0.0 – Science & Health by Mary Baker Eddy Chapter 8 – Footsteps of Truth – 1910 Edition

We now realize that these longed-for footsteps to Truth which we are faithfully trying to fulfil are only possible of fulfilment because they are in fact footsteps leading out from Truth. It is a cycle. Perfection may seem to be an absolute goal, an impossible ideal, but these demands of Truth upon us can be fulfilled because our footsteps are actually the footsteps of Truth itself. At the end of this chapter we are told, "The divine demand, 'Be ye  therefore perfect,' is scientific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are indispensable" (253:32).
~ DISSOLVING BARRIERS, The Healing Work of Christian Science by John L. MorganSHOW ALL

     Chapter 8                                                                              201

  	Footsteps of Truth 

  	Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servants;
  	how I do bear in my bosom the reproach of all the mighty people;
  	wherewith Thine enemies have reproached, O Lord;
  	wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of Thine anointed. — Psalms. 

 1	    The best sermon ever preached is Truth practised
  	and demonstrated by the destruction of sin, sickness,
 3	and death. Knowing this and knowing too	Practical
  	that one affection would be supreme in us and	preaching 
  	take the lead in our lives, Jesus said, "No man can serve
 6	two masters." 
  	    We cannot build safely on false  foundations. Truth
  	makes a new creature, in whom old things pass away
 9	and "all things are become new." Passions, selfishness,
  	false appetites, hatred, fear, all sensuality, yield to spirit-
  	uality, and the superabundance of being is on the side
12	of God, good. 
  	    We cannot fill vessels already full. They must first be
  	emptied. Let us disrobe error. Then, when	The uses
15	the winds of God blow, we shall not hug our	of truth 
  	tatters close about us. 
  	    The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour
18	in truth through flood-tides of Love. Christian perfec-
  	tion is won on no other basis. 
  	    Grafting holiness upon unholiness, supposing that sin
 
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1	can be forgiven when it is not forsaken, is as foolish as
  	straining out gnats and swallowing camels. 
 3	    The scientific unity which exists between God and man
  	must be wrought out in life-practice, and God's will must
  	be universally done. 
 6	    If men would bring to bear upon the study of the
  	Science of Mind half the faith they bestow upon the so-
  	called pains and pleasures of material sense,	Divine
 9	they would not go on from bad to worse,	study 
  	until disciplined by the prison and the scaffold; but
  	the whole human family would be redeemed through
12	the merits of Christ, — through the perception and ac-
  	ceptance of Truth. For this glorious result Christian
  	Science lights the torch of spiritual understanding. 
15	    Outside of this Science all is mutable; but immortal
  	man, in accord with the divine Principle of his being,
  	God, neither sins, suffers, nor dies. The days	Harmonious
18	of our pilgrimage will multiply instead of di-	life-work 
  	minish, when God's kingdom comes on earth; for the
  	true way leads to Life instead of to death, and earthly
21	experience discloses the finity of error and the infinite
  	capacities of Truth, in which God gives man dominion
  	over all the earth. 
24	    Our beliefs about a Supreme Being contradict the
  	practice growing out of them. Error abounds where
  	Truth should "much more abound." We	Belief and
27	admit that God has almighty power, is "a	practice 
  	very present help in trouble;" and yet we rely on a drug
  	or hypnotism to heal disease, as if senseless matter or err-
30	ing mortal mind had more power than omnipotent Spirit. 
  	    Common opinion admits that a man may take cold in
  	the act of doing good, and that this cold may produce
 
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 1	fatal pulmonary disease; as though evil could overbear
  	the law of Love, and check the reward for do-	Sure reward of
 3	ing good. In the Science of Christianity, Mind	righteousness 
  	 — omnipotence — has all-power, assigns sure
  	rewards to righteousness, and shows that matter can
 6	neither heal nor make sick, create nor destroy. 
  	    If God were understood instead of being merely be-
  	lieved, this understanding would establish health. The
 9	accusation of the rabbis, "He made himself	Our belief
  	the Son of God," was really the justification	and
  	of Jesus, for to the Christian the only true	understanding 
12	spirit is Godlike. This thought incites to a more exalted
  	worship and self-abnegation. Spiritual perception brings
  	out the possibilities of being, destroys reliance on aught
15	but God, and so makes man the image of his Maker in
  	deed and in truth. 
  	    We are prone to believe either in more than one Su-
18	preme Ruler or in some power less than God. We im-
  	agine that Mind can be imprisoned in a sensuous body. 
  	When the material body has gone to ruin, when evil has
21	overtaxed the belief of life in matter and destroyed it,
  	then mortals believe that the deathless Principle, or
  	Soul, escapes from matter and lives on; but this is not
24	true. Death is not a stepping-stone to Life, immortality,
  	and bliss. The so-called sinner is a suicide. 	Suicide
  	Sin kills the sinner and will continue to kill	and sin 
27	him so long as he sins. The foam and fury of illegiti-
  	mate living and of fearful and doleful dying should
  	disappear on the shore of time; then the waves of sin,
30	sorrow, and death beat in vain. 
  	    God, divine good, does not kill a man in order to give
  	him eternal Life, for God alone is man's life. God is at
 
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 1	once the centre and circumference of being. It is evil
  	that dies; good dies not. 
 3	    All forms of error support the false conclusions that
  	there is more than one Life; that material history is as
  	real and living as spiritual history; that mortal	Spirit the only
 6	error is as conclusively mental as immortal	intelligence
  	Truth; and that there are two separate, an-	and substance 
  	tagonistic entities and beings, two powers, — namely,
 9	Spirit and matter, — resulting in a third person (mortal
  	man) who carries out the delusions of sin, sickness, and
  	death. 
12	    The first power is admitted to be good, an intelligence or
  	Mind called God. The so-called second power, evil, is the
  	unlikeness of good. It cannot therefore be mind, though
15	so called. The third power, mortal man, is a supposed
  	mixture of the first and second antagonistic powers, in-
  	telligence and non-intelligence, of Spirit and matter. 
18	    Such theories are evidently erroneous. They can never
  	stand the test of Science. Judging them by their fruits,
  	they are corrupt. When will the ages under-	Unscientific
21	stand the Ego, and realize only one God, one	theories 
  	Mind or intelligence? 
  	    False and self-assertive theories have given sinners the
24	notion that they can create what God cannot, — namely,
  	sinful mortals in God's image, thus usurping the name
  	without the nature of the image or reflection of divine
27	Mind; but in Science it can never be said that man
  	has a mind of his own, distinct from God, the all
  	Mind. 
30	    The belief that God lives in matter is pantheistic. The
  	error, which says that Soul is in body, Mind is in matter,
  	and good is in evil, must unsay it and cease from such
 
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 1	utterances; else God will continue to be hidden from hu-
  	manity, and mortals will sin without knowing that they
 3	are sinning, will lean on matter instead of Spirit, stumble
  	with lameness, drop with drunkenness, consume with dis-
  	ease, — all because of their blindness, their false sense
 6	concerning God and man. 
  	    When will the error of believing that there is life in
  	matter, and that sin, sickness, and death are creations of
 9	God, be unmasked? When will it be under-	Creation
  	stood that matter has neither intelligence, life,	perfect 
  	nor sensation, and that the opposite belief is the prolific
12	source of all suffering? God created all through Mind,
  	and made all perfect and eternal. Where then is the
  	necessity for recreation or procreation? 
15	    Befogged in error (the error of believing that matter
  	can be intelligent for good or evil), we can catch clear
  	glimpses of God only as the mists disperse,	Perceiving
18	or as they melt into such thinness that we per-	the divine
  	ceive the divine image in some word or deed	image 
  	which indicates the true idea, — the supremacy and real-
21	ity of good, the nothingness and unreality of evil. 
  	    When we realize that there is one Mind, the divine law
  	of loving our neighbor as ourselves is unfolded;	Redemption
24	whereas a belief in many ruling minds hinders	from
  	man's normal drift towards the one Mind, one	selfishness 
  	God, and leads human thought into opposite channels
27	where selfishness reigns. 
  	    Selfishness tips the beam of human existence towards
  	the side of error, not towards Truth. Denial of the one-
30	ness of Mind throws our weight into the scale, not of
  	Spirit, God, good, but of matter. 
  	    When we fully understand our relation to the Divine,
 
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 1	we can have no other Mind but His, — no other Love,
  	wisdom, or Truth, no other sense of Life, and no con-
 3	sciousness of the existence of matter or error. 
  	    The power of the human will should be exercised only
  	in subordination to Truth; else it will misguide the judg-
 6	ment and free the lower propensities. It is the	Will-power
  	province of spiritual sense to govern man. 	unrighteous 
  	Material, erring, human thought acts injuriously both
 9	upon the body and through it. 
  	    Will-power is capable of all evil. It can never heal
  	the sick, for it is the prayer of the unrighteous; while
12	the exercise of the sentiments — hope, faith, love — is the
  	prayer of the righteous. This prayer, governed by Science
  	instead of the senses, heals the sick. 
15	    In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that
  	whatever blesses one blesses all, as Jesus showed with
  	the loaves and the fishes, — Spirit, not matter, being the
18	source of supply. 
  	    Does God send sickness, giving the mother her child
  	for the brief space of a few years and then taking it away
21	by death? Is God creating anew what He	Birth and
  	has already created? The Scriptures are defi-	death unreal 
  	nite on this point, declaring that His work was finished,
24	nothing is new to God, and that it was good. 
  	    Can there be any birth or death for man, the spiritual
  	image and likeness of God? Instead of God sending
27	sickness and death, He destroys them, and brings to light
  	immortality. Omnipotent and infinite Mind made all
  	and includes all. This Mind does not make mistakes
30	and subsequently correct them. God does not cause man
  	to sin, to be sick, or to die. 
  	    There are evil beliefs, often called evil spirits; but
 
