War is waged between the evidences of Spirit and the evidences of the five
physical senses; and this contest must go on until peace be declared by the
final triumph of Spirit in immutable harmony. Divine Science disclaims sin,
sickness, and death, on the basis of the omnipotence and omnipresence of
God, or divine good.
All consciousness is Mind, and Mind is God. Hence there is but one Mind;
and that one is the infinite good, supplying all Mind by the reflection,
not the subdivision, of God. Whatever else claims to be mind, or
consciousness, is untrue. The sun sends forth light, but not suns; so God
reflects Himself, or Mind, but does not subdivide Mind, or good, into
minds, good and evil. Divine Science demands mighty wrestlings with mortal
beliefs, as we sail into the eternal haven over the unfathomable sea of
possibilities.
Neither ancient nor modern philosophy furnishes a scientific basis for the
Science of Mind-healing. Plato believed he had a soul, which must be
doctored in order to heal his body. This would be like correcting the
principle of music for the purpose of destroying discord. Principle is
right; it is practice that is wrong. Soul is right; it is the flesh that is
evil. Soul is the synonym of Spirit, God; hence there is but one Soul, and
that one is infinite. If that pagan philosopher had known that physical
sense, not Soul, causes all bodily ailments, his philosophy would have
yielded to Science.
Man shines by borrowed light. He reflects God as his Mind, and this
reflection is substance,--the substance of good. Matter is substance in
error, Spirit is substance in Truth.
Evil, or error, is not Mind; but infinite Mind is sufficient to supply all
manifestations of intelligence. The notion of more than one Mind, or Life,
is as unsatisfying as it is unscientific. All must be of God, and not our
own, separated from Him.
Human systems of philosophy and religion are departures from Christian
Science. Mistaking divine Principle for corporeal personality, ingrafting
upon one First Cause such opposite effects as good and evil, health and
sickness, life and death; making mortality the status and rule of
divinity,--such methods can never reach the perfection and demonstration of
metaphysical, or Christian Science.
Stating the divine Principle, omnipotence (_omnis potens_), and then
departing from this statement and taking the rule of finite matter, with
which to work out the problem of infinity or Spirit,--all this is like
trying to compensate for the absence of omnipotence by a physical, false,
and finite substitute.
With our Master, life was not merely a sense of existence, but an
accompanying sense of power that subdued matter and brought to light
immortality, insomuch that the people "were astonished at his doctrine: for
he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." Life, as
defined by Jesus, had no beginning; it was not the result of organization,
or infused into matter; it was Spirit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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