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Question of precedence
Which was first, Mind or medicine? If Mind was
first and self-existent, then Mind, not matter, must have been the first
medicine. God being All-in-all, He made medicine; but that medicine was Mind.
It could not have been matter, which departs from the nature and character of
Mind, God. Truth is God's remedy for error of every kind, and Truth destroys
only what is untrue. Hence the fact that, to-day, as yesterday, Christ casts
out evils and heals the sick.
Methods
rejected
It is plain that God does not employ drugs or
hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and
employed them in his healing. The sick are more deplorably lost than the
sinning, if the sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinning can. The
divine Mind never called matter medicine
, and matter required a material and human belief before it could be
considered as medicine.
Error
not curative
Sometimes the human mind uses one error to
medicine another. Driven to choose between two difficulties, the human mind
takes the lesser to relieve the greater. On this basis it saves from
starvation by theft, and quiets pain with anodynes. You admit that mind
influences the body somewhat, but you conclude that the stomach, blood,
nerves, bones, etc., hold the preponderance of power. Controlled by this
belief, you continue in the old routine. You lean on the inert and
unintelligent, never discerning how this deprives you of the available
superiority of divine Mind. The body is not controlled scientifically by a
negative mind.
Impossible
coalescence
Mind is the grand creator, and there can be no
power except that which is derived from Mind. If Mind was first
chronologically, is first potentially, and must be first eternally, then give
to Mind the glory, honor, dominion, and power everlastingly due its holy name.
Inferior and unspiritual methods of healing may try to make Mind and drugs
coalesce, but the two will not mingle scientifically. Why should we wish to
make them do so, since no good can come of it?
If Mind is foremost and superior, let us rely
upon Mind, which needs no cooperation from lower powers, even if these
so-called powers are real.
Naught is the squire, when the king is nigh;
Withdraws the star, when dawns the sun's brave
light.
The various mortal beliefs formulated in human
philosophy, physiology, hygiene, are mainly predicated of matter, and afford
faint gleams of God, or Truth. The more material a belief, the more
obstinately tenacious its error; the stronger are the manifestations of the
corporeal senses, the weaker the indications of Soul. Human will-power is not
Science. Human will belongs to the so-called material senses, and its use is
to be condemned. Willing the sick to recover is not the metaphysical practice
of Christian Science, but is sheer animal magnetism. Human will-power may
infringe the rights of man. It produces evil continually, and is not a factor
in the realism of being. Truth, and not corporeal will, is the divine power
which says to disease, "Peace, be still."
Because divine Science wars with so-called
physical science, even as Truth wars with error, the old schools still oppose
it. Ignorance, pride, or prejudice closes the door to whatever is not
stereotyped. When the Science of being is universally understood, every man
will be his own physician, and Truth will be the universal panacea.
It is a question to-day, whether the ancient
inspired healers understood the Science of Christian healing, or whether they
caught its sweet tones, as the natural musician catches the tones of harmony,
without being able to explain them. So divinely imbued were they with the
spirit of Science, that the lack of the letter could not hinder their work;
and that letter, without the spirit, would have made void their practice.
The
struggle and victory
The struggle for the recovery of invalids goes
on, not between material methods, but between mortal minds and immortal Mind.
The victory will be on the patient's side only as immortal Mind through
Christ, Truth, subdues the human belief in disease. It matters not what
material method one may adopt, whether faith in drugs, trust in hygiene, or
reliance on some other minor curative.
Mystery
of godliness
Scientific healing has this advantage over
other methods, - that in it Truth controls error. From this fact arise its
ethical as well as its physical effects. Indeed, its ethical and physical
effects are indissolubly connected. If there is any mystery in Christian
healing, it is the mystery which godliness always presents to the ungodly, -
the mystery always arising from ignorance of the laws of eternal and unerring
Mind.
Matter
^versus^ matter
Other methods undertake to oppose error with
error, and thus they increase the antagonism of one form of matter towards
other forms of matter or error, and the warfare between Spirit and the flesh
goes on. By this antagonism mortal mind must continually weaken its own
assumed power.
