Whatever dims thy sense of truth
Or stains thy purity,
Though light as breath of summer air,
O count it sin to thee.

Preserve the tablet of thy thoughts
From every blemish free,
For our Redeemer’s holy faith
Its temple makes with thee.

And pray of God, that grace be given
To tread the narrow way:
How dark soever it may seem,
It leads to cloudless day.

Matt. 5:1, 27-29

[Jesus] opened his mouth and taught them saying, . . “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who [so much as] looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye makes you stumble and leads you to sin, tear it out and throw it away [that is, remove yourself from the source of temptation].

Gen. 2:7, 16-17

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground . . . . And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat from every tree of the garden; but [only] from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, otherwise on the day that you eat from it, you shall most certainly die.

Gen. 3:1, 4-5, 9-11

Now the serpent was more subtle, skilled in deceit than any living creature . . . [T]he serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

[T]he Lord God called to Adam, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, . . . “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten [fruit] from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

Gen. 49:1, 3-4

“Jacob called to his sons and said, . .. “Reuben, you are my firstborn; My might, the beginning of my strength and vigor, Preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power [that should have been your birthright]. “But unstable and reckless and boiling over like water [in sinful lust], you shall not excel or have the preeminence [of the firstborn], Because you went up to your father’s bed; You defiled it.

1 John 2:15-17

Do not love the world [of sin that opposes God and His precepts], nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust and sensual craving of the flesh and the lust and longing of the eyes and the boastful pride of life [pretentious confidence in one’s resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father, but are from the world. The world is passing away, and with it its lusts [the shameful pursuits and ungodly longings]; but the one who does the will of God and carries out His purposes lives forever.

Ps. 119:67

Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep and honor Your word with loving obedience.

2 Samuel 11:2-6, 8-9, 13-15, 26-27
One evening David got up from his couch and was walking on the [flat] roof of the king’s palace, and from there he saw a woman bathing; and she was very beautiful in appearance. David sent word and inquired about the woman. Someone said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” David sent messengers and took her. When she came to him, he lay with her . . . .The woman conceived; and she sent word and told David, “I am pregnant.”

Then David sent word to Joab, saying, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.”. . . . Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet (spend time at home).” Uriah left the king’s palace, and a gift from the king was sent out after him. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s palace with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. . . . Now David called him [to dinner], and he ate and drank with him, so that he made Uriah drunk; in the evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, and [still] did not go down to his house.

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. He wrote in the letter, “Put Uriah in the front line of the heaviest fighting and leave him, so that he may be struck down and die.” . . . When Uriah’s wife [Bathsheba] heard that her husband Uriah was dead, she mourned for her husband. And when the time of mourning was past, David sent word and had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.

2 Samuel 12:1, 7-10, 13-14, 16, 18, 20, 24
And the Lord sent Nathan [the prophet] to David. He came and said to him . . . Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you as king over Israel, and I spared you from the hand of Saul. . . Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord, doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife. . . . David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has allowed your sin to pass [without further punishment]; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have given [a great] opportunity to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme [Him], the son that is born to you shall certainly die.”

David therefore appealed to God for the child [to be healed]; and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. Then David got up from the ground, washed, anointed himself, changed his clothes, and went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. . . . David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and went to her and lay with her; and she gave birth to a son, and David named him Solomon. And the Lord loved the child.

Ps. 51:1, 2, 6, 10 – A Psalm of David; when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had sinned with Bathsheba.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness . . . And cleanse me from my sin.

Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part [of my heart] You will make me know wisdom. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a right and steadfast spirit within me. . . . Restore to me the joy of Your salvation.

John 5:2, 5, 8-9, 14

Now in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, there is a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda . . . . There was a certain man there who had suffered with a deep-seated and lingering disorder for thirty-eight years. He said to him . . . “Get up; pick up your sleeping pad and walk.” Immediately the man was healed and recovered his strength, and picked up his bed and walked. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

Rev. 12:7-10

[W]ar broke out in heaven, Michael [the archangel] and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated . . . . And the great dragon was thrown down, the age-old serpent who is called the devil and Satan, he who continually deceives and seduces the entire inhabited world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying,

“Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom (dominion, reign) of our God, and the authority of His Christ have come.

SH 593:7

Red Dragon. . . sensuality; subtlety; animal magnetism . . . .

SH 178:18-22

Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensation in matter, is animal magnetism; but this so-called mind, from which comes all evil, contradicts itself, and must finally yield to the eternal Truth, or the divine Mind, expressed in Science.

SH 485:4-7

Science declares that Mind, not matter, sees, hears, feels, speaks. Whatever contradicts this statement is the false sense, which ever betrays mortals into sickness, sin, and death.

SH 480:8-9

Nerves are an element of the belief that there is sensation in matter, whereas matter is devoid of sensation.

