Landmarks—they can be important signposts for directions guiding us along our way.   Or they can commemorate significant events in our world, culture, or in our personal experiences.

They often indicate turning points or achievements that stand out in mankind’s development.  Obviously, a word denoting import.

But did you know that Mary Baker Eddy only used the word “landmarks” on two occasions in Science and Health?  And each as complete opposites?

Indeed, one could say that they are ‘landmarks’ in and of themselves!

One of them occurs with some frequency in the weekly Bible Lessons:

Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear, — this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. (p. 324)

While the other is less often cited:

Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, we are helped onward in the march towards righteousness, peace, and purity, which are the landmarks of Science. (p. 323)

In the first instance, she’s speaking of those false landmarks that would keep us from being healed and making the spiritual progress that we need to and deserve to be making.  Those could be any of the plethora of guises that error—evil, mortal mind, the carnal mind: that which claims that there could be another presence or power than God—would impose on our thinking and which, for one reason or another, we’ve accepted as our own thinking and wrongly identified with.

Perhaps, you’ve been dealing with an illness and you keep finding yourself remembering when it supposedly began—including the symptoms, circumstances, and what appear to be the material “reasons” or “causations.”  It could be the memories of an accident that keep coming to thought, or of an illness encountered by a forebear in which the fear of heredity and what it might mean to your well-being tries to assert itself on your consciousness.  Or maybe you’re holding onto the thought of a relationship that didn’t work out, or employment that seems to be eluding you.

Or even believing that the good health you may be enjoying is dependent on material circumstances, practices, hygiene, diet, and exercise instead of your growing recognition of your indestructible and ever-present relationship with your Father-Mother God in which health is entirely based in God—in Spirit.   That’s a subtle one that ensnares a lot of folks!

Each of these examples are false landmarks and they’re ones that we need to let go of—that we need to be glad to leave behind and joyous to see disappear, as Mrs. Eddy advises.

And we do that by focusing on the allness of God and striving to understand and put into practice in our daily lives—moment by moment—those true “landmarks of Science”—“righteousness, peace, and purity.”  The immutable landmarks that point out and scribe our real ever-ascending path to experiencing the kingdom of heaven right here, right now.

The landmarks that inevitably bring healing, reformation, and freedom!