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Science and
Health
with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter 7
— Physiology
Therefore I say unto you,
Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye
shall drink; nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on. Is
not the life more than meat, and
the body than raiment? —
JESUS.
He sent His word, and
healed them, and delivered them
from their destructions.
— PSALMS.
Physiology is one of the
apples from "the tree of
knowledge." Evil declared that
eating this fruit would open
man's eyes and make him as a god.
Instead of so doing, it closed
the eyes of mortals to man's
God-given dominion over the
earth.
To measure intellectual
capacity by the size of the brain
and strength by the exercise of
muscle, is to subjugate
intelligence, to make mind
mortal, and to place this
so-called mind at the mercy of
material organization and
non-intelligent matter.
Obedience to the so-called
physical laws of health has not
checked sickness. Diseases have
multiplied, since man-made
material theories took the place
of spiritual truth.
You say that indigestion,
fatigue, sleeplessness, cause
distressed stomachs and aching
heads. Then you consult your
brain in order to remember what
has hurt you, when your remedy
lies in forgetting the whole
thing; for matter has no
sensation of its own, and the
human mind is all that can
produce pain.
As a man thinketh, so is he.
Mind is all that feels, acts, or
impedes action. Ignorant of this,
or shrinking from its implied
responsibility, the healing
effort is made on the wrong side,
and thus the conscious control
over the body is lost.
The Mohammedan believes in a
pilgrimage to Mecca for the
salvation of his soul. The
popular doctor believes in his
prescription, and the pharmacist
believes in the power of his
drugs to save a man's life. The
Mohammedan's belief is a
religious delusion; the doctor's
and pharmacist's is a medical
mistake.
The erring human mind is
inharmonious in itself. From it
arises the inharmonious body. To
ignore God as of little use in
sickness is a mistake. Instead of
thrusting Him aside in times of
bodily trouble, and waiting for
the hour of strength in which to
acknowledge Him, we should learn
that He can do all things for us
in sickness as in health.
Failing to recover health
through adherence to physiology
and hygiene, the despairing
invalid often drops them, and in
his extremity and only as a last
resort, turns to God. The
invalid's faith in the divine
Mind is less than in drugs, air,
and exercise, or he would have
resorted to Mind first. The
balance of power is conceded to
be with matter by most of the
medical systems; but when Mind at
last asserts its mastery over
sin, disease, and death, then is
man found to be harmonious and
immortal.
Should we implore a corporeal
God to heal the sick out of His
personal volition, or should we
understand the infinite divine
Principle which heals? If we rise
no higher than blind faith, the
Science of healing is not
attained, and Soul-existence, in
the place of sense-existence, is
not comprehended. We apprehend
Life in divine Science only as we
live above corporeal sense and
correct it. Our proportionate
admission of the claims of good
or of evil determines the harmony
of our existence, — our
health, our longevity, and our
Christianity.
We cannot serve two masters
nor perceive divine Science with
the material senses. Drugs and
hygiene cannot successfully usurp
the place and power of the divine
source of all health and
perfection. If God made man both
good and evil, man must remain
thus. What can improve God's
work? Again, an error in the
premise must appear in the
conclusion. To have one God and
avail yourself of the power of
Spirit, you must love God
supremely.
The "flesh lusteth against the
Spirit." The flesh and Spirit can
no more unite in action, than
good can coincide with evil. It
is not wise to take a halting and
half-way position or to expect to
work equally with Spirit and
matter, Truth and error. There is
but one way — namely, God
and His idea — which leads
to spiritual being. The
scientific government of the body
must be attained through the
divine Mind. It is impossible to
gain control over the body in any
other way. On this fundamental
point, timid conservatism is
absolutely inadmissible. Only
through radical reliance on Truth
can scientific healing power be
realized.
Substituting good words for a
good life, fair seeming for
straightforward character, is a
poor shift for the weak and
worldly, who think the standard
of Christian Science too high for
them.
If the scales are evenly
adjusted, the removal of a single
weight from either scale gives
preponderance to the opposite.
Whatever influence you cast on
the side of matter, you take away
from Mind, which would otherwise
outweigh all else. Your belief
militates against your health,
when it ought to be enlisted on
the side of health. When sick
(according to belief) you rush
after drugs, search out the
material so-called laws of
health, and depend upon them to
heal you, though you have already
brought yourself into the slough
of disease through just this
false belief.
Because man-made systems
insist that man becomes sick and
useless, suffers and dies, all in
consonance with the laws of God,
are we to believe it? Are we to
believe an authority which denies
God's spiritual command relating
to perfection, — an
authority which Jesus proved to
be false? He did the will of the
Father. He healed sickness in
defiance of what is called
material law, but in accordance
with God's law, the law of
Mind.
I have discerned disease in
the human mind, and recognized
the patient's fear of it, months
before the so-called disease made
its appearance in the body.
Disease being a belief, a latent
illusion of mortal mind, the
sensation would not appear if the
error of belief was met and
destroyed by truth.
Here let a word be noticed
which will be better understood
hereafter, —
chemicalization. By
chemicalization I mean the
process which mortal mind and
body undergo in the change of
belief from a material to a
spiritual basis.
Whenever an aggravation of
symptoms has occurred through
mental chemicalization, I have
seen the mental signs, assuring
me that danger was over, before
the patient felt the change; and
I have said to the patient, "You
are healed," — sometimes to
his discomfiture, when he was
incredulous. But it always came
about as I had foretold.
I name these facts to show
that disease has a mental, mortal
origin, — that faith in
rules of health or in drugs
begets and fosters disease by
attracting the mind to the
subject of sickness, by exciting
fear of disease, and by dosing
the body in order to avoid it.
The faith reposed in these things
should find stronger supports and
a higher home. If we understood
the control of Mind over body, we
should put no faith in material
means.
Science not only reveals the
origin of all disease as mental,
but it also declares that all
disease is cured by divine Mind.
There can be no healing except by
this Mind, however much we trust
a drug or any other means towards
which human faith or endeavor is
directed. It is mortal mind, not
matter, which brings to the sick
whatever good they may seem to
receive from materiality. But the
sick are never really healed
except by means of the divine
power. Only the action of Truth,
Life, and Love can give
harmony.
