A
gospel narrative 362
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.
Parable
of the creditor 363
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."
Divine
insight 363
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.
Penitence
or hospitality 364
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.
Genuine
repentance 364
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.
Compassion
requisite 364
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?
Speedy
healing 365
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.
Truth
desecrated 365
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.
Moral
evils to be cast out 366
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 true
physician 366
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.
Source
of calmness 366
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.
Genuine
healing 366
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.
Gratitude
and humility 367
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.
The salt
of the earth 367
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.
Real and
counterfeit 367
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.
Results
of faith in Truth 368
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.
Life
independent of matter 368
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.
Man's
entity 369
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.
The
Christ treatment 369
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.
Matter
not medicine 369
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
healing in sin 369
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.
Like
curing like 370
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.
Transient
potency of drugs 370
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.
Diagnosis
of matter 370
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.
Ghost-stories
inducing fear 371
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.
Mind
imparts purity, health, and beauty 371
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."
Brain
not intelligent 372
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.
Veritable
success 372
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.
Recognition
of benefits 372
"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.
Disease
far more docile than iniquity 373
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.
Love
frees from fear 373
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.
Mind
circulates blood 373
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.
Mind can
destroy all ills 374
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.
Temperature
is mental 374
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.
Science
^versus^ hypnotism 375
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.
Cure for
palsy 375
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.
Latent
fear diagnosed 375
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.
Insidious
concepts 376
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.
Remedy
for fever 376
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 Mind-science, 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.
Climate
harmless 377
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.
Mind
governs body 377
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.
Latent
power 378
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
powerless 378
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.
Jurisdiction
of Mind 379
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.
Power of
imagination 379
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
the effect of fear 379
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."
Misdirected
contention 380
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.
Benefits
of metaphysics 380
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.
A higher
discovery 380
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.
Ignorance
of our rights 380
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.
No laws
of matter 381
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.
God-given
dominion 381
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.
Begin
rightly 381
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.
Hygiene
excessive 382
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.
Blissful
ignorance 382
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."
A clean
mind and body 383
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.
Beliefs
illusive 383
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?
Corporeal
penalties 384
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.
Not
matter, but Mind 384
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.
Benefit
of philanthropy 384
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.
Honest
toil has no penalty 385
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.
Our
sleep and food 385
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.
Doubtful
evidence 385
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.
Climate
and belief 386
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.
Erroneous
despatch 386
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.
Mourning
causeless 386
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.
Mind
heals brain-disease 387
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.
Right
never punishable 387
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.
Christian
history 387
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.
Sustenance
spiritual 388
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.
God
sustains man 388
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.
Diet and
digestion 388
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.
Scripture
rebukes 389
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.
Ancient
confusion 389
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."
Ultimate
harmony 390
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.
Unnecessary
prostration 390
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.
Treatment
of disease 390
"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!"
Righteous
rebellion 391
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.
Contradict
error 391
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.
Sin to
be overcome 391
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.
Illusions
about nerves 392
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.
Guarding
the door 392
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
strength of Spirit 393
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.
No pain
in matter 393
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.
No real
disease 393
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.
Recuperation
mental 394
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?
Arguing
wrongly 394
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.
Divine
authority 395
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.
Aids in
sickness 395
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.
Mental
quackery 395
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.
Effacing
images of disease 395
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 disease 396
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.
False
testimony refuted 396
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.
Healthful
explanation 396
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.
Misleading
methods 397
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.
Remedy
for accidents 397
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.
Independent
mentality 397
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.
Naming
maladies 398
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.
Corporeal
combinations 399
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.
Automatic
mechanism 399
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.
Mental
strength 399
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.
Confirmation
in a parable 399
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.
Eradicate
error from thought 400
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.
Mortal
mind controlled 400
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.
Mortal
mind not a healer 400
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.
Effect
of opposites 401
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.
Medicine
and brain 401
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?
Skilful
surgery 401
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.
Indestructible
life of man 402
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.
The evil
of mesmerism 402
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.
Wrong-doer
should suffer 403
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.
Error's
power imaginary 403
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.
Disease-production
403
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.
Appetites
to be abandoned 404
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.
Temperance
reform 404
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.
Sin or
fear the root of sickness 404
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.
Mental
conspirators 405
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.
Cumulative
repentance 405
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
leaves of healing 406
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."
Sickness
will abate 406
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
to the end 406
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.
Morbid
cravings 406
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.
Universal
panacea 407
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.
Immortal
memory 407
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.
Sin a
form of insanity 407
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.
Drugs
and brain-lobes 408
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.
Matter
and animate error 408
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.
Dictation
of error 409
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.
So-called
superiority 409
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.
Death no
benefactor 409
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.
Life
eternal and present 410
"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.
Love
casteth out fear 410
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."
Naming
diseases 411
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.
Evils
cast out 411
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.
Fear as
the foundation 411
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.
Unspoken
pleading 411
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.
Eloquent
silence 412
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.
Insistence
requisite 412
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.
The cure
of infants 412
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.
Ablutions
for cleanliness 413
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.
Juvenile
ailments 413
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.
Cure of
insanity 414
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
is not inflamed 414
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.
Truth
calms the thought 415
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.
Effects
of etherization 415
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.
Sedatives
valueless 416
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
so-called physical ego 416
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.
Evil
thought depletes 416
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.
Helpful
encouragement 417
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.
Disease
to be made unreal 417
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.
Christian
pleading 418
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.
Truthful
arguments 418
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.
Morality
required 418
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.
Relapse
unnecessary 419
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.
Conquer
beliefs and fears 419
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.
True
government of man 419
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.
Positive
reassurance 420
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.
Proper
stimulus 420
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.
Awaken
the patient 420
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.
How to
treat a crisis 421
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.
No
perversion of Mind-science 421
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?"
Effect
of this book 422
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.
Disease
neutralized 422
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.
Bone-healing
by surgery 422
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.
Scientific
corrective 423
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.
Coping
with difficulties 423
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.
Formation
from thought 423
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
unknown to God 424
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.
Opposing
mentality 424
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.
Mind
removes scrofula 424
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.
Nothing
to consume 425
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.
The
lungs reformed 425
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.
Soundness
maintained 425
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.
Our
footsteps heavenward 426
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.
Christian
standard 426
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.
Life not
contingent on matter 427
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.
Mortality
vanquished 427
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.
No death
nor inaction 427
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."
Vision
opening 428
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."
Intelligent
consecration 428
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
present immortality 428
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.
Careful
guidance 428
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.
Clay
replying to the potter 429
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.
Continuity
of existence 429
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.
Life
all-inclusive 429
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.
A mental
court case 430
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.
Judge
Medicine charges the jury 433
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."
Mortal
Man sentenced 433
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.
Appeal
to a higher tribunal 433
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."
Counsel
for defence 434
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 fellow-man, 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.
Charge
of the Chief Justice 440
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?"
Divine
verdict 442
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."
Christ
the great physician 442
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.
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