Golden Text
I Corinthians 12:13 We
13. . . We have all received the one Spirit.
The Golden Text is from the New Life Version.
Responsive Reading
Exodus 19:3, 4 I bare, 5, 8 (to 1st .); Exodus 20:1–5 (to :), 22; Psalms 104:24 (to :), 30 (to :), 31
Ex. 19:3And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;
4. . . I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.
5Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:
8And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.
20:1And God spake all these words, saying,
2I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4Thou 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:
5Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:
22And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.
Ps. 104:24O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all:
30Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created:
31The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works.
Section 1
The Bible
Isaiah 45:22
22Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
John 4:24
24God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Philippians 1:27 stand
27stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;
Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesby Mary Baker Eddy
331:11–14
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.
594:19
Spirit. Divine substance; Mind; divine Principle; all that is good; God; that only which is perfect, everlasting, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite.
70:6–7
The infinite
one Spirit
There is but one Spirit.
Section 2
The Bible
I John 4:1, 6
1Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
6We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
Ezekiel 13:3, 6 (to 2nd :)
3Thus saith the Lord God; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!
6They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith: and the Lord hath not sent them:
Isaiah 8:19 (to 1st ?)
19And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God?
I Corinthians 8:4 there
4there is none other God but one.
Science and Health
278:10
Spirit, God, is infinite, all. Spirit can have no opposite.
594:22–24 (to 1st .)
Spirits. Mortal beliefs; corporeality; evil minds; supposed intelligences, or gods; the opposites of God; errors; hallucinations.
186:7, 15
Erring human mind-forces can work only evil under whatever name or pretence they are employed; for Spirit and matter, good and evil, light and darkness, cannot mingle.
Evil
negative and
self-destructive
Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil.
71:1–2 (to 1st .), 27
Nothing is real and eternal, — nothing is Spirit, — but God and His idea.
The basis and structure of spiritualism are alike material and physical. Its spirits are so many corporealities, limited and finite in character and quality. Spiritualism therefore presupposes Spirit, which is ever infinite, to be a corporeal being, a finite form, — a theory contrary to Christian Science.
70:9
The supposition that corporeal beings are spirits, or that there are good and evil spirits, is a mistake.
206:32–1
There are evil beliefs, often called evil spirits; but these evils are not Spirit, for there is no evil in Spirit.
307:7–14
Evil still affirms itself to be mind, and declares that there is more than one intelligence or God. It says: “There shall be lords and gods many. I declare that God makes evil minds and evil spirits, and that I aid Him. Truth shall change sides and be unlike Spirit. I will put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem to have life as much as God, Spirit, who is the only Life.”
This error has proved itself to be error.
466:21–23 Soul
Mankind
redeemed
Soul or Spirit means only one Mind, and cannot be rendered in the plural.
Section 3
The Bible
Mark 12:32 there
32there is one God; and there is none other but he:
Psalms 143:10 (to 2nd ;)
10Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good;
Psalms 139:1, 7, 8
1O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.
7Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
Psalms 118:17, 19
17I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.
19Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord:
Jeremiah 7:1–3, 24
1The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,
2Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.
3Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
24But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.
Science and Health
74:17–21, 29–30
Bridgeless
division
The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect, is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to fraternize with or control the worm. Such a backward transformation is impossible in Science.
In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, never a return to positions outgrown.
77:28–5
Spiritism consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling that of blighted buds, — to a wretched purgatory, where the chances of the departed for improvement narrow into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of matter.
Unnatural
deflections
The decaying flower, the blighted bud, the gnarled oak, the ferocious beast, — like the discords of disease, sin, and death, — are unnatural. They are the falsities of sense, the changing deflections of mortal mind; they are not the eternal realities of Mind.
80:6–18
A denial of
immortality
A communication purporting to come from the late Theodore Parker reads as follows: “There never was, and there never will be, an immortal spirit.” Yet the very periodical containing this sentence repeats weekly the assertion that spirit-communications are our only proofs of immortality.
Mysticism
unscientific
I entertain no doubt of the humanity and philanthropy of many Spiritualists, but I cannot coincide with their views. It is mysticism which gives spiritualism its force. Science dispels mystery and explains extraordinary phenomena; but Science never removes phenomena from the domain of reason into the realm of mysticism.
296:23–26, 28
Mixed
testimony
When the evidence of Spirit and matter, Truth and error, seems to commingle, it rests upon foundations which time is wearing away.
An improved belief is one step out of error, and aids in taking the next step and in understanding the situation in Christian Science.