Whatever teaches man to have
other laws and to acknowledge
other powers than the divine
Mind, is anti-Christian. The good
that a poisonous drug seems to do
is evil, for it robs man of
reliance on God, omnipotent Mind,
and according to belief, poisons
the human system. Truth is not
the basis of theogony. Modes of
matter form neither a moral nor a
spiritual system. The discord
which calls for material methods
is the result of the exercise of
faith in material modes, —
faith in matter instead of in
Spirit.
Did Jesus understand the
economy of man less than Graham
or Cutter? Christian ideas
certainly present what human
theories exclude — the
Principle of man's harmony. The
text, "Whosoever liveth and
believeth in me shall never die,"
not only contradicts human
systems, but points to the
self-sustaining and eternal
Truth.
The demands of Truth are
spiritual, and reach the body
through Mind. The best
interpreter of man's needs said:
"Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye
shall drink."
If there are material laws
which prevent disease, what then
causes it? Not divine law, for
Jesus healed the sick and cast
out error, always in opposition,
never in obedience, to
physics.
Spiritual causation is the one
question to be considered, for
more than all others spiritual
causation relates to human
progress. The age seems ready to
approach this subject, to ponder
somewhat the supremacy of Spirit,
and at least to touch the hem of
Truth's garment.
The description of man as
purely physical, or as both
material and spiritual, —
but in either case dependent upon
his physical organization, —
is the Pandora box, from which
all ills have gone forth,
especially despair. Matter, which
takes divine power into its own
hands and claims to be a creator,
is a fiction, in which paganism
and lust are so sanctioned by
society that mankind has caught
their moral contagion.
Through discernment of the
spiritual opposite of
materiality, even the way through
Christ, Truth, man will reopen
with the key of divine Science
the gates of Paradise which human
beliefs have closed, and will
find himself unfallen, upright,
pure, and free, not needing to
consult almanacs for the
probabilities either of his life
or of the weather, not needing to
study brainology to learn how
much of a man he is.
Mind's control over the
universe, including man, is no
longer an open question, but is
demonstrable Science. Jesus
illustrated the divine Principle
and the power of immortal Mind by
healing sickness and sin and
destroying the foundations of
death.
Mistaking his origin and
nature, man believes himself to
be combined matter and Spirit. He
believes that Spirit is sifted
through matter, carried on a
nerve, exposed to ejection by the
operation of matter. The
intellectual, the moral, the
spiritual, — yea, the image
of infinite Mind, — subject
to non-intelligence!
No more sympathy exists
between the flesh and Spirit than
between Belial and Christ.
The so-called laws of matter
are nothing but false beliefs
that intelligence and life are
present where Mind is not. These
false beliefs are the procuring
cause of all sin and disease. The
opposite truth, that intelligence
and life are spiritual, never
material, destroys sin, sickness,
and death.
The fundamental error lies in
the supposition that man is a
material outgrowth and that the
cognizance of good or evil, which
he has through the bodily senses,
constitutes his happiness or
misery.
Theorizing about man's
development from mushrooms to
monkeys and from monkeys into men
amounts to nothing in the right
direction and very much in the
wrong.
Materialism grades the human
species as rising from matter
upward. How then is the material
species maintained, if man passes
through what we call death and
death is the Rubicon of
spirituality? Spirit can form no
real link in this supposed chain
of material being. But divine
Science reveals the eternal chain
of existence as uninterrupted and
wholly spiritual; yet this can be
realized only as the false sense
of being disappears.
If man was first a material
being, he must have passed
through all the forms of matter
in order to become man. If the
material body is man, he is a
portion of matter, or dust. On
the contrary, man is the image
and likeness of Spirit; and the
belief that there is Soul in
sense or Life in matter obtains
in mortals, alias mortal
mind, to which the apostle refers
when he says that we must "put
off the old man."
What is man? Brain, heart,
blood, bones, etc., the material
structure? If the real man is in
the material body, you take away
a portion of the man when you
amputate a limb; the surgeon
destroys manhood, and worms
annihilate it. But the loss of a
limb or injury to a tissue is
sometimes the quickener of
manliness; and the unfortunate
cripple may present more nobility
than the statuesque athlete,
— teaching us by his very
deprivations, that "a man's a
man, for a' that."
When we admit that matter
(heart, blood, brain, acting
through the five physical senses)
constitutes man, we fail to see
how anatomy can distinguish
between humanity and the brute,
or determine when man is really
man and has progressed
farther than his animal
progenitors.
When the supposition, that
Spirit is within what it creates
and the potter is subject to the
clay, is individualized, Truth is
reduced to the level of error,
and the sensible is required to
be made manifest through the
insensible.
What is termed matter
manifests nothing but a material
mentality. Neither the substance
nor the manifestation of Spirit
is obtainable through matter.
Spirit is positive. Matter is
Spirit's contrary, the absence of
Spirit. For positive Spirit to
pass through a negative condition
would be Spirit's
destruction.
Anatomy declares man to be
structural. Physiology continues
this explanation, measuring human
strength by bones and sinews, and
human life by material law. Man
is spiritual, individual, and
eternal; material structure is
mortal.
Phrenology makes man knavish
or honest according to the
development of the cranium; but
anatomy, physiology, phrenology,
do not define the image of God,
the real immortal man.
Human reason and religion come
slowly to the recognition of
spiritual facts, and so continue
to call upon matter to remove the
error which the human mind alone
has created.
The idols of civilization are
far more fatal to health and
longevity than are the idols of
barbarism. The idols of
civilization call into action
less faith than Buddhism in a
supreme governing intelligence.
The Esquimaux restore health by
incantations as consciously as do
civilized practitioners by their
more studied methods.
Is civilization only a higher
form of idolatry, that man should
bow down to a flesh-brush, to
flannels, to baths, diet,
exercise, and air? Nothing save
divine power is capable of doing
so much for man as he can do for
himself.
