Science and Health
and the
Church Manual

Jesus: Pentecost: Mary Baker Eddy: Today

W. Gordon Brown

PART I SCIENCE AND HEALTH

7. Physiology

And therefore, like the children of Israel (the members of the Christ-body) in the Apocalypse's seventh section, we are, at the point of the textbook's seventh chapter, "Physiology," delivered from Egyptian servitude, or from the belief that body is physiologically organized and subject to sin, disease, and death.

In consequence, from the human point of view, we are led through a transitional, temporal wilderness as we make our way to our divinely bestowed heritage, the land which is promised to the entire human race as the church, or body, of the one Christ, Truth.

This is why the underlying metaphysical tone at this point is Christ in the aspect of Christianity. Christ, the guiding, governing head,and Christianity, the obedient ,governed body, is immediately the immortal translation of the physiological relationship of brain and body which features so largely in this chapter on physiology, and from which, in our journey heavenward, we are in process of being delivered.

8. Footsteps of Truth

But this journey of ours "from sense to Soul" is not, we realize, one in which we take our own wilfully contrived human footsteps, but rather, it is a journey which is wholly God-determined, and therefore is the unfolding footsteps of Christ, Truth, itself.

Coming from Truth and returning to Truth (by reason of all that the first seven chapters have taught us), the footsteps of our own Christly divinity govern, determine, and actually constitute those of our unfolding humanity. In doing so, they progressively eliminate from our human experience the footsteps of carnality, or animality.

According to the eighth section of "The Apocalypse" (corresponding to this eighth chapter of the textbook) what actually puts this true sense of "footsteps" into operation is the combined ministries of Michael and Gabriel, the archangels of Truth and Love. Like the two pillars of fire original foundations of Truth and Love (in the Apocalypse's opening section) Michael and Gabriel move before us by night and by day, reducing to nothingness the serpentine belief in personal egotism, or that we are capable of acting independently of God by reason of having had a "sea"or a carnal mind origin.

Hence, at the end of the chapter, we stand, like Moses, on the "Horeb height" —on our two unshod feet, our own individual understanding— where the I AM THAT I AM, the one and only Ego of all creation, is revealed. As the final page of the chapter shows, Christian Science is, at this point, understood to be absolute. This signifies that what is taking place is resurrection, and therefore that the last enemy, death, is being overcome.

Published by
Gordon and Estelle Brown
England 1988
© Copyright W. Gordon Brown 1988
ISBN 0 904320 05 7
Printed by Villiers Publications Ltd 26a Shepherds Hill, London N6 5AH