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Science and
Health
with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter 12
— Christian Science
Practice
Why art thou cast down, O
my soul [sense]?
And why art thou disquieted
within me?
Hope thou in God; for I shall yet
praise Him,
Who is the health of my
countenance and my God.
— PSALMS.
And these signs shall
follow them that believe: In my
name shall they cast out devils:
they shall speak with new
tongues; they shall take up
serpents; and if they drink any
deadly thing, it shall not hurt
them; they shall lay hands on the
sick, and they shall recover.
— JESUS.
It is related in the seventh
chapter of Luke's Gospel that
Jesus was once the honored guest
of a certain Pharisee, by name
Simon, though he was quite unlike
Simon the disciple. While they
were at meat, an unusual incident
occurred, as if to interrupt the
scene of Oriental festivity. A
"strange woman" came in. Heedless
of the fact that she was debarred
from such a place and such
society, especially under the
stern rules of rabbinical law, as
positively as if she were a
Hindoo pariah intruding upon the
household of a high-caste
Brahman, this woman (Mary
Magdalene, as she has since been
called) approached Jesus.
According to the custom of those
days, he reclined on a couch with
his head towards the table and
his bare feet away from it. It
was therefore easy for the
Magdalen to come behind the couch
and reach his feet. She bore an
alabaster jar containing costly
and fragrant oil, — sandal
oil perhaps, which is in such
common use in the East. Breaking
the sealed jar, she perfumed
Jesus' feet with the oil, wiping
them with her long hair, which
hung loosely about her shoulders,
as was customary with women of
her grade.
Did Jesus spurn the woman? Did
he repel her adoration? No! He
regarded her compassionately. Nor
was this all. Knowing what those
around him were saying in their
hearts, especially his host,
— that they were wondering
why, being a prophet, the exalted
guest did not at once detect the
woman's immoral status and bid
her depart, — knowing this,
Jesus rebuked them with a short
story or parable. He described
two debtors, one for a large sum
and one for a smaller, who were
released from their obligations
by their common creditor. "Which
of them will love him most?" was
the Master's question to Simon
the Pharisee; and Simon replied,
"He to whom he forgave most."
Jesus approved the answer, and so
brought home the lesson to all,
following it with that remarkable
declaration to the woman, "Thy
sins are forgiven."
Why did he thus summarize her
debt to divine Love? Had she
repented and reformed, and did
his insight detect this unspoken
moral uprising? She bathed his
feet with her tears before she
anointed them with the oil. In
the absence of other proofs, was
her grief sufficient evidence to
warrant the expectation of her
repentance, reformation, and
growth in wisdom? Certainly there
was encouragement in the mere
fact that she was showing her
affection for a man of undoubted
goodness and purity, who has
since been rightfully regarded as
the best man that ever trod this
planet. Her reverence was
unfeigned, and it was manifested
towards one who was soon, though
they knew it not, to lay down his
mortal existence in behalf of all
sinners, that through his word
and works they might be redeemed
from sensuality and sin.
Which was the higher tribute
to such ineffable affection, the
hospitality of the Pharisee or
the contrition of the Magdalen?
This query Jesus answered by
rebuking self-righteousness and
declaring the absolution of the
penitent. He even said that this
poor woman had done what his rich
entertainer had neglected to do,
— wash and anoint his
guest's feet, a special sign of
Oriental courtesy.
Here is suggested a solemn
question, a question indicated by
one of the needs of this age. Do
Christian Scientists seek Truth
as Simon sought the Saviour,
through material conservatism and
for personal homage? Jesus told
Simon that such seekers as he
gave small reward in return for
the spiritual purgation which
came through the Messiah. If
Christian Scientists are like
Simon, then it must be said of
them also that they love
little.
On the other hand, do they
show their regard for Truth, or
Christ, by their genuine
repentance, by their broken
hearts, expressed by meekness and
human affection, as did this
woman? If so, then it may be said
of them, as Jesus said of the
unwelcome visitor, that they
indeed love much, because much is
forgiven them.
Did the careless doctor, the
nurse, the cook, and the brusque
business visitor sympathetically
know the thorns they plant in the
pillow of the sick and the
heavenly homesick looking away
from earth, — Oh, did they
know! — this knowledge would
do much more towards healing the
sick and preparing their helpers
for the "midnight call," than all
cries of "Lord, Lord!" The benign
thought of Jesus, finding
utterance in such words as "Take
no thought for your life," would
heal the sick, and so enable them
to rise above the supposed
necessity for physical
thought-taking and doctoring; but
if the unselfish affections be
lacking, and common sense and
common humanity are disregarded,
what mental quality remains, with
which to evoke healing from the
outstretched arm of
righteousness?
If the Scientist reaches his
patient through divine Love, the
healing work will be accomplished
at one visit, and the disease
will vanish into its native
nothingness like dew before the
morning sunshine. If the
Scientist has enough Christly
affection to win his own pardon,
and such commendation as the
Magdalen gained from Jesus, then
he is Christian enough to
practise scientifically and deal
with his patients
compassionately; and the result
will correspond with the
spiritual intent.
If hypocrisy, stolidity,
inhumanity, or vice finds its way
into the chambers of disease
through the would-be healer, it
would, if it were possible,
convert into a den of thieves the
temple of the Holy Ghost, —
the patient's spiritual power to
resuscitate himself. The
unchristian practitioner is not
giving to mind or body the joy
and strength of Truth. The poor
suffering heart needs its
rightful nutriment, such as
peace, patience in tribulation,
and a priceless sense of the dear
Father's loving-kindness.
In order to cure his patient,
the metaphysician must first cast
moral evils out of himself and
thus attain the spiritual freedom
which will enable him to cast
physical evils out of his
patient; but heal he cannot,
while his own spiritual
barrenness debars him from giving
drink to the thirsty and hinders
him from reaching his patient's
thought, — yea, while mental
penury chills his faith and
understanding.
The physician who lacks
sympathy for his fellow-being is
deficient in human affection, and
we have the apostolic warrant for
asking: "He that loveth not his
brother whom he hath seen, how
can he love God whom he hath not
seen?" Not having this spiritual
affection, the physician lacks
faith in the divine Mind and has
not that recognition of infinite
Love which alone confers the
healing power. Such so-called
Scientists will strain out gnats,
while they swallow the camels of
bigoted pedantry.
The physician must also watch,
lest he be overwhelmed by a sense
of the odiousness of sin and by
the unveiling of sin in his own
thoughts. The sick are terrified
by their sick beliefs, and
sinners should be affrighted by
their sinful beliefs; but the
Christian Scientist will be calm
in the presence of both sin and
disease, knowing, as he does,
that Life is God and God is
All.
If we would open their prison
doors for the sick, we must first
learn to bind up the
broken-hearted. If we would heal
by the Spirit, we must not hide
the talent of spiritual healing
under the napkin of its form, nor
bury the morale of
Christian Science in the
grave-clothes of its letter. The
tender word and Christian
encouragement of an invalid,
pitiful patience with his fears
and the removal of them, are
better than hecatombs of gushing
theories, stereotyped borrowed
speeches, and the doling of
arguments, which are but so many
parodies on legitimate Christian
Science, aflame with divine
Love.
This is what is meant by
seeking Truth, Christ, not "for
the loaves and fishes," nor, like
the Pharisee, with the arrogance
of rank and display of
scholarship, but like Mary
Magdalene, from the summit of
devout consecration, with the oil
of gladness and the perfume of
gratitude, with tears of
repentance and with those hairs
all numbered by the Father.
A Christian Scientist occupies
the place at this period of which
Jesus spoke to his disciples,
when he said: "Ye are the salt of
the earth." "Ye are the light of
the world. A city that is set on
an hill cannot be hid." Let us
watch, work, and pray that this
salt lose not its saltness, and
that this light be not hid, but
radiate and glow into noontide
glory.
The infinite Truth of the
Christ-cure has come to this age
through a "still, small voice,"
through silent utterances and
divine anointing which quicken
and increase the beneficial
effects of Christianity. I long
to see the consummation of my
hope, namely, the student's
higher attainments in this line
of light.
Because Truth is infinite,
error should be known as nothing.
Because Truth is omnipotent in
goodness, error, Truth's
opposite, has no might. Evil is
but the counterpoise of
nothingness. The greatest wrong
is but a supposititious opposite
of the highest right. The
confidence inspired by Science
lies in the fact that Truth is
real and error is unreal. Error
is a coward before Truth. Divine
Science insists that time will
prove all this. Both truth and
error have come nearer than ever
before to the apprehension of
mortals, and truth will become
still clearer as error is
self-destroyed.
Against the fatal beliefs that
error is as real as Truth, that
evil is equal in power to good if
not superior, and that discord is
as normal as harmony, even the
hope of freedom from the bondage
of sickness and sin has little
inspiration to nerve endeavor.
When we come to have more faith
in the truth of being than we
have in error, more faith in
Spirit than in matter, more faith
in living than in dying, more
faith in God than in man, then no
material suppositions can prevent
us from healing the sick and
destroying error.
That Life is not contingent on
bodily conditions is proved, when
we learn that life and man
survive this body. Neither evil,
disease, nor death can be
spiritual, and the material
belief in them disappears in the
ratio of one's spiritual growth.
Because matter has no
consciousness or Ego, it cannot
act; its conditions are
illusions, and these false
conditions are the source of all
seeming sickness. Admit the
existence of matter, and you
admit that mortality (and
therefore disease) has a
foundation in fact. Deny the
existence of matter, and you can
destroy the belief in material
conditions. When fear disappears,
the foundation of disease is
gone. Once let the mental
physician believe in the reality
of matter, and he is liable to
admit also the reality of all
discordant conditions, and this
hinders his destroying them. Thus
he is unfitted for the successful
treatment of disease.
In proportion as matter loses
to human sense all entity as man,
in that proportion does man
become its master. He enters into
a diviner sense of the facts, and
comprehends the theology of Jesus
as demonstrated in healing the
sick, raising the dead, and
walking over the wave. All these
deeds manifested Jesus' control
over the belief that matter is
substance, that it can be the
arbiter of life or the
constructor of any form of
existence.
We never read that Luke or
Paul made a reality of disease in
order to discover some means of
healing it. Jesus never asked if
disease were acute or chronic,
and he never recommended
attention to laws of health,
never gave drugs, never prayed to
know if God were willing that a
man should live. He understood
man, whose Life is God, to be
immortal, and knew that man has
not two lives, one to be
destroyed and the other to be
made indestructible.
The prophylactic and
therapeutic (that is, the
preventive and curative) arts
belong emphatically to Christian
Science, as would be readily
seen, if psychology, or the
Science of Spirit, God, was
understood. Unscientific methods
are finding their dead level.
Limited to matter by their own
law, what have they of the
advantages of Mind and
immortality?
No man is physically healed in
wilful error or by it, any more
than he is morally saved in or by
sin. It is error even to murmur
or to be angry over sin. To be
every whit whole, man must be
better spiritually as well as
physically. To be immortal, we
must forsake the mortal sense of
things, turn from the lie of
false belief to Truth, and gather
the facts of being from the
divine Mind. The body improves
under the same regimen which
spiritualizes the thought; and if
health is not made manifest under
this regimen, this proves that
fear is governing the body. This
is the law of cause and effect,
or like producing like.
Homoeopathy furnishes the
evidence to the senses, that
symptoms, which might be produced
by a certain drug, are removed by
using the same drug which might
cause the symptoms. This confirms
my theory that faith in the drug
is the sole factor in the cure.
The effect, which mortal mind
produces through one belief, it
removes through an opposite
belief, but it uses the same
medicine in both cases.
The moral and spiritual facts
of health, whispered into
thought, produce very direct and
marked effects on the body. A
physical diagnosis of disease
— since mortal mind must be
the cause of disease — tends
to induce disease.
According to both medical
testimony and individual
experience, a drug may eventually
lose its supposed power and do no
more for the patient. Hygienic
treatment also loses its
efficacy. Quackery likewise fails
at length to inspire the
credulity of the sick, and then
they cease to improve. These
lessons are useful. They should
naturally and genuinely change
our basis from sensation to
Christian Science, from error to
Truth, from matter to Spirit.
Physicians examine the pulse,
tongue, lungs, to discover the
condition of matter, when in fact
all is Mind. The body is the
substratum of mortal mind, and
this so-called mind must finally
yield to the mandate of immortal
Mind.
Disquisitions on disease have
a mental effect similar to that
produced on children by telling
ghost-stories in the dark. By
those uninstructed in Christian
Science, nothing is really
understood of material existence.
Mortals are believed to be here
without their consent and to be
removed as involuntarily, not
knowing why nor when. As
frightened children look
everywhere for the imaginary
ghost, so sick humanity sees
danger in every direction, and
looks for relief in all ways
except the right one. Darkness
induces fear. The adult, in
bondage to his beliefs, no more
comprehends his real being than
does the child; and the adult
must be taken out of his
darkness, before he can get rid
of the illusive sufferings which
throng the gloaming. The way in
divine Science is the only way
out of this condition.
I would not transform the
infant at once into a man, nor
would I keep the suckling a
lifelong babe. No impossible
thing do I ask when urging the
claims of Christian Science; but
because this teaching is in
advance of the age, we should not
deny our need of its spiritual
unfoldment. Mankind will improve
through Science and Christianity.
The necessity for uplifting the
race is father to the fact that
Mind can do it; for Mind can
impart purity instead of
impurity, strength instead of
weakness, and health instead of
disease. Truth is an alterative
in the entire system, and can
make it "every whit whole."
Remember, brain is not mind.
Matter cannot be sick, and Mind
is immortal. The mortal body is
only an erroneous mortal belief
of mind in matter. What you call
matter was originally error in
solution, elementary mortal mind,
— likened by Milton to
"chaos and old night." One theory
about this mortal mind is, that
its sensations can reproduce man,
can form blood, flesh, and bones.
The Science of being, in which
all is divine Mind, or God and
His idea, would be clearer in
this age, but for the belief that
matter is the medium of man, or
that man can enter his own
embodied thought, bind himself
with his own beliefs, and then
call his bonds material and name
them divine law.