The footsteps of thought,
rising above material
standpoints, are slow, and
portend a long night to the
traveller; but the angels of His
presence — the spiritual
intuitions that tell us when "the
night is far spent, the day is at
hand" — are our guardians in
the gloom. Whoever opens the way
in Christian Science is a pilgrim
and stranger, marking out the
path for generations yet
unborn.
The thunder of Sinai and the
Sermon on the Mount are pursuing
and will overtake the ages,
rebuking in their course all
error and proclaiming the kingdom
of heaven on earth. Truth is
revealed. It needs only to be
practised.
Mortal belief is all that
enables a drug to cure mortal
ailments. Anatomy admits that
mind is somewhere in man, though
out of sight. Then, if an
individual is sick, why treat the
body alone and administer a dose
of despair to the mind? Why
declare that the body is
diseased, and picture this
disease to the mind, rolling it
under the tongue as a sweet
morsel and holding it before the
thought of both physician and
patient? We should understand
that the cause of disease obtains
in the mortal human mind, and its
cure comes from the immortal
divine Mind. We should prevent
the images of disease from taking
form in thought, and we should
efface the outlines of disease
already formulated in the minds
of mortals.
When there are fewer
prescriptions, and less thought
is given to sanitary subjects,
there will be better
constitutions and less disease.
In old times who ever heard of
dyspepsia, cerebro-spinal
meningitis, hay-fever, and
rose-cold?
What an abuse of natural
beauty to say that a rose, the
smile of God, can produce
suffering! The joy of its
presence, its beauty and
fragrance, should uplift the
thought, and dissuade any sense
of fear or fever. It is profane
to fancy that the perfume of
clover and the breath of new-mown
hay can cause glandular
inflammation, sneezing, and nasal
pangs.
If a random thought, calling
itself dyspepsia, had tried to
tyrannize over our forefathers,
it would have been routed by
their independence and industry.
Then people had less time for
selfishness, coddling, and sickly
after-dinner talk. The exact
amount of food the stomach could
digest was not discussed
according to Cutter nor referred
to sanitary laws. A man's belief
in those days was not so severe
upon the gastric juices.
Beaumont's "Medical Experiments"
did not govern the digestion.
Damp atmosphere and freezing
snow empurpled the plump cheeks
of our ancestors, but they never
indulged in the refinement of
inflamed bronchial tubes. They
were as innocent as Adam, before
he ate the fruit of false
knowledge, of the existence of
tubercles and troches, lungs and
lozenges.
"Where ignorance is bliss,
'tis folly to be wise," says the
English poet, and there is truth
in his sentiment. The action of
mortal mind on the body was not
so injurious before inquisitive
modern Eves took up the study of
medical works and unmanly Adams
attributed their own downfall and
the fate of their offspring to
the weakness of their wives.
The primitive custom of taking
no thought about food left the
stomach and bowels free to act in
obedience to nature, and gave the
gospel a chance to be seen in its
glorious effects upon the body. A
ghastly array of diseases was not
paraded before the imagination.
There were fewer books on
digestion and more "sermons in
stones, and good in everything."
When the mechanism of the human
mind gives place to the divine
Mind, selfishness and sin,
disease and death, will lose
their foothold.
Human fear of miasma would
load with disease the air of
Eden, and weigh down mankind with
superimposed and conjectural
evils. Mortal mind is the worst
foe of the body, while divine
Mind is its best friend.
Should all cases of organic
disease be treated by a regular
practitioner, and the Christian
Scientist try truth only in cases
of hysteria, hypochondria, and
hallucination? One disease is no
more real than another. All
disease is the result of
education, and disease can carry
its ill-effects no farther than
mortal mind maps out the way. The
human mind, not matter, is
supposed to feel, suffer, enjoy.
Hence decided types of acute
disease are quite as ready to
yield to Truth as the less
distinct type and chronic form of
disease. Truth handles the most
malignant contagion with perfect
assurance.
Human mind produces what is
termed organic disease as
certainly as it produces
hysteria, and it must relinquish
all its errors, sicknesses, and
sins. I have demonstrated this
beyond all cavil. The evidence of
divine Mind's healing power and
absolute control is to me as
certain as the evidence of my own
existence.
Mortal mind and body are one.
Neither exists without the other,
and both must be destroyed by
immortal Mind. Matter, or body,
is but a false concept of mortal
mind. This so-called mind builds
its own superstructure, of which
the material body is the grosser
portion; but from first to last,
the body is a sensuous, human
concept.
In the Scriptural allegory of
the material creation, Adam or
error, which represents the
erroneous theory of life and
intelligence in matter, had the
naming of all that was material.
These names indicated matter's
properties, qualities, and forms.
But a lie, the opposite of Truth,
cannot name the qualities and
effects of what is termed matter,
and create the so-called laws of
the flesh, nor can a lie hold the
preponderance of power in any
direction against God, Spirit and
Truth.
If a dose of poison is
swallowed through mistake, and
the patient dies even though
physician and patient are
expecting favorable results, does
human belief, you ask, cause this
death? Even so, and as directly
as if the poison had been
intentionally taken.
In such cases a few persons
believe the potion swallowed by
the patient to be harmless, but
the vast majority of mankind,
though they know nothing of this
particular case and this special
person, believe the arsenic, the
strychnine, or whatever the drug
used, to be poisonous, for it is
set down as a poison by mortal
mind. Consequently, the result is
controlled by the majority of
opinions, not by the
infinitesimal minority of
opinions in the sick-chamber.
Heredity is not a law. The
remote cause or belief of disease
is not dangerous because of its
priority and the connection of
past mortal thoughts with
present. The predisposing cause
and the exciting cause are
mental.
Perhaps an adult has a
deformity produced prior to his
birth by the fright of his
mother. When wrested from human
belief and based on Science or
the divine Mind, to which all
things are possible, that chronic
case is not difficult to
cure.
Mortal mind, acting from the
basis of sensation in matter, is
animal magnetism; but this
so-called mind, from which comes
all evil, contradicts itself, and
must finally yield to the eternal
Truth, or the divine Mind,
expressed in Science. In
proportion to our understanding
of Christian Science, we are
freed from the belief of
heredity, of mind in matter or
animal magnetism; and we disarm
sin of its imaginary power in
proportion to our spiritual
understanding of the status of
immortal being.
