May 23, 2018
Hymns: 12, 5, 416
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The Bible
&
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
By Mary Baker Eddy
EXODUS
20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:
SH 340:15-20
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus xx. 3.) The First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the triunity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal good, and that all men shall have one Mind.
ISAIAH
44:9 They that make a graven image are all of them vanity…
10 Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is profitable for nothing?
DEUTERONOMY (Authorized King James)
32:37 And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted,
SH 301:17-23
As God is substance and man is the divine image and likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only the substance of good, the substance of Spirit, not matter. The belief that man has any other substance, or mind, is not spiritual and breaks the First Commandment, Thou shalt have one God, one Mind.
SH 466:23-26
Heathen mythology and Jewish theology have perpetuated the fallacy that intelligence, soul, and life can be in matter; and idolatry and ritualism are the outcome of all man-made beliefs.
HABAKKUK
2:19 Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it.
20 But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.
I JOHN
5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
SH 591:25-10
Mortal Mind. Nothing claiming to be something, for Mind is immortal; mythology; error creating other errors; a suppositional material sense, alias the belief that sensation is in matter, which is sensationless; a belief that life, substance, and intelligence are in and of matter; the opposite of Spirit, and therefore the opposite of God, or good; the belief that life has a beginning and therefore an end; the belief that man is the offspring of mortals; the belief that there can be more than one creator; idolatry; the subjective states of error; material senses; that which neither exists in Science nor can be recognized by the spiritual sense; sin; sickness; death.
SH 71:10
Close your eyes, and you may dream that you see a flower, — that you touch and smell it. Thus you learn that the flower is a product of the so-called mind, a formation of thought rather than of matter. Close your eyes again, and you may see landscapes, men, and women. Thus you learn that these also are images, which mortal mind holds and evolves and which simulate mind, life, and intelligence. From dreams also you learn that neither mortal mind nor matter is the image or likeness of God, and that immortal Mind is not in matter.
ACTS
17:22 Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
LUKE
4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
I CORINTHIANS
8:4…we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.
5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,)
6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.
SH 65:13-16
The broadcast powers of evil so conspicuous today show themselves in the materialism and sensualism of the age, struggling against the advancing spiritual era.
SH 186:28
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it would be better. Since it must believe in something besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity. The human mind has been an idolater from the beginning, having other gods and believing in more than the one Mind.
I JOHN (Easy to Read)
4:1 My dear friends, many false prophets are in the world now. So don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God.
SH 86:29-30
Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees.
SH 103:18-22
As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful.
SH 155:3
When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which heals; and according to this faith will the effect be. Even when you take away the individual confidence in the drug, you have not yet divorced the drug from the general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the druggist, the doctor, and the nurse equip the medicine with their faith, and the beliefs which are in the majority rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate drug as doing this or that, individual dissent or faith, unless it rests on Science, is but a belief held by a minority, and such a belief is governed by the majority.
SH 12:18-21
The drug does nothing, because it has no intelligence. It is a mortal belief, not divine Principle or Love, which causes a drug to be apparently either poisonous or sanative.
SH 153:25-30 (to ,)
We weep because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection. When this mental contagion is understood, we shall be more careful of our mental conditions, …
SH 114:29
Science shows that what is termed matter is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author mortal mind.
SH 146:2
The ancient Christians were healers. Why has this element of Christianity been lost? Because our systems of religion are governed more or less by our systems of medicine. The first idolatry was faith in matter. The schools have rendered faith in drugs the fashion, rather than faith in Deity. By trusting matter to destroy its own discord, health and harmony have been sacrificed. Such systems are barren of the vitality of spiritual power, by which material sense is made the servant of Science and religion becomes Christlike.
SH 158:1-12
It is recorded that the profession of medicine originated in idolatry with pagan priests, who besought the gods to heal the sick and designated Apollo as “the god of medicine.” He was supposed to have dictated the first prescription, according to the “History of Four Thousand Years of Medicine.” It is here noticeable that Apollo was also regarded as the sender of disease, “the god of pestilence.” Hippocrates turned from image-gods to vegetable and mineral drugs for healing. This was deemed progress in medicine; but what we need is the truth which heals both mind and body.
SH 157:23-25 Erring, 8-10
Erring mortal mind confers the power which the drug seems to possess.
Christian Science exterminates the drug, and rests on Mind alone as the curative Principle, acknowledging that the divine Mind has all power.
COLOSSIANS (Living Bible)
3:5 Away then with sinful, earthly things; deaden the evil desires lurking within you; have nothing to do with sexual sin, impurity, lust, and shameful desires; don’t worship the good things of life, for that is idolatry.
LUKE
12:15… Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.
SH 535:10-14
Divine Science deals its chief blow at the supposed material foundations of life and intelligence. It dooms idolatry. A belief in other gods, other creators, and other creations must go down before Christian Science.
SH 353:1
The Christianly scientific real is the sensuous unreal. Sin, disease, whatever seems real to material sense, is unreal in divine Science. The physical senses and Science have ever been antagonistic, and they will so continue, till the testimony of the physical senses yields entirely to Christian Science.
I CORINTHIANS
8:4…we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.
5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,)
6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.
I JOHN
2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
SH 173:26-31
Human reason and religion come slowly to the recognition of spiritual facts, and so continue to call upon matter to remove the error which the human mind alone has created. The idols of civilization are far more fatal to health and longevity than are the idols of barbarism.
SH 174:9-14
The footsteps of thought, rising above material standpoints, are slow, and portend a long night to the traveller; but the angels of His presence — the spiritual intuitions that tell us when “the night is far spent, the day is at hand” — are our guardians in the gloom.
SH 428:8-12
To divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear, — this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true.
SUPPLEMENTAL READING
“The Doom of Idolatry”
By Gordon Thomas Spare
Christian Science Sentinel, Oct 1968
Thousands of years ago the Hebrew prophets exhorted their people to abstain from the idol-worship practiced all about them. Today Christian Science warns that the enlightenment of the present age has not destroyed mankind’s fondness for false attractions or their worship of false gods. It tells us further that the idols of modern times are inherently more subtle and dangerous than primitive ones could ever be. Mrs. Eddy writes, “The idols of civilization are far more fatal to health and longevity than are the idols of barbarism.”
…modern men are tempted to believe that their burgeoning knowledge of their environment has removed every mystery, that there is no longer any need to look beyond material evidence for ultimate causation. On this premise mankind formulate a vast body of matter-based laws—laws of mortality, disease, heredity, decay, and the like—and then bow down to them and fear them. In their striving for power and wealth, for ease and pleasure in matter, many believe in and practice the selfish doctrines of might makes right, of survival of the fittest, or the end justifying the means…
The attractions of material pursuits and pleasure-seeking fade away as we learn that God, the one infinite Mind, is the source of all true joy and the giver of all true substance and inspiration…Addictions and afflictions must disappear as we realize that the real, spiritual man, our true selfhood, is the beloved child of God, forever expressing, or reflecting, Him alone. The emergence from idolatry, or the awakening from the worship of matter and material processes, brings a greatly expanded sense of the meaningfulness of existence, a growing love and concern for one’s fellowmen, and a new feeling of closeness to the Father….