Mind in operation

The book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is packed with Bible quotations, allusions, and references. Author Mary Baker Eddy was a lifelong student of the Scriptures. A biographer writes, “All her life the Bible seems to have formed another dimension of reality for her” (Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p. 127). Mrs. Eddy’s exposition of biblical passages is a particularly rich resource for students of her book, and this week’s Bible Lesson, titled “Mind,” includes several of them.

For example, in Exodus, Moses encounters God at the burning bush (Section 2, citations 5 and 6) and is commissioned to “bring forth … the children of Israel out of Egypt.” But Moses exclaims, “They will not believe me.” God commands him to throw down his shepherd’s staff, and Moses runs away when it turns into a snake. Science and Health explains: “When, led by wisdom to cast down his rod, he saw it become a serpent, Moses fled before it; but wisdom bade him come back and handle the serpent, and then Moses’ fear departed. In this incident was seen the actuality of Science. Matter was shown to be a belief only. The serpent, evil, under wisdom’s bidding, was destroyed through understanding divine Science, and this proof was a staff upon which to lean. The illusion of Moses lost its power to alarm him, when he discovered that what he apparently saw was really but a phase of mortal belief” (p. 321 , cit. 6). 

When Moses pleads his lack of eloquence, God reassures him, “I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say” (Exodus 4:12 , cit. 10). Science and Health shows the outcome: “Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by immortal Mind” (p. 200 , cit. 7).

The Golden Text, which is also the last Bible citation in this Lesson, sums up Moses’ experience: “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7 ).

To understand God as the only Mind, to overcome fear, and to expand our abilities, we, too, must face up to mortal belief, which is opposed to God. Jesus shows us how: “No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house” (Mark 3:27 , cit. 13). Eddy explains: “Mortal mind is ‘the strong man,’ which must be held in subjection before its influence upon health and morals can be removed. This error conquered, we can despoil ‘the strong man’ of his goods,—namely, of sin and disease” (Science and Health, p. 400 , cit. 15).

Two cases of healing make this parable concrete: a woman with “an issue of blood twelve years” (Mark 5:25–34 , cit. 15) is cured when she comes in contact with Christ Jesus, and the son of a nobleman is healed at a distance (John 4:46–53 , cit. 18). Science and Health directly refers to the first healing (see Section 5, p. 86 , cit. 18), and, in another place, comments on the power operative in both cures: “Science can heal the sick, who are absent from their healers, as well as those present, since space is no obstacle to Mind” (p. 179 , cit. 23)—a fact made radiantly clear in this week’s Lesson.