# Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898)/12 Christian Science Practice

CHAPTER XII.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PRACTICE.
* Why art thou cast down, oh my soul [sense],
* And why art thou disquieted within me?
* Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him,
* Who is the health of my countenance and my God. — Psalms.
And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. — Jesus.
IT is related, in the seventh chapter of Luke's Gospel, that Jesus was once the honored guest of a certain A Gospel narrative. Pharisee, Simon by name, though quite unlike Simon the disciple. While they were at meat, a strange incident occurred, as if to interrupt the scene of Oriental festivity. A “strange woman” came in, having heard of Jesus' presence in Simon's house. 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 did not sit on a chair, as we sit at table, but reclined on a couch, or lounge, with his head towards the festal board, and ​with his bare feet away from it. It was therefore easy for the Magdalen to come behind his 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 his feet with the oil, wiping them with her long hair, which hung loosely about her shoulders, as was customary with women of her grade.
Did Jesus spurn the woman? Did he repel her adoration? No! He regarded her compassionately. Nor Christ's parable. 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 mutual creditor. “Which would be most grateful?” was the Master's question to Simon the Pharisee; and Simon replied, “He whose debt was largest.” Jesus approved the answer, and so brought home the lesson to all; and followed it by that remarkable declaration to the woman, “Thy sins are forgiven.”
Why did he thus summarize her debt to divine Love? Had she repented and reformed, and did his insight Divine insight. detect this unspoken moral uprising? She bathed his feet with her tears, ere she anointed them with the oil. In the absence of other proofs, was her grief sufficient evidence to warrant the hope of her growth in wisdom? Certainly there was ​encouragement in the mere fact that she was testifying her affection for a man of undoubted goodness and purity, who has since been rightfully regarded as the best man who 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 him they might be redeemed from all sensuality.
Which was the highest tribute to such ineffable affection, the hospitality of the Pharisee, or the contrition of Penitence or hospitality. the Magdalen? This query Jesus answered by rebuking self-righteousness, and declaring the absolution of the penitent. He even declared 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 an awful question, a question indicated by one of the giant needs of this age. Do Christian Pregnant questions. Scientists seek Truth, as Simon sought the Saviour, through material conservatism and for personal homage? Jesus told Simon that such seekers as he gave small reward in return for the spiritual purgation which came through the Messiah. If Christian Scientists are like Simon, then it must be said of them also, that they “love little.”
On the other hand, do they show their regard for Truth, or Christ, by their genuine repentance, by their broken hearts, expressed through meekness and human affection, as did this woman? If so, then it may be said of them, as Jesus said of this unwelcome visitor, that they indeed “love much,” because much is forgiven them.
​Did the doctor, the nurse, the cook, and the brusque business visitor whose graven idols are worldly success Sympathy. and policy, sympathetically feel the thorns they plant in the pillow of the sick and heavenly homesick, looking away from earth, — oh, did they know! — this knowledge would do a million times more towards healing the sick, and preparing their helpers for the “midnight call,” than all their lofty scorn for matter, and 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 man, and so enable him to rise above the supposed necessity of physical thought-taking and planning; but if the unselfish affections be lacking, and common sense and common humanity are disregarded, what mental quality remains, wherewith to evoke healing from the outspread wings of righteousness?
If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, he will accomplish the healing work at one visit, Speedy relief. and the disease will vanish into its native extinction, like dew before the morning sunshine. If the Scientist has enough Christly affection to win his own pardon, and such commendation as the Magdalen won from Jesus, then he is Christian enough to practise Scientifically, and deal with his patients compassionately; and the result will correspond with the spiritual intent.
If hypocrisy, stolidity, or inhumanity find their way into the chambers of disease, through the would-be Desecration. healer, if it were possible, they would convert into a den of thieves the temple of the Holy Ghost, the patient's spiritual power to resuscitate himself. ​Such mistaken metaphysicians are not giving to mind or body the joy and strength of Truth. The poor suffering heart needs its rightful nutriment such as peace, patience in tribulation, and a priceless sense of the dear Father's loving-kindness.
