Perfection requisite
If God is admitted to be the only Mind and Life,
276:18 there ceases to be any opportunity for sin and death.
When we learn in Science how to be perfect
even as our Father in heaven is perfect,
276:21 thought is turned into new and healthy channels, -
towards the contemplation of things immortal and away
from materiality to the Principle of the universe, includ-
276:24 ing harmonious man.
Material beliefs and spiritual understanding never
mingle. The latter destroys the former. Discord is the
276:27 /nothingness/ named error. Harmony is the /somethingness/
named Truth.
Like evolving like
Nature and revelation inform us that like produces
276:30 like. Divine Science does not gather grapes
from thorns nor figs from thistles. Intelli-
gence never produces non-intelligence; but matter is
277:1 ever non-intelligent and therefore cannot spring from
intelligence. To all that is unlike unerring and eternal
277:3 Mind, this Mind saith, "Thou shalt surely die;" and else-
where the Scripture says that dust returns to dust. The
non-intelligent relapses into its own unreality. Matter
277:6 never produces mind. The immortal never produces the
mortal. Good cannot result in evil. As God Himself is
good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be im-
277:9 mortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal
error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirit-
uality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and can-
277:12 not be the outcome of an infinite God, good.
Natural history presents vegetables and animals as preserving their original species, - like reproducing like. 277:15 A mineral is not produced by a vegetable nor the man by the brute. In reproduction, the order of genus and species is preserved throughout the entire round of nature. 277:18 This points to the spiritual truth and Science of being. Error relies upon a reversal of this order, asserts that Spirit produces matter and matter produces all the ills 277:21 of flesh, and therefore that good is the origin of evil. These suppositions contradict even the order of material so-called science.
Material error
277:24 The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit
is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine, - it is
a human concept. Matter is an error of state-
277:27 ment. This error in the premise leads to errors
in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters.
Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immor-
277:30 tal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phe-
nomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always
erroneous.
Substance /versus/ supposition
278:1 Is Spirit the source or creator of matter? Science re-
veals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter.
278:3 Divine metaphysics explains away matter.
Spirit is the only substance and consciousness
recognized by divine Science. The material
278:6 senses oppose this, but there are no material senses, for
matter has no mind. In Spirit there is no matter, even
as in Truth there is no error, and in good no evil. It is
278:9 a false supposition, the notion that there is real substance-
matter, the opposite of Spirit. Spirit, God, is infinite,
all. Spirit can have no opposite.