Ignorant of the methods and
the basis of metaphysical
healing, you may attempt to unite
with it hypnotism, spiritualism,
electricity; but none of these
methods can be mingled with
metaphysical healing.
Whoever reaches the
understanding of Christian
Science in its proper
signification will perform the
sudden cures of which it is
capable; but this can be done
only by taking up the cross and
following Christ in the daily
life.
Science can heal the sick, who
are absent from their healers, as
well as those present, since
space is no obstacle to Mind.
Immortal Mind heals what eye hath
not seen; but the spiritual
capacity to apprehend thought and
to heal by the Truth-power, is
won only as man is found, not in
self-righteousness, but
reflecting the divine nature.
Every medical method has its
advocates. The preference of
mortal mind for a certain method
creates a demand for that method,
and the body then seems to
require such treatment. You can
even educate a healthy horse so
far in physiology that he will
take cold without his blanket,
whereas the wild animal, left to
his instincts, sniffs the wind
with delight. The epizootic is a
humanly evolved ailment, which a
wild horse might never have.
Treatises on anatomy,
physiology, and health, sustained
by what is termed material law,
are the promoters of sickness and
disease. It should not be
proverbial, that so long as you
read medical works you will be
sick.
The sedulous matron —
studying her Jahr with
homoeopathic pellet and powder in
hand, ready to put you into a
sweat, to move the bowels, or to
produce sleep — is
unwittingly sowing the seeds of
reliance on matter, and her
household may erelong reap the
effect of this mistake.
Descriptions of disease given
by physicians and advertisements
of quackery are both prolific
sources of sickness. As mortal
mind is the husbandman of error,
it should be taught to do the
body no harm and to uproot its
false sowing.
The patient sufferer tries to
be satisfied when he sees his
would-be healers busy, and his
faith in their efforts is
somewhat helpful to them and to
himself; but in Science one must
understand the resuscitating law
of Life. This is the seed within
itself bearing fruit after its
kind, spoken of in Genesis.
Physicians should not deport
themselves as if Mind were
non-existent, nor take the ground
that all causation is matter,
instead of Mind. Ignorant that
the human mind governs the body,
its phenomenon, the invalid may
unwittingly add more fear to the
mental reservoir already
overflowing with that
emotion.
Doctors should not implant
disease in the thoughts of their
patients, as they so frequently
do, by declaring disease to be a
fixed fact, even before they go
to work to eradicate the disease
through the material faith which
they inspire. Instead of
furnishing thought with fear,
they should try to correct this
turbulent element of mortal mind
by the influence of divine Love
which casteth out fear.
When man is governed by God,
the ever-present Mind who
understands all things, man knows
that with God all things are
possible. The only way to this
living Truth, which heals the
sick, is found in the Science of
divine Mind as taught and
demonstrated by Christ Jesus.
To reduce inflammation,
dissolve a tumor, or cure organic
disease, I have found divine
Truth more potent than all lower
remedies. And why not, since
Mind, God, is the source and
condition of all existence?
Before deciding that the body,
matter, is disordered, one should
ask, "Who art thou that repliest
to Spirit? Can matter speak for
itself, or does it hold the
issues of life?" Matter, which
can neither suffer nor enjoy, has
no partnership with pain and
pleasure, but mortal belief has
such a partnership.
When you manipulate patients,
you trust in electricity and
magnetism more than in Truth; and
for that reason, you employ
matter rather than Mind. You
weaken or destroy your power when
you resort to any except
spiritual means.
It is foolish to declare that
you manipulate patients but that
you lay no stress on
manipulation. If this be so, why
manipulate? In reality you
manipulate because you are
ignorant of the baneful effects
of magnetism, or are not
sufficiently spiritual to depend
on Spirit. In either case you
must improve your mental
condition till you finally attain
the understanding of Christian
Science.
If you are too material to
love the Science of Mind and are
satisfied with good words instead
of effects, if you adhere to
error and are afraid to trust
Truth, the question then recurs,
"Adam, where art thou?" It is
unnecessary to resort to aught
besides Mind in order to satisfy
the sick that you are doing
something for them, for if they
are cured, they generally know it
and are satisfied.
"Where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also." If you
have more faith in drugs than in
Truth, this faith will incline
you to the side of matter and
error. Any hypnotic power you may
exercise will diminish your
ability to become a Scientist,
and vice versa. The act of
healing the sick through divine
Mind alone, of casting out error
with Truth, shows your position
as a Christian Scientist.
The demands of God appeal to
thought only; but the claims of
mortality, and what are termed
laws of nature, appertain to
matter. Which, then, are we to
accept as legitimate and capable
of producing the highest human
good? We cannot obey both
physiology and Spirit, for one
absolutely destroys the other,
and one or the other must be
supreme in the affections. It is
impossible to work from two
standpoints. If we attempt it, we
shall presently "hold to the one,
and despise the other."
The hypotheses of mortals are
antagonistic to Science and
cannot mix with it. This is clear
to those who heal the sick on the
basis of Science.
Mind's government of the body
must supersede the so-called laws
of matter. Obedience to material
law prevents full obedience to
spiritual law, — the law
which overcomes material
conditions and puts matter under
the feet of Mind. Mortals entreat
the divine Mind to heal the sick,
and forthwith shut out the aid of
Mind by using material means,
thus working against themselves
and their prayers and denying
man's God-given ability to
demonstrate Mind's sacred power.
Pleas for drugs and laws of
health come from some sad
incident, or else from ignorance
of Christian Science and its
transcendent power.
To admit that sickness is a
condition over which God has no
control, is to presuppose that
omnipotent power is powerless on
some occasions. The law of
Christ, or Truth, makes all
things possible to Spirit; but
the so-called laws of matter
would render Spirit of no avail,
and demand obedience to
materialistic codes, thus
departing from the basis of one
God, one lawmaker. To suppose
that God constitutes laws of
inharmony is a mistake; discords
have no support from nature or
divine law, however much is said
to the contrary.
