Science and Health With Key to The Scriptures

M >> Mary Baker Eddy >> Science and Health With Key to The Scriptures

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If all who ever partook of the sacrament had really
commemorated the sufferings of Jesus and drunk of
34:12 his cup, they would have revolutionized the
world. If all who seek his commemoration
through material symbols will take up the cross, heal
34:15 the sick, cast out evils, and preach Christ, or Truth,
to the poor, - the receptive thought, - they will bring
in the millennium.

Fellowship with Christ

34:18 Through all the disciples experienced, they became more
spiritual and understood better what the Master had
taught. His resurrection was also their resur-
34:21 rection. It helped them to raise themselves and
others from spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into
the perception of infinite possibilities. They needed this
34:24 quickening, for soon their dear Master would rise again
in the spiritual realm of reality, and ascend far above
their apprehension. As the reward for his faithfulness,
34:27 he would disappear to material sense in that change which
has since been called the ascension.

The last breakfast

What a contrast between our Lord's last supper and
34:30 his last spiritual breakfast with his disciples
in the bright morning hours at the joyful
meeting on the shore of the Galilean Sea! His gloom
35:1 had passed into glory, and His disciples' grief into repent-
ance, - hearts chastened and pride rebuked. Convinced
35:3 of the fruitlessness of their toil in the dark and wakened
by their Master's voice, they changed their methods, turned
away from material things, and cast their net on the right
35:6 side. Discerning Christ, Truth, anew on the shore of
time, they were enabled to rise somewhat from mortal
sensuousness, or the burial of mind in matter, into new-
35:9 ness of life as Spirit.

This spiritual meeting with our Lord in the dawn of a
new light is the morning meal which Christian Scientists
35:12 commemorate. They bow before Christ, Truth, to re-
ceive more of his reappearing and silently to commune
with the divine Principle, Love. They celebrate their
35:15 Lord's victory over death, his probation in the flesh
after death, its exemplification of human probation, and
his spiritual and final ascension above matter, or the flesh,
35:18 when he rose out of material sight.

Spiritual Eucharist

Our baptism is a purification from all error. Our
church is built on the divine Principle, Love. We can
35:21 unite with this church only as we are new-
born of Spirit, as we reach the Life which
is Truth and the Truth which is Life by bringing forth
35:24 the fruits of Love, - casting out error and healing the
sick. Our Eucharist is spiritual communion with the one
God. Our bread, "which cometh down from heaven,"
35:27 is Truth. Our cup is the cross. Our wine the inspira-
tion of Love, the draught our Master drank and com-
mended to his followers.

Final purpose

35:30 The design of Love is to reform the sinner. If the
sinner's punishment here has been insufficient to re-
form him, the good man's heaven would be a hell to
36:1 the sinner. They, who know not purity and affection by
experience, can never find bliss in the blessed company of
36:3 Truth and Love simply through translation
into another sphere. Divine Science reveals
the necessity of sufficient suffering, either before or after
36:6 death, to quench the love of sin. To remit the penalty
due for sin, would be for Truth to pardon error. Escape
from punishment is not in accordance with God's govern-
36:9 ment, since justice is the handmaid of mercy.

Jesus endured the shame, that he might pour his
dear-bought bounty into barren lives. What was his
36:12 earthly reward? He was forsaken by all save John,
the beloved disciple, and a few women who bowed in
silent woe beneath the shadow of his cross. The earthly
36:15 price of spirituality in a material age and the great moral
distance between Christianity and sensualism preclude
Christian Science from finding favor with the worldly-
36:18 minded.

Righteous retribution

A selfish and limited mind may be unjust, but the un-
limited and divine Mind is the immortal law of justice as
36:21 well as of mercy. It is quite as impossible for
sinners to receive their full punishment this
side of the grave as for this world to bestow on the right-
36:24 eous their full reward. It is useless to suppose that the
wicked can gloat over their offences to the last moment
and then be suddenly pardoned and pushed into heaven,
36:27 or that the hand of Love is satisfied with giving us only
toil, sacrifice, cross-bearing, multiplied trials, and mock-
ery of our motives in return for our efforts at well doing.

Vicarious suffering

36:30 Religious history repeats itself in the suf-
fering of the just for the unjust. Can God
therefore overlook the law of righteousness which de-
37:1 stroys the belief called sin? Does not Science show that
sin brings suffering as much to-day as yesterday? They
37:3 who sin must suffer. "With what measure ye mete, it
shall be measured to you again."

Martyrs inevitable

History is full of records of suffering. "The blood of
37:6 the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Mortals try in
vain to slay Truth with the steel or the stake,
but error falls only before the sword of Spirit.
37:9 Martyrs are the human links which connect one stage with
another in the history of religion. They are earth's lumi-
naries, which serve to cleanse and rarefy the atmosphere of
37:12 material sense and to permeate humanity with purer ideals.
Consciousness of right-doing brings its own reward; but
not amid the smoke of battle is merit seen and appreciated
37:15 by lookers-on.

