Max Kappeler’s Teaching Moments
Download this article as a PDF:
“Science is Revolutionary”
Mary Baker Eddy
Celebrating the Revolutionary Spirit
of Christ Science as exemplified by Christ Jesus
Science is Revolutionary
(Mary Baker Eddy – Prose Works, Mis., pp. 98-101.)
A Teaching Moment
“Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright. …are you called to voice a higher order of Science? Then obey this call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaffold, but take not back the words of Truth.”
Mary Baker Eddy
(The following edited text is quoted from Prose Works, Miscellaneous Writings, “Science and the Senses” by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 99-101.)
“Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright. It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five material senses, ‘Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not; neither can you understand.’ To weave one thread of Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself. The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? This awful price: the temporary loss of his self-respect. His fear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictions fell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of tyrants.
Men and women of the nineteenth century, are you called to voice a higher order of Science? Then obey this call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaffold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to stand a long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and be in the battle every day?
In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth more divine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. He said, ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away;’ and they have not. The winds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they can never bear into oblivion his words. They still live, and to-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight God’s paths; make way for health, holiness, universal harmony, and come up hither.’ The grandeur of the word, the power of Truth, is again casting out evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered, ‘This is Science.’
Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull disciples. His immortal words were articulated in a decaying language, and then left to the providence of God. Christian Science was to interpret them; and woman, ‘last at the cross,’ was to awaken the dull senses, intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaning of those words.
Past, present, future, will show the word and might of Truth—healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner—so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to deny or to destroy. Love’s labors are not lost. The five personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning nor the magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof; but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good, leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scope of the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth, and teach the eternal.
Science speaks when the senses are silent, and then the evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual monitor understood is coincidence of the divine with the human, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity, friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to earth a foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celestial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite.
The Christian Scientist loves man more because he loves God most. He understands this Principle,—Love. Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers that patience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, are the symptoms by which our Father indicates the different stages of man’s recovery from sin and his entrance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how healing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind is understood and demonstrated? He alone knows these wonders who is departing from the thraldom of the senses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal of sorrow.
Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is a revolutionary struggle. We already have had two in this nation; and they began and ended in a contest for the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometh a third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, and the attainment of heaven.
The scientific sense of being which establishes harmony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality, of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive free, opening the doors for them that are bound.
He who turns to the body for evidence, bases his conclusions on mortality, on imperfection; but Science saith to man, ‘God hath all-power.’
The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but one power, and this power is good, not evil; not matter, but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, including sin and disease.
If God is All, and God is good, it follows that all must be good; and no other power, law, or intelligence can exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion in Science, and the facts that disprove the evidence of the senses.”