When man demonstrates
Christian Science absolutely, he
will be perfect. He can neither
sin, suffer, be subject to
matter, nor disobey the law of
God. Therefore he will be as the
angels in heaven. Christian
Science and Christianity are one.
How, then, in Christianity any
more than in Christian Science,
can we believe in the reality and
power of both Truth and error,
Spirit and matter, and hope to
succeed with contraries? Matter
is not self-sustaining. Its false
supports fail one after another.
Matter succeeds for a period only
by falsely parading in the
vestments of law.
"Whosoever shall deny me
before men, him will I also deny
before my Father which is in
heaven." In Christian Science, a
denial of Truth is fatal, while a
just acknowledgment of Truth and
of what it has done for us is an
effectual help. If pride,
superstition, or any error
prevents the honest recognition
of benefits received, this will
be a hindrance to the recovery of
the sick and the success of the
student.
If we are Christians on all
moral questions, but are in
darkness as to the physical
exemption which Christianity
includes, then we must have more
faith in God on this subject and
be more alive to His promises. It
is easier to cure the most
malignant disease than it is to
cure sin. The author has raised
up the dying, partly because they
were willing to be restored,
while she has struggled long, and
perhaps in vain, to lift a
student out of a chronic sin.
Under all modes of pathological
treatment, the sick recover more
rapidly from disease than does
the sinner from his sin. Healing
is easier than teaching, if the
teaching is faithfully done.
The fear of disease and the
love of sin are the sources of
man's enslavement. "The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom," but the Scriptures also
declare, through the exalted
thought of John, that "perfect
Love casteth out fear."
The fear occasioned by
ignorance can be cured; but to
remove the effects of fear
produced by sin, you must rise
above both fear and sin. Disease
is expressed not so much by the
lips as in the functions of the
body. Establish the scientific
sense of health, and you relieve
the oppressed organ. The
inflammation, decomposition, or
deposit will abate, and the
disabled organ will resume its
healthy functions.
When the blood rushes madly
through the veins or languidly
creeps along its frozen channels,
we call these conditions disease.
This is a misconception. Mortal
mind is producing the propulsion
or the languor, and we prove this
to be so when by mental means the
circulation is changed, and
returns to that standard which
mortal mind has decided upon as
essential for health. Anodynes,
counter-irritants, and depletion
never reduce inflammation
scientifically, but the truth of
being, whispered into the ear of
mortal mind, will bring
relief.
Hatred and its effects on the
body are removed by Love. Because
mortal mind seems to be
conscious, the sick say: "How can
my mind cause a disease I never
thought of and knew nothing
about, until it appeared on my
body?" The author has answered
this question in her explanation
of disease as originating in
human belief before it is
consciously apparent on the body,
which is in fact the objective
state of mortal mind, though it
is called matter. This mortal
blindness and its sharp
consequences show our need of
divine metaphysics. Through
immortal Mind, or Truth, we can
destroy all ills which proceed
from mortal mind.
Ignorance of the cause or
approach of disease is no
argument against the mental
origin of disease. You confess to
ignorance of the future and
incapacity to preserve your own
existence, and this belief helps
rather than hinders disease. Such
a state of mind induces sickness.
It is like walking in darkness on
the edge of a precipice. You
cannot forget the belief of
danger, and your steps are less
firm because of your fear, and
ignorance of mental cause and
effect.
Heat and cold are products of
mortal mind. The body, when
bereft of mortal mind, at first
cools, and afterwards it is
resolved into its primitive
mortal elements. Nothing that
lives ever dies, and vice
versa. Mortal mind produces
animal heat, and then expels it
through the abandonment of a
belief, or increases it to the
point of self-destruction. Hence
it is mortal mind, not matter,
which says, "I die." Heat would
pass from the body as painlessly
as gas dissipates into the air
when it evaporates but for the
belief that inflammation and pain
must accompany the separation of
heat from the body.
Chills and heat are often the
form in which fever manifests
itself. Change the mental state,
and the chills and fever
disappear. The old-school
physician proves this when his
patient says, "I am better," but
the patient believes that matter,
not mind, has helped him. The
Christian Scientist demonstrates
that divine Mind heals, while the
hypnotist dispossesses the
patient of his individuality in
order to control him. No person
is benefited by yielding his
mentality to any mental despotism
or malpractice. All unscientific
mental practice is erroneous and
powerless, and should be
understood and so rendered
fruitless. The genuine Christian
Scientist is adding to his
patient's mental and moral power,
and is increasing his patient's
spirituality while restoring him
physically through divine
Love.
Palsy is a belief that matter
governs mortals, and can paralyze
the body, making certain portions
of it motionless. Destroy the
belief, show mortal mind that
muscles have no power to be lost,
for Mind is supreme, and you cure
the palsy.
Consumptive patients always
show great hopefulness and
courage, even when they are
supposed to be in hopeless
danger. This state of mind seems
anomalous except to the expert in
Christian Science. This mental
state is not understood, simply
because it is a stage of fear so
excessive that it amounts to
fortitude. The belief in
consumption presents to mortal
thought a hopeless state, an
image more terrifying than that
of most other diseases. The
patient turns involuntarily from
the contemplation of it, but
though unacknowledged, the latent
fear and the despair of recovery
remain in thought.
Just so is it with the
greatest sin. It is the most
subtle, and does its work almost
self-deceived. The diseases
deemed dangerous sometimes come
from the most hidden, undefined,
and insidious beliefs. The pallid
invalid, whom you declare to be
wasting away with consumption of
the blood, should be told that
blood never gave life and can
never take it away, — that
Life is Spirit, and that there is
more life and immortality in one
good motive and act, than in all
the blood which ever flowed
through mortal veins and
simulated a corporeal sense of
life.
If the body is material, it
cannot, for that very reason,
suffer with a fever. Because the
so-called material body is a
mental concept and governed by
mortal mind, it manifests only
what that so-called mind
expresses. Therefore the
efficient remedy is to destroy
the patient's false belief by
both silently and audibly arguing
the true facts in regard to
harmonious being, —
representing man as healthy
instead of diseased, and showing
that it is impossible for matter
to suffer, to feel pain or heat,
to be thirsty or sick. Destroy
fear, and you end fever. Some
people, mistaught as to
Mindscience, inquire when it will
be safe to check a fever. Know
that in Science you cannot check
a fever after admitting that it
must have its course. To fear and
admit the power of disease, is to
paralyze mental and scientific
demonstration.
If your patient believes in
taking cold, mentally convince
him that matter cannot take cold,
and that thought governs this
liability. If grief causes
suffering, convince the sufferer
that affliction is often the
source of joy, and that he should
rejoice always in ever-present
Love.
Invalids flee to tropical
climates in order to save their
lives, but they come back no
better than when they went away.
Then is the time to cure them
through Christian Science, and
prove that they can be healthy in
all climates, when their fear of
climate is exterminated.
Through different states of
mind, the body becomes suddenly
weak or abnormally strong,
showing mortal mind to be the
producer of strength or weakness.
A sudden joy or grief has caused
what is termed instantaneous
death. Because a belief
originates unseen, the mental
state should be continually
watched that it may not produce
blindly its bad effects. The
author never knew a patient who
did not recover when the belief
of the disease had gone. Remove
the leading error or governing
fear of this lower so-called
mind, and you remove the cause of
all disease as well as the morbid
or excited action of any organ.
You also remove in this way what
are termed organic diseases as
readily as functional
difficulties.
The cause of all so-called
disease is mental, a mortal fear,
a mistaken belief or conviction
of the necessity and power of
ill-health; also a fear that Mind
is helpless to defend the life of
man and incompetent to control
it. Without this ignorant human
belief, any circumstance is of
itself powerless to produce
suffering. It is latent belief in
disease, as well as the fear of
disease, which associates
sickness with certain
circumstances and causes the two
to appear conjoined, even as
poetry and music are reproduced
in union by human memory. Disease
has no intelligence. Unwittingly
you sentence yourself to suffer.
The understanding of this will
enable you to commute this
self-sentence, and meet every
circumstance with truth. Disease
is less than mind, and Mind can
control it.
Without the so-called human
mind, there can be no
inflammatory nor torpid action of
the system. Remove the error, and
you destroy its effects. By
looking a tiger fearlessly in the
eye, Sir Charles Napier sent it
cowering back into the jungle. An
animal may infuriate another by
looking it in the eye, and both
will fight for nothing. A man's
gaze, fastened fearlessly on a
ferocious beast, often causes the
beast to retreat in terror. This
latter occurrence represents the
power of Truth over error, —
the might of intelligence
exercised over mortal beliefs to
destroy them; whereas hypnotism
and hygienic drilling and
drugging, adopted to cure matter,
is represented by two material
erroneous bases.
Disease is not an intelligence
to dispute the empire of Mind or
to dethrone Mind and take the
government into its own hands.
Sickness is not a God-given, nor
a self-constituted material
power, which copes astutely with
Mind and finally conquers it. God
never endowed matter with power
to disable Life or to chill
harmony with a long and cold
night of discord. Such a power,
without the divine permission, is
inconceivable; and if such a
power could be divinely directed,
it would manifest less wisdom
than we usually find displayed in
human governments.
If disease can attack and
control the body without the
consent of mortals, sin can do
the same, for both are errors,
announced as partners in the
beginning. The Christian
Scientist finds only effects,
where the ordinary physician
looks for causes. The real
jurisdiction of the world is in
Mind, controlling every effect
and recognizing all causation as
vested in divine Mind.
A felon, on whom certain
English students experimented,
fancied himself bleeding to
death, and died because of that
belief, when only a stream of
warm water was trickling over his
arm. Had he known his sense of
bleeding was an illusion, he
would have risen above the false
belief. Let the despairing
invalid, inspecting the hue of
her blood on a cambric
handkerchief, think of the
experiment of those Oxford boys,
who caused the death of a man,
when not a drop of his blood was
shed. Then let her learn the
opposite statement of Life as
taught in Christian Science, and
she will understand that she is
not dying on account of the state
of her blood, but is suffering
from her belief that blood is
destroying her life. The
so-called vital current does not
affect the invalid's health, but
her belief produces the very
results she dreads.
Fevers are errors of various
types. The quickened pulse,
coated tongue, febrile heat, dry
skin, pain in the head and limbs,
are pictures drawn on the body by
a mortal mind. The images, held
in this disturbed mind, frighten
conscious thought. Unless the
fever-picture, drawn by millions
of mortals and imaged on the body
through the belief that mind is
in matter and discord is as real
as harmony, is destroyed through
Science, it may rest at length on
some receptive thought, and
become a fever case, which ends
in a belief called death, which
belief must be finally conquered
by eternal Life. Truth is always
the victor. Sickness and sin fall
by their own weight. Truth is the
rock of ages, the headstone of
the corner, "but on whomsoever it
shall fall, it will grind him to
powder."
Contending for the evidence or
indulging the demands of sin,
disease, or death, we virtually
contend against the control of
Mind over body, and deny the
power of Mind to heal. This false
method is as though the defendant
should argue for the plaintiff in
favor of a decision which the
defendant knows will be turned
against himself.
The physical effects of fear
illustrate its illusion. Gazing
at a chained lion, crouched for a
spring, should not terrify a man.
The body is affected only with
the belief of disease produced by
a so-called mind ignorant of the
truth which chains disease.
Nothing but the power of Truth
can prevent the fear of error,
and prove man's dominion over
error.
Many years ago the author made
a spiritual discovery, the
scientific evidence of which has
accumulated to prove that the
divine Mind produces in man
health, harmony, and immortality.
Gradually this evidence will
gather momentum and clearness,
until it reaches its culmination
of scientific statement and
proof. Nothing is more
disheartening than to believe
that there is a power opposite to
God, or good, and that God endows
this opposing power with strength
to be used against Himself,
against Life, health,
harmony.
Every law of matter or the
body, supposed to govern man, is
rendered null and void by the law
of Life, God. Ignorant of our
God-given rights, we submit to
unjust decrees, and the bias of
education enforces this slavery.
Be no more willing to suffer the
illusion that you are sick or
that some disease is developing
in the system, than you are to
yield to a sinful temptation on
the ground that sin has its
necessities.
When infringing some supposed
law, you say that there is
danger. This fear is the danger
and induces the physical effects.
We cannot in reality suffer from
breaking anything except a moral
or spiritual law. The so-called
laws of mortal belief are
destroyed by the understanding
that Soul is immortal, and that
mortal mind cannot legislate the
times, periods, and types of
disease, with which mortals die.
God is the lawmaker, but He is
not the author of barbarous
codes. In infinite Life and Love
there is no sickness, sin, nor
death, and the Scriptures declare
that we live, move, and have our
being in the infinite God.
Think less of the enactments
of mortal mind, and you will
sooner grasp man's God-given
dominion. You must understand
your way out of human theories
relating to health, or you will
never believe that you are quite
free from some ailment. The
harmony and immortality of man
will never be reached without the
understanding that Mind is not in
matter. Let us banish sickness as
an outlaw, and abide by the rule
of perpetual harmony, —
God's law. It is man's moral
right to annul an unjust
sentence, a sentence never
inflicted by divine
authority.
Christ Jesus overruled the
error which would impose
penalties for transgressions of
the physical laws of health; he
annulled supposed laws of matter,
opposed to the harmonies of
Spirit, lacking divine authority
and having only human approval
for their sanction.
If half the attention given to
hygiene were given to the study
of Christian Science and to the
spiritualization of thought, this
alone would usher in the
millennium. Constant bathing and
rubbing to alter the secretions
or to remove unhealthy
exhalations from the cuticle
receive a useful rebuke from
Jesus' precept, "Take no thought
. . . for the body." We must
beware of making clean merely the
outside of the platter.
He, who is ignorant of what is
termed hygienic law, is more
receptive of spiritual power and
of faith in one God, than is the
devotee of supposed hygienic law,
who comes to teach the so-called
ignorant one. Must we not then
consider the so-called law of
matter a canon "more honored in
the breach than the observance"?