Can the agriculturist,
according to belief, produce a
crop without sowing the seed and
awaiting its germination
according to the laws of nature?
The answer is no, and yet the
Scriptures inform us that sin, or
error, first caused the
condemnation of man to till the
ground, and indicate that
obedience to God will remove this
necessity. Truth never made error
necessary, nor devised a law to
perpetuate error.
The supposed laws which result
in weariness and disease are not
His laws, for the legitimate and
only possible action of Truth is
the production of harmony. Laws
of nature are laws of Spirit; but
mortals commonly recognize as law
that which hides the power of
Spirit. Divine Mind rightly
demands man's entire obedience,
affection, and strength. No
reservation is made for any
lesser loyalty. Obedience to
Truth gives man power and
strength. Submission to error
superinduces loss of power.
Truth casts out all evils and
materialistic methods with the
actual spiritual law, — the
law which gives sight to the
blind, hearing to the deaf, voice
to the dumb, feet to the lame. If
Christian Science dishonors human
belief, it honors spiritual
understanding; and the one Mind
only is entitled to honor.
The so-called laws of health
are simply laws of mortal belief.
The premises being erroneous, the
conclusions are wrong. Truth
makes no laws to regulate
sickness, sin, and death, for
these are unknown to Truth and
should not be recognized as
reality.
Belief produces the results of
belief, and the penalties it
affixes last so long as the
belief and are inseparable from
it. The remedy consists in
probing the trouble to the
bottom, in finding and casting
out by denial the error of belief
which produces a mortal disorder,
never honoring erroneous belief
with the title of law nor
yielding obedience to it. Truth,
Life, and Love are the only
legitimate and eternal demands on
man, and they are spiritual
lawgivers, enforcing obedience
through divine statutes.
Controlled by the divine
intelligence, man is harmonious
and eternal. Whatever is governed
by a false belief is discordant
and mortal. We say man suffers
from the effects of cold, heat,
fatigue. This is human belief,
not the truth of being, for
matter cannot suffer. Mortal mind
alone suffers, — not because
a law of matter has been
transgressed, but because a law
of this so-called mind has been
disobeyed. I have demonstrated
this as a rule of divine Science
by destroying the delusion of
suffering from what is termed a
fatally broken physical law.
A woman, whom I cured of
consumption, always breathed with
great difficulty when the wind
was from the east. I sat silently
by her side a few moments. Her
breath came gently. The
inspirations were deep and
natural. I then requested her to
look at the weather-vane. She
looked and saw that it pointed
due east. The wind had not
changed, but her thought of it
had and so her difficulty in
breathing had gone. The wind had
not produced the difficulty. My
metaphysical treatment changed
the action of her belief on the
lungs, and she never suffered
again from east winds, but was
restored to health.
No system of hygiene but
Christian Science is purely
mental. Before this book was
published, other books were in
circulation, which discussed
"mental medicine" and
"mind-cure," operating through
the power of the earth's magnetic
currents to regulate life and
health. Such theories and such
systems of so-called mind-cure,
which have sprung up, are as
material as the prevailing
systems of medicine. They have
their birth in mortal mind, which
puts forth a human conception in
the name of Science to match the
divine Science of immortal Mind,
even as the necromancers of Egypt
strove to emulate the wonders
wrought by Moses. Such theories
have no relationship to Christian
Science, which rests on the
conception of God as the only
Life, substance, and
intelligence, and excludes the
human mind as a spiritual factor
in the healing work.
Jesus cast out evil and healed
the sick, not only without drugs,
but without hypnotism, which is
the reverse of ethical and
pathological Truth-power.
Erroneous mental practice may
seem for a time to benefit the
sick, but the recovery is not
permanent. This is because
erroneous methods act on and
through the material stratum of
the human mind, called brain,
which is but a mortal
consolidation of material
mentality and its suppositional
activities.
A patient under the influence
of mortal mind is healed only by
removing the influence on him of
this mind, by emptying his
thought of the false stimulus and
reaction of will-power and
filling it with the divine
energies of Truth.
Christian Science destroys
material beliefs through the
understanding of Spirit, and the
thoroughness of this work
determines health. Erring human
mind-forces can work only evil
under whatever name or pretence
they are employed; for Spirit and
matter, good and evil, light and
darkness, cannot mingle.
Evil is a negation, because it
is the absence of truth. It is
nothing, because it is the
absence of something. It is
unreal, because it presupposes
the absence of God, the
omnipotent and omnipresent. Every
mortal must learn that there is
neither power nor reality in
evil.
Evil is self-assertive. It
says: "I am a real entity,
overmastering good." This
falsehood should strip evil of
all pretensions. The only power
of evil is to destroy itself. It
can never destroy one iota of
good. Every attempt of evil to
destroy good is a failure, and
only aids in peremptorily
punishing the evil-doer. If we
concede the same reality to
discord as to harmony, discord
has as lasting a claim upon us as
has harmony. If evil is as real
as good, evil is also as
immortal. If death is as real as
Life, immortality is a myth. If
pain is as real as the absence of
pain, both must be immortal; and
if so, harmony cannot be the law
of being.
Mortal mind is ignorant of
self, or it could never be
self-deceived. If mortal mind
knew how to be better, it would
be better. Since it must believe
in something besides itself, it
enthrones matter as deity. The
human mind has been an idolater
from the beginning, having other
gods and believing in more than
the one Mind.
As mortals do not comprehend
even mortal existence, how
ignorant must they be of the
all-knowing Mind and of His
creations.
Here you may see how so-called
material sense creates its own
forms of thought, gives them
material names, and then worships
and fears them. With pagan
blindness, it attributes to some
material god or medicine an
ability beyond itself. The
beliefs of the human mind rob and
enslave it, and then impute this
result to another illusive
personification, named Satan.
The valves of the heart,
opening and closing for the
passage of the blood, obey the
mandate of mortal mind as
directly as does the hand,
admittedly moved by the will.
Anatomy allows the mental cause
of the latter action, but not of
the former.
We say, "My hand hath done
it." What is this my but
mortal mind, the cause of all
materialistic action? All
voluntary, as well as miscalled
involuntary, action of the
mortal body is governed by this
so-called mind, not by matter.