Complete emulation

When will Jesus' professed followers learn to emulate
him in /all/ his ways and to imitate his mighty works?
37:18 Those who procured the martyrdom of that
righteous man would gladly have turned his
sacred career into a mutilated doctrinal platform. May
37:21 the Christians of to-day take up the more practical im-
port of that career! It is possible, - yea, it is the duty
and privilege of every child, man, and woman, - to follow
37:24 in some degree the example of the Master by the demon-
stration of Truth and Life, of health and holiness. Chris-
tians claim to be his followers, but do they follow him in
37:27 the way that he commanded? Hear these imperative com-
mands: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
which is in heaven is perfect!" "Go ye into all the world,
37:30 and preach the gospel to every creature!" "/Heal the
sick/!"

Jesus' teaching belittled

Why has this Christian demand so little inspiration
38:1 to stir mankind to Christian effort? Because men are
assured that this command was intended only for a par-
38:3 ticular period and for a select number of fol-
lowers. This teaching is even more pernicious
than the old doctrine of foreordination, - the election of a
38:6 few to be saved, while the rest are damned; and so it will
be considered, when the lethargy of mortals, produced
by man-made doctrines, is broken by the demands of
38:9 divine Science.

Jesus said: "These signs shall follow them that be-
lieve; . . . they shall lay hands on the sick, and they
38:12 shall recover." Who believes him? He was addressing
his disciples, yet he did not say, " These signs shall follow
/you/," but /them/- "them that believe" in all time to come.
38:15 Here the word /hands/ is used metaphorically, as in the text,
"The right hand of the Lord is exalted." It expresses
spiritual power; otherwise the healing could not have
38:18 been done spiritually. At another time Jesus prayed, not
for the twelve only, but for as many as should believe
"through their word."

Material pleasures

38:21 Jesus experienced few of the pleasures of the physical
senses, but his sufferings were the fruits of other peo-
ple's sins, not of his own. The eternal Christ,
38:24 his spiritual selfhood, never suffered. Jesus
mapped out the path for others. He unveiled the Christ,
the spiritual idea of divine Love. To those buried in the
38:27 belief of sin and self, living only for pleasure or the grati-
fication of the senses, he said in substance: Having eyes
ye see not, and having ears ye hear not; lest ye should un-
38:30 derstand and be converted, and I might heal you. He
taught that the material senses shut out Truth and its
healing power.

Mockery of truth

39:1 Meekly our Master met the mockery of his unrecog-
nized grandeur. Such indignities as he received, his fol-
39:3 lowers will endure until Christianity's last
triumph. He won eternal honors. He over-
came the world, the flesh, and all error, thus proving
39:6 their nothingness. He wrought a full salvation from sin,
sickness, and death. We need "Christ, and him cruci-
fied." We must have trials and self-denials, as well as
39:9 joys and victories, until all error is destroyed.

A belief suicidal

The educated belief that Soul is in the body causes
mortals to regard death as a friend, as a stepping-stone
39:12 out of mortality into immortality and bliss.
The Bible calls death an enemy, and Jesus
overcame death and the grave instead of yielding to them.
39:15 He was "the way." To him, therefore, death was not
the threshold over which he must pass into living
glory.

Present salvation

39:18 "/Now/," cried the apostle, "is the accepted time; be-
hold, /now/ is the day of salvation," - meaning, not that
now men must prepare for a future-world salva-
39:21 tion, or safety, but that now is the time in which
to experience that salvation in spirit and in life. Now is
the time for so-called material pains and material pleas-
39:24 ures to pass away, for both are unreal, because impossible
in Science. To break this earthly spell, mortals must get
the true idea and divine Principle of all that really exists
39:27 and governs the universe harmoniously. This thought is
apprehended slowly, and the interval before its attain-
ment is attended with doubts and defeats as well as
39:30 triumphs.

Sin and penalty

Who will stop the practice of sin so long as he believes
in the pleasures of sin? When mortals once admit that
40:1 evil confers no pleasure, they turn from it. Remove error
from thought, and it will not appear in effect. The ad-
40:3 vanced thinker and devout Christian, perceiv-
ing the scope and tendency of Christian healing
and its Science, will support them. Another will say:
40:6 "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient
season I will call for thee."

Divine Science adjusts the balance as Jesus adjusted
40:9 it. Science removes the penalty only by first removing
the sin which incurs the penalty. This is my sense of
divine pardon, which I understand to mean God's method
40:12 of destroying sin. If the saying is true, "While there's
life there's hope," its opposite is also true, While there's
sin there's doom. Another's suffering cannot lessen our
40:15 own liability. Did the martyrdom of Savonarola make
the crimes of his implacable enemies less criminal?