How
healing was lost
The theology of Christian Science includes
healing the sick. Our Master's first article of faith propounded to his
students was healing, and he proved his faith by his works. The ancient
Christians were healers. Why has this element of Christianity been lost?
Because our systems of religion are governed more or less by our systems of
medicine. The first idolatry was faith in matter. The schools have rendered
faith in drugs the fashion, rather than faith in Deity. By trusting matter to
destroy its own discord, health and harmony have been sacrificed. Such systems
are barren of the vitality of spiritual power, by which material sense is made
the servant of Science and religion becomes Christlike.
Drugs
and divinity
Material medicine substitutes drugs for the
power of God-even the might of Mind-to heal the body. Scholasticism clings for
salvation to the person, instead of to the divine Principle, of the man Jesus;
and his Science, the curative agent of God, is silenced. Why? Because truth
divests material drugs of their imaginary power, and clothes Spirit with
supremacy. Science is the "stranger that is within thy gates,"
remembered not, even when its elevating effects practically prove its divine
origin and efficacy.
Christian
Science as old as God
Divine Science derives its sanction from the
Bible, and the divine origin of Science is demonstrated through the holy
influence of Truth in healing sickness and sin. This healing power of Truth
must have been far anterior to the period in which Jesus lived. It is as
ancient as "the Ancient of days." It lives through all Life, and
extends throughout all space.
Reduction
to system
Divine metaphysics is now reduced to a system,
to a form comprehensible by and adapted to the thought of the age in which we
live. This system enables the learner to demonstrate the divine Principle,
upon which Jesus' healing was based, and the sacred rules for its present
application to the cure of disease.
Late in the nineteenth century I demonstrated
the divine rules of Christian Science. They were submitted to the broadest
practical test, and everywhere, when honestly applied under circumstances
where demonstration was humanly possible, this Science showed that Truth had
lost none of its divine and healing efficacy, even though centuries had passed
away since Jesus practised these rules on the hills of Judaea and in the
valleys of Galilee.
Perusal
and practice
Although this volume contains the complete
Science of Mind-healing, never believe that you can absorb the whole meaning
of the Science by a simple perusal
of this book. The book needs to be studied
, and the demonstration of the rules of scientific healing will plant
you firmly on the spiritual groundwork of Christian Science. This proof lifts
you high above the perishing fossils of theories already antiquated, and
enables you to grasp the spiritual facts of being hitherto unattained and
seemingly dim.
A
definite rule discovered
Our Master healed the sick, practised Christian
healing, and taught the generalities of its divine Principle to his students;
but he left no definite rule for demonstrating this Principle of healing and
preventing disease. This rule remained to be discovered in Christian Science.
A pure affection takes form in goodness, but Science alone reveals the divine
Principle of goodness and demonstrates its rules.
Jesus'
own practice
Jesus never spoke of disease as dangerous or as
difficult to heal. When his students brought to him a case they had failed to
heal, he said to them, "O faithless generation," "implying that
the requisite power to heal was in Mind. He prescribed no drugs, urged no
obedience to material laws, but acted in direct disobedience to them.
The man
of anatomy and of theology
Neither anatomy nor theology has ever described
man as created by Spirit, - as God's man. The former explains the men of men
, or the "children of men," as created corporeally instead
of spiritually and as emerging from the lowest, instead of from the highest,
conception of being. Both anatomy and theology define man as both physical and
mental, and place mind at the mercy of matter for every function, formation,
and manifestation. Anatomy takes up man at all points materially. It loses
Spirit, drops the true tone, and accepts the discord. Anatomy and theology
reject the divine Principle which produces harmonious man, and deal - the one
wholly, the other primarily - with matter, calling that man
which is not the counterpart, but the counterfeit, of God's man. Then
theology tries to explain how to make this man a Christian, - how from this
basis of division and discord to produce the concord and unity of Spirit and
His likeness.