There is no involuntary action.
The divine Mind includes all
action and volition, and man in
Science is governed by this Mind.
The human mind tries to classify
action as voluntary and
involuntary, and suffers from the
attempt.
If you take away this erring
mind, the mortal material body
loses all appearance of life or
action, and this so-called mind
then calls itself dead; but the
human mind still holds in belief
a body, through which it acts and
which appears to the human mind
to live, — a body like the
one it had before death. This
body is put off only as the
mortal, erring mind yields to
God, immortal Mind, and man is
found in His image.
What is termed disease does
not exist. It is neither mind nor
matter. The belief of sin, which
has grown terrible in strength
and influence, is an unconscious
error in the beginning, — an
embryonic thought without motive;
but afterwards it governs the
so-called man. Passion, depraved
appetites, dishonesty, envy,
hatred, revenge ripen into
action, only to pass from shame
and woe to their final
punishment.
Mortal existence is a dream of
pain and pleasure in matter, a
dream of sin, sickness, and
death; and it is like the dream
we have in sleep, in which every
one recognizes his condition to
be wholly a state of mind. In
both the waking and the sleeping
dream, the dreamer thinks that
his body is material and the
suffering is in that body.
The smile of the sleeper
indicates the sensation produced
physically by the pleasure of a
dream. In the same way pain and
pleasure, sickness and care, are
traced upon mortals by
unmistakable signs.
Sickness is a growth of error,
springing from mortal ignorance
or fear. Error rehearses error.
What causes disease cannot cure
it. The soil of disease is mortal
mind, and you have an abundant or
scanty crop of disease, according
to the seedlings of fear. Sin and
the fear of disease must be
uprooted and cast out.
When darkness comes over the
earth, the physical senses have
no immediate evidence of a sun.
The human eye knows not where the
orb of day is, nor if it exists.
Astronomy gives the desired
information regarding the sun.
The human or material senses
yield to the authority of this
science, and they are willing to
leave with astronomy the
explanation of the sun's
influence over the earth. If the
eyes see no sun for a week, we
still believe that there is solar
light and heat. Science (in this
instance named natural) raises
the human thought above the
cruder theories of the human
mind, and casts out a fear.
In like manner mortals should
no more deny the power of
Christian Science to establish
harmony and to explain the effect
of mortal mind on the body,
though the cause be unseen, than
they should deny the existence of
the sunlight when the orb of day
disappears, or doubt that the sun
will reappear. The sins of others
should not make good men
suffer.
We call the body material; but
it is as truly mortal mind,
according to its degree, as is
the material brain which is
supposed to furnish the evidence
of all mortal thought or things.
The human mortal mind, by an
inevitable perversion, makes all
things start from the lowest
instead of from the highest
mortal thought. The reverse is
the case with all the formations
of the immortal divine Mind. They
proceed from the divine source;
and so, in tracing them, we
constantly ascend in infinite
being.
From mortal mind comes the
reproduction of the species,
— first the belief of
inanimate, and then of animate
matter. According to mortal
thought, the development of
embryonic mortal mind commences
in the lower, basal portion of
the brain, and goes on in an
ascending scale by evolution,
keeping always in the direct line
of matter, for matter is the
subjective condition of mortal
mind.
Next we have the formation of
so-called embryonic mortal mind,
afterwards mortal men or mortals,
— all this while matter is a
belief, ignorant of itself,
ignorant of what it is supposed
to produce. The mortal says that
an inanimate unconscious seedling
is producing mortals, both body
and mind; and yet neither a
mortal mind nor the immortal Mind
is found in brain or elsewhere in
matter or in mortals.
This embryonic and
materialistic human belief called
mortal man in turn fills itself
with thoughts of pain and
pleasure, of life and death, and
arranges itself into five
so-called senses, which presently
measure mind by the size of a
brain and the bulk of a body,
called man.
Human birth, growth, maturity,
and decay are as the grass
springing from the soil with
beautiful green blades,
afterwards to wither and return
to its native nothingness. This
mortal seeming is temporal; it
never merges into immortal being,
but finally disappears, and
immortal man, spiritual and
eternal, is found to be the real
man.
The Hebrew bard, swayed by
mortal thoughts, thus swept his
lyre with saddening strains on
human existence:
As for man, his days are as
grass: As a flower of the field,
so he flourisheth. For the wind
passeth over it, and it is gone;
And the place thereof shall know
it no more.
When hope rose higher in the
human heart, he sang:
As for me, I will behold Thy
face in righteousness: I shall be
satisfied, when I awake, with Thy
likeness.
For with Thee is the fountain
of life; In Thy light shall we
see light.
The brain can give no idea of
God's man. It can take no
cognizance of Mind. Matter is not
the organ of infinite Mind.
As mortals give up the
delusion that there is more than
one Mind, more than one God, man
in God's likeness will appear,
and this eternal man will include
in that likeness no material
element.
As a material, theoretical
life-basis is found to be a
misapprehension of existence, the
spiritual and divine Principle of
man dawns upon human thought, and
leads it to "where the young
child was," — even to the
birth of a new-old idea, to the
spiritual sense of being and of
what Life includes. Thus the
whole earth will be transformed
by Truth on its pinions of light,
chasing away the darkness of
error.
The human thought must free
itself from self-imposed
materiality and bondage. It
should no longer ask of the head,
heart, or lungs: What are man's
prospects for life? Mind is not
helpless. Intelligence is not
mute before non-intelligence.
By its own volition, not a
blade of grass springs up, not a
spray buds within the vale, not a
leaf unfolds its fair outlines,
not a flower starts from its
cloistered cell.
The Science of being reveals
man and immortality as based on
Spirit. Physical sense defines
mortal man as based on matter,
and from this premise infers the
mortality of the body.
The illusive senses may fancy
affinities with their opposites;
but in Christian Science, Truth
never mingles with error. Mind
has no affinity with matter, and
therefore Truth is able to cast
out the ills of the flesh. Mind,
God, sends forth the aroma of
Spirit, the atmosphere of
intelligence. The belief that a
pulpy substance under the skull
is mind is a mockery of
intelligence, a mimicry of
Mind.