In order to cure his patient, the metaphysician should first cast moral evils out of himself, that he may thus Heal thyself. 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 the faith and hope.
The physician who lacks sympathy for his fellow-being is deficient in human affection; and we have The true physician. the apostolic warrant for asking: “If any man love not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?” Not having this divine affection, he lacks faith in the divine Mind, and has not that recognition of infinite Love which alone confers the healing power. Such Scientists will strain out gnats of human misfortune, while they swallow the camels of bigoted pedantry.
The physician must also watch, lest he be overwhelmed by a growing sense of the odiousness of sin, and by the Alarms quelled. 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 God is Love and God is All.
If we would open their prison doors for the sick, we ​must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted. If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of Genuine healing. spiritual healing under the napkin of its form, or bury the morale of Christian Science in the grave-clothes of its letter. The tender word and sweet forbearance with an invalid's hastiness, pitiful patience with his fears, and the removal thereof are far better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped speeches, and strait-laced methods, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with the Master's compassion.
This is what is meant by seeking Truth, Christ, not “for the loaves and fishes,” nor, like the Pharisee, with Moral of the tale. the arrogance of rank and display of scholarship, but like Mary Magdalene, with the oil of gladness and the perfume of gratitude, with tears from repentant eyes, and with those hairs, all numbered by the Father, from the summit of devout consecration.
The true Christian Scientist occupies the place at this period whereof Jesus spake to his disciples, when he Saving savor. said: “Ye are the salt of the earth. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a 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.
Because Truth is limitless, error would be thought unbounded. Because Truth is mighty in goodness, error claims an equal power for evil. Evil is the ​counterfeit of goodness, and seeks to equal it. The greatest wrong is but the supposititious opposite of the highest Real and counterfeit. right. The confidence inspired by Science lies in the fact that Truth is real and error unreal. Error is a coward before Truth. Truth is mighty, while error is powerless. Divine Science insists that time will prove this. Both Truth and error have come nearer than ever before to the apprehension of mortals. Truth will become still clearer, but error will be self-destroyed.
Against the fatal belief that error is as real as Truth, — that evil is equal in power to Good, if not superior, Abnormal condition. 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 God than in man, then no material conditions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error through Truth.
That Life is not contingent on bodily conditions is proven, when we see that Life and man survive this Survival of the fittest. body. Neither evil, disease, nor death can be discerned spiritually, and the mortal sense of them disappears in the ratio of our spiritual growth. Because matter has no consciousness, or Ego, its conditions are unreal, and these false conditions are the source of all sickness. Admit the existence of matter, and we admit that mortality (and therefore disease) has a foundation in fact. Deny the existence of matter, and we destroy the belief in these conditions, and with it disappears the foundation of disease. Once let the ​mental physician believe in the reality of matter, and he must admit also the reality of all its discordant conditions, which prevents his destroying them. Then he is even less fitted for the treatment of disease than the ordinary medical practitioner.
In proportion as matter, to human sense, loses all entity as substance, in that proportion does man become its Entity. 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 Christ's control over the belief that matter is substance, that it can be the arbiter of life, or the constructor of any form of existence.
We never read that Jesus made a diagnosis of a disease, in order to discover some means of healing it. He The Christ treatment. never asked if it were acute or chronic. He never recommended attention to laws of health, never gave drugs, never prayed to know if God were willing a man should live. He understood man to be immortal, whose Life is God, — and not that man has two lives, one to be destroyed, and the other to be made indestructible.
The prophylactic and therapeutic (that is, the preventive and curative) arts belong emphatically to Christian Science; Medical devices. as would be readily seen, if psychology, or the Science of Soul, were understood. Material medicine is finding its proper level. Limited to matter, by its own law, it has none of the advantages of Mind.
No man is physically healed in sin, or by it, any more than he is morally saved in or by sin. To be every ​whit whole, he must be better spiritually, as well as physically. To be made whole, we must forsake the No healing in sin. mortal sense of things, turn from the lie of belief to Truth, and gather the facts of Being from the immortal divine Mind. The body improves under the same regimen which improves the thought; and if this is not made manifest, it proves that it is not Truth which is influencing us. This is the law of cause and effect, or like producing like.
