Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures

by Mary Baker Eddy

215:15 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
215:18 which darkness loses the appearance of reality.
So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional
absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before
215:21 truth and love.

With its divine proof, Science reverses the evidence of
material sense. Every quality and condition of mortality
215:24 is lost, swallowed up in immortality. Mortal man is the
antipode of immortal man in origin, in existence, and in his
relation to God.

Faith of Socrates

215:27 Because he understood the superiority and immor-
tality of good, Socrates feared not the hemlock poison.
Even the faith of his philosophy spurned phys-
215:30 ical timidity. Having sought man's spiritual
state, he recognized the immortality of man. The igno-
rance and malice of the age would have killed the vener-
216:1 able philosopher because of his faith in Soul and his in-
difference to the body.

The serpent of error

216:3 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-
216:6 ence unveils the mystery and solves the prob-
lem of man. Error bites the heel of truth, but cannot kill
truth. Truth bruises the head of error - destroys error.
216:9 Spirituality lays open siege to materialism. On which
side are we fighting?

Servants and masters

The understanding that the Ego is Mind, and that
216:12 there is but one Mind or intelligence, begins at once to
destroy the errors of mortal sense and to supply
the truth of immortal sense. This understand-
216:15 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-
216:18 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
216:21 and evil.

If the decision were left to the corporeal senses, evil
would appear to be the master of good, and sickness to
216:24 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-
216:27 inthians vi. 15.)

Personal identity