Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?

Section 1

The Bible

1Isaiah 45:5, 12, 22

5I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:

12I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.

22Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.

2Psalms 18:2–6, 16, 28

2The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

3I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

4The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.

5The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.

6In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.

16He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.

28For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.

3Psalms 139:1, 7, 14

1O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

7Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

14I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

4Psalms 26:3 thy

3thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.

5Psalms 89:26 Thou

26Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.

Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesby Mary Baker Eddy

1330:19–20

God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be, — Life, Truth, Love.

2593:20

Salvation. Life, Truth, and Love understood and demonstrated as supreme over all; sin, sickness, and death destroyed.

3331:11

Allness of
Spirit

The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God’s universe expresses Him.

4207:23–24

One primal
cause

Sin, sickness, disease, and death belong not to the Science of being.

5215:15

Light and
darkness

We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the absence of light, at the coming of which darkness loses the appearance of reality. So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before truth and love.

6256:7

Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man.

717:2–3

Enable us to know, — as in heaven, so on earth, — God is omnipotent, supreme.

Section 2

The Bible

6Isaiah 43:3 I am (to :), 4 (to :)

3I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour:

4Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee:

7Isaiah 57:19 Peace

19Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord; and I will heal him.

8Nehemiah 8:2, 3, 6, 8

2And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.

3And he read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law.

6And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

8So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.

9Psalms 119:18, 143, 151, 169, 174

18Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.

143Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments are my delights.

151Thou art near, O Lord; and all thy commandments are truth.

169Let my cry come near before thee, O Lord: give me understanding according to thy word.

174I have longed for thy salvation, O Lord; and thy law is my delight.

10Psalms 116:8

8For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.

11Romans 13:1 there (to :)

1there is no power but of God:

Science and Health

8127:16–19

Christian Science reveals God, not as the author of sin, sickness, and death, but as divine Principle, Supreme Being, Mind, exempt from all evil.

9471:31

This Science teaches man that God is the only Life, and that this Life is Truth and Love; that God is to be understood, adored, and demonstrated; that divine Truth casts out suppositional error and heals the sick.

10225:1 What

What is it that binds man with iron shackles to sin, sickness, and death? Whatever enslaves man is opposed to the divine government. Truth makes man free.

11243:25

Annihilation
of error

Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hatred. Life has no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.

12472:9–11

Sickness, sin, and death, being inharmonious, do not originate in God nor belong to His government. His law, rightly understood, destroys them.

Section 3

The Bible

12Luke 12:15 a

15a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

13Psalms 52:1

1Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? the goodness of God endureth continually.

14Psalms 79:9

9Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name’s sake.

15Isaiah 39:1–6

1At that time Merodach–baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: for he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered.

2And Hezekiah was glad of them, and shewed them the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not.

3Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men? and from whence came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country unto me, even from Babylon.

4Then said he, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah answered, All that is in mine house have they seen: there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewed them.

5Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Lord of hosts:

6Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.

Science and Health

134:32

Whatever materializes worship hinders man’s spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.

14vii:15

Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-stone to faith. The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal. Though empires fall, “the Lord shall reign forever.”

15327:17, 29–2

Peremptory
demands

To the physical senses, the strict demands of Christian Science seem peremptory; but mortals are hastening to learn that Life is God, good, and that evil has in reality neither place nor power in the human or the divine economy.

Reason is the most active human faculty. Let that inform the sentiments and awaken the man’s dormant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal.

16231:20–25

Superiority
to sickness
and sin

To hold yourself superior to sin, because God made you superior to it and governs man, is true wisdom. To fear sin is to misunderstand the power of Love and the divine Science of being in man’s relation to God, — to doubt His government and distrust His omnipotent care.

17405:18

The good man finally can overcome his fear of sin. This is sin’s necessity, — to destroy itself. Immortal man demonstrates the government of God, good, in which is no power to sin.

Section 4

The Bible

16Matthew 9:35 Jesus

35Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

17Matthew 21:11, 14

11And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

14And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.