Suffering inevitable

Was it just for Jesus to suffer? No; but it was
40:18 inevitable, for not otherwise could he show us the way
and the power of Truth. If a career so great
and good as that of Jesus could not avert a
40:21 felon's fate, lesser apostles of Truth may endure human
brutality without murmuring, rejoicing to enter into
fellowship with him through the triumphal arch of
40:24 Truth and Love.

Service and worship

Our heavenly Father, divine Love, demands that all
men should follow the example of our Master and his
40:27 apostles and not merely worship his personal-
ity. It is sad that the phrase /divine service/
has come so generally to mean public worship instead of
40:30 daily deeds.

Within the veil

The nature of Christianity is peaceful and blessed,
but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of
41:1 hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the
Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us; and
41:3 this advance beyond matter must come
through the joys and triumphs of the right-
eous as well as through their sorrows and afflictions.
41:6 Like our Master, we must depart from material sense
into the spiritual sense of being.

The thorns and flowers

The God-inspired walk calmly on though it be with
41:9 bleeding footprints, and in the hereafter they will reap
what they now sow. The pampered hypo-
crite may have a flowery pathway here, but
41:12 he cannot forever break the Golden Rule and escape the
penalty due.

Healing early lost

The proofs of Truth, Life, and Love, which Jesus gave
41:15 by casting out error and healing the sick, completed his
earthly mission; but in the Christian Church
this demonstration of healing was early lost,
41:18 about three centuries after the crucifixion. No ancient
school of philosophy, /materia medica/, or scholastic theol-
ogy ever taught or demonstrated the divine healing of
41:21 absolute Science.

Immortal achieval

Jesus foresaw the reception Christian Science would have
before it was understood, but this foreknowledge hindered
41:24 him not. He fulfilled his God-mission, and
then sat down at the right hand of the Father.
Persecuted from city to city, his apostles still went about
41:27 doing good deeds, for which they were maligned and
stoned. The truth taught by Jesus, the elders scoffed at.
Why? Because it demanded more than they were willing
41:30 to practise. It was enough for them to believe in a national
Deity; but that belief, from their time to ours, has never
made a disciple who could cast out evils and heal the sick.
42:1 Jesus' life proved, divinely and scientifically, that God
is Love, whereas priest and rabbi affirmed God to be a
42:3 mighty potentate, who loves and hates. The Jewish the-
ology gave no hint of the unchanging love of God.

A belief in death

The universal belief in death is of no advantage. It
42:6 cannot make Life or Truth apparent. Death
will be found at length to be a mortal dream,
which comes in darkness and disappears with the light.

Cruel desertion

42:9 The "man of sorrows" was in no peril from salary or
popularity. Though entitled to the homage of the world
and endorsed pre-eminently by the approval
42:12 of God, his brief triumphal entry into Jerusa-
lem was followed by the desertion of all save a few friends,
who sadly followed him to the foot of the cross.

Death outdone

42:15 The resurrection of the great demonstrator of God's
power was the proof of his final triumph over body
and matter, and gave full evidence of divine
42:18 Science, - evidence so important to mortals.
The belief that man has existence or mind separate from
God is a dying error. This error Jesus met with divine
42:21 Science and proved its nothingness. Because of the won-
drous glory which God bestowed on His anointed, temp-
tation, sin, sickness, and death had no terror for Jesus.
42:24 Let men think they had killed the body! Afterwards he
would show it to them unchanged. This demonstrates
that in Christian Science the true man is governed by
42:27 God - by good, not evil - and is therefore not a mortal
but an immortal. Jesus had taught his disciples the
Science of this proof. He was here to enable them to
42:30 test his still uncomprehended saying, "He that believ-
eth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." They
must understand more fully his Life-principle by casting
43:1 out error, healing the sick, and raising the dead, even as
they did understand it after his bodily departure.

Pentecost repeated

43:3 The magnitude of Jesus' work, his material disappear-
ance before their eyes and his reappearance, all enabled
the disciples to understand what Jesus had
43:6 said. Heretofore they had only believed;
now they understood. The advent of this understanding
is what is meant by the descent of the Holy Ghost, - that
43:9 influx of divine Science which so illuminated the Pentecos-
tal Day and is now repeating its ancient history.

Convincing evidence

Jesus' last proof was the highest, the most convincing,
43:12 the most profitable to his students. The malignity of
brutal persecutors, the treason and suicide of
his betrayer, were overruled by divine Love to
43:15 the glorification of the man and of the true idea of God,
which Jesus' persecutors had mocked and tried to slay.
The final demonstration of the truth which Jesus taught,
43:18 and for which he was crucified, opened a new era for the
world. Those who slew him to stay his influence perpetu-
ated and extended it.