213:11–12
Every step towards goodness is a departure from materiality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit.
21:9–12
If the disciple is advancing spiritually, he is striving to enter in. He constantly turns away from material sense, and looks towards the imperishable things of Spirit.
Section 4
The Bible
Zechariah 4:6 Not, 8, 9 (to 2nd ;)
6Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
8Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
9The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it;
Ezra 1:2, 5
2Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
5Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem.
Ezra 4:1, 2 (to ;), 3–5, 24
1Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the Lord God of Israel;
2Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do;
3But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us.
4Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building,
5And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.
24Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem. So it ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.
Ezra 6:1–3 (to 1st ;), 7 (to ;)
1Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon.
2And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written:
3In the first year of Cyrus the king the same Cyrus the king made a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, Let the house be builded, the place where they offered sacrifices, and let the foundations thereof be strongly laid;
7Let the work of this house of God alone;
Science and Health
334:31–1
Spirit being God, there is but one Spirit, for there can be but one infinite and therefore one God. There are neither spirits many nor gods many.
466:7 What, 8–13 To (to 1st .)
What are spirits and souls?
Real versus
unreal
To human belief, they are personalities constituted of mind and matter, life and death, truth and error, good and evil; but these contrasting pairs of terms represent contraries, as Christian Science reveals, which neither dwell together nor assimilate.
72:9 (only), 18–19
So-called spirits are but corporeal communicators.
Spirit is not made manifest through matter, the antipode of Spirit.
73:8
One
government
The belief that one man, as spirit, can control another man, as matter, upsets both the individuality and the Science of man, for man is image. God controls man, and God is the only Spirit. Any other control or attraction of so-called spirit is a mortal belief, which ought to be known by its fruit, — the repetition of evil.
78:16–19, 23–24
Spiritualism with its material accompaniments would destroy the supremacy of Spirit. If Spirit pervades all space, it needs no material method for the transmission of messages.
Spirit
intangible
How can the majesty and omnipotence of Spirit be lost?
193:32–2
It has been demonstrated to me that Life is God and that the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its strength with matter or with human will.
Section 5
The Bible
Luke 4:14, 33–36
14And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.
33And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice,
34Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.
35And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.
36And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.
Romans 8:9 ye (to 1st .), 15–17 (to 2nd ;)
9ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.
15For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
16The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
17And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;
Science and Health
316:7
Christ, Truth, was demonstrated through Jesus to prove the power of Spirit over the flesh, — to show that Truth is made manifest by its effects upon the human mind and body, healing sickness and destroying sin.
79:11–17, 19 (only)
Spiritualism relies upon human beliefs and hypotheses. Christian Science removes these beliefs and hypotheses through the higher understanding of God, for Christian Science, resting on divine Principle, not on material personalities, in its revelation of immortality, introduces the harmony of being.
Jesus cast out evil spirits, or false beliefs.
Jesus did his own work by the one Spirit.
20:3
He at last paid no homage to forms of doctrine or to theories of man, but acted and spake as he was moved, not by spirits but by Spirit.
390:20, 32
Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate, because you know that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin. You have no law of His to support the necessity either of sin or sickness, but you have divine authority for denying that necessity and healing the sick.
Rise in the conscious strength of the spirit of Truth to overthrow the plea of mortal mind, alias matter, arrayed against the supremacy of Spirit. Blot out the images of mortal thought and its beliefs in sickness and sin. Then, when thou art delivered to the judgment of Truth, Christ, the judge will say, “Thou art whole!”
Section 6
The Bible
II Corinthians 6:17 I will, 18
17I will receive you,
18And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Malachi 2:10 (to 2nd ?)
10Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?
John 12:44, 46
44Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.
46I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
Luke 8:19–21
19Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press.
20And it was told him by certain which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee.
21And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.
Science and Health
31:4
Fleshly ties
temporal
Jesus acknowledged no ties of the flesh. He said: “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.” Again he asked: “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren,” implying that it is they who do the will of his Father. We have no record of his calling any man by the name of father. He recognized Spirit, God, as the only creator, and therefore as the Father of all.
333:30
The one Spirit includes all identities.
Section 7
The Bible
I Corinthians 2:9 as, 10
9as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
10But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
I Corinthians 8:6 to
6to 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.
James 2:19 (to :)
19Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well:
Science and Health
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 tri-unity 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.
94:1–3
Jesus taught but one God, one Spirit, who makes man in the image and likeness of Himself, — of Spirit, not of matter.
481:2–3
Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else.