We are Christian Scientists,
only as we quit our reliance upon
that which is false and grasp the
true. We are not Christian
Scientists until we leave all for
Christ. Human opinions are not
spiritual. They come from the
hearing of the ear, from
corporeality instead of from
Principle, and from the mortal
instead of from the immortal.
Spirit is not separate from God.
Spirit is God.
Erring power is a material
belief, a blind miscalled force,
the offspring of will and not of
wisdom, of the mortal mind and
not of the immortal. It is the
headlong cataract, the devouring
flame, the tempest's breath. It
is lightning and hurricane, all
that is selfish, wicked,
dishonest, and impure.
Moral and spiritual might
belong to Spirit, who holds the
"wind in His fists;" and this
teaching accords with Science and
harmony. In Science, you can have
no power opposed to God, and the
physical senses must give up
their false testimony. Your
influence for good depends upon
the weight you throw into the
right scale. The good you do and
embody gives you the only power
obtainable. Evil is not power. It
is a mockery of strength, which
erelong betrays its weakness and
falls, never to rise.
We walk in the footsteps of
Truth and Love by following the
example of our Master in the
understanding of divine
metaphysics. Christianity is the
basis of true healing. Whatever
holds human thought in line with
unselfed love, receives directly
the divine power.
I was called to visit Mr.
Clark in Lynn, who had been
confined to his bed six months
with hip-disease, caused by a
fall upon a wooden spike when
quite a boy. On entering the
house I met his physician, who
said that the patient was dying.
The physician had just probed the
ulcer on the hip, and said the
bone was carious for several
inches. He even showed me the
probe, which had on it the
evidence of this condition of the
bone. The doctor went out. Mr.
Clark lay with his eyes fixed and
sightless. The dew of death was
on his brow. I went to his
bedside. In a few moments his
face changed; its death-pallor
gave place to a natural hue. The
eyelids closed gently and the
breathing became natural; he was
asleep. In about ten minutes he
opened his eyes and said: "I feel
like a new man. My suffering is
all gone." It was between three
and four o'clock in the afternoon
when this took place.
I told him to rise, dress
himself, and take supper with his
family. He did so. The next day I
saw him in the yard. Since then I
have not seen him, but am
informed that he went to work in
two weeks. The discharge from the
sore stopped, and the sore was
healed. The diseased condition
had continued there ever since
the injury was received in
boyhood.
Since his recovery I have been
informed that his physician
claims to have cured him, and
that his mother has been
threatened with incarceration in
an insane asylum for saying: "It
was none other than God and that
woman who healed him." I cannot
attest the truth of that report,
but what I saw and did for that
man, and what his physician said
of the case, occurred just as I
have narrated.
It has been demonstrated to me
that Life is God and that the
might of omnipotent Spirit shares
not its strength with matter or
with human will. Reviewing this
brief experience, I cannot fail
to discern the coincidence of the
spiritual idea of man with the
divine Mind.
A change in human belief
changes all the physical
symptoms, and determines a case
for better or for worse. When
one's false belief is corrected,
Truth sends a report of health
over the body.
Destruction of the auditory
nerve and paralysis of the optic
nerve are not necessary to ensure
deafness and blindness; for if
mortal mind says, "I am deaf and
blind," it will be so without an
injured nerve. Every theory
opposed to this fact (as I
learned in metaphysics) would
presuppose man, who is immortal
in spiritual understanding, a
mortal in material belief.
The authentic history of
Kaspar Hauser is a useful hint as
to the frailty and inadequacy of
mortal mind. It proves beyond a
doubt that education constitutes
this so-called mind, and that, in
turn, mortal mind manifests
itself in the body by the false
sense it imparts. Incarcerated in
a dungeon, where neither sight
nor sound could reach him, at the
age of seventeen Kaspar was still
a mental infant, crying and
chattering with no more
intelligence than a babe, and
realizing Tennyson's
description:
An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a
cry.
His case proves material sense
to be but a belief formed by
education alone. The light which
affords us joy gave him a belief
of intense pain. His eyes were
inflamed by the light. After the
babbling boy had been taught to
speak a few words, he asked to be
taken back to his dungeon, and
said that he should never be
happy elsewhere. Outside of
dismal darkness and cold silence
he found no peace. Every sound
convulsed him with anguish. All
that he ate, except his black
crust, produced violent
retchings. All that gives
pleasure to our educated senses
gave him pain through those very
senses, trained in an opposite
direction.
The point for each one to
decide is, whether it is mortal
mind or immortal Mind that is
causative. We should forsake the
basis of matter for metaphysical
Science and its divine
Principle.
Whatever furnishes the
semblance of an idea governed by
its Principle, furnishes food for
thought. Through astronomy,
natural history, chemistry,
music, mathematics, thought
passes naturally from effect back
to cause.
Academics of the right sort
are requisite. Observation,
invention, study, and original
thought are expansive and should
promote the growth of mortal mind
out of itself, out of all that is
mortal.
It is the tangled barbarisms
of learning which we deplore,
— the mere dogma, the
speculative theory, the nauseous
fiction. Novels, remarkable only
for their exaggerated pictures,
impossible ideals, and specimens
of depravity, fill our young
readers with wrong tastes and
sentiments. Literary
commercialism is lowering the
intellectual standard to
accommodate the purse and to meet
a frivolous demand for amusement
instead of for improvement.
Incorrect views lower the
standard of truth.
If materialistic knowledge is
power, it is not wisdom. It is
but a blind force. Man has
"sought out many inventions," but
he has not yet found it true that
knowledge can save him from the
dire effects of knowledge. The
power of mortal mind over its own
body is little understood.
Better the suffering which
awakens mortal mind from its
fleshly dream, than the false
pleasures which tend to
perpetuate this dream. Sin alone
brings death, for sin is the only
element of destruction.
"Fear him which is able to
destroy both soul and body in
hell," said Jesus. A careful
study of this text shows that
here the word soul means a
false sense or material
consciousness. The command was a
warning to beware, not of Rome,
Satan, nor of God, but of sin.
