Science and Health
and the
Church Manual

Jesus: Pentecost: Mary Baker Eddy: Today

W. Gordon Brown

PART I SCIENCE AND HEALTH

9. Creation

On account of this absolute standpoint of our own deathless life, creation is to us now on new unconfinable foundations. In the words of the text of the ninth chapter, "Creation," the cosmos wherein we live has "a boundless basis," from which the infinite idea, man, is forever developing itself, "broadening and rising higher and higher."

And the reason we can now view creation in this unbounded way is because, as shown in the ninth section of "The Apocalypse," Michael and Gabriel, manifesting divine Truth and Love, actually, at this point, cast the red dragon out of heaven —out of subjective individual consciousness —having waged what the text calls "the divine method of warfare in Science".

What is really cast out of course is the primeval myth that man himself was ever cast out of God. And therefore it is that the one I AM, the subjective Ego of all creation, is understood by us now to be God and not man.

It is important to realize (as the text of this section clearly states) that to wage the divine method of warfare in Science is identical with using the divine method of creation in Genesis (the method of the seven days of creation) in contrast to using the Adam and Eve method.

In other words, the false method of warfare (defined as "the fatal effects of trying to meet error with error") and the false method of creation (contriving to do things personally with the human mind and the human will) yield to the true method of warfare and the true method of creation, as being one inseparable activity.

This lays the axe at the root of error. It gives us control over animal magnetism. It casts evil into its native nothingness subjectively, individually, instead of our believing we have to battle with it objectively, as if it were some aggressive reality assailing us from 'over there'.

Note that at the point of this ninth chapter, we have entered upon the textbook's third group of four chapters, where the emphasis changes from "Christ" to "Christianity."

10. Science of Being

Seeing creation in the way it is presented in the ninth chapter, we come in the tenth chapter to where this becomes to us the Science of the whole world's being. For now it is established, more radically than ever before, that there are not, and never can be, two opposing creations, two antithetic bases of being, Mind and matter, but one alone, Mind. And therefore only scientific metaphysics (pure Mind) not semi-metaphysics (mixing Mind with matter) is able to overcome the inherent self-destructiveness of physics (pure matter).

In the tenth section of "The Apocalypse" the dragon, having (in the ninth section) been cast from heaven to earth, it is imperative now that he be dealt with on earth. And because of this need the term "Christian Science" is used in the Apocalypse text for the first time. All previous references have either been to "divine Science," or to "Science" by itself without the qualifying adjective.

That is to say, while divine Science (Science in its oneness as it applies to divinity) casts animal magnetism out of individual consciousness subjectively, Christian Science (Science in its diversity as it applies to humanity) proves that animal magnetism has no objective reality anywhere on earth, or as any of the specific material happenings apparently going on in the world. If animal magnetism has no place in divinity (heaven) then it has no place in humanity (earth), for the two are one and inseparable.

The problem of evil's supposed reality out there is handled and resolved by demonstrating (in the words of Jesus) that "the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me" in here (John 14:30). All of which stems from the Principle elucidated in the first chapter, "Prayer," where our outward lives, which we live openly, must be found to be reflections of our inward union and communion with God.

Inconsequence, at the end of "Science of Being", we find ourselves standing on the Platform of infallible divine metaphysics, surveying our world as it is in Science, not the way it appears to be to material sense. Remember that we began to take up this position when, at the end of "Footsteps of Truth," we stood on "the Horeb height where God is revealed," and entertained the vision of an absolute boundless creation.

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