A patient thoroughly booked in
medical theories is more
difficult to heal through Mind
than one who is not. This
verifies the saying of our
Master: "Whosoever shall not
receive the kingdom of God as a
little child, shall in no wise
enter therein."
One whom I rescued from
seeming spiritual oblivion, in
which the senses had engulfed
him, wrote to me: "I should have
died, but for the glorious
Principle you teach, —
supporting the power of Mind over
the body and showing me the
nothingness of the so-called
pleasures and pains of sense. The
treatises I had read and the
medicines I had taken only
abandoned me to more hopeless
suffering and despair. Adherence
to hygiene was useless. Mortal
mind needed to be set right. The
ailment was not bodily, but
mental, and I was cured when I
learned my way in Christian
Science."
We need a clean body and a
clean mind, — a body
rendered pure by Mind as well as
washed by water. One says: "I
take good care of my body." To do
this, the pure and exalting
influence of the divine Mind on
the body is requisite, and the
Christian Scientist takes the
best care of his body when he
leaves it most out of his
thought, and, like the Apostle
Paul, is "willing rather to be
absent from the body, and to be
present with the Lord."
A hint may be taken from the
emigrant, whose filth does not
affect his happiness, because
mind and body rest on the same
basis. To the mind equally gross,
dirt gives no uneasiness. It is
the native element of such a
mind, which is symbolized, and
not chafed, by its surroundings;
but impurity and uncleanliness,
which do not trouble the gross,
could not be borne by the
refined. This shows that the mind
must be clean to keep the body in
proper condition.
The tobacco-user, eating or
smoking poison for half a
century, sometimes tells you that
the weed preserves his health,
but does this make it so? Does
his assertion prove the use of
tobacco to be a salubrious habit,
and man to be the better for it?
Such instances only prove the
illusive physical effect of a
false belief, confirming the
Scriptural conclusion concerning
a man, "As he thinketh in his
heart, so is he."
The movement-cure —
pinching and pounding the poor
body, to make it sensibly well
when it ought to be insensibly so
— is another medical
mistake, resulting from the
common notion that health depends
on inert matter instead of on
Mind. Can matter, or what is
termed matter, either feel or act
without mind?
We should relieve our minds
from the depressing thought that
we have transgressed a material
law and must of necessity pay the
penalty. Let us reassure
ourselves with the law of Love.
God never punishes man for doing
right, for honest labor, or for
deeds of kindness, though they
expose him to fatigue, cold,
heat, contagion. If man seems to
incur the penalty through matter,
this is but a belief of mortal
mind, not an enactment of wisdom,
and man has only to enter his
protest against this belief in
order to annul it. Through this
action of thought and its results
upon the body, the student will
prove to himself, by small
beginnings, the grand verities of
Christian Science.
If exposure to a draught of
air while in a state of
perspiration is followed by
chills, dry cough, influenza,
congestive symptoms in the lungs,
or hints of inflammatory
rheumatism, your Mind-remedy is
safe and sure. If you are a
Christian Scientist, such
symptoms are not apt to follow
exposure; but if you believe in
laws of matter and their fatal
effects when transgressed, you
are not fit to conduct your own
case or to destroy the bad
effects of your belief. When the
fear subsides and the conviction
abides that you have broken no
law, neither rheumatism,
consumption, nor any other
disease will ever result from
exposure to the weather. In
Science this is an established
fact which all the evidence
before the senses can never
overrule.
Sickness, sin, and death must
at length quail before the divine
rights of intelligence, and then
the power of Mind over the entire
functions and organs of the human
system will be acknowledged. It
is proverbial that Florence
Nightingale and other
philanthropists engaged in humane
labors have been able to undergo
without sinking fatigues and
exposures which ordinary people
could not endure. The explanation
lies in the support which they
derived from the divine law,
rising above the human. The
spiritual demand, quelling the
material, supplies energy and
endurance surpassing all other
aids, and forestalls the penalty
which our beliefs would attach to
our best deeds. Let us remember
that the eternal law of right,
though it can never annul the law
which makes sin its own
executioner, exempts man from all
penalties but those due for
wrong-doing.
Constant toil, deprivations,
exposures, and all untoward
conditions, if without
sin, can be experienced
without suffering. Whatever it is
your duty to do, you can do
without harm to yourself. If you
sprain the muscles or wound the
flesh, your remedy is at hand.
Mind decides whether or not the
flesh shall be discolored,
painful, swollen, and
inflamed.
You say that you have not
slept well or have overeaten. You
are a law unto yourself. Saying
this and believing it, you will
suffer in proportion to your
belief and fear. Your sufferings
are not the penalty for having
broken a law of matter, for it is
a law of mortal mind which you
have disobeyed. You say or think,
because you have partaken of salt
fish, that you must be thirsty,
and you are thirsty accordingly,
while the opposite belief would
produce the opposite result.
Any supposed information,
coming from the body or from
inert matter as if either were
intelligent, is an illusion of
mortal mind, — one of its
dreams. Realize that the evidence
of the senses is not to be
accepted in the case of sickness,
any more than it is in the case
of sin.
Expose the body to certain
temperatures, and belief says
that you may catch cold and have
catarrh; but no such result
occurs without mind to demand it
and produce it. So long as
mortals declare that certain
states of the atmosphere produce
catarrh, fever, rheumatism, or
consumption, those effects will
follow, — not because of the
climate, but on account of the
belief. The author has in too
many instances healed disease
through the action of Truth on
the minds of mortals, and the
corresponding effects of Truth on
the body, not to know that this
is so.
A blundering despatch,
mistakenly announcing the death
of a friend, occasions the same
grief that the friend's real
death would bring. You think that
your anguish is occasioned by
your loss. Another despatch,
correcting the mistake, heals
your grief, and you learn that
your suffering was merely the
result of your belief. Thus it is
with all sorrow, sickness, and
death. You will learn at length
that there is no cause for grief,
and divine wisdom will then be
understood. Error, not Truth,
produces all the suffering on
earth.
If a Christian Scientist had
said, while you were laboring
under the influence of the belief
of grief, "Your sorrow is without
cause," you would not have
understood him, although the
correctness of the assertion
might afterwards be proved to
you. So, when our friends pass
from our sight and we lament,
that lamentation is needless and
causeless. We shall perceive this
to be true when we grow into the
understanding of Life, and know
that there is no death.
Because mortal mind is kept
active, must it pay the penalty
in a softened brain? Who dares to
say that actual Mind can be
overworked? When we reach our
limits of mental endurance, we
conclude that intellectual labor
has been carried sufficiently
far; but when we realize that
immortal Mind is ever active, and
that spiritual energies can
neither wear out nor can
so-called material law trespass
upon God-given powers and
resources, we are able to rest in
Truth, refreshed by the
assurances of immortality,
opposed to mortality.
Our thinkers do not die early
because they faithfully perform
the natural functions of being.
If printers and authors have the
shortest span of earthly
existence, it is not because they
occupy the most important posts
and perform the most vital
functions in society. That man
does not pay the severest penalty
who does the most good. By
adhering to the realities of
eternal existence, — instead
of reading disquisitions on the
inconsistent supposition that
death comes in obedience to the
law of life, and that God
punishes man for doing good,
— one cannot suffer as the
result of any labor of love, but
grows stronger because of it. It
is a law of so-called mortal
mind, misnamed matter, which
causes all things discordant.
The history of Christianity
furnishes sublime proofs of the
supporting influence and
protecting power bestowed on man
by his heavenly Father,
omnipotent Mind, who gives man
faith and understanding whereby
to defend himself, not only from
temptation, but from bodily
suffering.
The Christian martyrs were
prophets of Christian Science.
Through the uplifting and
consecrating power of divine
Truth, they obtained a victory
over the corporeal senses, a
victory which Science alone can
explain. Stolidity, which is a
resisting state of mortal mind,
suffers less, only because it
knows less of material law.
The Apostle John testified to
the divine basis of Christian
Science, when dire inflictions
failed to destroy his body.
Idolaters, believing in more than
one mind, had "gods many," and
thought that they could kill the
body with matter, independently
of mind.
Admit the common hypothesis
that food is the nutriment of
life, and there follows the
necessity for another admission
in the opposite direction, —
that food has power to destroy
Life, God, through a deficiency
or an excess, a quality or a
quantity. This is a specimen of
the ambiguous nature of all
material health-theories. They
are self-contradictory and
self-destructive, constituting a
"kingdom divided against itself,"
which is "brought to desolation."
If food was prepared by Jesus for
his disciples, it cannot destroy
life.
The fact is, food does not
affect the absolute Life of man,
and this becomes self-evident,
when we learn that God is our
Life. Because sin and sickness
are not qualities of Soul, or
Life, we have hope in
immortality; but it would be
foolish to venture beyond our
present understanding, foolish to
stop eating until we gain
perfection and a clear
comprehension of the living
Spirit. In that perfect day of
understanding, we shall neither
eat to live nor live to eat.
If mortals think that food
disturbs the harmonious functions
of mind and body, either the food
or this thought must be dispensed
with, for the penalty is coupled
with the belief. Which shall it
be? If this decision be left to
Christian Science, it will be
given in behalf of the control of
Mind over this belief and every
erroneous belief, or material
condition. The less we know or
think about hygiene, the less we
are predisposed to sickness.
Recollect that it is not the
nerves, not matter, but mortal
mind, which reports food as
undigested. Matter does not
inform you of bodily
derangements; it is supposed to
do so. This pseudo-mental
testimony can be destroyed only
by the better results of Mind's
opposite evidence.
Our dietetic theories first
admit that food sustains the life
of man, and then discuss the
certainty that food can kill man.
This false reasoning is rebuked
in Scripture by the metaphors
about the fount and stream, the
tree and its fruit, and the
kingdom divided against itself.
If God has, as prevalent theories
maintain, instituted laws that
food shall support human life, He
cannot annul these regulations by
an opposite law that food shall
be inimical to existence.
Materialists contradict their
own statements. Their belief in
material laws and in penalties
for their infraction is the
ancient error that there is
fraternity between pain and
pleasure, good and evil, God and
Satan. This belief totters to its
falling before the battle-axe of
Science.
A case of convulsions,
produced by indigestion, came
under my observation. In her
belief the woman had chronic
liver-complaint, and was then
suffering from a complication of
symptoms connected with this
belief. I cured her in a few
minutes. One instant she spoke
despairingly of herself. The next
minute she said, "My food is all
digested, and I should like
something more to eat."
We cannot deny that Life is
self-sustained, and we should
never deny the everlasting
harmony of Soul, simply because,
to the mortal senses, there is
seeming discord. It is our
ignorance of God, the divine
Principle, which produces
apparent discord, and the right
understanding of Him restores
harmony. Truth will at length
compel us all to exchange the
pleasures and pains of sense for
the joys of Soul.
When the first symptoms of
disease appear, dispute the
testimony of the material senses
with divine Science. Let your
higher sense of justice destroy
the false process of mortal
opinions which you name law, and
then you will not be confined to
a sick-room nor laid upon a bed
of suffering in payment of the
last farthing, the last penalty
demanded by error. "Agree with
thine adversary quickly, whiles
thou art in the way with him."
Suffer no claim of sin or of
sickness to grow upon the
thought. Dismiss it with an
abiding conviction that it is
illegitimate, because you know
that God is no more the author of
sickness than He is of sin. You
have no law of His to support the
necessity either of sin or
sickness, but you have divine
authority for denying that
necessity and healing the
sick.
"Agree to disagree" with
approaching symptoms of chronic
or acute disease, whether it is
cancer, consumption, or smallpox.
Meet the incipient stages of
disease with as powerful mental
opposition as a legislator would
employ to defeat the passage of
an inhuman law. Rise in the
conscious strength of the spirit
of Truth to overthrow the plea of
mortal mind, alias matter,
arrayed against the supremacy of
Spirit. Blot out the images of
mortal thought and its beliefs in
sickness and sin. Then, when thou
art delivered to the judgment of
Truth, Christ, the judge will
say, "Thou art whole!"
Instead of blind and calm
submission to the incipient or
advanced stages of disease, rise
in rebellion against them. Banish
the belief that you can possibly
entertain a single intruding pain
which cannot be ruled out by the
might of Mind, and in this way
you can prevent the development
of pain in the body. No law of
God hinders this result. It is
error to suffer for aught but
your own sins. Christ, or Truth,
will destroy all other supposed
suffering, and real suffering for
your own sins will cease in
proportion as the sin ceases.
Justice is the moral
signification of law. Injustice
declares the absence of law. When
the body is supposed to say, "I
am sick," never plead guilty.
Since matter cannot talk, it must
be mortal mind which speaks;
therefore meet the intimation
with a protest. If you say, "I am
sick," you plead guilty. Then
your adversary will deliver you
to the judge (mortal mind), and
the judge will sentence you.
Disease has no intelligence to
declare itself something and
announce its name. Mortal mind
alone sentences itself. Therefore
make your own terms with
sickness, and be just to yourself
and to others.
Mentally contradict every
complaint from the body, and rise
to the true consciousness of Life
as Love, — as all that is
pure, and bearing the fruits of
Spirit. Fear is the fountain of
sickness, and you master fear and
sin through divine Mind; hence it
is through divine Mind that you
overcome disease. Only while fear
or sin remains can it bring forth
death. To cure a bodily ailment,
every broken moral law should be
taken into account and the error
be rebuked. Fear, which is an
element of all disease, must be
cast out to readjust the balance
for God. Casting out evil and
fear enables truth to outweigh
error. The only course is to take
antagonistic grounds against all
that is opposed to the health,
holiness, and harmony of man,
God's image.
The physical affirmation of
disease should always be met with
the mental negation. Whatever
benefit is produced on the body,
must be expressed mentally, and
thought should be held fast to
this ideal. If you believe in
inflamed and weak nerves, you are
liable to an attack from that
source. You will call it
neuralgia, but we call it a
belief. If you think that
consumption is hereditary in your
family, you are liable to the
development of that thought in
the form of what is termed
pulmonary disease, unless Science
shows you otherwise. If you
decide that climate or atmosphere
is unhealthy, it will be so to
you. Your decisions will master
you, whichever direction they
take.
