Neither ancient nor modern philosophy furnishes a scientific basis for the Science of Mind-healing.  Plato believed he had a soul, which must be doctored in order to heal his body.  This would be like correcting the principle of music for the purpose of destroying discord.  Principle is right; it is practice that is wrong.  Soul is right; it is the flesh that is evil.  Soul is the synonym of Spirit, God; hence there is but one Soul, and that one is infinite.  If that pagan philosopher had known that physical sense, not Soul, causes all bodily ailments, his philosophy would have yielded to Science.

Man shines by borrowed light.  He reflects God as his Mind, and this reflection is substance,—­the substance of good.  Matter is substance in error, Spirit is substance in Truth.

Evil, or error, is not Mind; but infinite Mind is sufficient to supply all manifestations of intelligence.  The notion of more than one Mind, or Life, is as unsatisfying as it is unscientific.  All must be of God, and not our own, separated from Him.

Human systems of philosophy and religion are departures from Christian Science.  Mistaking divine Principle for corporeal personality, ingrafting upon one First Cause such opposite effects as good and evil, health and sickness, life and death; making mortality the status and rule of divinity,—­such methods can never reach the perfection and demonstration of metaphysical, or Christian Science.

Stating the divine Principle, omnipotence (omnis potens), and then departing from this statement and taking the rule of finite matter, with which to work out the problem of infinity or Spirit,—­all this is like trying to compensate for the absence of omnipotence by a physical, false, and finite substitute.

With our Master, life was not merely a sense of existence, but an accompanying sense of power that subdued matter and brought to light immortality, insomuch that the people “were astonished at his doctrine:  for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”  Life, as defined by Jesus, had no beginning; it was not the result of organization, or infused into matter; it was Spirit.

THE GREAT REVELATION

Christian Science reveals the grand verity, that to believe man has a finite and erring mind, and consequently a mortal mind and soul and life, is error.  Scientific terms have no contradictory significations.

In Science, Life is not temporal, but eternal, without beginning or ending.  The word Life never means that which is the source of death, and of good and evil.  Such an inference is unscientific.  It is like saying that addition means subtraction in one instance and addition in another, and then applying this rule to a demonstration of the science of numbers; even as mortals apply finite terms to God, in demonstration of infinity. Life is a term used to indicate Deity; and every other name for the Supreme Being, if properly employed, has the signification of Life.  Whatever errs is mortal, and is the antipodes of Life, or God, and of health and holiness, both in idea and demonstration.