AN ARTICLE FOUND BY LYDA SANDIFER HORD, CSB

[rv.ros...@gmail.com]

"BODY"



by



Mary Baker Eddy



The following article by Mary Baker Eddy is verified-Registrar of
Copyright, Congressional Library. Washington, D. C. January 19,
l886. (This article found by Lyda Sandifer Hord, CSB)



"The term Mind and body I understand to mean God and man; man the
manifestation and embodiment of Mind is the body of Mind; is the
Infinite aggregation of spiritual ideas forever held, controlled,
and governed by the law of Life, harmony, and completeness, so man
was never born, never had a claim, never sinned, never left
heaven, but is spiritual, perfect, harmonious and eternal. This
understanding is the savior to our belief of body, the law of
recovery of every and any claim of error. There is just one God
and one body. I am the image and likeness of God; no mortal mind
can confine this image in a mortal body, harm or touch it in any
way, Mind has set me free from every error. Divine Love fills
every avenue, flows through every channel and removes every
obstruction. Man has no material body through which to express
anything; his body is the body of God.



STATEMENT COPYRIGHTED BY MRS. MARY BAKER G. EDDY AT THE
CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY IN WASHINGTON, D. C. JANUARY 19th, 1886




The term Mind and body literally means God and man, for man is the
expression of Mind and the manifestation of Mind is the embodiment
of Mind. Therefore man is God's body and there is but one God.
Body is therefore the aggregation of spiritual Ideas, forever
controlled and governed by the law of Life, harmonious and
eternal. This understanding of perfect body is the savior of the
belief of body and is the law of recovery to any and every claim
of error.



It seemed a wonderful thing when advanced thinkers began to
perceive certain mental laws and to apply them to the healing of
the body. This mental teaching is that man is the builder or
creator of his body, that he builds or forms his body through his
own thought, that he can change his body by his thought, and
therefore that, if he has built a sick body by wrong thinking or
ignorant thinking, he can build a well body by right thinking,
that by his ignorant inharmonious thought he prevents God from
manifesting, and by his true and harmonious thought he brings God
into manifestation.



Of course, this is a great advance over the old drug system, but
it does not go far enough to satisfy the one who wishes the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. It makes the body a battle ground
for opposing and contending forces, wrong thinking tearing down,
right thinking building up; wrong thinking creating disease, right
thinking destroying disease and bringing in healthy conditions,
for this teaching deals only with the changing conditions of the
personal mentality and not with the changeless state of being, the
changeless Mind, the omnipresence. It is better than the old way,
but it is a hard way, a way of constant battle between good and
evil, of hard work and doubtful results, because it deals with two
powers instead of one.



Practically all metaphysical teachers agree that there is one
presence, therefore one power, but they balk at the next step,
which is that one power must mean one activity. Omnipresence means
the full presence of God as all, that God is everywhere, all the
time. It means that God and his activity is all there is, not only
of the invisible, but of the visible, not only of the formless,
but of the formed. Therefore it must follow that the formed is as
perfect as the formless, the manifest is as perfect as the
unmanifest; for since there is but one unchanging creator, one
activity, one power, one perfect Mind bringing forth its own
perfect substance, it logically follows that all form is
changeless and eternally perfect.



The body is God incarnate, God created and formed. It is God come
forth within Himself and of Himself, and man's beliefs, opinions
and mental concepts are not making God manifest, nor are they
hindering or preventing that manifestation. Man does not create
anything. He only sees that which eternally is, which is God
manifest, and calls it good or evil according to his own
development. Paul tells us, not that we are sufficient of
ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God. Our sufficiency to think is of God; our ability to form
thoughts and opinions is of our own ignorance, our belief in
duality, but our power or sufficiency to think is when we think
with God, as God. From this basis then, we see that man's wrong or
ignorant beliefs and opinions and misinterpretations do not create
or produce conditions in the body or in God's substance anywhere.




Wrong thinking, which is really mental chaos and confusion itself,
has no power to create. It does not create conditions of disease.
The wrong thinking itself, the mental confusion and chaos itself
is the condition, for the condition is wholly and entirely of that
personal mentality. There is no condition in substance, for
substance is God. A condition is not a tangible something which
has been created in the body by a belief of evil or an ignorant
attitude. The definition given in the College Normal Class is
this: A condition is that conception of Truth which is limited and
temporal. It is not something which the limited conception has
created, but the limited conception itself. It has no place
anywhere but in the realm of chaos and confusion, the place of
opinions and conclusions, based on a false premise.