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1	these evils are not Spirit, for there is no evil in Spirit. 
  	Because God is Spirit, evil becomes more apparent and
 3	obnoxious proportionately as we advance spir-	No evil
  	itually, until it disappears from our lives. 	in Spirit 
  	This fact proves our position, for every scientific state-
 6	ment in Christianity has its proof. Error of statement
  	leads to error in action. 
  	    God is not the creator of an evil mind. Indeed, evil
 9	is not Mind. We must learn that evil is the awful decep-
  	tion and unreality of existence. Evil is not	Subordination
  	supreme; good is not helpless; nor are the	of evil 
12	so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit
  	secondary. Without this lesson, we lose sight of the per-
  	fect Father, or the divine Principle of man. 
15	    Body is not first and Soul last, nor is evil mightier than
  	good. The Science of being repudiates self-	Evident
  	evident impossibilities, such as the amalgama-	impossibilities 
18	tion of Truth and error in cause or effect. Science sepa-
  	rates the tares and wheat in time of harvest. 
  	    There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can
21	be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no
  	reality in aught which does not proceed from	One primal
  	this great and only cause. Sin, sickness, dis-	cause 
24	ease, and death belong not to the Science of being. They
  	are the errors, which presuppose the absence of Truth,
  	Life, or Love. 
27	    The spiritual reality is the scientific fact in all things. 
  	The spiritual fact, repeated in the action of man and the
  	whole universe, is harmonious and is the ideal of Truth. 
30	Spiritual facts are not inverted; the opposite discord,
  	which bears no resemblance to spirituality, is not real. 
  	The only evidence of this inversion is obtained from
 

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 1	suppositional error, which affords no proof of God,
  	Spirit, or of the spiritual creation. Material sense de-
 3	fines all things materially, and has a finite sense of the
  	infinite. 
  	    The Scriptures say, "In Him we live, and move, and
 6	have our being." What then is this seeming power, in-
  	dependent of God, which causes disease and	Seemingly
  	cures it? What is it but an error of belief, — 	independent
 9	a law of mortal mind, wrong in every sense,	authority 
  	embracing sin, sickness, and death? It is the very anti-
  	pode of immortal Mind, of Truth, and of spiritual law. 
12	It is not in accordance with the goodness of God's char-
  	acter that He should make man sick, then leave man to
  	heal himself; it is absurd to suppose that matter can both
15	cause and cure disease, or that Spirit, God, produces
  	disease and leaves the remedy to matter. 
  	    John Young of Edinburgh writes: "God is the father
18	of mind, and of nothing else." Such an utterance is
  	"the voice of one crying in the wilderness" of human
  	beliefs and preparing the way of Science. Let us learn
21	of the real and eternal, and prepare for the reign of
  	Spirit, the kingdom of heaven, — the reign and rule of
  	universal harmony, which cannot be lost nor remain
24	forever unseen. 
  	    Mind, not matter, is causation. A material body
  	only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal
27	man possesses this body, and he makes it	Sickness as
  	harmonious or discordant according to the	only thought 
  	images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace
30	your body in your thought, and you should delineate
  	upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness. You should
  	banish all thoughts of disease and sin and of other beliefs
 
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 1	included in matter. Man, being immortal, has a perfect
  	indestructible life. It is the mortal belief which makes
 3	the body discordant and diseased in proportion as igno-
  	rance, fear, or human will governs mortals. 
  	    Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing
 6	them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas,
  	the life and light of all its own vast creation;	Allness of
  	and man is tributary to divine Mind. The	Truth 
 9	material and mortal body or mind is not the man. 
  	    The world would collapse without Mind, without the in-
  	telligence which holds the winds in its grasp. Neither
12	philosophy nor skepticism can hinder the march of the
  	Science which reveals the supremacy of Mind. The im-
  	manent sense of Mind-power enhances the glory of Mind. 
15	Nearness, not distance, lends enchantment to this view. 
  	    The compounded minerals or aggregated substances
  	composing the earth, the relations which constituent
18	masses hold to each other, the magnitudes,	Spiritual
  	distances, and revolutions of the celestial	translation 
  	bodies, are of no real importance, when we remember
21	that they all must give place to the spiritual fact by the
  	translation of man and the universe back into Spirit. In
  	proportion as this is done, man and the universe will be
24	found harmonious and eternal. 
  	    Material substances or mundane formations, astro-
  	nomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of specu-
27	lative theories, based on the hypothesis of material law
  	or life and intelligence resident in matter, will ulti-
  	mately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of
30	Spirit. 
  	    Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to un-
  	derstand God. It shows the superiority of faith by works
 

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 1	over faith in words. Its ideas are expressed only in "new
  	tongues;" and these are interpreted by the translation of
 3	the spiritual original into the language which human
  	thought can comprehend. 
  	    The Principle and proof of Christianity are discerned
 6	by spiritual sense. They are set forth in Jesus' demon-
  	strations, which show — by his healing the	Jesus'
  	sick, casting out evils, and destroying death,	disregard
 9	"the last enemy that shall be destroyed," — 	of matter 
  	his disregard of matter and its so-called laws. 
  	    Knowing that Soul and its attributes were forever
12	manifested through man, the Master healed the sick,
  	gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the
  	lame, thus bringing to light the scientific action of the
15	divine Mind on human minds and bodies and giving
  	a better understanding of Soul and salvation. Jesus
  	healed sickness and sin by one and the same metaphysical
18	process. 
  	    The expression mortal mind is really a solecism, for
  	Mind is immortal, and Truth pierces the error of mortality
21	as a sunbeam penetrates the cloud. Because,	Mind not
  	in obedience to the immutable law of Spirit,	mortal 
  	this so-called mind is self-destructive, I name it mortal. 
24	Error soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind. 
  	    What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say,
  	"I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well." It is the so-
27	called mortal mind which voices this and ap-	Matter
  	pears to itself to make good its claim. To	mindless 
  	mortal sense, sin and suffering are real, but immortal
30	sense includes no evil nor pestilence. Because immortal
  	sense has no error of sense, it has no sense of error; there-
  	fore it is without a destructive element. 
 

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 1	    If brain, nerves, stomach, are intelligent, — if they talk
  	to us, tell us their condition, and report how they feel, — 
 3	then Spirit and matter, Truth and error, commingle
  	and produce sickness and health, good and evil, life and
  	death; and who shall say whether Truth or error is the
 6	greater? 
  	    The sensations of the body must either be the sensa-
  	tions of a so-called mortal mind or of matter. Nerves
 9	are not mind. Is it not provable that Mind is	Matter
  	not mortal and that matter has no sensation? 	sensationless 
  	Is it not equally true that matter does not appear in the
12	spiritual understanding of being? 
  	    The sensation of sickness and the impulse to sin seem
  	to obtain in mortal mind. When a tear starts, does not
15	this so-called mind produce the effect seen in the lachry-
  	mal gland? Without mortal mind, the tear could not
  	appear; and this action shows the nature of all so-called
18	material cause and effect. 
  	    It should no longer be said in Israel that "the fathers
  	have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set
21	on edge." Sympathy with error should disappear. The
  	transfer of the thoughts of one erring mind to another,
  	Science renders impossible. 
24	    If it is true that nerves have sensation, that matter has
  	intelligence, that the material organism causes the eyes to
  	see and the ears to hear, then, when the body	Nerves
27	is dematerialized, these faculties must be lost,	painless 
  	for their immortality is not in Spirit; whereas the fact
  	is that only through dematerialization and spiritualiza-
30	tion of thought can these faculties be conceived of as
  	immortal. 
  	    Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure. We
 

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 1	suffer or enjoy in our dreams, but this pain or pleasure
  	is not communicated through a nerve. A tooth which has
 3	been extracted sometimes aches again in belief, and the
  	pain seems to be in its old place. A limb which has been
  	amputated has continued in belief to pain the owner. If
 6	the sensation of pain in the limb can return, can be pro-
  	longed, why cannot the limb reappear? 
  	    Why need pain, rather than pleasure, come to this mor-
 9	tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid
  	than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting
  	attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut
12	off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say
  	was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it
  	proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, not in matter. 
15	Reverse the process; take away this so-called mind instead
  	of a piece of the flesh, and the nerves have no sensation. 
  	    Mortals have a modus of their own, undirected and un-
18	sustained by God. They produce a rose through seed and
  	soil, and bring the rose into contact with the	Human
  	olfactory nerves that they may smell it. In	falsities 
21	legerdemain and credulous frenzy, mortals believe that
  	unseen spirits produce the flowers. God alone makes
  	and clothes the lilies of the field, and this He does by
24	means of Mind, not matter. 
  	    Because all the methods of Mind are not understood,
  	we say the lips or hands must move in order to convey
27	thought, that the undulations of the air convey	No miracles
  	sound, and possibly that other methods involve	in Mind-
  	so-called miracles. The realities of being, its	methods 
30	normal action, and the origin of all things are unseen to
  	mortal sense; whereas the unreal and imitative move-
  	ments of mortal belief, which would reverse the immortal
 
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 1	modus and action, are styled the real. Whoever con-
  	tradicts this mortal mind supposition of reality is called
 3	a deceiver, or is said to be deceived. Of a man it has
  	been said, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he;" hence
  	as a man spiritually understandeth, so is he in truth. 
 6	    Mortal mind conceives of something as either liquid
  	or solid, and then classifies it materially. Immortal and
  	spiritual facts exist apart from this mortal and	Good
 9	material conception. God, good, is self-exist-	indefinable 
  	ent and self-expressed, though indefinable as a whole. 
  	Every step towards goodness is a departure from materi-
12	ality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit. Material
  	theories partially paralyze this attraction towards infinite
  	and eternal good by an opposite attraction towards the
15	finite, temporary, and discordant. 
  	    Sound is a mental impression made on mortal belief. 
  	The ear does not really hear. Divine Science reveals
18	sound as communicated through the senses of Soul — 
  	through spiritual understanding. 
  	    Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The
21	rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He
  	was a musician beyond what the world knew. 	Music,
  	This was even more strikingly true of Bee-	rhythm of
24	thoven, who was so long hopelessly deaf. Men-	head and
  	tal melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede con-	heart 
  	scious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart. 
27	Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing
  	either discord or harmony according as the hand, which
  	sweeps over it, is human or divine. 
30	    Before human knowledge dipped to its depths into a
  	false sense of things, — into belief in material origins
  	which discard the one Mind and true source of being, — 
 