Reverse the case. Stand porter
at the door of thought. Admitting
only such conclusions as you wish
realized in bodily results, you
will control yourself
harmoniously. When the condition
is present which you say induces
disease, whether it be air,
exercise, heredity, contagion, or
accident, then perform your
office as porter and shut out
these unhealthy thoughts and
fears. Exclude from mortal mind
the offending errors; then the
body cannot suffer from them. The
issues of pain or pleasure must
come through mind, and like a
watchman forsaking his post, we
admit the intruding belief,
forgetting that through divine
help we can forbid this
entrance.
The body seems to be
self-acting, only because mortal
mind is ignorant of itself, of
its own actions, and of their
results, — ignorant that the
predisposing, remote, and
exciting cause of all bad effects
is a law of so-called mortal
mind, not of matter. Mind is the
master of the corporeal senses,
and can conquer sickness, sin,
and death. Exercise this
God-given authority. Take
possession of your body, and
govern its feeling and action.
Rise in the strength of Spirit to
resist all that is unlike good.
God has made man capable of this,
and nothing can vitiate the
ability and power divinely
bestowed on man.
Be firm in your understanding
that the divine Mind governs, and
that in Science man reflects
God's government. Have no fear
that matter can ache, swell, and
be inflamed as the result of a
law of any kind, when it is
self-evident that matter can have
no pain nor inflammation. Your
body would suffer no more from
tension or wounds than the trunk
of a tree which you gash or the
electric wire which you stretch,
were it not for mortal mind.
When Jesus declares that "the
light of the body is the eye," he
certainly means that light
depends upon Mind, not upon the
complex humors, lenses, muscles,
the iris and pupil, constituting
the visual organism.
Man is never sick, for Mind is
not sick and matter cannot be. A
false belief is both the tempter
and the tempted, the sin and the
sinner, the disease and its
cause. It is well to be calm in
sickness; to be hopeful is still
better; but to understand that
sickness is not real and that
Truth can destroy its seeming
reality, is best of all, for this
understanding is the universal
and perfect remedy.
By conceding power to discord,
a large majority of doctors
depress mental energy, which is
the only real recuperative power.
Knowledge that we can accomplish
the good we hope for, stimulates
the system to act in the
direction which Mind points out.
The admission that any bodily
condition is beyond the control
of Mind disarms man, prevents him
from helping himself, and
enthrones matter through error.
To those struggling with
sickness, such admissions are
discouraging, — as much so
as would be the advice to a man
who is down in the world, that he
should not try to rise above his
difficulties.
Experience has proved to the
author the fallacy of material
systems in general, — that
their theories are sometimes
pernicious, and that their
denials are better than their
affirmations. Will you bid a man
let evils overcome him, assuring
him that all misfortunes are from
God, against whom mortals should
not contend? Will you tell the
sick that their condition is
hopeless, unless it can be aided
by a drug or climate? Are
material means the only refuge
from fatal chances? Is there no
divine permission to conquer
discord of every kind with
harmony, with Truth and Love?
We should remember that Life
is God, and that God is
omnipotent. Not understanding
Christian Science, the sick
usually have little faith in it
till they feel its beneficent
influence. This shows that faith
is not the healer in such cases.
The sick unconsciously argue for
suffering, instead of against it.
They admit its reality, whereas
they should deny it. They should
plead in opposition to the
testimony of the deceitful
senses, and maintain man's
immortality and eternal likeness
to God.
Like the great Exemplar, the
healer should speak to disease as
one having authority over it,
leaving Soul to master the false
evidences of the corporeal senses
and to assert its claims over
mortality and disease. The same
Principle cures both sin and
sickness. When divine Science
overcomes faith in a carnal mind,
and faith in God destroys all
faith in sin and in material
methods of healing, then sin,
disease, and death will
disappear.
Prayers, in which God is not
asked to heal but is besought to
take the patient to Himself, do
not benefit the sick. An
ill-tempered, complaining, or
deceitful person should not be a
nurse. The nurse should be
cheerful, orderly, punctual,
patient, full of faith, —
receptive to Truth and Love.
It is mental quackery to make
disease a reality — to hold
it as something seen and felt
— and then to attempt its
cure through Mind. It is no less
erroneous to believe in the real
existence of a tumor, a cancer,
or decayed lungs, while you argue
against their reality, than it is
for your patient to feel these
ills in physical belief. Mental
practice, which holds disease as
a reality, fastens disease on the
patient, and it may appear in a
more alarming form.
The knowledge that brain-lobes
cannot kill a man nor affect the
functions of mind would prevent
the brain from becoming diseased,
though a moral offence is indeed
the worst of diseases. One should
never hold in mind the thought of
disease, but should efface from
thought all forms and types of
disease, both for one's own sake
and for that of the patient.
Avoid talking illness to the
patient. Make no unnecessary
inquiries relative to feelings or
disease. Never startle with a
discouraging remark about
recovery, nor draw attention to
certain symptoms as unfavorable,
avoid speaking aloud the name of
the disease. Never say beforehand
how much you have to contend with
in a case, nor encourage in the
patient's thought the expectation
of growing worse before a crisis
is passed.
The refutation of the
testimony of material sense is
not a difficult task in view of
the conceded falsity of this
testimony. The refutation becomes
arduous, not because the
testimony of sin or disease is
true, but solely on account of
the tenacity of belief in its
truth, due to the force of
education and the overwhelming
weight of opinions on the wrong
side, — all teaching that
the body suffers, as if matter
could have sensation.
At the right time explain to
the sick the power which their
beliefs exercise over their
bodies. Give them divine and
wholesome understanding, with
which to combat their erroneous
sense, and so efface the images
of sickness from mortal mind.
Keep distinctly in thought that
man is the offspring of God, not
of man; that man is spiritual,
not material; that Soul is
Spirit, outside of matter, never
in it, never giving the body life
and sensation. It breaks the
dream of disease to understand
that sickness is formed by the
human mind, not by matter nor by
the divine Mind.
By not perceiving vital
metaphysical points, not seeing
how mortal mind affects the body,
— acting beneficially or
injuriously on the health, as
well as on the morals and the
happiness of mortals, — we
are misled in our conclusions and
methods. We throw the mental
influence on the wrong side,
thereby actually injuring those
whom we mean to bless.
Suffering is no less a mental
condition than is enjoyment. You
cause bodily sufferings and
increase them by admitting their
reality and continuance, as
directly as you enhance your joys
by believing them to be real and
continuous. When an accident
happens, you think or exclaim, "I
am hurt!" Your thought is more
powerful than your words, more
powerful than the accident
itself, to make the injury
real.
Now reverse the process.
Declare that you are not hurt and
understand the reason why, and
you will find the ensuing good
effects to be in exact proportion
to your disbelief in physics, and
your fidelity to divine
metaphysics, confidence in God as
All, which the Scriptures declare
Him to be.
To heal the sick, one must be
familiar with the great verities
of being. Mortals are no more
material in their waking hours
than when they act, walk, see,
hear, enjoy, or suffer in dreams.
We can never treat mortal mind
and matter separately, because
they combine as one. Give up the
belief that mind is, even
temporarily, compressed within
the skull, and you will quickly
become more manly or womanly. You
will understand yourself and your
Maker better than before.
Sometimes Jesus called a
disease by name, as when he said
to the epileptic boy, "Thou dumb
and deaf spirit, I charge thee,
come out of him, and enter no
more into him." It is added that
"the spirit [error]
cried, and rent him sore and came
out of him, and he was as one
dead," — clear evidence that
the malady was not material.
These instances show the
concessions which Jesus was
willing to make to the popular
ignorance of spiritual Life-laws.
Often he gave no name to the
distemper he cured. To the
synagogue ruler's daughter, whom
they called dead but of whom he
said, "she is not dead, but
sleepeth," he simply said,
"Damsel, I say unto thee, arise!"
To the sufferer with the withered
hand he said, "Stretch forth
thine hand," and it "was restored
whole, like as the other."
Homoeopathic remedies,
sometimes not containing a
particle of medicine, are known
to relieve the symptoms of
disease. What produces the
change? It is the faith of the
doctor and the patient, which
reduces self-inflicted sufferings
and produces a new effect upon
the body. In like manner destroy
the illusion of pleasure in
intoxication, and the desire for
strong drink is gone. Appetite
and disease reside in mortal
mind, not in matter.
So also faith, cooperating
with a belief in the healing
effects of time and medication,
will soothe fear and change the
belief of disease to a belief of
health. Even a blind faith
removes bodily ailments for a
season, but hypnotism changes
such ills into new and more
difficult forms of disease. The
Science of Mind must come to the
rescue, to work a radical cure.
Then we understand the process.
The great fact remains that evil
is not mind. Evil has no power,
no intelligence, for God is good,
and therefore good is infinite,
is All.
You say that certain material
combinations produce disease; but
if the material body causes
disease, can matter cure what
matter has caused? Mortal mind
prescribes the drug, and
administers it. Mortal mind plans
the exercise, and puts the body
through certain motions. No
gastric gas accumulates, not a
secretion nor combination can
operate, apart from the action of
mortal thought, alias
mortal mind.
So-called mortal mind sends
its despatches over its body, but
this so-called mind is both the
service and message of this
telegraphy. Nerves are unable to
talk, and matter can return no
answer to immortal Mind. If Mind
is the only actor, how can
mechanism be automatic? Mortal
mind perpetuates its own thought.
It constructs a machine, manages
it, and then calls it material. A
mill at work or the action of a
water-wheel is but a derivative
from, and continuation of, the
primitive mortal mind. Without
this force the body is devoid of
action, and this deadness shows
that so-called mortal life is
mortal mind, not matter.
Scientifically speaking, there
is no mortal mind out of which to
make material beliefs, springing
from illusion. This misnamed mind
is not an entity. It is only a
false sense of matter, since
matter is not sensible. The one
Mind, God, contains no mortal
opinions. All that is real is
included in this immortal
Mind.
Our Master asked: "How can one
enter into a strong man's house
and spoil his goods, except he
first bind the strong man?" In
other words: How can I heal the
body, without beginning with
so-called mortal mind, which
directly controls the body? When
disease is once destroyed in this
so-called mind, the fear of
disease is gone, and therefore
the disease is thoroughly cured.
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.
Mortals obtain the harmony of
health, only as they forsake
discord, acknowledge the
supremacy of divine Mind, and
abandon their material beliefs.
Eradicate the image of disease
from the perturbed thought before
it has taken tangible shape in
conscious thought, alias
the body, and you prevent the
development of disease. This task
becomes easy, if you understand
that every disease is an error,
and has no character nor type,
except what mortal mind assigns
to it. By lifting thought above
error, or disease, and contending
persistently for truth, you
destroy error.
When we remove disease by
addressing the disturbed mind,
giving no heed to the body, we
prove that thought alone creates
the suffering. Mortal mind rules
all that is mortal. We see in the
body the images of this mind,
even as in optics we see painted
on the retina the image which
becomes visible to the senses.
The action of so-called mortal
mind must be destroyed by the
divine Mind to bring out the
harmony of being. Without divine
control there is discord,
manifest as sin, sickness, and
death.
The Scriptures plainly declare
the baneful influence of sinful
thought on the body. Even our
Master felt this. It is recorded
that in certain localities he did
not many mighty works "because of
their unbelief" in Truth. Any
human error is its own enemy, and
works against itself; it does
nothing in the right direction
and much in the wrong. If
so-called mind is cherishing evil
passions and malicious purposes,
it is not a healer, but it
engenders disease and death.
If faith in the truth of
being, which you impart mentally
while destroying error, causes
chemicalization (as when an
alkali is destroying an acid), it
is because the truth of being
must transform the error to the
end of producing a higher
manifestation. This fermentation
should not aggravate the disease,
but should be as painless to man
as to a fluid, since matter has
no sensation and mortal mind only
feels and sees materially.
What I term
chemicalization is the
upheaval produced when immortal
Truth is destroying erroneous
mortal belief. Mental
chemicalization brings sin and
sickness to the surface, forcing
impurities to pass away, as is
the case with a fermenting
fluid.
The only effect produced by
medicine is dependent upon mental
action. If the mind were parted
from the body, could you produce
any effect upon the brain or body
by applying the drug to either?
Would the drug remove paralysis,
affect organization, or restore
will and action to cerebrum and
cerebellum?
Until the advancing age admits
the efficacy and supremacy of
Mind, it is better for Christian
Scientists to leave surgery and
the adjustment of broken bones
and dislocations to the fingers
of a surgeon, while the mental
healer confines himself chiefly
to mental reconstruction and to
the prevention of inflammation.
Christian Science is always the
most skilful surgeon, but surgery
is the branch of its healing
which will be last acknowledged.
However, it is but just to say
that the author has already in
her possession well-authenticated
records of the cure, by herself
and her students through mental
surgery alone, of broken bones,
dislocated joints, and spinal
vertebrae.
The time approaches when
mortal mind will forsake its
corporeal, structural, and
material basis, when immortal
Mind and its formations will be
apprehended in Science, and
material beliefs will not
interfere with spiritual facts.
Man is indestructible and
eternal. Sometime it will be
learned that mortal mind
constructs the mortal body with
this mind's own mortal materials.
In Science, no breakage nor
dislocation can really occur. You
say that accidents, injuries, and
disease kill man, but this is not
true. The life of man is Mind.
The material body manifests only
what mortal mind believes,
whether it be a broken bone,
disease, or sin.
We say that one human mind can
influence another and in this way
affect the body, but we rarely
remember that we govern our own
bodies. The error, mesmerism
— or hypnotism, to use the
recent term — illustrates
the fact just stated. The
operator would make his subjects
believe that they cannot act
voluntarily and handle themselves
as they should do. If they yield
to this influence, it is because
their belief is not better
instructed by spiritual
understanding. Hence the proof
that hypnotism is not scientific;
Science cannot produce both
disorder and order. The
involuntary pleasure or pain of
the person under hypnotic control
is proved to be a belief without
a real cause.
