Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/199

Rh Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious

action. It is the same Life, Love, and Wisdom, “yesterday and to-day and forever.” Matter and its beliefs — sin, sickness, and death — are states of mortal mind, which acts, reacts, and then comes to a stop. They are not facts of Mind. They are not ideas, but illusions. Principle is absolute. It admits of no beliefs, but rests upon understanding.

But what say prevalent theories ? They insist that Life, or God, is one and the same with material life,

so called. They speak of both Truth and error as mind, and of Good and evil as spirit. They claim that to be life which is but the objective state of material sense, — such as the structural life of the tree and of material man, — and deem it the manifestation of the one Life, God.

This false belief as to what really constitutes life so detracts from God's character and nature, that the true

sense of His power is lost to all who cling to this falsity. The Divine principle, or Life, cannot be practically demonstrated in length of days, as it was by the Patriarchs, unless its Science be stated accurately. We must receive it in the understanding, and live it in daily life; and unless we so do we cannot teach Science, any more than we can teach and illustrate geometry by calling a curve a straight line, or calling a straight line a sphere.

Are mentality, immortality, consciousness, resident in matter? It is not rational to say that Mind is infinite, but dwells in finiteness, in matter, or that matter is the medium of Mind.