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 1	it is possible that the impressions from Truth were as
  	distinct as sound, and that they came as sound to the
 3	primitive prophets. If the medium of hearing is wholly
  	spiritual, it is normal and indestructible. 
  	    If Enoch's perception had been confined to the evidence
 6	before his material senses, he could never have "walked
  	with God," nor been guided into the demonstration of
  	life eternal. 
 9	    Adam, represented in the Scriptures as formed from
  	dust, is an object-lesson for the human mind. The mate-
  	rial senses, like Adam, originate in matter and	Adam and
12	return to dust, — are proved non-intelligent. 	the senses 
  	They go out as they came in, for they are still the error,
  	not the truth of being. When it is learned that the spirit-
15	ual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions
  	of Mind to man, then being will be understood and found
  	to be harmonious. 
18	    We bow down to matter, and entertain finite thoughts
  	of God like the pagan idolater. Mortals are inclined to
  	fear and to obey what they consider a material	Idolatrous
21	body more than they do a spiritual God. All	illusions 
  	material knowledge, like the original "tree of knowledge,"
  	multiplies their pains, for mortal illusions would rob God,
24	slay man, and meanwhile would spread their table with
  	cannibal tidbits and give thanks. 
  	    How transient a sense is mortal sight, when a wound on
27	the retina may end the power of light and lens! But the
  	real sight or sense is not lost. Neither age nor	The senses
  	accident can interfere with the senses of Soul,	of Soul 
30	and there are no other real senses. It is evident that the
  	body as matter has no sensation of its own, and there is no
  	oblivion for Soul and its faculties. Spirit's senses are with-
 

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 1	out pain, and they are forever at peace. Nothing can hide
  	from them the harmony of all things and the might and
 3	permanence of Truth. 
  	    If Spirit, Soul, could sin or be lost, then being and im-
  	mortality would be lost, together with all the faculties of
 6	Mind; but being cannot be lost while God ex-	Real being
  	ists. Soul and matter are at variance from the	never lost 
  	very necessity of their opposite natures. Mortals are
 9	unacquainted with the reality of existence, because matter
  	and mortality do not reflect the facts of Spirit. 
  	    Spiritual vision is not subordinate to geometric alti-
12	tudes. Whatever is governed by God, is never for an
  	instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence
  	and Life. 
15	    We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real
  	as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal
  	sense of the absence of light, at the coming of	Light and
18	which darkness loses the appearance of reality. 	darkness 
  	So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional
  	absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before
21	truth and love. 
  	    With its divine proof, Science reverses the evidence of
  	material sense. Every quality and condition of mortality
24	is lost, swallowed up in immortality. Mortal man is the
  	antipode of immortal man in origin, in existence, and in his
  	relation to God. 
27	    Because he understood the superiority and immor-
  	tality of good, Socrates feared not the hemlock poison. 
  	Even the faith of his philosophy spurned phys-	Faith of
30	ical timidity. Having sought man's spiritual	Socrates 
  	state, he recognized the immortality of man. The igno-
  	rance and malice of the age would have killed the vener-
 

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 1	able philosopher because of his faith in Soul and his in-
  	difference to the body. 
 3	    Who shall say that man is alive to-day, but may be dead
  	to-morrow? What has touched Life, God, to such
  	strange issues? Here theories cease, and Sci-	The serpent
 6	ence unveils the mystery and solves the prob-	of error 
  	lem of man. Error bites the heel of truth, but cannot kill
  	truth. Truth bruises the head of error — destroys error. 
 9	Spirituality lays open siege to materialism. On which
  	side are we fighting? 
  	    The understanding that the Ego is Mind, and that
12	there is but one Mind or intelligence, begins at once to
  	destroy the errors of mortal sense and to supply	Servants
  	the truth of immortal sense. This understand-	and masters 
15	ing makes the body harmonious; it makes the nerves,
  	bones, brain, etc., servants, instead of masters. If man
  	is governed by the law of divine Mind, his body is in sub-
18	mission to everlasting Life and Truth and Love. The
  	great mistake of mortals is to suppose that man, God's
  	image and likeness, is both matter and Spirit, both good
21	and evil. 
  	    If the decision were left to the corporeal senses, evil
  	would appear to be the master of good, and sickness to
24	be the rule of existence, while health would seem the
  	exception, death the inevitable, and life a paradox. Paul
  	asked: "What concord hath Christ with Belial?"  (2 Cor-
27	inthians vi. 15.) 
  	    When you say, "Man's  body is material," I say with
  	Paul:  Be "willing rather to be absent from the body,
30	and to be present with the Lord." Give up	Personal
  	your material belief of mind in matter, and	identity 
  	have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            217


 1	own likeness. The loss of man's identity through the
  	understanding which Science confers is impossible; and
 3	the notion of such a possibility is more absurd than to
  	conclude that individual musical tones are lost in the
  	origin of harmony. 
 6	    Medical schools may inform us that the healing work
  	of Christian Science and Paul's peculiar Christian con-
  	version and experience, — which prove Mind	Paul's
 9	to be scientifically distinct from matter, — are	experience 
  	indications of unnatural mental and bodily conditions,
  	even of catalepsy and hysteria; yet if we turn to the Scrip-
12	tures, what do we read? Why, this: "If a man keep my
  	saying, he shall never see death!" and "Henceforth know
  	we no man after the flesh!" 
15	    That scientific methods are superior to others, is
  	seen by their effects. When you have once conquered
  	a diseased condition of the body through	Fatigue is
18	Mind, that condition never recurs, and you	mental 
  	have won a point in Science. When mentality gives
  	rest to the body, the next toil will fatigue you less, for
21	you are working out the problem of being in divine meta-
  	physics; and in proportion as you understand the con-
  	trol which Mind has over so-called matter, you will be
24	able to demonstrate this control. The scientific and
  	permanent remedy for fatigue is to learn the power of
  	Mind over the body or any illusion of physical weariness,
27	and so destroy this illusion, for matter cannot be weary
  	and heavy-laden. 
  	    You say, "Toil fatigues me." But what is this me? 
30	Is it muscle or mind? Which is tired and so speaks? 
  	Without mind, could the muscles be tired? Do the
  	muscles talk, or do you talk for them? Matter is non-
 

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 1	intelligent. Mortal mind does the false talking, and that
  	which affirms weariness, made that weariness. 
 3	    You do not say a wheel is fatigued; and yet the body
  	is as material as the wheel. If it were not for what the
  	human mind says of the body, the body, like	Mind never
 6	the inanimate wheel, would never be weary. 	weary 
  	The consciousness of Truth rests us more than hours of
  	repose in unconsciousness. 
 9	    The body is supposed to say, "I am ill." The reports
  	of sickness may form a coalition with the reports of sin,
  	and say, "I am malice, lust, appetite, envy,	Coalition
12	hate." What renders both sin and sickness	of sin and
  	difficult of cure is, that the human mind is the	sickness 
  	sinner, disinclined to self-correction, and believing that
15	the body can be sick independently of mortal mind and
  	that the divine Mind has no jurisdiction over the body. 
  	    Why pray for the recovery of the sick, if you are with-
18	out faith in God's willingness and ability to heal them? 
  	If you do believe in God, why do you sub-	Sickness
  	stitute drugs for the Almighty's power, and	akin to sin 
21	employ means which lead only into material ways of
  	obtaining help, instead of turning in time of need to
  	God, divine Love, who is an ever-present help? 
24	    Treat a belief in sickness as you would sin, with sudden
  	dismissal. Resist the temptation to believe in matter as
  	intelligent, as having sensation or power. 
27	    The Scriptures say, "They that wait upon the Lord
  	. . . shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk,
  	and not faint." The meaning of that passage is not
30	perverted by applying it literally to moments of fatigue,
  	for the moral and physical are as one in their results. 
  	When we wake to the truth of being, all disease,
 

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 1	pain, weakness, weariness, sorrow, sin, death, will be
  	unknown, and the mortal dream will forever cease. My
 3	method of treating fatigue applies to all bodily ailments,
  	since Mind should be, and is, supreme, absolute, and
  	final. 
 6	    In mathematics, we do not multiply when we should
  	subtract, and then say the product is correct. No more
  	can we say in Science that muscles give strength,	Affirmation
 9	that nerves give pain or pleasure, or that matter	and result 
  	governs, and then expect that the result will be harmony. 
  	Not muscles, nerves, nor bones, but mortal mind makes
12	the whole body "sick, and the whole heart faint;" whereas
  	divine Mind heals. 
  	    When this is understood, we shall never affirm concern-
15	ing the body what we do not wish to have manifested. We
  	shall not call the body weak, if we would have it strong;
  	for the belief in feebleness must obtain in the human
18	mind before it can be made manifest on the body, and
  	the destruction of the belief will be the removal of its
  	effects. Science includes no rule of discord, but governs
21	harmoniously. "The wish," says the poet, "is ever father
  	to the thought." 
  	    We may hear a sweet melody, and yet misunderstand
24	the science that governs it. Those who are healed
  	through metaphysical Science, not compre-	Scientific
  	hending the Principle of the cure, may misun-	beginning 
27	derstand it, and impute their recovery to change of air or
  	diet, not rendering to God the honor due to Him alone. 
  	Entire immunity from the belief in sin, suffering, and
30	death may not be reached at this period, but we may look
  	for an abatement of these evils; and this scientific begin-
  	ning is in the right direction. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            220


 1	    We hear it said: "I exercise daily in the open air. I
  	take cold baths, in order to overcome a predisposition to
 3	take cold; and yet I have continual colds,	Hygiene
  	catarrh, and cough." Such admissions ought	ineffectual 
  	to open people's eyes to the inefficacy of material hygiene,
 6	and induce sufferers to look in other directions for cause
  	and cure. 
  	    Instinct is better than misguided reason, as even na-
 9	ture declares. The violet lifts her blue eye to greet the
  	early spring. The leaves clap their hands as nature's
  	untired worshippers. The snowbird sings and soars
12	amid the blasts; he has no catarrh from wet feet, and
  	procures a summer residence with more ease than a na-
  	bob. The atmosphere of the earth, kinder than the at-
15	mosphere of mortal mind, leaves catarrh to the latter. 
  	Colds, coughs, and contagion are engendered solely by
  	human theories. 
18	    Mortal mind produces its own phenomena, and then
  	charges them to something else, — like a kitten	The reflex
  	glancing into the mirror at itself and thinking	phenomena 
21	it sees another kitten. 
  	    A clergyman once adopted a diet of bread and water
  	to increase his spirituality. Finding his health failing,
24	he gave up his abstinence, and advised others never to
  	try dietetics for growth in grace. 
  	    The belief that either fasting or feasting makes men
27	better morally or physically is one of the fruits of "the
  	tree of the knowledge of good and evil," con-	Volition
  	cerning which God said, "Thou shalt not eat	far-reaching 
30	of it." Mortal mind forms all conditions of the mortal
  	body, and controls the stomach, bones, lungs, heart, blood,
  	etc., as directly as the volition or will moves the hand. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            221