So the sick through their
beliefs have induced their own
diseased conditions. The great
difference between voluntary and
involuntary mesmerism is that
voluntary mesmerism is induced
consciously and should and does
cause the perpetrator to suffer,
while self-mesmerism is induced
unconsciously and by his mistake
a man is often instructed. In the
first instance it is understood
that the difficulty is a mental
illusion, while in the second it
is believed that the misfortune
is a material effect. The human
mind is employed to remove the
illusion in one case, but matter
is appealed to in the other. In
reality, both have their origin
in the human mind, and can be
healed only by the divine
Mind.
You command the situation if
you understand that mortal
existence is a state of
self-deception and not the truth
of being. Mortal mind is
constantly producing on mortal
body the results of false
opinions; and it will continue to
do so, until mortal error is
deprived of its imaginary powers
by Truth, which sweeps away the
gossamer web of mortal illusion.
The most Christian state is one
of rectitude and spiritual
understanding, and this is best
adapted for healing the sick.
Never conjure up some new
discovery from dark forebodings
regarding disease and then
acquaint your patient with
it.
The mortal so-called mind
produces all that is unlike the
immortal Mind. The human mind
determines the nature of a case,
and the practitioner improves or
injures the case in proportion to
the truth or error which
influences his conclusions. The
mental conception and development
of disease are not understood by
the patient, but the physician
should be familiar with mental
action and its effect in order to
judge the case according to
Christian Science.
If a man is an inebriate, a
slave to tobacco, or the special
servant of any one of the myriad
forms of sin, meet and destroy
these errors with the truth of
being, — by exhibiting to
the wrong-doer the suffering
which his submission to such
habits brings, and by convincing
him that there is no real
pleasure in false appetites. A
corrupt mind is manifested in a
corrupt body. Lust, malice, and
all sorts of evil are diseased
beliefs, and you can destroy them
only by destroying the wicked
motives which produce them. If
the evil is over in the repentant
mortal mind, while its effects
still remain on the individual,
you can remove this disorder as
God's law is fulfilled and
reformation cancels the crime.
The healthy sinner is the
hardened sinner.
The temperance reform, felt
all over our land, results from
metaphysical healing, which cuts
down every tree that brings not
forth good fruit. This
conviction, that there is no real
pleasure in sin, is one of the
most important points in the
theology of Christian Science.
Arouse the sinner to this new and
true view of sin, show him that
sin confers no pleasure, and this
knowledge strengthens his moral
courage and increases his ability
to master evil and to love
good.
Healing the sick and reforming
the sinner are one and the same
thing in Christian Science. Both
cures require the same method and
are inseparable in Truth. Hatred,
envy, dishonesty, fear, and so
forth, make a man sick, and
neither material medicine nor
Mind can help him permanently,
even in body, unless it makes him
better mentally, and so delivers
him from his destroyers. The
basic error is mortal mind.
Hatred inflames the brutal
propensities. The indulgence of
evil motives and aims makes any
man, who is above the lowest type
of manhood, a hopeless
sufferer.
Christian Science commands man
to master the propensities,
— to hold hatred in abeyance
with kindness, to conquer lust
with chastity, revenge with
charity, and to overcome deceit
with honesty. Choke these errors
in their early stages, if you
would not cherish an army of
conspirators against health,
happiness, and success. They will
deliver you to the judge, the
arbiter of truth against error.
The judge will deliver you to
justice, and the sentence of the
moral law will be executed upon
mortal mind and body. Both will
be manacled until the last
farthing is paid, — until
you have balanced your account
with God. "Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap."
The good man finally can overcome
his fear of sin. This is sin's
necessity, — to destroy
itself. Immortal man demonstrates
the government of God, good, in
which is no power to sin.
It were better to be exposed
to every plague on earth than to
endure the cumulative effects of
a guilty conscience. The abiding
consciousness of wrongdoing tends
to destroy the ability to do
right. If sin is not regretted
and is not lessening, then it is
hastening on to physical and
moral doom. You are conquered by
the moral penalties you incur and
the ills they bring. The pains of
sinful sense are less harmful
than its pleasures. Belief in
material suffering causes mortals
to retreat from their error, to
flee from body to Spirit, and to
appeal to divine sources outside
of themselves.
The Bible contains the recipe
for all healing. "The leaves of
the tree were for the healing of
the nations." Sin and sickness
are both healed by the same
Principle. The tree is typical of
man's divine Principle, which is
equal to every emergency,
offering full salvation from sin,
sickness, and death. Sin will
submit to Christian Science when,
in place of modes and forms, the
power of God is understood and
demonstrated in the healing of
mortals, both mind and body.
"Perfect Love casteth out
fear."
The Science of being unveils
the errors of sense, and
spiritual perception, aided by
Science, reaches Truth. Then
error disappears. Sin and
sickness will abate and seem less
real as we approach the
scientific period, in which
mortal sense is subdued and all
that is unlike the true likeness
disappears. The moral man has no
fear that he will commit a
murder, and he should be as
fearless on the question of
disease.
Resist evil — error of
every sort — and it will
flee from you. Error is opposed
to Life. We can, and ultimately
shall, so rise as to avail
ourselves in every direction of
the supremacy of Truth over
error, Life over death, and good
over evil, and this growth will
go on until we arrive at the
fulness of God's idea, and no
more fear that we shall be sick
and die. Inharmony of any kind
involves weakness and suffering,
— a loss of control over the
body.
The depraved appetite for
alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea,
coffee, opium, is destroyed only
by Mind's mastery of the body.
This normal control is gained
through divine strength and
understanding. There is no
enjoyment in getting drunk, in
becoming a fool or an object of
loathing; but there is a very
sharp remembrance of it, a
suffering inconceivably terrible
to man's self-respect. Puffing
the obnoxious fumes of tobacco,
or chewing a leaf naturally
attractive to no creature except
a loathsome worm, is at least
disgusting.
Man's enslavement to the most
relentless masters —
passion, selfishness, envy,
hatred, and revenge — is
conquered only by a mighty
struggle. Every hour of delay
makes the struggle more severe.
If man is not victorious over the
passions, they crush out
happiness, health, and manhood.
Here Christian Science is the
sovereign panacea, giving
strength to the weakness of
mortal mind, — strength from
the immortal and omnipotent Mind,
— and lifting humanity above
itself into purer desires, even
into spiritual power and
good-will to man.
Let the slave of wrong desire
learn the lessons of Christian
Science, and he will get the
better of that desire, and ascend
a degree in the scale of health,
happiness, and existence.
If delusion says, "I have lost
my memory," contradict it. No
faculty of Mind is lost. In
Science, all being is eternal,
spiritual, perfect, harmonious in
every action. Let the perfect
model be present in your thoughts
instead of its demoralized
opposite. This spiritualization
of thought lets in the light, and
brings the divine Mind, Life not
death, into your
consciousness.
There are many species of
insanity. All sin is insanity in
different degrees. Sin is spared
from this classification, only
because its method of madness is
in consonance with common mortal
belief. Every sort of sickness is
error, — that is, sickness
is loss of harmony. This view is
not altered by the fact that sin
is worse than sickness, and
sickness is not acknowledged nor
discovered to be error by many
who are sick.
There is a universal insanity
of so-called health, which
mistakes fable for fact
throughout the entire round of
the material senses, but this
general craze cannot, in a
scientific diagnosis, shield the
individual case from the special
name of insanity. Those
unfortunate people who are
committed to insane asylums are
only so many distinctly defined
instances of the baneful effects
of illusion on mortal minds and
bodies.
The supposition that we can
correct insanity by the use of
purgatives and narcotics is in
itself a mild species of
insanity. Can drugs go of their
own accord to the brain and
destroy the so-called
inflammation of disordered
functions, thus reaching mortal
mind through matter? Drugs do not
affect a corpse, and Truth does
not distribute drugs through the
blood, and from them derive a
supposed effect on intelligence
and sentiment. A dislocation of
the tarsal joint would produce
insanity as perceptibly as would
congestion of the brain, were it
not that mortal mind thinks that
the tarsal joint is less
intimately connected with the
mind than is the brain. Reverse
the belief, and the results would
be perceptibly different.
The unconscious thought in the
corporeal substratum of brain
produces no effect, and that
condition of the body which we
call sensation in matter is
unreal. Mortal mind is ignorant
of itself, — ignorant of the
errors it includes and of their
effects. Intelligent matter is an
impossibility. You may say: "But
if disease obtains in matter, why
do you insist that disease is
formed by mortal mind and not by
matter?" Mortal mind and
body combine as one, and the
nearer matter approaches its
final statement, — animate
error called nerves, brain, mind,
— the more prolific it is
likely to become in sin and
disease-beliefs.
Unconscious mortal mind —
alias matter, brain —
cannot dictate terms to
consciousness nor say, "I am
sick." The belief, that the
unconscious substratum of mortal
mind, termed the body, suffers
and reports disease independently
of this so-called conscious mind,
is the error which prevents
mortals from knowing how to
govern their bodies.
The so-called conscious mortal
mind is believed to be superior
to its unconscious substratum,
matter, and the stronger never
yields to the weaker, except
through fear or choice. The
animate should be governed by God
alone. The real man is spiritual
and immortal, but the mortal and
imperfect so-called "children of
men" are counterfeits from the
beginning, to be laid aside for
the pure reality. This mortal is
put off, and the new man or real
man is put on, in proportion as
mortals realize the Science of
man and seek the true model.
We have no right to say that
life depends on matter now, but
will not depend on it after
death. We cannot spend our days
here in ignorance of the Science
of Life, and expect to find
beyond the grave a reward for
this ignorance. Death will not
make us harmonious and immortal
as a recompense for ignorance. If
here we give no heed to Christian
Science, which is spiritual and
eternal, we shall not be ready
for spiritual Life hereafter.
"This is life eternal," says
Jesus, — is, not
shall be; and then he
defines everlasting life as a
present knowledge of his Father
and of himself, — the
knowledge of Love, Truth, and
Life. "This is life eternal, that
they might know Thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
Thou hast sent." The Scriptures
say, "Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God," showing that Truth is
the actual life of man; but
mankind objects to making this
teaching practical.
Every trial of our faith in
God makes us stronger. The more
difficult seems the material
condition to be overcome by
Spirit, the stronger should be
our faith and the purer our love.
The Apostle John says: "There is
no fear in Love, but perfect Love
casteth out fear. . . . He that
feareth is not made perfect in
Love." Here is a definite and
inspired proclamation of
Christian Science.
MENTAL TREATMENT
ILLUSTRATED
The Science of mental practice
is susceptible of no misuse.
Selfishness does not appear in
the practice of Truth or
Christian Science. If mental
practice is abused or is used in
any way except to promote right
thinking and doing, the power to
heal mentally will diminish,
until the practitioner's healing
ability is wholly lost. Christian
scientific practice begins with
Christ's keynote of harmony, "Be
not afraid!" Said Job: "The thing
which I greatly feared is come
upon me."
My first discovery in the
student's practice was this: If
the student silently called the
disease by name, when he argued
against it, as a general rule the
body would respond more quickly,
— just as a person replies
more readily when his name is
spoken; but this was because the
student was not perfectly attuned
to divine Science, and needed the
arguments of truth for reminders.
If Spirit or the power of divine
Love bear witness to the truth,
this is the ultimatum, the
scientific way, and the healing
is instantaneous.
It is recorded that once Jesus
asked the name of a disease,
— a disease which moderns
would call dementia. The
demon, or evil, replied that his
name was Legion. Thereupon Jesus
cast out the evil, and the insane
man was changed and straightway
became whole. The Scripture seems
to import that Jesus caused the
evil to be self-seen and so
destroyed.
The procuring cause and
foundation of all sickness is
fear, ignorance, or sin. Disease
is always induced by a false
sense mentally entertained, not
destroyed. Disease is an image of
thought externalized. The mental
state is called a material state.
Whatever is cherished in mortal
mind as the physical condition is
imaged forth on the body.
Always begin your treatment by
allaying the fear of patients.
Silently reassure them as to
their exemption from disease and
danger. Watch the result of this
simple rule of Christian Science,
and you will find that it
alleviates the symptoms of every
disease. If you succeed in wholly
removing the fear, your patient
is healed. The great fact that
God lovingly governs all, never
punishing aught but sin, is your
standpoint, from which to advance
and destroy the human fear of
sickness. Mentally and silently
plead the case scientifically for
Truth. You may vary the arguments
to meet the peculiar or general
symptoms of the case you treat,
but be thoroughly persuaded in
your own mind concerning the
truth which you think or speak,
and you will be the victor.
You may call the disease by
name when you mentally deny it;
but by naming it audibly, you are
liable under some circumstances
to impress it upon the thought.
The power of Christian Science
and divine Love is omnipotent. It
is indeed adequate to unclasp the
hold and to destroy disease, sin,
and death.
To prevent disease or to cure
it, the power of Truth, of divine
Spirit, must break the dream of
the material senses. To heal by
argument, find the type of the
ailment, get its name, and array
your mental plea against the
physical. Argue at first
mentally, not audibly, that the
patient has no disease, and
conform the argument so as to
destroy the evidence of disease.
Mentally insist that harmony is
the fact, and that sickness is a
temporal dream. Realize the
presence of health and the fact
of harmonious being, until the
body corresponds with the normal
conditions of health and
harmony.
If the case is that of a young
child or an infant, it needs to
be met mainly through the
parent's thought, silently or
audibly on the aforesaid basis of
Christian Science. The Scientist
knows that there can be no
hereditary disease, since matter
is not intelligent and cannot
transmit good or evil
intelligence to man, and God, the
only Mind, does not produce pain
in matter. The act of yielding
one's thoughts to the undue
contemplation of physical wants
or conditions induces those very
conditions. A single requirement,
beyond what is necessary to meet
the simplest needs of the babe is
harmful. Mind regulates the
condition of the stomach, bowels,
and food, the temperature of
children and of men, and matter
does not. The wise or unwise
views of parents and other
persons on these subjects produce
good or bad effects on the health
of children.
The daily ablutions of an
infant are no more natural nor
necessary than would be the
process of taking a fish out of
water every day and covering it
with dirt in order to make it
thrive more vigorously in its own
element. "Cleanliness is next to
godliness," but washing should be
only for the purpose of keeping
the body clean, and this can be
effected without scrubbing the
whole surface daily. Water is not
the natural habitat of humanity.
