Seedtime and Harvest
From Unity of Good by Mary Baker Eddy
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Page 8
1 LET another query now be considered, which gives
much trouble to many earnest thinkers before Science
3 answers it.
Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?
Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so.
6 What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and
can have no other reality than the sense you entertain
of it.
9 It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the senses,
for this evidence is not absolute, and therefore not real,
in our sense of the word. All that is beautiful and good
12 in your individual consciousness is permanent. That
which is not so is illusive and fading. My insistence upon
a proper understanding of the unreality of matter and
15 evil arises from their deleterious effects, physical, moral,
and intellectual, upon the race.
All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on the same
18 basis whereby sickness is healed, — namely, by the es-
tablishment, through reason, revelation, and Science, of
the nothingness of every claim of error, even the doc-
21 trine of heredity and other physical causes. You demon-
strate the process of Science, and it proves my view
Page 9
1 conclusively, that mortal mind is the cause of all disease.
Destroy the mental sense of the disease, and the disease
3 itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itself
disappears.
Material and sensual consciousness are mortal. Hence
6 they must, some time and in some way, be reckoned un-
real. That time has partially come, or my words would
not have been spoken. Jesus has made the way plain,
9 — so plain that all are without excuse who walk not in
it; but this way is not the path of physical science, human
philosophy, or mystic psychology.
12 The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly
reckoned. They have not based upon revelation their
arguments and conclusions as to the source and resources
15 of being, — its combinations, phenomena, and outcome,
— but have built instead upon the sand of human reason.
They have not accepted the simple teaching and life of
18 Jesus as the only true solution of the perplexing problem
of human existence.
Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to understand
21 me, that I monopolize; and this is said because ideas
akin to mine have been held by a few spiritual think-
ers in all ages. So they have, but in a far different
24 form. Healing has gone on continually; yet healing, as
I teach it, has not been practised since the days of
Christ.
27 What is the cardinal point of the difference in my meta-
physical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of
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1 disease, sin, end death, you demonstrate the allness of God.
This difference wholly separates my system from all others.
3 The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because
they are not to be found in God, and this system is built
on Him as the sole cause. It would be difficult to name
6 any previous teachers, save Jesus and his apostles, who
have thus taught.
If there be any monopoly in my teaching, it lies in this
9 utter reliance upon the one God, to whom belong all
things.
Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The
12 universe and man are the spiritual phenomena of this one
infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena never converge toward
aught but infinite Deity. Their gradations are spiritual
15 and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their op-
posites, for God is their divine Principle. They live,
because He lives; and they are eternally perfect, because
18 He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth of divine
Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre
and circumference.
21 To attempt the calculation of His mighty ways, from
the evidence before the material senses, is fatuous. It is
like commencing with the minus sign, to learn the prin-
24 ciple of positive mathematics.
God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the blind
force of a material universe. Mortals must learn this;
27 unless, pursued by their fears, they would endeavor to
hide from His presence under their own falsities, and call
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1 in vain for the mountains of unholiness to shield them
from the penalty of error.
3 Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the cur-
rents of matter, or mortal mind. His teachings beard
the lions in their dens. He turned the water into wine,
6 he commanded the winds, he healed the sick, — all in
direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called
natural science. He annulled the laws of matter, showing
9 them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed
the need of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He
demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and
12 effected this change through the higher laws of God.
The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of
physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human
15 consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He
heeded not the taunt, "That withered hand looks very
real and feels very real;" but he cut off this vain boast-
18 ing and destroyed human pride by taking away the ma-
terial evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some
bigoted sect, a physician, or a professor of natural phi-
21 losophy, — according to the ruder sort then prevalent, —
he never thanked Jesus for restoring his senseless hand;
but neither red tape nor indignity hindered the divine
24 process. Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought
in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibili-
ties. He said that the kingdom of heaven is here, and
27 is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four
months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up,
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1 not down, for your fields are already white for the harvest;
and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes.
3 The laborers are few in this vineyard of Mind-sowing and
reaping; but let them apply to the waiting grain the curv-
ing sickle of Mind’s eternal circle, and bind it with bands
6 of Soul.