 1	    I knew a person who when quite a child adopted the
  	Graham system to cure dyspepsia. For many years, he
 3	ate only bread and vegetables, and drank noth-	Starvation
  	ing but water. His dyspepsia increasing, he	and
  	decided that his diet should be more rigid, and	dyspepsia 
 6	thereafter he partook of but one meal in twenty-four
  	hours, this meal consisting of only a thin slice of bread
  	without water. His physician also recommended that
 9	he should not wet his parched throat until three hours
  	after eating. He passed many weary years in hunger
  	and weakness, almost in starvation, and finally made up
12	his mind to die, having exhausted the skill of the doctors,
  	who kindly informed him that death was indeed his only
  	alternative. At this point Christian Science saved him,
15	and he is now in perfect health without a vestige of the
  	old complaint. 
  	    He learned that suffering and disease were the self-
18	imposed beliefs of mortals, and not the facts of being;
  	that God never decreed disease, — never ordained a law
  	that fasting should be a means of health. Hence semi-
21	starvation is not acceptable to wisdom, and it is equally
  	far from Science, in which being is sustained by God, Mind. 
  	These truths, opening his eyes, relieved his stomach, and
24	he ate without suffering, "giving God thanks;" but he
  	never enjoyed his food as he had imagined he would
  	when, still the slave of matter, he thought of the flesh-
27	pots of Egypt, feeling childhood's hunger and undisci-
  	plined by self-denial and divine Science. 
  	    This new-born understanding, that neither food nor
30	the stomach, without the consent of mortal	Mind and
  	mind, can make one suffer, brings with it an-	stomach 
  	other lesson, — that gluttony is a sensual illusion, and
 

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 1	that this phantasm of mortal mind disappears as we better
  	apprehend our spiritual existence and ascend the ladder
 3	of life. 
  	    This person learned that food affects the body only
  	as mortal mind has its material methods of working, one
 6	of which is to believe that proper food supplies nutriment
  	and strength to the human system. He learned also that
  	mortal mind makes a mortal body, whereas Truth re-
 9	generates this fleshly mind and feeds thought with the
  	bread of Life. 
  	    Food had less power to help or to hurt him after he
12	had availed himself of the fact that Mind governs man,
  	and he also had less faith in the so-called pleasures and
  	pains of matter. Taking less thought about what he
15	should eat or drink, consulting the stomach less about
  	the economy of living and God more, he recovered
  	strength and flesh rapidly. For many years he had
18	been kept alive, as was believed, only by the strictest ad-
  	herence to hygiene and drugs, and yet he continued ill
  	all the while. Now he dropped drugs and material
21	hygiene, and was well. 
  	    He learned that a dyspeptic was very far from being
  	the image and likeness of God, — far from having "do-
24	minion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
  	air, and over the cattle," if eating a bit of animal flesh
  	could overpower him. He finally concluded that God
27	never made a dyspeptic, while fear, hygiene, physiology,
  	and physics had made him one, contrary to His commands. 
  	    In seeking a cure for dyspepsia consult matter not at
30	all, and eat what is set before you, "asking	Life only
  	no question for conscience sake." We must	in Spirit 
  	destroy the false belief that life and intelligence are in
 

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 1	matter, and plant ourselves upon what is pure and per-
  	fect. Paul said, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not
 3	fulfil the lust of the flesh." Sooner or later we shall learn
  	that the fetters of man's finite capacity are forged by the
  	illusion that he lives in body instead of in Soul, in matter
 6	instead of in Spirit. 
  	    Matter does not express Spirit. God is infinite omni-
  	present Spirit. If Spirit is all and is everywhere, what
 9	and where is matter? Remember that truth	Soul greater
  	is greater than error, and we cannot put the	than body 
  	greater into the less. Soul is Spirit, and Spirit is greater
12	than body. If Spirit were once within the body, Spirit
  	would be finite, and therefore could not be Spirit. 
  	    The question, "What is Truth," convulses the world. 
15	Many are ready to meet this inquiry with the assurance
  	which comes of understanding; but more are	The question
  	blinded by their old illusions, and try to "give	of the ages 
18	it pause." "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into
  	the ditch." 
  	    The efforts of error to answer this question by some
21	ology are vain. Spiritual rationality and free thought ac-
  	company approaching Science, and cannot be put down. 
  	They will emancipate humanity, and supplant unscientific
24	means and so-called laws. 
  	    Peals that should startle the slumbering thought from
  	its erroneous dream are partially unheeded; but the last
27	trump has not sounded, or this would not be	Heralds of
  	so. Marvels, calamities, and sin will much	Science 
  	more abound as truth urges upon mortals its resisted
30	claims; but the awful daring of sin destroys sin, and
  	foreshadows the triumph of truth. God will over-
  	turn, until "He come whose right it is." Longevity
 

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 1	is increasing and the power of sin diminishing, for the
  	world feels the alterative effect of truth through every
 3	pore. 
  	    As the crude footprints of the past disappear from the
  	dissolving paths of the present, we shall better understand
 6	the Science which governs these changes, and shall plant
  	our feet on firmer ground. Every sensuous pleasure or
  	pain is self-destroyed through suffering. There should
 9	be painless progress, attended by life and peace instead
  	of discord and death. 
  	    In the record of nineteen centuries, there are sects
12	many but not enough Christianity. Centuries ago re-
  	ligionists were ready to hail an anthropomor-	Sectarianism
  	phic God, and array His vicegerent with pomp	and
15	and splendor; but this was not the manner	opposition 
  	of truth's appearing. Of old the cross was truth's cen-
  	tral sign, and it is to-day. The modern lash is less
18	material than the Roman scourge, but it is equally as
  	cutting. Cold disdain, stubborn resistance, opposition
  	from church, state laws, and the press, are still the har-
21	bingers of truth's full-orbed appearing. 
  	    A higher and more practical Christianity, demonstrat-
  	ing justice and meeting the needs of mortals in sickness
24	and in health, stands at the door of this age, knocking
  	for admission. Will you open or close the door upon this
  	angel visitant, who cometh in the quiet of meekness, as he
27	came of old to the patriarch at noonday? 
  	    Truth brings the elements of liberty. On its banner
  	is the Soul-inspired motto, "Slavery is abolished." The
30	power of God brings deliverance to the cap-	Mental
  	tive. No power can withstand divine Love. 	emancipation 
  	What is this supposed power, which opposes itself to God? 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            225


 1	Whence cometh it? What is it that binds man with iron
  	shackles to sin, sickness, and death? Whatever enslaves
 3	man is opposed to the divine government. Truth makes
  	man free. 
  	    You may know when first Truth leads by the few-
 6	ness and faithfulness of its followers. Thus it is that
  	the march of time bears onward freedom's	Truth's
  	banner. The powers of this world will fight,	ordeal 
 9	and will command their sentinels not to let truth pass
  	the guard until it subscribes to their systems; but Science,
  	heeding not the pointed bayonet, marches on. There is
12	always some tumult, but there is a rallying to truth's
  	standard. 
  	    The history of our country, like all history, illustrates
15	the might of Mind, and shows human power to be propor-
  	tionate to its embodiment of right thinking. A	Immortal
  	few immortal sentences, breathing the omnipo-	sentences 
18	tence of divine justice, have been potent to break despotic
  	fetters and abolish the whipping-post and slave market;
  	but oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the
21	breath of freedom come from the cannon's mouth. Love
  	is the liberator. 
  	    Legally to abolish unpaid servitude in the United
24	States was hard; but the abolition of mental slavery is
  	a more difficult task. The despotic tenden-	Slavery
  	cies, inherent in mortal mind and always ger-	abolished 
27	minating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out
  	through the action of the divine Mind. 
  	    Men and women of all climes and races are still in
30	bondage to material sense, ignorant how to obtain their
  	freedom. The rights of man were vindicated in a single
  	section and on the lowest plane of human life, when Afri-
 

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 1	can slavery was abolished in our land. That was only
  	prophetic of further steps towards the banishment of a
 3	world-wide slavery, found on higher planes of existence
  	and under more subtle and depraving forms. 
  	    The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was
 6	still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of
  	this new crusade sounded the keynote of uni-	Liberty's
  	versal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledg-	crusade 
 9	ment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding
  	that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken
  	from the human mind and that its freedom be won, not
12	through human warfare, not with bayonet and blood, but
  	through Christ's divine Science. 
  	    God has built a higher platform of human rights, and
15	He has built it on diviner claims. These claims are not
  	made through code or creed, but in demonstra-	Cramping
  	tion of "on earth peace, good-will toward men." 	systems 
18	Human codes, scholastic theology, material medicine and
  	hygiene, fetter faith and spiritual understanding. Divine
  	Science rends asunder these fetters, and man's birthright
21	of sole allegiance to his Maker asserts itself. 
  	    I saw before me the sick, wearing out years of servi-
  	tude to an unreal master in the belief that the body gov-
24	erned them, rather than Mind. 
  	    The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the
  	sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of
27	their own beliefs and from the educational	House of
  	systems of the Pharaohs, who to-day, as of	bondage 
  	yore, hold the children of Israel in bondage. I saw be-
30	fore me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilder-
  	ness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting
  	Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land
 