Physiology
deficient
Physiology exalts matter, dethrones Mind, and
claims to rule man by material law, instead of spiritual. When physiology
fails to give health or life by this process, it ignores the divine Spirit as
unable or unwilling to render help in time of physical need. When mortals sin,
this ruling of the schools leaves them to the guidance of a theology which
admits God to be the healer of sin but not of sickness, although our great
Master demonstrated that Truth could save from sickness as well as from sin.
Blunders
and blunderers
Mind as far outweighs drugs in the cure of
disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is divine Science in
every case. Is materia medica
a science or a bundle of speculative human theories? The prescription
which succeeds in one instance fails in another, and this is owing to the
different mental states of the patient. These states are not comprehended, and
they are left without explanation except in Christian Science. The rule and
its perfection of operation never vary in Science. If you fail to succeed in
any case, it is because you have not demonstrated the life of Christ, Truth,
more in your own life, - because you have not obeyed the rule and proved the
Principle of divine Science.
Old-school
physician
A physician of the old school remarked with
great gravity: "We know that mind affects the body somewhat, and advise
our patients to be hopeful and cheerful and to take as little medicine as
possible; but mind can never cure organic difficulties." The logic is
lame, and facts contradict it. The author has cured what is termed organic
disease as readily as she has cured purely functional disease, and with no
power but the divine Mind.
Tests in
our day
Since God, divine Mind, governs all, not
partially but supremely, predicting disease does not dignify therapeutics.
Whatever guides thought spiritually benefits mind and body. We need to
understand the affirmations of divine Science, dismiss superstition, and
demonstrate truth according to Christ. To-day there is hardly a city, village,
or hamlet, in which are not to be found living witnesses and monuments to the
virtue and power of Truth, as applied through this Christian system of healing
disease.
The main
purpose
To-day the healing power of Truth is widely
demonstrated as an immanent, eternal Science, instead of a phenomenal
exhibition. Its appearing is the coming anew of the gospel of "on earth
peace, good-will toward men." This coming, as was promised by the Master,
is for its establishment as a permanent dispensation among men; but the
mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration,
is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are
wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are
only to demonstrate its divine origin, - to attest the reality of the higher
mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world.
Exploded
doctrine
The science (so-called) of physics would have
one believe that both matter and mind are subject to disease, and that, too,
in spite of the individual's protest and contrary to the law of divine Mind.
This human view infringes man's free moral agency; and it is as evidently
erroneous to the author, and will be to all others at some future day, as the
practically rejected doctrine of the predestination of souls to damnation or
salvation. The doctrine that man's harmony is governed by physical conditions
all his earthly days, and that he is then thrust out of his own body by the
operation of matter, - even the doctrine of the superiority of matter over
Mind, - is fading out.
Disease
mental
The hosts of Aesculapius are flooding the world
with diseases, because they are ignorant that the human mind and body are
myths. To be sure, they sometimes treat the sick as if there was but one
factor in the case; but this one factor they represent to be body, not mind.
Infinite Mind could not possibly create a remedy outside of itself, but
erring, finite, human mind has an absolute need of something beyond itself for
its redemption and healing.
Intentions
respected
Great respect is due the motives and
philanthropy of the higher class of physicians. We know that if they
understood the Science of Mind-healing, and were in possession of the enlarged
power it confers to benefit the race physically and spiritually, they would
rejoice with us. Even this one reform in medicine would ultimately deliver
mankind from the awful and oppressive bondage now enforced by false theories,
from which multitudes would gladly escape.
Man
governed by Mind
Mortal belief says that death has been
occasioned by fright. Fear never stopped being and its action. The blood,
heart, lungs, brain, etc., have nothing to do with Life, God. Every function
of the real man is governed by the divine Mind. The human mind has no power to
kill or to cure, and it has no control over God's man. The divine Mind that
made man maintains His own image and likeness. The human mind is opposed to
God and must be put off, as St. Paul declares. All that really exists is the
divine Mind and its idea, and in this Mind the entire being is found
harmonious and eternal. The straight and narrow way is to see and acknowledge
this fact, yield to this power, and follow the leadings of truth.