Sickness, sin, and death are not
concomitants of Life or Truth. No
law supports them. They have no
relation to God wherewith to
establish their power. Sin makes
its own hell, and goodness its
own heaven.
Such books as will rule
disease out of mortal mind,
— and so efface the images
and thoughts of disease, instead
of impressing them with forcible
descriptions and medical details,
— will help to abate
sickness and to destroy it.
Many a hopeless case of
disease is induced by a single
post mortem examination,
— not from infection nor
from contact with material virus,
but from the fear of the disease
and from the image brought before
the mind; it is a mental state,
which is afterwards outlined on
the body.
The press unwittingly sends
forth many sorrows and diseases
among the human family. It does
this by giving names to diseases
and by printing long descriptions
which mirror images of disease
distinctly in thought. A new name
for an ailment affects people
like a Parisian name for a novel
garment. Every one hastens to get
it. A minutely described disease
costs many a man his earthly days
of comfort. What a price for
human knowledge! But the price
does not exceed the original
cost. God said of the tree of
knowledge, which bears the fruit
of sin, disease, and death, "In
the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die."
The less that is said of
physical structure and laws, and
the more that is thought and said
about moral and spiritual law,
the higher will be the standard
of living and the farther mortals
will be removed from imbecility
or disease.
We should master fear, instead
of cultivating it. It was the
ignorance of our forefathers in
the departments of knowledge now
broadcast in the earth, that made
them hardier than our trained
physiologists, more honest than
our sleek politicians.
We are told that the simple
food our forefathers ate helped
to make them healthy, but that is
a mistake. Their diet would not
cure dyspepsia at this period.
With rules of health in the head
and the most digestible food in
the stomach, there would still be
dyspeptics. Many of the
effeminate constitutions of our
time will never grow robust until
individual opinions improve and
mortal belief loses some portion
of its error.
The doctor's mind reaches that
of his patient. The doctor should
suppress his fear of disease,
else his belief in its reality
and fatality will harm his
patients even more than his
calomel and morphine, for the
higher stratum of mortal mind has
in belief more power to harm man
than the substratum, matter. A
patient hears the doctor's
verdict as a criminal hears his
death-sentence. The patient may
seem calm under it, but he is
not. His fortitude may sustain
him, but his fear, which has
already developed the disease
that is gaining the mastery, is
increased by the physician's
words.
The materialistic doctor,
though humane, is an artist who
outlines his thought relative to
disease, and then fills in his
delineations with sketches from
textbooks. It is better to
prevent disease from forming in
mortal mind afterwards to appear
on the body; but to do this
requires attention. The thought
of disease is formed before one
sees a doctor and before the
doctor undertakes to dispel it by
a counter-irritant, —
perhaps by a blister, by the
application of caustic or croton
oil, or by a surgical operation.
Again, giving another direction
to faith, the physician
prescribes drugs, until the
elasticity of mortal thought
haply causes a vigorous reaction
upon itself, and reproduces a
picture of healthy and harmonious
formations.
A patient's belief is more or
less moulded and formed by his
doctor's belief in the case, even
though the doctor says nothing to
support his theory. His thoughts
and his patient's commingle, and
the stronger thoughts rule the
weaker. Hence the importance that
doctors be Christian
Scientists.
Because the muscles of the
blacksmith's arm are strongly
developed, it does not follow
that exercise has produced this
result or that a less used arm
must be weak. If matter were the
cause of action, and if muscles,
without volition of mortal mind,
could lift the hammer and strike
the anvil, it might be thought
true that hammering would enlarge
the muscles. The trip-hammer is
not increased in size by
exercise. Why not, since muscles
are as material as wood and iron?
Because nobody believes that mind
is producing such a result on the
hammer.
Muscles are not self-acting.
If mind does not move them, they
are motionless. Hence the great
fact that Mind alone enlarges and
empowers man through its mandate,
— by reason of its demand
for and supply of power. Not
because of muscular exercise, but
by reason of the blacksmith's
faith in exercise, his arm
becomes stronger.
Mortals develop their own
bodies or make them sick,
according as they influence them
through mortal mind. To know
whether this development is
produced consciously or
unconsciously, is of less
importance than a knowledge of
the fact. The feats of the
gymnast prove that latent mental
fears are subdued by him. The
devotion of thought to an honest
achievement makes the achievement
possible. Exceptions only confirm
this rule, proving that failure
is occasioned by a too feeble
faith.
Had Blondin believed it
impossible to walk the rope over
Niagara's abyss of waters, he
could never have done it. His
belief that he could do it gave
his thought-forces, called
muscles, their flexibility and
power which the unscientific
might attribute to a lubricating
oil. His fear must have
disappeared before his power of
putting resolve into action could
appear.
When Homer sang of the Grecian
gods, Olympus was dark, but
through his verse the gods became
alive in a nation's belief. Pagan
worship began with muscularity,
but the law of Sinai lifted
thought into the song of David.
Moses advanced a nation to the
worship of God in Spirit instead
of matter, and illustrated the
grand human capacities of being
bestowed by immortal Mind.
Whoever is incompetent to
explain Soul would be wise not to
undertake the explanation of
body. Life is, always has been,
and ever will be independent of
matter; for Life is God, and man
is the idea of God, not formed
materially but spiritually, and
not subject to decay and dust.
The Psalmist said: "Thou madest
him to have dominion over the
works of Thy hands. Thou hast put
all things under his feet."
The great truth in the Science
of being, that the real man was,
is, and ever shall be perfect, is
incontrovertible; for if man is
the image, reflection, of God, he
is neither inverted nor
subverted, but upright and
Godlike.
The suppositional antipode of
divine infinite Spirit is the
so-called human soul or spirit,
in other words the five senses,
— the flesh that warreth
against Spirit. These so-called
material senses must yield to the
infinite Spirit, named God.
St. Paul said: "For I
determined not to know anything
among you, save Jesus Christ, and
him crucified." (I Cor. ii. 2.)
Christian Science says: I am
determined not to know anything
among you, save Jesus Christ, and
him glorified.
Go
to Chapter 8: Footsteps of
Truth
|