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 1	of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of
  	man are fully known and acknowledged. 
 3	    I saw that the law of mortal belief included all error,
  	and that, even as oppressive laws are disputed and mor-
  	tals are taught their right to freedom, so the	Higher law
 6	claims of the enslaving senses must be de-	ends bondage 
  	nied and superseded. The law of the divine Mind must
  	end human bondage, or mortals will continue unaware
 9	of man's inalienable rights and in subjection to hope-
  	less slavery, because some public teachers permit
  	an ignorance of divine power, — an ignorance that
12	is the foundation of continued bondage and of human
  	suffering. 
  	    Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to fore-
15	see the doom of all oppression. Slavery is not the legiti-
  	mate state of man. God made man free. 	Native
  	Paul said, "I was free born." All men should	freedom 
18	be free. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is lib-
  	erty." Love and Truth make free, but evil and error
  	lead into captivity. 
21	    Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and
  	cries: "Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sick-
  	ness, sin, and death!" Jesus marked out the	Standard
24	way. Citizens of the world, accept the "glori-	of liberty 
  	ous liberty of the children of God," and be free! This
  	is your divine right. The illusion of material sense, not
27	divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs,
  	crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and de-
  	faced the tablet of your being. 
30	    If God had instituted material laws to govern man,
  	disobedience to which would have made man ill, Jesus
  	would not have disregarded those laws by healing in
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            228


 1	direct opposition to them and in defiance of all material
  	conditions. 
 3	    The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncra-
  	sies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact
  	of being were learned, — namely, that nothing	No fleshly
 6	inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God. 	heredity 
  	Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin the-
  	ories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the
 9	right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly
  	ills will disappear. 
  	    The enslavement of man is not legitimate. It will
12	cease when man enters into his heritage of freedom, his
  	God-given dominion over the material senses. 	God-given
  	Mortals will some day assert their freedom in	dominion 
15	the name of Almighty God. Then they will control their
  	own bodies through the understanding of divine Science. 
  	Dropping their present beliefs, they will recognize har-
18	mony as the spiritual reality and discord as the material
  	unreality. 
  	    If we follow the command of our Master, "Take no
21	thought for your life," we shall never depend on bodily
  	conditions, structure, or economy, but we shall be masters
  	of the body, dictate its terms, and form and control it with
24	Truth. 
  	    There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence has
  	all-power, and to acknowledge any other power is to dis-
27	honor God. The humble Nazarene overthrew	Priestly pride
  	the supposition that sin, sickness, and death	humbled 
  	have power. He proved them powerless. It should have
30	humbled the pride of the priests, when they saw the dem-
  	onstration of Christianity excel the influence of their dead
  	faith and ceremonies. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            229


 1	    If Mind is not the master of sin, sickness, and death,
  	they are immortal, for it is already proved that mat-
 3	ter has not destroyed them, but is their basis and
  	support. 
  	    We should hesitate to say that Jehovah sins or suffers;
 6	but if sin and suffering are realities of being, whence did
  	they emanate? God made all that was made,	No union of
  	and Mind signifies God, — infinity, not finity. 	opposites 
 9	Not far removed from infidelity is the belief which
  	unites such opposites as sickness and health, holiness
  	and unholiness, calls both the offspring of spirit, and
12	at the same time admits that Spirit is God, — vir-
  	tually declaring Him good in one instance and evil in
  	another. 
15	    By universal consent, mortal belief has constituted
  	itself a law to bind mortals to sickness, sin, and death. 
  	This customary belief is misnamed material	Self-
18	law, and the individual who upholds it is mis-	constituted
  	taken in theory and in practice. The so-called law of	law 
  	mortal mind, conjectural and speculative, is made void
21	by the law of immortal Mind, and false law should be
  	trampled under foot. 
  	    If God causes man to be sick, sickness must be good,
24	and its opposite, health, must be evil, for all that He
  	makes is good and will stand forever. If the	Sickness from
  	transgression of God's law produces sickness, it	mortal mind 
27	is right to be sick; and we cannot if we would, and should
  	not if we could, annul the decrees of wisdom. It is the
  	transgression of a belief of mortal mind, not of a law of
30	matter nor of divine Mind, which causes the belief of sick-
  	ness. The remedy is Truth, not matter, — the truth that
  	disease is unreal. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            230


 1	    If sickness is real, it belongs to immortality; if true,
  	it is a part of Truth. Would you attempt with drugs,
 3	or without, to destroy a quality or condition of Truth? 
  	But if sickness and sin are illusions, the awakening from
  	this mortal dream, or illusion, will bring us into health,
 6	holiness, and immortality. This awakening is the for-
  	ever coming of Christ, the advanced appearing of Truth,
  	which casts out error and heals the sick. This is the sal-
 9	vation which comes through God, the divine Principle,
  	Love, as demonstrated by Jesus. 
  	    It would be contrary to our highest ideas of God to
12	suppose Him capable of first arranging law and causation
  	so as to bring about certain evil results, and	God never
  	then punishing the helpless victims of His vo-	inconsistent 
15	lition for doing what they could not avoid doing. Good
  	is not, cannot be, the author of experimental sins. God,
  	good, can no more produce sickness than goodness can
18	cause evil and health occasion disease. 
  	    Does wisdom make blunders which must afterwards
  	be rectified by man? Does a law of God produce sick-
21	ness, and can man put that law under his feet	Mental
  	by healing sickness? According to Holy Writ,	narcotics 
  	the sick are never really healed by drugs, hygiene, or any
24	material method. These merely evade the question. 
  	They are soothing syrups to put children to sleep, satisfy
  	mortal belief, and quiet fear. 
27	    We think that we are healed when a disease disap-
  	pears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never
  	thoroughly healed until the liability to be	The true
30	ill is removed. So-called mortal mind or the	healing 
  	mind of mortals being the remote, predisposing, and
  	the exciting cause of all suffering, the cause of disease
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            231


 1	must be obliterated through Christ in divine Science, or
  	the so-called physical senses will get the victory. 
 3	    Unless an ill is rightly met and fairly overcome by
  	Truth, the ill is never conquered. If God destroys not
  	sin, sickness, and death, they are not de-	Destruction
 6	stroyed in the mind of mortals, but seem to	of all evil 
  	this so-called mind to be immortal. What God cannot
  	do, man need not attempt. If God heals not the sick,
 9	they are not healed, for no lesser power equals the infinite
  	All-power; but God, Truth, Life, Love, does heal the
  	sick through the prayer of the righteous. 
12	    If God makes sin, if good produces evil, if truth results
  	in error, then Science and Christianity are helpless; but
  	there are no antagonistic powers nor laws, spiritual or
15	material, creating and governing man through perpetual
  	warfare. God is not the author of mortal discords. 
  	Therefore we accept the conclusion that discords have
18	only a fabulous existence, are mortal beliefs which divine
  	Truth and Love destroy. 
  	    To hold yourself superior to sin, because God made
21	you superior to it and governs man, is true wisdom. To
  	fear sin is to misunderstand the power of Love	Superiority
  	and the divine Science of being in man's rela-	to sickness
24	tion to God, — to doubt His government and	and sin 
  	distrust His omnipotent care. To hold yourself superior
  	to sickness and death is equally wise, and is in accordance
27	with divine Science. To fear them is impossible, when
  	you fully apprehend God and know that they are no part
  	of His creation. 
30	    Man, governed by his Maker, having no other Mind, — 
  	planted on the Evangelist's statement that "all things
  	were made by Him [the Word of God]; and without
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            232


 1	Him was not anything made that was made," — can
  	triumph over sin, sickness, and death. 
 3	    Many theories relative to God and man neither make
  	man harmonious nor God lovable. The beliefs we com-
  	monly entertain about happiness and life	Denials of
 6	afford no scatheless and permanent evidence	divine power 
  	of either. Security for the claims of harmonious and
  	eternal being is found only in divine Science. 
 9	    Scripture informs us that "with God all things are
  	possible," — all good is possible to Spirit; but our prev-
  	alent theories practically deny this, and make healing
12	possible only through matter. These theories must be
  	untrue, for the Scripture is true. Christianity is not
  	false, but religions which contradict its Principle are
15	false. 
  	    In our age Christianity is again demonstrating the
  	power of divine Principle, as it did over nineteen hun-
18	dred years ago, by healing the sick and triumphing over
  	death. Jesus never taught that drugs, food, air, and ex-
  	ercise could make a man healthy, or that they could de-
21	stroy human life; nor did he illustrate these errors by his
  	practice. He referred man's harmony to Mind, not to
  	matter, and never tried to make of none effect the sen-
24	tence of God, which sealed God's condemnation of sin,
  	sickness, and death. 
  	    In the sacred sanctuary of Truth are voices of sol-
27	emn import, but we heed them not. It is only when the
  	so-called pleasures and pains of sense pass	Signs
  	away in our lives, that we find unquestion-	following 
30	able signs of the burial of error and the resurrection to
  	spiritual life. 
  	    There is neither place nor opportunity in Science for error
 

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 1	of any sort. Every day makes its demands upon us for
  	higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. 
 3	These proofs consist solely in the destruction	Profession
  	of sin, sickness, and death by the power of	and proof 
  	Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of
 6	progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law de-
  	mands of us only what we can certainly fulfil. 
  	    In the midst of imperfection, perfection is seen and
 9	acknowledged only by degrees. The ages must slowly
  	work up to perfection. How long it must be	Perfection
  	before we arrive at the demonstration of scien-	gained
12	tific being, no man knoweth, — not even "the	slowly 
  	Son but the Father;" but the false claim of error con-
  	tinues its delusions until the goal of goodness is assidu-
15	ously earned and won. 
  	    Already the shadow of His right hand rests upon the
  	hour. Ye who can discern the face of the sky, — the
18	sign material, — how much more should ye	Christ's
  	discern the sign mental, and compass the de-	mission 
  	struction of sin and sickness by overcoming the thoughts
21	which produce them, and by understanding the spiritual
  	idea which corrects and destroys them. To reveal this
  	truth was our Master's mission to all mankind, including
24	the hearts which rejected him. 
  	    When numbers have been divided according to a fixed
  	rule, the quotient is not more unquestionable than the
27	scientific tests I have made of the effects of	Efficacy
  	truth upon the sick. The counter fact rela-	of truth 
  	tive to any disease is required to cure it. The utterance
30	of truth is designed to rebuke and destroy error. Why
  	should truth not be efficient in sickness, which is solely
  	the result of inharmony? 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            234