Mortal
mind dethroned
That mortal mind claims to govern every organ
of the mortal body, we have overwhelming proof. But this so-called mind is a
myth, and must by its own consent yield to Truth. It would wield the sceptre
of a monarch, but it is powerless. The immortal divine Mind takes away all its
supposed sovereignty, and saves mortal mind from itself. The author has
endeavored to make this book the Aesculapius of mind as well as of body, that
it may give hope to the sick and heal them, although they know not how the
work is done. Truth has a healing effect, even when not fully understood.
All
activity from thought
Anatomy describes muscular action as produced
by mind in one instance and not in another. Such errors beset every material
theory, in which one statement contradicts another over and over again. It is
related that Sir Humphry Davy once apparently cured a case of paralysis simply
by introducing a thermometer into the patient's mouth. This he did merely to
ascertain the temperature of the patient's body; but the sick man supposed
this ceremony was intended to heal him, and he recovered accordingly. Such a
fact illustrates our theories.
The
author's experiments in medicine
The author's medical researches and experiments
had prepared her thought for the metaphysics of Christian Science. Every
material dependence had failed her in her search for truth; and she can now
understand why, and can see the means by which mortals are divinely driven to
a spiritual source for health and happiness.
Homoeopathic
attenuations
Her experiments in homoeopathy had made her
skeptical as to material curative methods. Jahr, from Aconitum
to Zincum oxydatum
, enumerates the general symptoms, the characteristic signs, which
demand different remedies; but the drug is frequently attenuated to such a
degree that not a vestige of it remains. Thus we learn that it is not the drug
which expels the disease or changes one of the symptoms of disease.
Only
salt and water
The author has attenuated Natrum
muriaticum (common table-salt) until there
was not a single saline property left. The salt had "lost his savour;"
and yet, with one drop of that attenuation in a goblet of water, and a
teaspoonful of the water administered at intervals of three hours, she has
cured a patient sinking in the last stage of typhoid fever. The highest
attenuation of homoeopathy and the most potent rises above matter into mind.
This discovery leads to more light. From it may be learned that either human
faith or the divine Mind is the healer and that there is no efficacy in a
drug.
Origin
of pain
You say a boil is painful; but that is
impossible, for matter without mind is not painful. The boil simply manifests,
through inflammation and swelling, a belief in pain, and this belief is called
a boil. Now administer mentally to your patient a high attenuation of truth,
and it will soon cure the boil. The fact that pain cannot exist where there is
no mortal mind to feel it is a proof that this so-called mind makes its own
pain - that is, its own belief
in pain.
Source
of contagion
We weep because others weep, we yawn because
they yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but mortal mind, not
matter, contains and carries the infection. When this mental contagion is
understood, we shall be more careful of our mental conditions, and we shall
avoid loquacious tattling about disease, as we would avoid advocating crime.
Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to cherish error in any
form, and certainly we should not be error's advocate.
Disease arises, like other mental conditions,
from association. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases
should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association,
- calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent
manifestation in the body.
Imaginary
cholera
This fact in metaphysics is illustrated by the
following incident: A man was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a
cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared,
and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material
contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed.
Children's
ailments
If a child is exposed to contagion or
infection, the mother is frightened and says, "My child will be
sick." The law of mortal mind and her own fears govern her child more
than the child's mind governs itself, and they produce the very results which
might have been prevented through the opposite understanding. Then it is
believed that exposure to the contagion wrought the mischief.
That mother is not a Christian Scientist, and
her affections need better guidance, who says to her child: "You look
sick," "You look tired," "You need rest," or
"You need medicine."
Such a mother runs to her little one, who
thinks she has hurt her face by falling on the carpet, and says, moaning more
childishly than her child, "Mamma knows you are hurt." The better
and more successful method for any mother to adopt is to say: "Oh, never
mind! You're not hurt, so don't think you are." Presently the child
forgets all about the accident, and is at play.