SH 277:26

Matter is an error of statement. This error in the premise leads to errors in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters. Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immortal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous.

SH 170:28

The description of man as purely physical, or as both material and spiritual, — but in either case dependent upon his physical organization, — is the Pandora box, from which all ills have gone forth, especially despair. Matter, which takes divine power into its own hands and claims to be a creator, is a fiction, in which paganism and lust are so sanctioned by society that mankind has caught their moral contagion.

SH 6:12-14

Every supposed pleasure in sin will furnish more than its equivalent of pain, until belief in material life and sin is destroyed.

SH 82:31-2

In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a greater development of power, it is wise earnestly to consider whether it is the human mind or the divine Mind which is influencing one.

SH 92:11

In old Scriptural pictures we see a serpent coiled around the tree of knowledge and speaking to Adam and Eve. This represents the serpent in the act of commending to our first parents the knowledge of good and evil, a knowledge gained from matter, or evil, instead of from Spirit. The portrayal is still graphically accurate, for the common conception of mortal man — a burlesque of God’s man — is an outgrowth of human knowledge or sensuality, a mere offshoot of material sense.

SH 532:31

The first impression material man had of himself was one of nakedness and shame. Had he lost man’s rich inheritance and God’s behest, dominion over all the earth? No! This had never been bestowed on Adam.

SH 278:12-16

That matter is substantial or has life and sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, as we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter.

SH 218:25

Resist the temptation to believe in matter as intelligent, as having sensation or power.

SH 490:31

Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and that he is swimming when he is on dry land. Needle-thrusts will not hurt him. A delicious perfume will seem intolerable. Animal magnetism thus uncovers material sense, and shows it to be a belief without actual foundation or validity. Change the belief, and the sensation changes. Destroy the belief, and the sensation disappears.

SH 260:24-1, 22

Selfishness and sensualism are educated in mortal mind by the thoughts ever recurring to one’s self, by conversation about the body, and by the expectation of perpetual pleasure or pain from it; and this education is at the expense of spiritual growth. If we array thought in mortal vestures, it must lose its immortal nature. If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain; for Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit, we find its opposite, matter. . . .

Sensualism evolves bad physical and moral conditions.

SH 241:5-9

Sensual treasures are laid up “where moth and rust doth corrupt.” Mortality is their doom. Sin breaks in upon them, and carries off their fleeting joys. The sensualist’s affections are as imaginary, whimsical, and unreal as his pleasures.

SH 337:6-10

Sensualism is not bliss, but bondage. For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love; the Son must be in accord with the Father, in conformity with Christ.

SH 38:24

Jesus mapped out the path for others. He unveiled the Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love. To those buried in the belief of sin and self, living only for pleasure or the gratification of the senses, he said in substance: Having eyes ye see not, and having ears ye hear not; lest ye should understand and be converted, and I might heal you. He taught that the material senses shut out Truth and its healing power.

SH 142:16

Sensuality palsies the right hand, and causes the left to let go its grasp on the divine.

SH 104:19-22

The medicine of Science is divine Mind; and dishonesty, sensuality, falsehood, revenge, malice, are animal propensities and by no means the mental qualities which heal the sick.

SH 254:16

During the sensual ages, absolute Christian Science may not be achieved prior to the change called death, for we have not the power to demonstrate what we do not understand. But the human self must be evangelized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material, and to work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual.

SH 16:20-23

Only as we rise above all material sensuousness and sin, can we reach the heaven-born aspiration and spiritual consciousness, which is indicated in the Lord’s Prayer and which instantaneously heals the sick.

SH 237:1, 18

A little girl, who had occasionally listened to my explanations, badly wounded her finger. She seemed not to notice it. On being questioned about it she answered ingenuously, “There is no sensation in matter.” Bounding off with laughing eyes, she presently added, “Mamma, my finger is not a bit sore.To prevent the experience of error and its sufferings, keep out of the minds of your children either sinful or diseased thoughts.

SH 62:16-19

Children should be allowed to remain children in knowledge, and should become men and women only through growth in the understanding of man’s higher nature.

SH 242:9

There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality — to have no other consciousness of life — than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses.

SH 76:22-26

The sinless joy, — the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness without a single bodily pleasure or pain, — constitutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual.

Dear Lord and Father of us all,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind;
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up and follow thee.

Breathe through the pulses of desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still small voice of calm.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from us now the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

O God, our Father-Mother, Love,
Purge Thou our hearts from sin,
That in Thy radiancy divine
We may with eyes undimmed define
Thy will, reality.

O God, our Father-Mother, Truth,
Send forth Thy light sublime,
That in its pure and cleansing rays
We may, with thought attuned to praise,
Behold reality.

O God, our Father-Mother, Life,
Reveal in us Thy might,
That henceforth we may live to Thee,
In all our ways reflecting Thee,
And know reality.