 1	    Spiritual draughts heal, while material lotions interfere
  	with truth, even as ritualism and creed hamper spirit-
 3	uality. If we trust matter, we distrust Spirit. 
  	    Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love — be
  	it song, sermon, or Science — blesses the human family
 6	with crumbs of comfort from Christ's table,	Crumbs of
  	feeding the hungry and giving living waters to	comfort 
  	the thirsty. 
 9	    We should become more familiar with good than with
  	evil, and guard against false beliefs as watchfully as we
  	bar our doors against the approach of thieves	Hospitality
12	and murderers. We should love our enemies	to health
  	and help them on the basis of the Golden	and good 
  	Rule; but avoid casting pearls before those who trample
15	them under foot, thereby robbing both themselves and
  	others. 
  	    If mortals would keep proper ward over mortal mind,
18	the brood of evils which infest it would be cleared out. 
  	We must begin with this so-called mind and	Cleansing
  	empty it of sin and sickness, or sin and sick-	the mind 
21	ness will never cease. The present codes of human
  	systems disappoint the weary searcher after a divine
  	theology, adequate to the right education of human
24	thought. 
  	    Sin and disease must be thought before they can be
  	manifested. You must control evil thoughts in the first
27	instance, or they will control you in the second. Jesus
  	declared that to look with desire on forbidden objects was
  	to break a moral precept. He laid great stress on the
30	action of the human mind, unseen to the senses. 
  	    Evil thoughts and aims reach no farther and do no more
  	harm than one's belief permits. Evil thoughts, lusts, and
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            235


 1	malicious purposes cannot go forth, like wandering pollen,
  	from one human mind to another, finding unsuspected
 3	lodgment, if virtue and truth build a strong defence. 
  	Better suffer a doctor infected with smallpox to attend
  	you than to be treated mentally by one who does not obey
 6	the requirements of divine Science. 
  	    The teachers of schools and the readers in churches
  	should be selected with as direct reference to their
 9	morals as to their learning or their correct	Teachers'
  	reading. Nurseries of character should be	functions 
  	strongly garrisoned with virtue. School-examinations are
12	one-sided; it is not so much academic education, as a
  	moral and spiritual culture, which lifts one higher. The
  	pure and uplifting thoughts of the teacher, constantly
15	imparted to pupils, will reach higher than the heavens of
  	astronomy; while the debased and unscrupulous mind,
  	though adorned with gems of scholarly attainment, will
18	degrade the characters it should inform and elevate. 
  	    Physicians, whom the sick employ in their helplessness,
  	should be models of virtue. They should be wise spir-
21	itual guides to health and hope. To the trem-	Physicians'
  	blers on the brink of death, who understand	privilege 
  	not the divine Truth which is Life and perpetuates being,
24	physicians should be able to teach it. Then when the soul
  	is willing and the flesh weak, the patient's feet may be
  	planted on the rock Christ Jesus, the true idea of spiritual
27	power. 
  	    Clergymen, occupying the watchtowers of the world,
  	should uplift the standard of Truth. They should so raise
30	their hearers spiritually, that their listeners	Clergymen's
  	will love to grapple with a new, right idea	duty 
  	and broaden their concepts. Love of Christianity, rather
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            236


 1	than love of popularity, should stimulate clerical labor
  	and progress. Truth should emanate from the pulpit,
 3	but never be strangled there. A special privilege is vested
  	in the ministry. How shall it be used? Sacredly, in the
  	interests of humanity, not of sect. 
 6	    Is it not professional reputation and emolument rather
  	than the dignity of God's laws, which many leaders seek? 
  	Do not inferior motives induce the infuriated attacks on
 9	individuals, who reiterate Christ's teachings in support
  	of his proof by example that the divine Mind heals sick-
  	ness as well as sin? 
12	    A mother is the strongest educator, either for or
  	against crime. Her thoughts form the embryo of an-
  	other mortal mind, and unconsciously mould	A mother's
15	it, either after a model odious to herself or	responsibility 
  	through divine influence, "according to the pattern
  	showed to thee in the mount." Hence the importance
18	of Christian Science, from which we learn of the one
  	Mind and of the availability of good as the remedy for
  	every woe. 
21	    Children should obey their parents; insubordination
  	is an evil, blighting the buddings of self-government. 
  	Parents should teach their children at the	Children's
24	earliest possible period the truths of health	tractability 
  	and holiness. Children are more tractable than adults,
  	and learn more readily to love the simple verities that will
27	make them happy and good. 
  	    Jesus loved little children because of their freedom
  	from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While
30	age is halting between two opinions or battling with
  	false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards
  	Truth. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            237


 1	    A little girl, who had occasionally listened to my ex-
  	planations, badly wounded her finger. She seemed not
 3	to notice it. On being questioned about it she answered
  	ingenuously, "There is no sensation in matter." Bound-
  	ing off with laughing eyes, she presently added, "Mamma,
 6	my finger is not a bit sore." 
  	    It might have been months or years before her parents
  	would have laid aside their drugs, or reached the mental
 9	height their little daughter so naturally at-	Soil and
  	tained. The more stubborn beliefs and theo-	seed 
  	ries of parents often choke the good seed in the minds of
12	themselves and their offspring. Superstition, like "the
  	fowls of the air," snatches away the good seed before it
  	has sprouted. 
15	    Children should be taught the Truth-cure, Christian
  	Science, among their first lessons, and kept from discuss-
  	ing or entertaining theories or thoughts about	Teaching
18	sickness. To prevent the experience of error	children 
  	and its sufferings, keep out of the minds of your children
  	either sinful or diseased thoughts. The latter should
21	be excluded on the same principle as the former. This
  	makes Christian Science early available. 
  	    Some invalids are unwilling to know the facts or to
24	hear about the fallacy of matter and its supposed laws. 
  	They devote themselves a little longer to their	Deluded
  	material gods, cling to a belief in the life and	invalids 
27	intelligence of matter, and expect this error to do more
  	for them than they are willing to admit the only living and
  	true God can do. Impatient at your explanation, unwill-
30	ing to investigate the Science of Mind which would rid
  	them of their complaints, they hug false beliefs and suffer
  	the delusive consequences. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            238


 1	    Motives and acts are not rightly valued before they are
  	understood. It is well to wait till those whom you would
 3	benefit are ready for the blessing, for Science	Patient
  	is working changes in personal character as	waiting 
  	well as in the material universe. 
 6	    To obey the Scriptural command, "Come out from
  	among them, and be ye separate," is to incur society's
  	frown; but this frown, more than flatteries, enables one
 9	to be Christian. Losing her crucifix, the Roman Catholic
  	girl said, "I have nothing left but Christ." "If God be
  	for us, who can be against us?" 
12	    To fall away from Truth in times of persecution, shows
  	that we never understood Truth. From out the bridal
  	chamber of wisdom there will come the warn-	Unimproved
15	ing, "I know you not." Unimproved op-	opportunities 
  	portunities will rebuke us when we attempt to claim the
  	benefits of an experience we have not made our own, try
18	to reap the harvest we have not sown, and wish to enter
  	unlawfully into the labors of others. Truth often remains
  	unsought, until we seek this remedy for human woe be-
21	cause we suffer severely from error. 
  	    Attempts to conciliate society and so gain dominion over
  	mankind, arise from worldly weakness. He who leaves
24	all for Christ forsakes popularity and gains Christianity. 
  	    Society is a foolish juror, listening only to one side of
  	the case. Justice often comes too late to secure a verdict. 
27	People with mental work before them have	Society and
  	no time for gossip about false law or testimony. 	intolerance 
  	To reconstruct timid justice and place the fact above the
30	falsehood, is the work of time. 
  	    The cross is the central emblem of history. It is the
  	lodestar in the demonstration of Christian healing, — the
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            239


 1	demonstration by which sin and sickness are destroyed. 
  	The sects, which endured the lash of their predecessors,
 3	in their turn lay it upon those who are in advance of
  	creeds. 
  	    Take away wealth, fame, and social organizations,
 6	which weigh not one jot in the balance of God, and we
  	get clearer views of Principle. Break up	Right views
  	cliques, level wealth with honesty, let worth	of humanity 
 9	be judged according to wisdom, and we get better views
  	of humanity. 
  	    The wicked man is not the ruler of his upright
12	neighbor. Let it be understood that success in error is
  	defeat in Truth. The watchword of Christian Science
  	is Scriptural: "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the
15	unrighteous man his thoughts." 
  	    To ascertain our progress, we must learn where our
  	affections are placed and whom we acknowledge and
18	obey as God. If divine Love is becoming	Standpoint
  	nearer, dearer, and more real to us, matter is	revealed 
  	then submitting to Spirit. The objects we pursue and
21	the spirit we manifest reveal our standpoint, and show
  	what we are winning. 
  	    Mortal mind is the acknowledged seat of human mo-
24	tives. It forms material concepts and produces every
  	discordant action of the body. If action pro-	Antagonistic
  	ceeds from the divine Mind, action is harmo-	sources 
27	nious. If it comes from erring mortal mind, it is discord-
  	ant and ends in sin, sickness, death. Those two opposite
  	sources never mingle in fount or stream. The perfect
30	Mind sends forth perfection, for God is Mind. Imper-
  	fect mortal mind sends forth its own resemblances, of
  	which the wise man said, "All is vanity." 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            240


 1	    Nature voices natural, spiritual law and divine Love,
  	but human belief misinterprets nature. Arctic regions,
 3	sunny tropics, giant hills, winged winds,	Some lessons
  	mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers,	from nature 
  	and glorious heavens, — all point to Mind, the spiritual
 6	intelligence they reflect. The floral apostles are hiero-
  	glyphs of Deity. Suns and planets teach grand lessons. 
  	The stars make night beautiful, and the leaflet turns nat-
 9	urally towards the light. 
  	    In the order of Science, in which the Principle is above
  	what it reflects, all is one grand concord. Change this
12	statement, suppose Mind to be governed by	Perpetual
  	matter or Soul in body, and you lose the key-	motion 
  	note of being, and there is continual discord. Mind is
15	perpetual motion. Its symbol is the sphere. The rota-
  	tions and revolutions of the universe of Mind go on
  	eternally. 
18	    Mortals move onward towards good or evil as time
  	glides on. If mortals are not progressive, past failures
  	will be repeated until all wrong work is ef-	Progress
21	faced or rectified. If at present satisfied with	demanded 
  	wrong-doing, we must learn to loathe it. If at present
  	content with idleness, we must become dissatisfied with
24	it. Remember that mankind must sooner or later, either
  	by suffering or by Science, be convinced of the error that
  	is to be overcome. 
27	    In trying to undo the errors of sense one must pay fully
  	and fairly the utmost farthing, until all error is finally
  	brought into subjection to Truth. The divine method
30	of paying sin's wages involves unwinding one's snarls,
  	and learning from experience how to divide between sense
  	and Soul. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            241


