Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/202

182 and immortal through the finite, mutable, and mortal, and so depend upon belief instead of demonstration; for this is fatal to a knowledge of Science. The understanding of Truth gives real faith in it, and is better than all burnt offerings.

The Master said, “No man cometh unto the Father [the Principle of Being] but by me.” Christ, the Truth and Life of man, reveals the divine Principle; for Christ said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Physical causation was put aside, from first to last, by this original man, Jesus. He knew that divine Principle alone creates and governs the real.

In the Saxon tongue good was the term for God.

The Scriptures declare all He made to be good, like Himself, — good in Principle and in idea. Therefore the spiritual universe is good, and reflects God as He is.

God's thoughts are perfect and eternal, are Substance and Life. Imperfect and temporal thoughts are human,

involving error; and since God, Spirit, is the only cause, they lack a divine cause. The temporal and material are not then creations of Spirit. They are but counterfeits of the spiritual and eternal. Such transitory thoughts are the antipodes of Truth; though (by the supposition of opposites) these errors must also say, “We are true.” But this saying destroys itself.

Sin, sickness, and death are comprised in human material belief, and belong not to a divine Mind. They are without a real origin or existence. They have neither principle nor permanence, but belong, with all that is material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which simulates the creations of Truth. All creations of Spirit