I insist on bodily cleanliness
within and without. I am not
patient with a speck of dirt; but
in caring for an infant one need
not wash his little body all over
each day in order to keep it
sweet as the new-blown
flower.
Giving drugs to infants,
noticing every symptom of
flatulency, and constantly
directing the mind to such signs,
— that mind being laden with
illusions about disease,
health-laws, and death, —
these actions convey mental
images to children's budding
thoughts, and often stamp them
there, making it probable at any
time that such ills may be
reproduced in the very ailments
feared. A child may have worms,
if you say so, or any other
malady, timorously held in the
beliefs concerning his body. Thus
are laid the foundations of the
belief in disease and death, and
thus are children educated into
discord.
The treatment of insanity is
especially interesting. However
obstinate the case, it yields
more readily than do most
diseases to the salutary action
of truth, which counteracts
error. The arguments to be used
in curing insanity are the same
as in other diseases: namely, the
impossibility that matter, brain,
can control or derange mind, can
suffer or cause suffering; also
the fact that truth and love will
establish a healthy state, guide
and govern mortal mind or the
thought of the patient, and
destroy all error, whether it is
called dementia, hatred, or any
other discord.
To fix truth steadfastly in
your patients' thoughts, explain
Christian Science to them, but
not too soon, — not until
your patients are prepared for
the explanation, — lest you
array the sick against their own
interests by troubling and
perplexing their thought. The
Christian Scientist's argument
rests on the Christianly
scientific basis of being. The
Scripture declares, "The Lord He
is God [good]; there is
none else beside Him." Even so,
harmony is universal, and discord
is unreal. Christian Science
declares that Mind is substance,
also that matter neither feels,
suffers, nor enjoys. Hold these
points strongly in view. Keep in
mind the verity of being, —
that man is the image and
likeness of God, in whom all
being is painless and permanent.
Remember that man's perfection is
real and unimpeachable, whereas
imperfection is blameworthy,
unreal, and is not brought about
by divine Love.
Matter cannot be inflamed.
Inflammation is fear, an excited
state of mortals which is not
normal. Immortal Mind is the only
cause; therefore disease is
neither a cause nor an effect.
Mind in every case is the eternal
God, good. Sin, disease, and
death have no foundations in
Truth. Inflammation as a mortal
belief quickens or impedes the
action of the system, because
thought moves quickly or slowly,
leaps or halts when it
contemplates unpleasant things,
or when the individual looks upon
some object which he dreads.
Inflammation never appears in a
part which mortal thought does
not reach. That is why opiates
relieve inflammation. They quiet
the thought by inducing
stupefaction and by resorting to
matter instead of to Mind.
Opiates do not remove the pain in
any scientific sense. They only
render mortal mind temporarily
less fearful, till it can master
an erroneous belief.
Note how thought makes the
face pallid. It either retards
the circulation or quickens it,
causing a pale or flushed cheek.
In the same way thought increases
or diminishes the secretions, the
action of the lungs, of the
bowels, and of the heart. The
muscles, moving quickly or slowly
and impelled or palsied by
thought, represent the action of
all the organs of the human
system, including brain and
viscera. To remove the error
producing disorder, you must calm
and instruct mortal mind with
immortal Truth.
Etherization will apparently
cause the body to disappear.
Before the thoughts are fully at
rest, the limbs will vanish from
consciousness. Indeed, the whole
frame will sink from sight along
with surrounding objects, leaving
the pain standing forth as
distinctly as a mountain-peak, as
if it were a separate bodily
member. At last the agony also
vanishes. This process shows the
pain to be in the mind, for the
inflammation is not suppressed;
and the belief of pain will
presently return, unless the
mental image occasioning the pain
be removed by recognizing the
truth of being.
A hypodermic injection of
morphine is administered to a
patient, and in twenty minutes
the sufferer is quietly asleep.
To him there is no longer any
pain. Yet any physician —
allopathic, homoeopathic,
botanic, eclectic — will
tell you that the troublesome
material cause is unremoved, and
that when the soporific influence
of the opium is exhausted, the
patient will find himself in the
same pain, unless the belief
which occasions the pain has
meanwhile been changed. Where is
the pain while the patient
sleeps?
The material body, which you
call me, is mortal mind,
and this mind is material in
sensation, even as the body,
which has originated from this
material sense and been developed
according to it, is material.
This materialism of parent and
child is only in mortal mind, as
the dead body proves; for when
the mortal has resigned his body
to dust, the body is no longer
the parent, even in
appearance.
The sick know nothing of the
mental process by which they are
depleted, and next to nothing of
the metaphysical method by which
they can be healed. If they ask
about their disease, tell them
only what is best for them to
know. Assure them that they think
too much about their ailments,
and have already heard too much
on that subject. Turn their
thoughts away from their bodies
to higher objects. Teach them
that their being is sustained by
Spirit, not by matter, and that
they find health, peace, and
harmony in God, divine Love.
Give sick people credit for
sometimes knowing more than their
doctors. Always support their
trust in the power of Mind to
sustain the body. Never tell the
sick that they have more courage
than strength. Tell them rather,
that their strength is in
proportion to their courage. If
you make the sick realize this
great truism, there will be no
reaction from over-exertion or
from excited conditions. Maintain
the facts of Christian Science,
— that Spirit is God, and
therefore cannot be sick; that
what is termed matter cannot be
sick; that all causation is Mind,
acting through spiritual law.
Then hold your ground with the
unshaken understanding of Truth
and Love, and you will win. When
you silence the witness against
your plea, you destroy the
evidence, for the disease
disappears. The evidence before
the corporeal senses is not the
Science of immortal man.
To the Christian Science
healer, sickness is a dream from
which the patient needs to be
awakened. Disease should not
appear real to the physician,
since it is demonstrable that the
way to cure the patient is to
make disease unreal to him. To do
this, the physician must
understand the unreality of
disease in Science.
Explain audibly to your
patients, as soon as they can
bear it, the complete control
which Mind holds over the body.
Show them how mortal mind seems
to induce disease by certain
fears and false conclusions, and
how divine Mind can cure by
opposite thoughts. Give your
patients an underlying
understanding to support them and
to shield them from the baneful
effects of their own conclusions.
Show them that the conquest over
sickness, as well as over sin,
depends on mentally destroying
all belief in material pleasure
or pain.
Stick to the truth of being in
contradistinction to the error
that life, substance, or
intelligence can be in matter.
Plead with an honest conviction
of truth and a clear perception
of the unchanging, unerring, and
certain effect of divine Science.
Then, if your fidelity is half
equal to the truth of your plea,
you will heal the sick.
It must be clear to you that
sickness is no more the reality
of being than is sin. This mortal
dream of sickness, sin, and death
should cease through Christian
Science. Then one disease would
be as readily destroyed as
another. Whatever the belief is,
if arguments are used to destroy
it, the belief must be
repudiated, and the negation must
extend to the supposed disease
and to whatever decides its type
and symptoms. Truth is
affirmative, and confers harmony.
All metaphysical logic is
inspired by this simple rule of
Truth, which governs all reality.
By the truthful arguments you
employ, and especially by the
spirit of Truth and Love which
you entertain, you will heal the
sick.
Include moral as well as
physical belief in your efforts
to destroy error. Cast out all
manner of evil. "Preach the
gospel to every creature." Speak
the truth to every form of error.
Tumors, ulcers, tubercles,
inflammation, pain, deformed
joints, are waking dream-shadows,
dark images of mortal thought,
which flee before the light of
Truth.
A moral question may hinder
the recovery of the sick. Lurking
error, lust, envy, revenge,
malice, or hate will perpetuate
or even create the belief in
disease. Errors of all sorts tend
in this direction. Your true
course is to destroy the foe, and
leave the field to God, Life,
Truth, and Love, remembering that
God and His ideas alone are real
and harmonious.
If your patient from any cause
suffers a relapse, meet the cause
mentally and courageously,
knowing that there can be no
reaction in Truth. Neither
disease itself, sin, nor fear has
the power to cause disease or a
relapse. Disease has no
intelligence with which to move
itself about or to change itself
from one form to another. If
disease moves, mind, not matter,
moves it; therefore be sure that
you move it off. Meet every
adverse circumstance as its
master. Observe mind instead of
body, lest aught unfit for
development enter thought. Think
less of material conditions and
more of spiritual.
Mind produces all action. If
the action proceeds from Truth,
from immortal Mind, there is
harmony; but mortal mind is
liable to any phase of belief. A
relapse cannot in reality occur
in mortals or so-called mortal
minds, for there is but one Mind,
one God. Never fear the mental
malpractitioner, the mental
assassin, who, in attempting to
rule mankind, tramples upon the
divine Principle of metaphysics,
for God is the only power. To
succeed in healing, you must
conquer your own fears as well as
those of your patients, and rise
into higher and holier
consciousness.
If it is found necessary to
treat against relapse, know that
disease or its symptoms cannot
change forms, nor go from one
part to another, for Truth
destroys disease. There is no
metastasis, no stoppage of
harmonious action, no paralysis.
Truth not error, Love not hate,
Spirit not matter, governs man.
If students do not readily heal
themselves, they should early
call an experienced Christian
Scientist to aid them. If they
are unwilling to do this for
themselves, they need only to
know that error cannot produce
this unnatural reluctance.
Instruct the sick that they
are not helpless victims, for if
they will only accept Truth, they
can resist disease and ward it
off, as positively as they can
the temptation to sin. This fact
of Christian Science should be
explained to invalids when they
are in a fit mood to receive it,
— when they will not array
themselves against it, but are
ready to become receptive to the
new idea. The fact that Truth
overcomes both disease and sin
reassures depressed hope. It
imparts a healthy stimulus to the
body, and regulates the system.
It increases or diminishes the
action, as the case may require,
better than any drug, alterative,
or tonic.
Mind is the natural stimulus
of the body, but erroneous
belief, taken at its best, is not
promotive of health or happiness.
Tell the sick that they can meet
disease fearlessly, if they only
realize that divine Love gives
them all power over every
physical action and
condition.
If it becomes necessary to
startle mortal mind to break its
dream of suffering, vehemently
tell your patient that he must
awake. Turn his gaze from the
false evidence of the senses to
the harmonious facts of Soul and
immortal being. Tell him that he
suffers only as the insane
suffer, from false beliefs. The
only difference is, that insanity
implies belief in a diseased
brain, while physical ailments
(so-called) arise from the belief
that other portions of the body
are deranged. Derangement, or
disarrangement, is a word
which conveys the true definition
of all human belief in
ill-health, or disturbed harmony.
Should you thus startle mortal
mind in order to remove its
beliefs, afterwards make known to
the patient your motive for this
shock, showing him that it was to
facilitate recovery.
If a crisis occurs in your
treatment, you must treat the
patient less for the disease and
more for the mental disturbance
or fermentation, and subdue the
symptoms by removing the belief
that this chemicalization
produces pain or disease. Insist
vehemently on the great fact
which covers the whole ground,
that God, Spirit, is all, and
that there is none beside Him.
There is no disease. When
the supposed suffering is gone
from mortal mind, there can be no
pain; and when the fear is
destroyed, the inflammation will
subside. Calm the excitement
sometimes induced by
chemicalization, which is the
alterative effect produced by
Truth upon error, and sometimes
explain the symptoms and their
cause to the patient.
It is no more Christianly
scientific to see disease than it
is to experience it. If you would
destroy the sense of disease, you
should not build it up by wishing
to see the forms it assumes or by
employing a single material
application for its relief. The
perversion of Mind-science is
like asserting that the products
of eight multiplied by five, and
of seven by ten, are both forty,
and that their combined sum is
fifty, and then calling the
process mathematics. Wiser than
his persecutors, Jesus said: "If
I by Beelzebub cast out devils,
by whom do your children cast
them out?"
If the reader of this book
observes a great stir throughout
his whole system, and certain
moral and physical symptoms seem
aggravated, these indications are
favorable. Continue to read, and
the book will become the
physician, allaying the tremor
which Truth often brings to error
when destroying it.
Patients, unfamiliar with the
cause of this commotion and
ignorant that it is a favorable
omen, may be alarmed. If such be
the case, explain to them the law
of this action. As when an acid
and alkali meet and bring out a
third quality, so mental and
moral chemistry changes the
material base of thought, giving
more spirituality to
consciousness and causing it to
depend less on material evidence.
These changes which go on in
mortal mind serve to reconstruct
the body. Thus Christian Science,
by the alchemy of Spirit,
destroys sin and death.
Let us suppose two parallel
cases of bone-disease, both
similarly produced and attended
by the same symptoms. A surgeon
is employed in one case, and a
Christian Scientist in the other.
The surgeon, holding that matter
forms its own conditions and
renders them fatal at certain
points, entertains fears and
doubts as to the ultimate outcome
of the injury. Not holding the
reins of government in his own
hands, he believes that something
stronger than Mind — namely,
matter — governs the case.
His treatment is therefore
tentative. This mental state
invites defeat. The belief that
he has met his master in matter
and may not be able to mend the
bone, increases his fear; yet
this belief should not be
communicated to the patient,
either verbally or otherwise, for
this fear greatly diminishes the
tendency towards a favorable
result. Remember that the
unexpressed belief oftentimes
affects a sensitive patient more
strongly than the expressed
thought.
The Christian Scientist,
understanding scientifically that
all is Mind, commences with
mental causation, the truth of
being, to destroy the error. This
corrective is an alterative,
reaching to every part of the
human system. According to
Scripture, it searches "the
joints and marrow," and it
restores the harmony of man.
The matter-physician deals
with matter as both his foe and
his remedy. He regards the
ailment as weakened or
strengthened according to the
evidence which matter presents.
The metaphysician, making Mind
his basis of operation
irrespective of matter and
regarding the truth and harmony
of being as superior to error and
discord, has rendered himself
strong, instead of weak, to cope
with the case; and he
proportionately strengthens his
patient with the stimulus of
courage and conscious power. Both
Science and consciousness are now
at work in the economy of being
according to the law of Mind,
which ultimately asserts its
absolute supremacy.