 1	    "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." He, who
  	knows God's will or the demands of divine Science and
 3	obeys them, incurs the hostility of envy; and he who
  	refuses obedience to God, is chastened by Love. 
  	    Sensual treasures are laid up "where moth and rust
 6	doth corrupt." Mortality is their doom. Sin breaks in
  	upon them, and carries off their fleeting joys. 	The doom
  	The sensualist's affections are as imaginary,	of sin 
 9	whimsical, and unreal as his pleasures. Falsehood, envy,
  	hypocrisy, malice, hate, revenge, and so forth, steal away
  	the treasures of Truth. Stripped of its coverings, what
12	a mocking spectacle is sin! 
  	    The Bible teaches transformation of the body by the
  	renewal of Spirit. Take away the spiritual signification
15	of Scripture, and that compilation can do no	Spirit
  	more for mortals than can moonbeams to melt	transforms 
  	a river of ice. The error of the ages is preaching without
18	practice. 
  	    The substance of all devotion is the reflection and
  	demonstration of divine Love, healing sickness and
21	destroying sin. Our Master said, "If ye love me, keep
  	my commandments." 
  	    One's aim, a point beyond faith, should be to find the
24	footsteps of Truth, the way to health and holiness. We
  	should strive to reach the Horeb height where God is re-
  	vealed; and the corner-stone of all spiritual building is
27	purity. The baptism of Spirit, washing the body of all
  	the impurities of flesh, signifies that the pure in heart
  	see God and are approaching spiritual Life and its
30	demonstration. 
  	    It is "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
  	needle," than for sinful beliefs to enter the kingdom of
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            242


 1	heaven, eternal harmony. Through repentance, spiritual
  	baptism, and regeneration, mortals put off their material
 3	beliefs and false individuality. It is only a	Spiritual
  	question of time when "they shall all know	baptism 
  	Me [God], from the least of them unto the greatest." 
 6	Denial of the claims of matter is a great step towards
  	the joys of Spirit, towards human freedom and the final
  	triumph over the body. 
 9	    There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ
  	in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no
  	other reality — to have no other conscious-	The one
12	ness of life — than good, God and His reflec-	only way 
  	tion, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure
  	of the senses. 
15	    Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In pa-
  	tient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dis-
  	solve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant
18	of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — 
  	which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin
  	and death. 
21	    The vesture of Life is Truth. According to the Bible,
  	the facts of being are commonly misconstrued, for it is
  	written: "They parted my raiment among	Divided
24	them, and for my vesture they did cast lots." 	vestments 
  	The divine Science of man is woven into one web of
  	consistency without seam or rent. Mere speculation or
27	superstition appropriates no part of the divine vesture,
  	while inspiration restores every part of the Christly gar-
  	ment of righteousness. 
30	    The finger-posts of divine Science show the way our
  	Master trod, and require of Christians the proof which
  	he gave, instead of mere profession. We may hide
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            243


 1	spiritual ignorance from the world, but we can never
  	succeed in the Science and demonstration of spiritual
 3	good through ignorance or hypocrisy. 
  	    The divine Love, which made harmless the poisonous
  	viper, which delivered men from the boiling oil, from
 6	the fiery furnace, from the jaws of the lion,	Ancient
  	can heal the sick in every age and triumph	and modern
  	over sin and death. It crowned the demon-	miracles 
 9	strations of Jesus with unsurpassed power and love. But
  	the same "Mind . . . which was also in Christ Jesus"
  	must always accompany the letter of Science in order to
12	confirm and repeat the ancient demonstrations of prophets
  	and apostles. That those wonders are not more com-
  	monly repeated to-day, arises not so much from lack of
15	desire as from lack of spiritual growth. 
  	    The clay cannot reply to the potter. The head, heart,
  	lungs, and limbs do not inform us that they are dizzy,
18	diseased, consumptive, or lame. If this in-	Mental
  	formation is conveyed, mortal mind conveys	telegraphy 
  	it. Neither immortal and unerring Mind nor matter,
21	the inanimate substratum of mortal mind, can carry
  	on such telegraphy; for God is "of purer eyes than
  	to behold evil," and matter has neither intelligence nor
24	sensation. 
  	    Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no
  	sense of hatred. Life has no partnership	Annihilation
27	with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law	of error 
  	of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because
  	they declare nothing except God. 
30	    Sickness, sin, and death are not the fruits of Life. 
  	They are inharmonies which Truth destroys. Perfection
  	does not animate imperfection. Inasmuch as God is
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            244


 1	good and the fount of all being, He does not produce
  	moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is
 3	not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error. 	Deformity
  	Divine Science reveals these grand facts. On	and
  	their basis Jesus demonstrated Life, never	perfection 
 6	fearing nor obeying error in any form. 
  	    If we were to derive all our conceptions of man from
  	what is seen between the cradle and the grave, happi-
 9	ness and goodness would have no abiding-place in man,
  	and the worms would rob him of the flesh; but Paul
  	writes: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath
12	made me free from the law of sin and death." 
  	    Man undergoing birth, maturity, and decay is like the
  	beasts and vegetables, — subject to laws of decay. If
15	man were dust in his earliest stage of exist-	Man never
  	ence, we might admit the hypothesis that he	less than
  	returns eventually to his primitive condition;	man 
18	but man was never more nor less than man. 
  	    If man flickers out in death or springs from matter into
  	being, there must be an instant when God is without His
21	entire manifestation, — when there is no full reflection
  	of the infinite Mind. 
  	    Man in Science is neither young nor old. He has
24	neither birth nor death. He is not a beast, a vegetable,
  	nor a migratory mind. He does not pass from	Man not
  	matter to Mind, from the mortal to the im-	evolved 
27	mortal, from evil to good, or from good to evil. Such
  	admissions cast us headlong into darkness and dogma. 
  	Even Shakespeare's poetry pictures age as infancy, as
30	helplessness and decadence, instead of assigning to man
  	the everlasting grandeur and immortality of development,
  	power, and prestige. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            245


 1	    The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the
  	benefits of destroying that illusion, are illustrated in a
 3	sketch from the history of an English woman, published
  	in the London medical magazine called The Lancet. 
  	    Disappointed in love in her early years, she became
 6	insane and lost all account of time. Believing that she
  	was still living in the same hour which parted	Perpetual
  	her from her lover, taking no note of years,	youth 
 9	she stood daily before the window watching for her
  	lover's coming. In this mental state she remained young. 
  	Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no
12	older. Some American travellers saw her when she was
  	seventy-four, and supposed her to be a young woman. 
  	She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but
15	youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her
  	age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that
  	she must be under twenty. 
18	    This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful
  	hint, upon which a Franklin might work with more cer-
  	tainty than when he coaxed the enamoured lightning
21	from the clouds. Years had not made her old, because
  	she had taken no cognizance of passing time nor thought
  	of herself as growing old. The bodily results of her belief
24	that she was young manifested the influence of such a be-
  	lief. She could not age while believing herself young, for
  	the mental state governed the physical. 
27	    Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the
  	foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four;
  	and the primary of that illustration makes it plain that
30	decrepitude is not according to law, nor is it a necessity of
  	nature, but an illusion. 
  	    The infinite never began nor will it ever end. Mind
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            246


 1	and its formations can never be annihilated. Man is not
  	a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and
 3	sorrow, sickness and health, life and death. 	Man
  	Life and its faculties are not measured by	reflects God 
  	calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal
 6	likeness of their Maker. Man is by no means a material
  	germ rising from the imperfect and endeavoring to reach
  	Spirit above his origin. The stream rises no higher than
 9	its source. 
  	    The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and
  	gives ugliness to age. The radiant sun of virtue and truth
12	coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, un-
  	dimmed by a declining sun. As the physical and mate-
  	rial, the transient sense of beauty fades, the radiance of
15	Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with bright
  	and imperishable glories. 
  	    Never record ages. Chronological data are no part
18	of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are
  	so many conspiracies against manhood and	Undesirable
  	womanhood. Except for the error of meas-	records 
21	uring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man
  	would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and
  	still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise. Man,
24	governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and
  	grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty,
  	and holiness. 
27	    Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the
  	demonstration thereof. Life and goodness are immortal. 
  	Let us then shape our views of existence into	True life
30	loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather	eternal 
  	than into age and blight. 
  	    Acute and chronic beliefs reproduce their own types. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            247


 1	The acute belief of physical life comes on at a remote
  	period, and is not so disastrous as the chronic belief. 
 3	    I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost,
  	sight and teeth. A woman of eighty-five, whom I knew,
  	had a return of sight. Another woman at	Eyes and
 6	ninety had new teeth, incisors, cuspids, bi-	teeth
  	cuspids, and one molar. One man at sixty	renewed 
  	had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth without
 9	a decaying cavity. 
  	    Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty
  	of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as
12	mortal belief. Custom, education, and fashion	Eternal
  	form the transient standards of mortals. Im-	beauty 
  	mortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its
15	own, — the radiance of Soul. Immortal men and women
  	are models of spiritual sense, drawn by perfect Mind
  	and reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness
18	which transcend all material sense. 
  	    Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Be-
  	ing possesses its qualities before they are perceived hu-
21	manly. Beauty is a thing of life, which	The divine
  	dwells forever in the eternal Mind and re-	loveliness 
  	flects the charms of His goodness in expression, form,
24	outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal
  	with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches
  	the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with
27	starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness. 
  	    The embellishments of the person are poor substitutes
  	for the charms of being, shining resplendent and eternal
30	over age and decay. 
  	    The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and
  	more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            248