Drug-power
mental
When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it
is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which heals;
and according to this faith will the effect be. Even when you take away the
individual confidence in the drug, you have not yet divorced the drug from the
general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the druggist, the doctor, and the
nurse equip the medicine with their faith, and the beliefs which are in the
majority rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate drug as doing
this or that, individual dissent or faith, unless it rests on Science, is but
a belief held by a minority, and such a belief is governed by the majority.
Belief
in physics
The universal belief in physics weighs against
the high and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This erroneous general
belief, which sustains medicine and produces all medical results, works
against Christian Science; and the percentage of power on the side of this
Science must mightily outweigh the power of popular belief in order to heal a
single case of disease. The human mind acts more powerfully to offset the
discords of matter and the ills of flesh, in proportion as it puts less weight
into the material or fleshly scale and more weight into the spiritual scale.
Homoeopathy diminishes the drug, but the potency of the medicine increases as
the drug disappears.
Nature
of drugs
Vegetarianism, homoeopathy, and hydropathy have
diminished drugging; but if drugs are an antidote to disease, why lessen the
antidote? If drugs are good things, is it safe to say that the less in
quantity you have of them the better? If drugs possess intrinsic virtues or
intelligent curative qualities, these qualities must be mental. Who named
drugs, and what made them good or bad for mortals, beneficial or injurious?
Dropsy
cured without drugs
A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell
into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and yet, as
she lay in her bed, the patient looked like a barrel. I prescribed the fourth
attenuation of Argentum nitratum
with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris
. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary
theories of medical practice, and learning that her former physician had
prescribed these remedies, I began to fear an aggravation of symptoms from
their prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up
the medicine while she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her
unmedicated pellets and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain.
Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the
effects. After trying this, she informed me that she could get along two days
without globules; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by
taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets, - and
receiving occasional visits from me, - but employing no other means, and she
was cured.
A
stately advance
Metaphysics, as taught in Christian Science, is
the next stately step beyond homoeopathy. In metaphysics, matter disappears
from the remedy entirely, and Mind takes its rightful and supreme place.
Homoeopathy takes mental symptoms largely into consideration in its diagnosis
of disease. Christian Science deals wholly with the mental cause in judging
and destroying disease. It succeeds where homoeopathy fails, solely because
its one recognized Principle of healing is Mind, and the whole force of the
mental element is employed through the Science of Mind, which never shares its
rights with inanimate matter.
The
modus of homoeopathy
Christian Science exterminates the drug, and
rests on Mind alone as the curative Principle, acknowledging that the divine
Mind has all power. Homoeopathy mentalizes a drug with such repetition of
thought-attenuations, that the drug becomes more like the human mind than the
substratum of this so-called mind, which we call matter; and the drug's power
of action is proportionately increased.
Drugging
unchristian
If drugs are part of God's creation, which
(according to the narrative in Genesis) He pronounced good
, then drugs cannot be poisonous. If He could create drugs
intrinsically bad, then they should never be used. If He creates drugs at all
and designs them for medical use, why did Jesus not employ them and recommend
them for the treatment of disease? Matter is not self-creative, for it is
unintelligent. Erring mortal mind confers the power which the drug seems to
possess.
Narcotics quiet mortal mind, and so relieve the
body; but they leave both mind and body worse for this submission. Christian
Science impresses the entire corporeality, - namely, mind and body, - and
brings out the proof that Life is continuous and harmonious. Science both
neutralizes error and destroys it. Mankind is the better for this spiritual
and profound pathology.
Mythology
and materia medica
It is recorded that the profession of medicine
originated in idolatry with pagan priests, who besought the gods to heal the
sick and designated Apollo as "the god of medicine." He was supposed
to have dictated the first prescription, according to the "History of
Four Thousand Years of Medicine." It is here noticeable that Apollo was
also regarded as the sender of disease, "the god of pestilence."
Hippocrates turned from image-gods to vegetable and mineral drugs for healing.
This was deemed progress in medicine; but what we need is the truth which
heals both mind and body. The future history of material medicine may
correspond with that of its material god, Apollo, who was banished from heaven
and endured great sufferings upon earth.