Ossification or any abnormal
condition or derangement of the
body is as directly the action of
mortal mind as is dementia or
insanity. Bones have only the
substance of thought which forms
them. They are only phenomena of
the mind of mortals. The
so-called substance of bone is
formed first by the parent's
mind, through self-division. Soon
the child becomes a separate,
individualized mortal mind, which
takes possession of itself and
its own thoughts of bones.
Accidents are unknown to God,
or immortal Mind, and we must
leave the mortal basis of belief
and unite with the one Mind, in
order to change the notion of
chance to the proper sense of
God's unerring direction and thus
bring out harmony.
Under divine Providence there
can be no accidents, since there
is no room for imperfection in
perfection.
In medical practice objections
would be raised if one doctor
should administer a drug to
counteract the working of a
remedy prescribed by another
doctor. It is equally important
in metaphysical practice that the
minds which surround your
patient should not act against
your influence by continually
expressing such opinions as may
alarm or discourage, —
either by giving antagonistic
advice or through unspoken
thoughts resting on your patient.
While it is certain that the
divine Mind can remove any
obstacle, still you need the ear
of your auditor. It is not more
difficult to make yourself heard
mentally while others are
thinking about your patients or
conversing with them, if you
understand Christian Science
— the oneness and the
allness of divine Love; but it is
well to be alone with God and the
sick when treating disease.
To prevent or to cure scrofula
and other so-called hereditary
diseases, you must destroy the
belief in these ills and the
faith in the possibility of their
transmission. The patient may
tell you that he has a humor in
the blood, a scrofulous
diathesis. His parents or some of
his progenitors farther back have
so believed. Mortal mind, not
matter, induces this conclusion
and its results. You will have
humors, just so long as you
believe them to be safety-valves
or to be ineradicable.
If the case to be mentally
treated is consumption, take up
the leading points included
(according to belief) in this
disease. Show that it is not
inherited; that inflammation,
tubercles, hemorrhage, and
decomposition are beliefs, images
of mortal thought superimposed
upon the body; that they are not
the truth of man; that they
should be treated as error and
put out of thought. Then these
ills will disappear.
If the body is diseased, this
is but one of the beliefs of
mortal mind. Mortal man will be
less mortal, when he learns that
matter never sustained existence
and can never destroy God, who is
man's Life. When this is
understood, mankind will be more
spiritual and know that there is
nothing to consume, since Spirit,
God, is All-in-all. What if the
belief is consumption? God is
more to a man than his belief,
and the less we acknowledge
matter or its laws, the more
immortality we possess.
Consciousness constructs a better
body when faith in matter has
been conquered. Correct material
belief by spiritual
understanding, and Spirit will
form you anew. You will never
fear again except to offend God,
and you will never believe that
heart or any portion of the body
can destroy you.
If you have sound and
capacious lungs and want them to
remain so, be always ready with
the mental protest against the
opposite belief in heredity.
Discard all notions about lungs,
tubercles, inherited consumption,
or disease arising from any
circumstance, and you will find
that mortal mind, when instructed
by Truth, yields to divine power,
which steers the body into
health.
The discoverer of Christian
Science finds the path less
difficult when she has the high
goal always before her thoughts,
than when she counts her
footsteps in endeavoring to reach
it. When the destination is
desirable, expectation speeds our
progress. The struggle for Truth
makes one strong instead of weak,
resting instead of wearying one.
If the belief in death were
obliterated, and the
understanding obtained that there
is no death, this would be a
"tree of life," known by its
fruits. Man should renew his
energies and endeavors, and see
the folly of hypocrisy, while
also learning the necessity of
working out his own salvation.
When it is learned that disease
cannot destroy life, and that
mortals are not saved from sin or
sickness by death, this
understanding will quicken into
newness of life. It will master
either a desire to die or a dread
of the grave, and thus destroy
the great fear that besets mortal
existence.
The relinquishment of all
faith in death and also of the
fear of its sting would raise the
standard of health and morals far
beyond its present elevation, and
would enable us to hold the
banner of Christianity aloft with
unflinching faith in God, in Life
eternal. Sin brought death, and
death will disappear with the
disappearance of sin. Man is
immortal, and the body cannot
die, because matter has no life
to surrender. The human concepts
named matter, death, disease,
sickness, and sin are all that
can be destroyed.
If it is true that man lives,
this fact can never change in
Science to the opposite belief
that man dies. Life is the law of
Soul, even the law of the spirit
of Truth, and Soul is never
without its representative. Man's
individual being can no more die
nor disappear in unconsciousness
than can Soul, for both are
immortal. If man believes in
death now, he must disbelieve in
it when learning that there is no
reality in death, since the truth
of being is deathless. The belief
that existence is contingent on
matter must be met and mastered
by Science, before Life can be
understood and harmony
obtained.
Death is but another phase of
the dream that existence can be
material. Nothing can interfere
with the harmony of being nor end
the existence of man in Science.
Man is the same after as before a
bone is broken or the body
guillotined. If man is never to
overcome death, why do the
Scriptures say, "The last enemy
that shall be destroyed is
death"? The tenor of the Word
shows that we shall obtain the
victory over death in proportion
as we overcome sin. The great
difficulty lies in ignorance of
what God is. God, Life, Truth,
and Love make man undying.
Immortal Mind, governing all,
must be acknowledged as supreme
in the physical realm, so-called,
as well as in the spiritual.
Called to the bed of death,
what material remedy has man when
all such remedies have failed?
Spirit is his last resort, but it
should have been his first and
only resort. The dream of death
must be mastered by Mind here or
hereafter. Thought will waken
from its own material
declaration, "I am dead," to
catch this trumpet-word of Truth,
"There is no death, no inaction,
diseased action, overaction, nor
reaction."
Life is real, and death is the
illusion. A demonstration of the
facts of Soul in Jesus' way
resolves the dark visions of
material sense into harmony and
immortality. Man's privilege at
this supreme moment is to prove
the words of our Master: "If a
man keep my saying, he shall
never see death." To divest
thought of false trusts and
material evidences in order that
the spiritual facts of being may
appear, — this is the great
attainment by means of which we
shall sweep away the false and
give place to the true. Thus we
may establish in truth the
temple, or body, "whose builder
and maker is God."
We should consecrate
existence, not "to the unknown
God" whom we "ignorantly
worship," but to the eternal
builder, the everlasting Father,
to the Life which mortal sense
cannot impair nor mortal belief
destroy. We must realize the
ability of mental might to offset
human misconceptions and to
replace them with the life which
is spiritual, not material.
The great spiritual fact must
be brought out that man
is, not shall be,
perfect and immortal. We must
hold forever the consciousness of
existence, and sooner or later,
through Christ and Christian
Science, we must master sin and
death. The evidence of man's
immortality will become more
apparent, as material beliefs are
given up and the immortal facts
of being are admitted.
The author has healed hopeless
organic disease, and raised the
dying to life and health through
the understanding of God as the
only Life. It is a sin to believe
that aught can overpower
omnipotent and eternal Life, and
this Life must be brought to
light by the understanding that
there is no death, as well as by
other graces of Spirit. We must
begin, however, with the more
simple demonstrations of control,
and the sooner we begin the
better. The final demonstration
takes time for its
accomplishment. When walking, we
are guided by the eye. We look
before our feet, and if we are
wise, we look beyond a single
step in the line of spiritual
advancement.
The corpse, deserted by
thought, is cold and decays, but
it never suffers. Science
declares that man is subject to
Mind. Mortal mind affirms that
mind is subordinate to the body,
that the body is dying, that it
must be buried and decomposed
into dust; but mortal mind's
affirmation is not true. Mortals
waken from the dream of death
with bodies unseen by those who
think that they bury the
body.
If man did not exist before
the material organization began,
he could not exist after the body
is disintegrated. If we live
after death and are immortal, we
must have lived before birth, for
if Life ever had any beginning,
it must also have an ending, even
according to the calculations of
natural science. Do you believe
this? No! Do you understand it?
No! This is why you doubt the
statement and do not demonstrate
the facts it involves. We must
have faith in all the sayings of
our Master, though they are not
included in the teachings of the
schools, and are not understood
generally by our ethical
instructors.
Jesus said (John viii. 51),
"If a man keep my saying, he
shall never see death." That
statement is not confined to
spiritual life, but includes all
the phenomena of existence. Jesus
demonstrated this, healing the
dying and raising the dead.
Mortal mind must part with error,
must put off itself with its
deeds, and immortal manhood, the
Christ ideal, will appear. Faith
should enlarge its borders and
strengthen its base by resting
upon Spirit instead of matter.
When man gives up his belief in
death, he will advance more
rapidly towards God, Life, and
Love. Belief in sickness and
death, as certainly as belief in
sin, tends to shut out the true
sense of Life and health. When
will mankind wake to this great
fact in Science?
I here present to my readers
an allegory illustrative of the
law of divine Mind and of the
supposed laws of matter and
hygiene, an allegory in which the
plea of Christian Science heals
the sick.
Suppose a mental case to be on
trial, as cases are tried in
court. A man is charged with
having committed liver-complaint.
The patient feels ill, ruminates,
and the trial commences. Personal
Sense is the plaintiff. Mortal
Man is the defendant. False
Belief is the attorney for
Personal Sense. Mortal Minds,
Materia Medica, Anatomy,
Physiology, Hypnotism, Envy,
Greed and Ingratitude, constitute
the jury. The courtroom is filled
with interested spectators, and
Judge Medicine is on the
bench.
The evidence for the
prosecution being called for, a
witness testifies thus:
—
I represent Health-laws. I
was present on certain nights
when the prisoner, or patient,
watched with a sick friend.
Although I have the
superintendence of human affairs,
I was personally abused on those
occasions. I was told that I must
remain silent until called for at
this trial, when I would be
allowed to testify in the case.
Notwithstanding my rules to the
contrary, the prisoner watched
with the sick every night in the
week. When the sick mortal was
thirsty, the prisoner gave him
drink. During all this time the
prisoner attended to his daily
labors, partaking of food at
irregular intervals, sometimes
going to sleep immediately after
a heavy meal. At last he
committed liver-complaint, which
I considered criminal, inasmuch
as this offence is deemed
punishable with death. Therefore
I arrested Mortal Man in behalf
of the state (namely, the body)
and cast him into prison.
At the time of the arrest
the prisoner summoned Physiology,
Materia Medica, and Hypnotism to
prevent his punishment. The
struggle on their part was long.
Materia Medica held out the
longest, but at length all these
assistants resigned to me,
Health-laws, and I succeeded in
getting Mortal Man into close
confinement until I should
release him.
The next witness is called:
—
I am Coated Tongue. I am
covered with a foul fur, placed
on me the night of the
liver-attack. Morbid Secretion
hypnotized the prisoner and took
control of his mind, making him
despondent.
Another witness takes the
stand and testifies: —
I am Sallow Skin. I have
been dry, hot, and chilled by
turns since the night of the
liver-attack. I have lost my
healthy hue and become unsightly,
although nothing on my part has
occasioned this change. I
practise daily ablutions and
perform my functions as usual,
but I am robbed of my good
looks.
The next witness testifies:
—
I am Nerve, the State
Commissioner for Mortal Man. I am
intimately acquainted with the
plaintiff, Personal Sense, and
know him to be truthful and
upright, whereas Mortal Man, the
prisoner at the bar, is capable
of falsehood. I was witness to
the crime of liver-complaint. I
knew the prisoner would commit
it, for I convey messages from my
residence in matter, alias brain,
to body.
Another witness is called for
by the Court of Error and says:
—
I am Mortality, Governor of
the Province of Body, in which
Mortal Man resides. In this
province there is a statute
regarding disease, — namely,
that he upon whose person disease
is found shall be treated as a
criminal and punished with
death.
The Judge asks if by doing
good to his neighbor, it is
possible for man to become
diseased, transgress the laws,
and merit punishment, and
Governor Mortality replies in the
affirmative.
Another witness takes the
stand and testifies: —
I am Death. I was called
for, shortly after the report of
the crime, by the officer of the
Board of Health, who protested
that the prisoner had abused him,
and that my presence was required
to confirm his testimony. One of
the prisoner's friends, Materia
Medica, was present when I
arrived, endeavoring to assist
the prisoner to escape from the
hands of justice, alias nature's
so-called law; but my appearance
with a message from the Board of
Health changed the purpose of
Materia Medica, and he decided at
once that the prisoner should
die.
The testimony for the
plaintiff, Personal Sense, being
closed, Judge Medicine arises,
and with great solemnity
addresses the jury of Mortal
Minds. He analyzes the offence,
reviews the testimony, and
explains the law relating to
liver-complaint. His conclusion
is, that laws of nature render
disease homicidal. In compliance
with a stern duty, his Honor,
Judge Medicine, urges the jury
not to allow their judgment to be
warped by the irrational,
unchristian suggestions of
Christian Science. The jury must
regard in such cases only the
evidence of Personal Sense
against Mortal Man.
As the Judge proceeds, the
prisoner grows restless. His
sallow face blanches with fear,
and a look of despair and death
settles upon it. The case is
given to the jury. A brief
consultation ensues, and the jury
returns a verdict of "Guilty of
liver-complaint in the first
degree."
Judge Medicine then proceeds
to pronounce the solemn sentence
of death upon the prisoner.
Because he has loved his neighbor
as himself, Mortal Man has been
guilty of benevolence in the
first degree, and this has led
him into the commission of the
second crime, liver-complaint,
which material laws condemn as
homicide. For this crime Mortal
Man is sentenced to be tortured
until he is dead. "May God have
mercy on your soul," is the
Judge's solemn peroration.
The prisoner is then remanded
to his cell (sick-bed), and
Scholastic Theology is sent for
to prepare the frightened sense
of Life, God, — which sense
must be immortal, — for
death.
Ah! but Christ, Truth, the
spirit of Life and the friend of
Mortal Man, can open wide those
prison doors and set the captive
free. Swift on the wings of
divine Love, there comes a
despatch: "Delay the execution;
the prisoner is not guilty."
Consternation fills the
prison-yard. Some exclaim, "It is
contrary to law and justice."