18Matthew 10:1

1And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

19Hebrews 13:8

8Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.

Science and Health

18473:10–15, 29

Christ is the ideal Truth, that comes to heal sickness and sin through Christian Science, and attributes all power to God. Jesus is the name of the man who, more than all other men, has presented Christ, the true idea of God, healing the sick and the sinning and destroying the power of death.

Jesus not
understood

Jesus proved the Principle, which heals the sick and casts out error, to be divine. Few, however, except his students understood in the least his teachings and their glorious proofs, — namely, that Life, Truth, and Love (the Principle of this unacknowledged Science) destroy all error, evil, disease, and death.

19162:4

Truth an
alterative

Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind.

20194:6

Change of
belief

A change in human belief changes all the physical symptoms, and determines a case for better or for worse. When one’s false belief is corrected, Truth sends a report of health over the body.

21389:28

A case of convulsions, produced by indigestion, came under my observation. In her belief the woman had chronic liver-complaint, and was then suffering from a complication of symptoms connected with this belief. I cured her in a few minutes. One instant she spoke despairingly of herself. The next minute she said, “My food is all digested, and I should like something more to eat.”

22285:27

Salvation
is through
reform

As mortals reach, through knowledge of Christian Science, a higher sense, they will seek to learn, not from matter, but from the divine Principle, God, how to demonstrate the Christ, Truth, as the healing and saving power.

23346:6–13

Nothingness
of error

It is sometimes said that Christian Science teaches the nothingness of sin, sickness, and death, and then teaches how this nothingness is to be saved and healed. The nothingness of nothing is plain; but we need to understand that error is nothing, and that its nothingness is not saved, but must be demonstrated in order to prove the somethingness — yea, the allness — of Truth.

Section 5

The Bible

20Psalms 3:2, 3, 8 (to :)

2Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God.

3But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.

8Salvation belongeth unto the Lord:

21I Timothy 1:14

14And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.

22Luke 7:11–16 he

11he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.

12Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her.

13And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.

14And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.

15And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.

16And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people.

Science and Health

24206:25–28, 30

Can there be any birth or death for man, the spiritual image and likeness of God? Instead of God sending sickness and death, He destroys them, and brings to light immortality.

God does not cause man to sin, to be sick, or to die.

25427:7

If man believes in death now, he must disbelieve in it when learning that there is no reality in death, since the truth of being is deathless. The belief that existence is contingent on matter must be met and mastered by Science, before Life can be understood and harmony obtained.

26428:6

Vision
opening

Man’s privilege at this supreme moment is to prove the words of our Master: “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” 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. Thus we may establish in truth the temple, or body, “whose builder and maker is God.”

27427:13–16, 21–23

Mortality
vanquished

Death is but another phase of the dream that existence can be material. Nothing can interfere with the harmony of being nor end the existence of man in Science.

The great difficulty lies in ignorance of what God is. God, Life, Truth, and Love make man undying.

28164:17

If you or I should appear to die, we should not be dead. The seeming decease, caused by a majority of human beliefs that man must die, or produced by mental assassins, does not in the least disprove Christian Science; rather does it evidence the truth of its basic proposition that mortal thoughts in belief rule the materiality miscalled life in the body or in matter. But the forever fact remains paramount that Life, Truth, and Love save from sin, disease, and death. “When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality [divine Science], then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory” (St. Paul).

29347:6–7

Nothing really has Life but God, who is infinite Life; hence all is Life, and death has no dominion.

Section 6

The Bible

23II Timothy 2:15

15Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

24II Timothy 3:14 continue, 15

14continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;

15And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

25Revelation 19:6 Alleluia

6Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

26Psalms 18:46 let

46let the God of my salvation be exalted.

Science and Health

3026:14–16

Divine Truth, Life, and Love gave Jesus authority over sin, sickness, and death.

31315:32–2

Explaining and demonstrating the way of divine Science, he became the way of salvation to all who accepted his word.

3222:11–12

“Work out your own salvation,” is the demand of Life and Love, for to this end God worketh with you.