 1	in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious free-
  	dom of spiritual harmony. 
 3	    Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon
  	its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less
  	than beautiful. Men and women of riper	Love's
 6	years and larger lessons ought to ripen into	endowment 
  	health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness
  	or gloom. Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal
 9	freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images
  	of thought and destroying the woes of sense which each
  	day brings to a nearer tomb. 
12	    The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in
  	order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors,
  	working at various forms, moulding and chisel-	Mental
15	ing thought. What is the model before mortal	sculpture 
  	mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? 
  	Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you repro-
18	ducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious
  	sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all
  	mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding
21	it before your gaze continually. The result is that you
  	are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life-
  	work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline
24	and deformity of matter models. 
  	    To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right
  	direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect
27	models in thought and look at them continually,	Perfect
  	or we shall never carve them out in grand and	models 
  	noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice,
30	health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign
  	within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until
  	they finally disappear. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            249


 1	    Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on
  	sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive
 3	ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that
  	one perfect, producing His own models of excellence. 
  	    Let the "male and female" of God's creating appear. 
 6	Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into
  	newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor	Renewed
  	material power as able to destroy. Let us re-	selfhood 
 9	joice that we are subject to the divine "powers that be." 
  	Such is the true Science of being. Any other theory of
  	Life, or God, is delusive and mythological. 
12	    Mind is not the author of matter, and the creator of
  	ideas is not the creator of illusions. Either there is no
  	omnipotence, or omnipotence is the only power. God is
15	the infinite, and infinity never began, will never end, and
  	includes nothing unlike God. Whence then is soulless
  	matter? 
18	    Life is, like Christ, "the same yesterday, and to-day,
  	and forever." Organization and time have nothing to do
  	with Life. You say, "I dreamed last night." 	Illusive
21	What a mistake is that! The I is Spirit. God	dreams 
  	never slumbers, and His likeness never dreams. Mortals
  	are the Adam dreamers. 
24	    Sleep and apathy are phases of the dream that life, sub-
  	stance, and intelligence are material. The mortal night-
  	dream is sometimes nearer the fact of being than are the
27	thoughts of mortals when awake. The night-dream has
  	less matter as its accompaniment. It throws off some
  	material fetters. It falls short of the skies, but makes its
30	mundane flights quite ethereal. 
  	    Man is the reflection of Soul. He is the direct oppo-
  	site of material sensation, and there is but one Ego. We
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            250


 1	run into error when we divide Soul into souls, multiply
  	Mind into minds and suppose error to be mind, then mind
 3	to be in matter and matter to be a lawgiver,	Philosophical
  	unintelligence to act like intelligence, and mor-	blunders 
  	tality to be the matrix of immortality. 
 6	    Mortal existence is a dream; mortal existence has no
  	real entity, but saith "It is I." Spirit is the Ego which
  	never dreams, but understands all things;	Spirit the
 9	which never errs, and is ever conscious; which	one Ego 
  	never believes, but knows; which is never born and
  	never dies. Spiritual man is the likeness of this Ego. 
12	Man is not God, but like a ray of light which comes from
  	the sun, man, the outcome of God, reflects God. 
  	    Mortal body and mind are one, and that one is called
15	man; but a mortal is not man, for man is immortal. A
  	mortal may be weary or pained, enjoy or suffer,	Mortal
  	according to the dream he entertains in sleep. 	existence
18	When that dream vanishes, the mortal finds himself	a dream 
  	experiencing none of these dream-sensations. To the
  	observer, the body lies listless, undisturbed, and sensa-
21	tionless, and the mind seems to be absent. 
  	    Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking
  	dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream? 
24	There cannot be, since whatever appears to be a mortal
  	man is a mortal dream. Take away the mortal mind,
  	and matter has no more sense as a man than it has as
27	a tree. But the spiritual, real man is immortal. 
  	    Upon this stage of existence goes on the dance of mortal
  	mind. Mortal thoughts chase one another like snowflakes,
30	and drift to the ground. Science reveals Life as not being
  	at the mercy of death, nor will Science admit that happi-
  	ness is ever the sport of circumstance. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            251


 1	    Error is not real, hence it is not more imperative
  	as it hastens towards self-destruction. The so-called
 3	belief of mortal mind apparent as an abscess	Error
  	should not grow more painful before it suppu-	self-destroyed 
  	rates, neither should a fever become more severe before
 6	it ends. 
  	    Fright is so great at certain stages of mortal belief
  	as to drive belief into new paths. In the illusion of
 9	death, mortals wake to the knowledge of two	Illusion
  	facts: (1) that they are not dead; (2) that	of death 
  	they have but passed the portals of a new belief. Truth
12	works out the nothingness of error in just these ways. 
  	Sickness, as well as sin, is an error that Christ, Truth,
  	alone can destroy. 
15	    We must learn how mankind govern the body, — 
  	whether through faith in hygiene, in drugs, or in will-
  	power. We should learn whether they govern	Mortal mind's
18	the body through a belief in the necessity of	disappearance 
  	sickness and death, sin and pardon, or govern
  	it from the higher understanding that the divine Mind
21	makes perfect, acts upon the so-called human mind
  	through truth, leads the human mind to relinquish all
  	error, to find the divine Mind to be the only Mind,
24	and the healer of sin, disease, death. This process of
  	higher spiritual understanding improves mankind until
  	error disappears, and nothing is left which deserves to
27	perish or to be punished. 
  	    Ignorance, like intentional wrong, is not Science. 
  	Ignorance must be seen and corrected before we can at-
30	tain harmony. Inharmonious beliefs, which	Spiritual
  	rob Mind, calling it matter, and deify their	ignorance 
  	own notions, imprison themselves in what they create. 
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            252


 1	They are at war with Science, and as our Master said,
  	"If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom
 3	cannot stand." 
  	    Human ignorance of Mind and of the recuperative
  	energies of Truth occasions the only skepticism regard-
 6	ing the pathology and theology of Christian Science. 
  	    When false human beliefs learn even a little of their
  	own falsity, they begin to disappear. A knowledge of
 9	error and of its operations must precede that	Eternal man
  	understanding of Truth which destroys error,	recognized 
  	until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears,
12	and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit,
  	is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his
  	Maker. 
15	    The false evidence of material sense contrasts strikingly
  	with the testimony of Spirit. Material sense lifts its voice
  	with the arrogance of reality and says: 
18	    I am wholly dishonest, and no man knoweth it. I can
  	cheat, lie, commit adultery, rob, murder, and I elude
  	detection by smooth-tongued villainy. Ani-	Testimony
21	mal in propensity, deceitful in sentiment,	of sense 
  	fraudulent in purpose, I mean to make my short span
  	of life one gala day. What a nice thing is sin! How
24	sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits! The world
  	is my kingdom. I am enthroned in the gorgeousness
  	of matter. But a touch, an accident, the law of God,
27	may at any moment annihilate my peace, for all my
  	fancied joys are fatal. Like bursting lava, I expand but
  	to my own despair, and shine with the resplendency of
30	consuming fire. 
  	    Spirit, bearing opposite testimony, saith: 
  	    I am Spirit. Man, whose senses are spiritual, is my
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            253


 1	likeness. He reflects the infinite understanding, for I am
  	Infinity. The beauty of holiness, the perfection of being,
 3	imperishable glory, — all are Mine, for I am	Testimony
  	God. I give immortality to man, for I am	of Soul 
  	Truth. I include and impart all bliss, for I am Love. 
 6	I give life, without beginning and without end, for I am
  	Life. I am supreme and give all, for I am Mind. I am
  	the substance of all, because I AM THAT I AM. 
 9	    I hope, dear reader, I am leading you into the under-
  	standing of your divine rights, your heaven-bestowed har-
  	mony, — that, as you read, you see there is no	Heaven-
12	cause (outside of erring, mortal, material sense	bestowed
  	which is not power) able to make you sick or	prerogative 
  	sinful; and I hope that you are conquering this false sense. 
15	Knowing the falsity of so-called material sense, you can
  	assert your prerogative to overcome the belief in sin, dis-
  	ease, or death. 
18	    If you believe in and practise wrong knowingly, you
  	can at once change your course and do right. Matter can
  	make no opposition to right endeavors against	Right
21	sin or sickness, for matter is inert, mindless. 	endeavor
  	Also, if you believe yourself diseased, you can	possible 
  	alter this wrong belief and action without hindrance from
24	the body. 
  	    Do not believe in any supposed necessity for sin, dis-
  	ease, or death, knowing (as you ought to know) that God
27	never requires obedience to a so-called material law, for
  	no such law exists. The belief in sin and death is de-
  	stroyed by the law of God, which is the law of Life in-
30	stead of death, of harmony instead of discord, of Spirit
  	instead of the flesh. 
  	    The divine demand, "Be ye therefore perfect," is sci-
 

      Science and Health – Footsteps of Truth                                            254


 1	entific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are
  	indispensable. Individuals are consistent who, watching
 3	and praying, can "run, and not be weary; . . . 	Patience
  	walk, and not faint," who gain good rapidly	and final
  	and hold their position, or attain slowly and	perfection 
 6	yield not to discouragement. God requires perfection,
  	but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought
  	and the victory won. To stop eating, drinking, or being
 9	clothed materially before the spiritual facts of existence
  	are gained step by step, is not legitimate. When we wait
  	patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs
12	our path. Imperfect mortals grasp the ultimate of spir-
  	itual perfection slowly; but to begin aright and to con-
  	tinue the strife of demonstrating the great problem of
15	being, is doing much. 
  	    During the sensual ages, absolute Christian Science
  	may not be achieved prior to the change called death,
18	for we have not the power to demonstrate what we do
  	not understand. But the human self must be evangel-
  	ized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly
21	to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material,
  	and to work out the spiritual which determines the out-
  	ward and actual. 
24	    If you venture upon the quiet surface of error and are
  	in sympathy with error, what is there to disturb the waters? 
  	What is there to strip off error's disguise? 
27	    If you launch your bark upon the ever-agitated but
  	healthful waters of truth, you will encounter storms. 
  	Your good will be evil spoken of. This is the	The cross
30	cross. Take it up and bear it, for through it	and crown 
  	you win and wear the crown. Pilgrim on earth, thy home
         is heaven; stranger, thou art the guest of God.SHOW ALL