Others say, "The law of Christ
supersedes our laws; let
us follow Christ."
After much debate and
opposition, permission is
obtained for a trial in the Court
of Spirit, where Christian
Science is allowed to appear as
counsel for the unfortunate
prisoner. Witnesses, judges, and
jurors, who were at the previous
Court of Error, are now summoned
to appear before the bar of
Justice and eternal Truth.
When the case for Mortal Man
versus Personal Sense is
opened, Mortal Man's counsel
regards the prisoner with the
utmost tenderness. The counsel's
earnest, solemn eyes, kindling
with hope and triumph, look
upward. Then Christian Science
turns suddenly to the supreme
tribunal, and opens the argument
for the defence: —
The prisoner at the bar has
been unjustly sentenced. His
trial was a tragedy, and is
morally illegal. Mortal Man has
had no proper counsel in the
case. All the testimony has been
on the side of Personal Sense,
and we shall unearth this foul
conspiracy against the liberty
and life of Man. The only valid
testimony in the case shows the
alleged crime never to have been
committed. The prisoner is not
proved "worthy of death, or of
bonds."
Your Honor, the lower court
has sentenced Mortal Man to die,
but God made Man immortal and
amenable to Spirit only. Denying
justice to the body, that court
commended man's immortal Spirit
to heavenly mercy, — Spirit
which is God Himself and Man's
only lawgiver! Who or what has
sinned? Has the body or has
Mortal Mind committed a criminal
deed? Counsellor False Belief has
argued that the body should die,
while Reverend Theology would
console conscious Mortal Mind,
which alone is capable of sin and
suffering. The body committed no
offence. Mortal Man, in obedience
to higher law, helped his
fellowman, an act which should
result in good to himself as well
as to others.
The law of our Supreme
Court decrees that whosoever
sinneth shall die; but good deeds
are immortal, bringing joy
instead of grief, pleasure
instead of pain, and life instead
of death. If liver-complaint was
committed by trampling on Laws of
Health, this was a good deed, for
the agent of those laws is an
outlaw, a destroyer of Mortal
Man's liberty and rights. Laws of
Health should be sentenced to
die.
Watching beside the couch
of pain in the exercise of a love
that "is the fulfilling of the
law," — doing "unto others
as ye would that they should do
unto you," — this is no
infringement of law, for no
demand, human or divine, renders
it just to punish a man for
acting justly. If mortals sin,
our Supreme Judge in equity
decides what penalty is due for
the sin, and Mortal Man can
suffer only for his sin. For
naught else can he be punished,
according to the law of Spirit,
God.
Then what jurisdiction had
his Honor, Judge Medicine, in
this case? To him I might say, in
Bible language, "Sittest thou to
judge . . . after the law, and
commandest . . . to be smitten
contrary to the law?" The only
jurisdiction to which the
prisoner can submit is that of
Truth, Life, and Love. If they
condemn him not, neither shall
Judge Medicine condemn him; and I
ask that the prisoner be restored
to the liberty of which he has
been unjustly deprived.
The principal witness (the
officer of the Health-laws)
deposed that he was an
eye-witness to the good deeds for
which Mortal Man is under
sentence of death. After
betraying him into the hands of
your law, the Health-agent
disappeared, to reappear however
at the trial as a witness against
Mortal Man and in the interest of
Personal Sense, a murderer. Your
Supreme Court must find the
prisoner on the night of the
alleged offence to have been
acting within the limits of the
divine law, and in obedience
thereto. Upon this statute hangs
all the law and testimony. Giving
a cup of cold water in Christ's
name, is a Christian service.
Laying down his life for a good
deed, Mortal Man should find it
again. Such acts bear their own
justification, and are under the
protection of the Most
High.
Prior to the night of his
arrest, the prisoner summoned two
professed friends, Materia Medica
and Physiology, to prevent his
committing liver-complaint, and
thus save him from arrest. But
they brought with them Fear, the
sheriff, to precipitate the
result which they were called to
prevent. It was Fear who
handcuffed Mortal Man and would
now punish him. You have left
Mortal Man no alternative. He
must obey your law, fear its
consequences, and be punished for
his fear. His friends struggled
hard to rescue the prisoner from
the penalty they considered
justly due, but they were
compelled to let him be taken
into custody, tried, and
condemned. Thereupon Judge
Medicine sat in judgment on the
case, and substantially charged
the jury, twelve Mortal Minds, to
find the prisoner guilty. His
Honor sentenced Mortal Man to die
for the very deeds which the
divine law compels man to commit.
Thus the Court of Error construed
obedience to the law of divine
Love as disobedience to the law
of Life. Claiming to protect
Mortal Man in right-doing, that
court pronounced a sentence of
death for doing right.
One of the principal
witnesses, Nerve, testified that
he was a ruler of Body, in which
province Mortal Man resides. He
also testified that he was on
intimate terms with the
plaintiff, and knew Personal
Sense to be truthful; that he
knew Man, and that Man was made
in the image of God, but was a
criminal. This is a foul
aspersion on man's Maker. It
blots the fair escutcheon of
omnipotence. It indicates malice
aforethought, a determination to
condemn Man in the interest of
Personal Sense. At the bar of
Truth, in the presence of divine
Justice, before the Judge of our
higher tribunal, the Supreme
Court of Spirit, and before its
jurors, the Spiritual Senses, I
proclaim this witness, Nerve, to
be destitute of intelligence and
truth and to be a false
witness.
Man self-destroyed; the
testimony of matter respected;
Spirit not allowed a hearing;
Soul a criminal though
recommended to mercy; the
helpless innocent body tortured,
— these are the terrible
records of your Court of Error,
and I ask that the Supreme Court
of Spirit reverse this
decision.
Here the opposing counsel,
False Belief, called Christian
Science to order for contempt of
court. Various notables —
Materia Medica, Anatomy,
Physiology, Scholastic Theology,
and Jurisprudence — rose to
the question of expelling
Christian Science from the bar,
for such high-handed illegality.
They declared that Christian
Science was overthrowing the
judicial proceedings of a
regularly constituted court.
But Judge Justice of the
Supreme Court of Spirit overruled
their motions on the ground that
unjust usages were not allowed at
the bar of Truth, which ranks
above the lower Court of
Error.
The attorney, Christian
Science, then read from the
supreme statute-book, the Bible,
certain extracts on the Rights of
Man, remarking that the Bible was
better authority than Blackstone:
—
Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness; and
let them have dominion.
Behold, I give unto you
power . . . over all the power of
the enemy: and nothing shall by
any means hurt you.
If a man keep my saying, he
shall never see death.
Then Christian Science proved
the witness, Nerve, to be a
perjurer. Instead of being a
ruler in the Province of Body, in
which Mortal Man was reported to
reside, Nerve was an
insubordinate citizen, putting in
false claims to office and
bearing false witness against
Man. Turning suddenly to Personal
Sense, by this time silent,
Christian Science continued:
—
I ask your arrest in the
name of Almighty God on three
distinct charges of crime, to
wit: perjury, treason, and
conspiracy against the rights and
life of man.
Then Christian Science
continued: —
Another witness, equally
inadequate, said that on the
night of the crime a garment of
foul fur was spread over him by
Morbid Secretion, while the facts
in the case show that this fur is
a foreign substance, imported by
False Belief, the attorney for
Personal Sense, who is in
partnership with Error and
smuggles Error's goods into
market without the inspection of
Soul's government officers. When
the Court of Truth summoned
Furred Tongue for examination, he
disappeared and was never heard
of more.
Morbid Secretion is not an
importer or dealer in fur, but we
have heard Materia Medica explain
how this fur is manufactured, and
we know Morbid Secretion to be on
friendly terms with the firm of
Personal Sense, Error, & Co.,
receiving pay from them and
introducing their goods into the
market. Also, be it known that
False Belief, the counsel for the
plaintiff, Personal Sense, is a
buyer for this firm. He
manufactures for it, keeps a
furnishing store, and advertises
largely for his
employers.
Death testified that he was
absent from the Province of Body,
when a message came from False
Belief, commanding him to take
part in the homicide. At this
request Death repaired to the
spot where the liver-complaint
was in process, frightening away
Materia Medica, who was then
manacling the prisoner in the
attempt to save him. True,
Materia Medica was a misguided
participant in the misdeed for
which the Health-officer had
Mortal Man in custody, though
Mortal Man was innocent.
Christian Science turned from
the abashed witnesses, his words
flashing as lightning in the
perturbed faces of these
worthies, Scholastic Theology,
Materia Medica, Physiology, the
blind Hypnotism, and the masked
Personal Sense, and said:
—
God will smite you, O
whited walls, for injuring in
your ignorance the unfortunate
Mortal Man who sought your aid in
his struggles against
liver-complaint and Death. You
came to his rescue, only to
fasten upon him an offence of
which he was innocent. You aided
and abetted Fear and Health-laws.
You betrayed Mortal Man,
meanwhile declaring Disease to be
God's servant and the righteous
executor of His laws. Our higher
statutes declare you all,
witnesses, jurors, and judges, to
be offenders, awaiting the
sentence which General Progress
and Divine Love will
pronounce.
We send our best detectives
to whatever locality is reported
to be haunted by Disease, but on
visiting the spot, they learn
that Disease was never there, for
he could not possibly elude their
search. Your Material Court of
Errors, when it condemned Mortal
Man on the ground of hygienic
disobedience, was manipulated by
the oleaginous machinations of
the counsel, False Belief, whom
Truth arraigns before the supreme
bar of Spirit to answer for his
crime. Morbid Secretion is taught
how to make sleep befool reason
before sacrificing mortals to
their false gods.
Mortal Minds were deceived
by your attorney, False Belief,
and were influenced to give a
verdict delivering Mortal Man to
Death. Good deeds are transformed
into crimes, to which you attach
penalties; but no warping of
justice can render disobedience
to the so-called laws of Matter
disobedience to God, or an act of
homicide. Even penal law holds
homicide, under stress of
circumstances, to be justifiable.
Now what greater justification
can any deed have, than that it
is for the good of one's
neighbor? Wherefore, then, in the
name of outraged justice, do you
sentence Mortal Man for
ministering to the wants of his
fellow-man in obedience to divine
law? You cannot trample upon the
decree of the Supreme Bench.
Mortal Man has his appeal to
Spirit, God, who sentences only
for sin.
The false and unjust
beliefs of your human mental
legislators compel them to enact
wicked laws of sickness and so
forth, and then render obedience
to these laws punishable as
crime. In the presence of the
Supreme Lawgiver, standing at the
bar of Truth, and in accordance
with the divine statutes, I
repudiate the false testimony of
Personal Sense. I ask that he be
forbidden to enter against Mortal
Man any more suits to be tried at
the Court of Material Error. I
appeal to the just and equitable
decisions of divine Spirit to
restore to Mortal Man the rights
of which he has been
deprived.
Here the counsel for the
defence closed, and the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court,
with benign and imposing
presence, comprehending and
defining all law and evidence,
explained from his statute-book,
the Bible, that any so-called
law, which undertakes to punish
aught but sin, is null and
void.
He also decided that the
plaintiff, Personal Sense, be not
permitted to enter any suits at
the bar of Soul, but be enjoined
to keep perpetual silence, and in
case of temptation, to give heavy
bonds for good behavior. He
concluded his charge thus:
—
The plea of False Belief we
deem unworthy of a hearing. Let
what False Belief utters, now and
forever, fall into oblivion,
"unknelled, uncoffined, and
unknown." According to our
statute, Material Law is a liar
who cannot bear witness against
Mortal Man, neither can Fear
arrest Mortal Man nor can Disease
cast him into prison. Our law
refuses to recognize Man as sick
or dying, but holds him to be
forever in the image and likeness
of his Maker. Reversing the
testimony of Personal Sense and
the decrees of the Court of Error
in favor of Matter, Spirit
decides in favor of Man and
against Matter. We further
recommend that Materia Medica
adopt Christian Science and that
Health-laws, Mesmerism,
Hypnotism, Oriental Witchcraft,
and Esoteric Magic be publicly
executed at the hands of our
sheriff, Progress.
The Supreme Bench decides
in favor of intelligence, that no
law outside of divine Mind can
punish or reward Mortal Man. Your
personal jurors in the Court of
Error are myths. Your attorney,
False Belief, is an impostor,
persuading Mortal Minds to return
a verdict contrary to law and
gospel. The plaintiff, Personal
Sense, is recorded in our Book of
books as a liar. Our great
Teacher of mental jurisprudence
speaks of him also as "a murderer
from the beginning." We have no
trials for sickness before the
tribunal of divine Spirit. There,
Man is adjudged innocent of
transgressing physical laws,
because there are no such laws.
Our statute is spiritual, our
Government is divine. "Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do
right?"
The Jury of Spiritual Senses
agreed at once upon a verdict,
and there resounded throughout
the vast audience-chamber of
Spirit the cry, Not guilty. Then
the prisoner rose up regenerated,
strong, free. We noticed, as he
shook hands with his counsel,
Christian Science, that all
sallowness and debility had
disappeared. His form was erect
and commanding, his countenance
beaming with health and
happiness. Divine Love had cast
out fear. Mortal Man, no longer
sick and in prison, walked forth,
his feet "beautiful upon the
mountains," as of one "that
bringeth good tidings."
Neither animal magnetism nor
hypnotism enters into the
practice of Christian Science, in
which truth cannot be reversed,
but the reverse of error is true.
An improved belief cannot
retrograde. When Christ changes a
belief of sin or of sickness into
a better belief, then belief
melts into spiritual
understanding, and sin, disease,
and death disappear. Christ,
Truth, gives mortals temporary
food and clothing until the
material, transformed with the
ideal, disappears, and man is
clothed and fed spiritually. St.
Paul says, "Work out your own
salvation with fear and
trembling:" Jesus said, "Fear
not, little flock; for it is your
Father's good pleasure to give
you the kingdom." This truth is
Christian Science.
Christian Scientists, be a law
to yourselves that mental
malpractice cannot harm you
either when asleep or when
awake.
Go
to Chapter 13: Teaching Christian
Science
|
