wrongfully-minded will dis-
10 appear in the proportion that Science is understood,
and the reality of being—goodness and harmony—is
demonstrated.
Error says that knowing all things implies the neces-
sity of knowing evil, that it dishonors God to claim that
15 He is ignorant of anything; but God says of this fruit
of the tree of knowledge of both good and evil, “In the
day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” If
God is infinite good, He knows nothing but good; if He
did know aught else, He would not be infinite. Infinite
20 Mind knows nothing beyond Himself or Herself. To
good, evil is never present; for evil is a different state of
consciousness. It was not against evil, but against know-
ing evil, that God forewarned. He dwelleth in light;
and in the light He sees light, and cannot see darkness.
25 The opposite conclusion, that darkness dwelleth in light,
has neither precedent nor foundation in nature, in logic,
or in the character of Christ.
The senses would say that whatever saves from sin,
must know sin. Truth replies that God is too pure
30 to behold iniquity; and by virtue of His ignorance of
that which is not, He knoweth that which is, and
abideth in Himself, the only Life, Truth, and Love,
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1 —and is reflected by a universe in His own image
and likeness.
Even so, Father, let the light that shineth in dark-
ness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not, dispel this
5 illusion of the senses, open the eyes of the blind, and cause
the deaf to hear.
“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.”
LOWELL