That there is a condition, is all the condition there is. The
inharmonious belief does not create an inharmonious condition. The
belief of lack is the lack. The belief of disease is the disease.
That is why the body seems to change as man's thinking changes. It
is simply as beliefs of disease and imperfections fall away, and
our thinking is corrected and held true to Truth, so that mental
chaos and confusion no longer cloud our vision, we see the body as
God sees it, as it eternally is. Then it stands revealed to us in
its beauty and its glory, the temple, not made with hands. All
that our ignorance does is to affect our vision, or view of
things. It does not change anything that God has made.



We do not handle substance through our personal thought to change
it. We only see according to our thought, our degree of
enlightenment. Walt Whitman said, "The world is jagged and broken
to him who is jagged and broken," to him whose mental realm is
dark. If one's thought is ignorant and unenlightened, it changes
his vision as a cloud of mist. As he looks through the cloud he
sees this world, the body, all things, distorted, abnormal and
wrong. If the mental atmosphere is dark and dense, we see but
dimly and are not able to perceive the perfection that is. Man
does not by mental effort bring God into manifestation, neither
does he through wrong thinking prevent God's manifestation.



God IS and God is manifest, and it is not in the power of
unenlightened personal thought or mental effort to obstruct or
hinder the activity of God, or to mar or to deface the perfection
of God's creation. The only thing that depends upon my thinking,
the only thing that is affected by it, the only thing that
responds to it, is my vision, my realization. I may be ignorant of
the truth of the body, but that does not alter the body itself. It
is whole and perfect now, not because I think it is, but because
it is God manifest. Thinking with God, as God, shows me the
perfection of the body, but the body is just as perfect before I
know it as after.



God's substance does not cease to be perfect just because I am
ignorant of its perfection, nor does it become perfect because I
find out the truth. Its wholeness does not depend upon my degree
of enlightenment. It is eternally perfect because it is eternally
just what God is and there is no power anywhere to make it
anything else. If we are looking at it through a mental fog,
opinions, doubts, fears, confusion, we shall not perceive its
perfection, but that does not change the body itself any more than
looking at the sun through a fog changes the sun. All the thought
that the earth was flat did not flatten the earth, did it? It just
went right on being as it was, and the only thing that changed, or
could change, was man's thought about it. Of course, until he
reached that place, he lived as if this ignorance was the truth.



We hear a lot about spiritualizing the body through thought. This
teaching regards body as physical or material and undertakes to
change matter into Spirit through mental effort. Divine Science,
from the basis of omnipresence, teaches that, since, there is but
one substance and that substance is Spirit, there is no material
body. The body is Spirit now. ''Except the Lord build the house,
they labour in vain that build it." Just so long as you are trying
to spiritualize the body, or to heal the body through your own
mental effort, just so long as you are trying to create health,
you are laboring in vain, for you are trying to do God's part, to
do that which has already been done.



We live in a universe of perfect form. Not only our body, but all
that is formed is literally the body of God and is perfect now. To
believe that the infinite substance has been malformed through the
ignorant mental activity of the individual, and must be redeemed
and perfected through the same activity, is to see not one power,
but two. There is no condition in the body. There is nothing in
the body to be rebuilt or straightened or healed. There is nothing
to change. There is nothing needed but to see God. Stand ye still
and see the salvation of the Lord.



Your spoken word is not needed to make wholeness manifest, for
wholeness is the eternal state of the unseen and the seen, the
unformed and the formed; but it is needed for your unfoldment, for
the unfolding and broadening and deepening of the individual until
he realizes this perfection.



Stop trying to think God into manifestation. God is manifest now.
God's glory and perfection are everywhere visible to him that hath
eyes to see. All that we need to do-and it will keep us busy-is to
train our thought faithfully and persistently in the
acknowledgment of the truth of God's presence, train it to judge
righteous judgment, to see God and God only, to think God and God
only.



Having accepted the omnipresence, hold to it no matter what the
apparent condition may seem to be. In treating yourself, never
deal with appearances or symptoms. Do not center your thought upon
organs or functions. Infinite substance, power, intelligence and
activity are in that place and do not need your suggestions.



Do not try to formulate in thought the perfect body. Stop thinking
about the body or trying to picture it as perfect from your
standpoint. Our highest perception of the body today is far short
of what body really is. Stop tinkering with it mentally. Loose it
and let it go. Just know that it is God's body and that God is
this moment and every moment forming it or bringing it forth
according to His Word, His divine idea. Jesus recognized Lazarus
as an undying manifestation of God.

FINIS


In Unity of Good,


Dave Nolan


1.888.592.4215