Divine victory

43:21 Jesus rose higher in demonstration because of the cup
of bitterness he drank. Human law had condemned
him, but he was demonstrating divine Science.
43:24 Out of reach of the barbarity of his enemies,
he was acting under spiritual law in defiance of mat-
ter and mortality, and that spiritual law sustained him.
43:27 The divine must overcome the human at every point.
The Science Jesus taught and lived must triumph over
all material beliefs about life, substance, and intelli-
43:30 gence, and the multitudinous errors growing from such
beliefs.

Love must triumph over hate. Truth and Life must
44:1 seal the victory over error and death, before the thorns
can be laid aside for a crown, the benediction follow,
44:3 "Well done, good and faithful servant," and the suprem-
acy of Spirit be demonstrated.

Jesus in the tomb

The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge
44:6 from his foes, a place in which to solve the great
problem of being. His three days' work in
the sepulchre set the seal of eternity on time.
44:9 He proved Life to be deathless and Love to be the mas-
ter of hate. He met and mastered on the basis of Chris-
tian Science, the power of Mind over matter, all the claims
44:12 of medicine, surgery, and hygiene.

He took no drugs to allay inflammation. He did not
depend upon food or pure air to resuscitate wasted
44:15 energies. He did not require the skill of a surgeon to
heal the torn palms and bind up the wounded side and
lacerated feet, that he might use those hands to remove
44:18 the napkin and winding-sheet, and that he might employ
his feet as before.

The deific naturalism

Could it be called supernatural for the God of nature
44:21 to sustain Jesus in his proof of man's truly derived power?
It was a method of surgery beyond material
art, but it was not a supernatural act. On
44:24 the contrary, it was a divinely natural act, whereby divinity
brought to humanity the understanding of the Christ-
healing and revealed a method infinitely above that of
44:27 human invention.

Obstacles overcome

His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was
hidden in the sepulchre, whereas he was alive, demon-
44:30 strating within the narrow tomb the power
of Spirit to overrule mortal, material sense.
There were rock-ribbed walls in the way, and a great
45:1 stone must be rolled from the cave's mouth; but Jesus
vanquished every material obstacle, overcame every law
45:3 of matter, and stepped forth from his gloomy resting-place,
crowned with the glory of a sublime success, an everlasting
victory.

Victory over the grave

45:6 Our Master fully and finally demonstrated divine Sci-
ence in his victory over death and the grave. Jesus'
deed was for the enlightenment of men and
45:9 for the salvation of the whole world from sin,
sickness, and death. Paul writes: "For if, when we were
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the [seeming] death
45:12 of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved
by his life." Three days after his bodily burial he talked
with his disciples. The persecutors had failed to hide im-
45:15 mortal Truth and Love in a sepulchre.

The stone rolled away

Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts!
Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of hu-
45:18 man hope and faith, and through the reve-
lation and demonstration of life in God, hath
elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual
45:21 idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.

After the resurrection

They who earliest saw Jesus after the resurrection
and beheld the final proof of all that he had taught,
45:24 misconstrued that event. Even his disciples
at first called him a spirit, ghost, or spectre,
for they believed his body to be dead. His reply was:
45:27 "Spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have."
The reappearing of Jesus was not the return of a spirit.
He presented the same body that he had before his cru-
45:30 cifixion, and so glorified the supremacy of Mind over
matter.

Jesus' students, not sufficiently advanced fully to un-
46:1 derstand their Master's triumph, did not perform many
wonderful works, until they saw him after his crucifixion
46:3 and learned that he had not died. This convinced them
of the truthfulness of all that he had taught.

Spiritual interpretation

In the walk to Emmaus, Jesus was known to his friends
46:6 by the words, which made their hearts burn within them,
and by the breaking of bread. The divine
Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries
46:9 ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak
through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the
receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and
46:12 healing the sick.

Corporeality and Spirit

The Master said plainly that physique was not Spirit,
and after his resurrection he proved to the physical senses
46:15 that his body was not changed until he himself
ascended, - or, in other words, rose even
higher in the understanding of Spirit, God. To convince
46:18 Thomas of this, Jesus caused him to examine the nail-
prints and the spear-wound.

Spiritual ascension

Jesus' unchanged physical condition after what seemed
46:21 to be death was followed by his exaltation above all ma-
terial conditions; and this exaltation explained
his ascension, and revealed unmistakably a
46:24 probationary and progressive state beyond the grave.
Jesus was "the way;" that is, he marked the way for
all men. In his final demonstration, called the ascen-
46:27 sion, which closed the earthly record of Jesus, he rose
above the physical knowledge of his disciples, and the
material senses saw him no more.

Pentecostal power