Footsteps
to intemperance
Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid
substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine Mind and its efficacy to
heal. It is pitiful to lead men into temptation through the byways of this
wilderness world, - to victimize the race with intoxicating prescriptions for
the sick, until mortal mind acquires an educated appetite for strong drink,
and men and women become loathsome sots.
Advancing
degrees
Evidences of progress and of spiritualization
greet us on every hand. Drug-systems are quitting their hold on matter and so
letting in matter's higher stratum, mortal mind. Homoeopathy, a step in
advance of allopathy, is doing this. Matter is going out of medicine; and
mortal mind, of a higher attenuation than the drug, is governing the pellet.
Effects
of fear
A woman in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts, was
etherized and died in consequence, although her physicians insisted that it
would be unsafe to perform a needed surgical operation without the ether.
After the autopsy, her sister testified that the deceased protested against
inhaling the ether and said it would kill her, but that she was compelled by
her physicians to take it. Her hands were held, and she was forced into
submission. The case was brought to trial. The evidence was found to be
conclusive, and a verdict was returned that death was occasioned, not by the
ether, but by fear of inhaling it.
Mental
conditions to be heeded
Is it skilful or scientific surgery to take no
heed of mental conditions and to treat the patient as if she were so much
mindless matter, and as if matter were the only factor to be consulted? Had
these unscientific surgeons understood metaphysics, they would have considered
the woman's state of mind, and not have risked such treatment. They would
either have allayed her fear or would have performed the operation without
ether.
The sequel proved that this Lynn woman died
from effects produced by mortal mind, and not from the disease or the
operation.
False
source of knowledge
The medical schools would learn the state of
man from matter instead of from Mind. They examine the lungs, tongue, and
pulse to ascertain how much harmony, or health, matter is permitting to
matter, - how much pain or pleasure, action or stagnation, one form of matter
is allowing another form of matter.
Ignorant of the fact that a man's belief
produces disease and all its symptoms, the ordinary physician is liable to
increase disease with his own mind, when he should address himself to the work
of destroying it through the power of the divine Mind.
The systems of physics act against metaphysics,
and vice versa .
When mortals forsake the material for the spiritual basis of action, drugs
lose their healing force, for they have no innate power. Unsupported by the
faith reposed in it, the inanimate drug becomes powerless.
Obedient
muscles
The motion of the arm is no more dependent upon
the direction of mortal mind, than are the organic action and secretion of the
viscera. When this so-called mind quits the body, the heart becomes as torpid
as the hand.
Anatomy
and mind
Anatomy finds a necessity for nerves to convey
the mandate of mind to muscle and so cause action; but what does anatomy say
when the cords contract and become immovable? Has mortal mind ceased speaking
to them, or has it bidden them to be impotent? Can muscles, bones, blood, and
nerves rebel against mind in one instance and not in another, and become
cramped despite the mental protest?
Unless muscles are self-acting at all times,
they are never so, - never capable of acting contrary to mental direction. If
muscles can cease to act and become rigid of their own preference, - be
deformed or symmetrical, as they please or as disease directs, - they must be
self-directing. Why then consult anatomy to learn how mortal mind governs
muscle, if we are only to learn from anatomy that muscle is not so governed?
Mind
over matter
Is man a material fungus without Mind to help
him? Is a stiff joint or a contracted muscle as much a result of law as the
supple and elastic condition of the healthy limb, and is God the lawgiver?
You say, " I
have burned my finger." This is an exact statement, more exact
than you suppose; for mortal mind, and not matter, burns it. Holy inspiration
has created states of mind which have been able to nullify the action of the
flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the
Babylonian furnace; while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous
combustion.
Restrictive
regulations
In 1880, Massachusetts put her foot on a
proposed tyrannical law, restricting the practice of medicine. If her sister
States follow this example in harmony with our Constitution and Bill of
Rights, they will do less violence to that immortal sentiment of the
Declaration, "Man is endowed by his Maker with certain inalienable
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The oppressive state statutes touching medicine
remind one of the words of the famous Madame Roland, as she knelt before a
statue of Liberty, erected near the guillotine: "Liberty, what crimes are
committed in thy name!"
Metaphysics
challenges physics
The ordinary practitioner, examining bodily
symptoms, telling the patient that he is sick, and treating the case according
to his physical diagnosis, would naturally induce the very disease he is
trying to cure, even if it were not already determined by mortal mind. Such
unconscious mistakes would not occur, if this old class of philanthropists
looked as deeply for cause and effect into mind as into matter. The physician
agrees with his "adversary quickly," but upon different terms than
does the metaphysician; for the matter-physician agrees with the disease,
while the metaphysician agrees only with health and challenges disease.
Truth an
alterative
Christian Science brings to the body the
sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as
an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions,
expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones
to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change
of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind.
Practical
success
Experiments have favored the fact that Mind
governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. The
indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the conditions of matter and
also without the false beliefs of a so-called material existence. Working out
the rules of Science in practice, the author has restored health in cases of
both acute and chronic disease in their severest forms. Secretions have been
changed, the structure has been renewed, shortened limbs have been elongated,
ankylosed joints have been made supple, and carious bones have been restored
to healthy conditions. I have restored what is called the lost substance of
lungs, and healthy organizations have been established where disease was
organic. Christian Science heals organic disease as surely as it heals what is
called functional, for it requires only a fuller understanding of the divine
Principle of Christian Science to demonstrate the higher rule.
Testimony
of medical teachers
With due respect for the faculty, I kindly
quote from Dr. Benjamin Rush, the famous Philadelphia teacher of medical
practice. He declared that "it is impossible to calculate the mischief
which Hippocrates has done, by first marking Nature with his name, and
afterward letting her loose upon sick people."
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, Professor in Harvard
University, declared himself "sick of learned quackery."
Dr. James Johnson, Surgeon to William IV, King
of England, said:
"I declare my conscientious opinion,
founded on long observation and reflection, that if there were not a single
physician, surgeon, apothecary, man - midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug on
the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality."
Dr. Mason Good, a learned Professor in London,
said:
"The effects of medicine on the human
system are in the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that it has
already destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine, all
combined."
Dr. Chapman, Professor of the Institutes and
Practice of Physic in the University of Pennsylvania, in a published essay
said:
"Consulting the records of our science, we
cannot help being disgusted with the multitude of hypotheses obtruded upon us
at different times. Nowhere is the imagination displayed to a greater extent;
and perhaps so ample an exhibition of human invention might gratify our
vanity, if it were not more than compensated by the humiliating view of so
much absurdity, contradiction, and falsehood. To harmonize the contrarieties
of medical doctrines is indeed a task as impracticable as to arrange the
fleeting vapors around us, or to reconcile the fixed and repulsive antipathies
of nature. Dark and perplexed, our devious career resembles the groping of
Homer's Cyclops around his cave."
Sir John Forbes, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the
Royal College of Physicians, London, said:
"No systematic or theoretical
classification of diseases or of therapeutic agents, ever yet promulgated, is
true, or anything like the truth, and none can be adopted as a safe guidance
in practice."
It is just to say that generally the cultured
class of medical practitioners are grand men and women, therefore they are
more scientific than are false claimants to Christian Science. But all human
systems based on material premises are minus the unction of divine Science.
Much yet remains to be said and done before all mankind is saved and all the
mental microbes of sin and all diseased thought - germs are exterminated.
If you or I should appear to die, we should not
be dead. The seeming decease, caused by a majority of human beliefs that man
must die, or produced by mental assassins, does not in the least disprove
Christian Science; rather does it evidence the truth of its basic proposition
that mortal thoughts in belief rule the materiality miscalled life in the body
or in matter. But the forever fact remains paramount that Life, Truth, and
Love save from sin, disease, and death. "When this corruptible shall have
put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality [divine
Science], then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is
swallowed up in victory" (St. Paul).
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