Homœopathy furnishes this evidence to the senses, — namely, that the symptoms produced by a certain drug, Like curing like. it removes by using the same drug which might cause them. This confirms my theory that faith in the drug is the sole factor in the cure. The effect that mortal mind produces through a certain belief, it removes through an opposite belief; but it uses the same drug in both cases.
The moral and spiritual facts of health, whispered into thought, produce very direct and marked Thought's whispering-gallery. effects on the body. A physical diagnosis of disease — since mortal mind must be its cause, if it exists — generally has a tendency to induce disease.
According both to medical testimony and individual experience, a drug eventually loses its supposed power, Effete potency. and can 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 gently change our basis from sensation to Christian Science, from error to Truth.
​Physicians examine the pulse, tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter; when in fact Diagnosis. all is Mind, and the body is the substratum of mortal mind, to whose higher mandate it must respond.
Disquisitions on disease have a mental effect similar to that produced by telling ghost-stories in the dark. Ghost-stones. 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 or when. As 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 he must be taken out of his darkness, before he can get rid of the illusive sufferings which throng the gloaming. The way of Science is the only way out of this condition.
I would not transform the infant at once into a man, nor would I keep the suckling a lifelong babe. No Infancy and maturity. 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 the need of spiritual understanding. 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, beauty instead of deformity, and health instead of sickness.
Truth is an alterative in the entire system, and can ​make it “every whit whole.” Remember, brain is not mind. Matter cannot be sick, and Mind is immortal Error in solution. harmony. Your mortal body is only a mortal belief of mind in matter. What you call matter was originally error in solution, or mortal mind. — likened, by Milton, to “chaos and old night.” One theory about this mortal mind is, that its sensations form blood, flesh, and bones. The Science of Being, wherein all is divine Mind, or God and His thought, would he clearer in this age, but for the belief that Mind can end in matter, or that mind can enter its own embodied thought, bind itself with its own beliefs, and then call its bonds material and divine law.
If man is absolutely governed by God, or Spirit, then man is not subject to matter, “neither indeed can be;” Veritable success. and therefore man cannot suffer, neither can he infringe his Maker's spiritual law. Christian Science and Christianity are one. How then in Christian Science, any more than in Christianity, can we believe in the reality and power of both Truth and error, and hope to succeed with either? Error is not self-sustaining. Its false supports fail, one after another! It succeeds for a time, only by parading in the stolen vestments of Truth.
“Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in Heaven.” A Fatal denials. denial of Truth is fatal to Christian Science. A just acknowledgment of Truth, and what it has done for us, is an effectual help. If pride, superstition, or any error, prevent the honest recognition of benefits received, this will be a hindrance to the recovery of the sick and the success of the student.
​If we are Christians on all moral questions, but are in darkness as to the physical exemption which Christianity Disease far more docile than iniquity. includes, we shall be more liable to sickness than the indifferent sinner, because we are more alive to the law, and to the fear of doing wrong. 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 metaphysical treatment, the sick recover more rapidly from disease than the sinner from his sin. Healing is easier than teaching, if the teaching is faithfully done.
The fear of disease and the love of sin are the springs of man's enslavement. “The fear of the Lord is the Enslavement. 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 you cannot remove the effects of fear produced by sin, Disease a misnomer. so long as the sin remains. 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, and the inflammation, decomposition, or deposit will abate; and the disabled organ will resume its healthy functions.
When the blood rushes madly through the veins, or languidly creeps along its frozen channels, we call these Circulation. conditions disease. This is a misconception. Mortal mind is producing the propulsion or the languor; and we prove this to be so when 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.
Error, and its effects on the body, are removed by Truth. Because mortal mind seems to be conscious, the Volition oft unconscious. 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 apparent on the body, which is in fact mortal mind, though it is called matter. This mortal blindness, and its sharp consequences, show our need of metaphysics. Through immortal Mind we can destroy all ills which proceed from mortal mind.
Ignorance of the cause or approach of disease is no argument against its mental origin. You confess to Precipice. 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 ignorance of mental power.
Heat and cold are products of mind. The body, when bereft of mortal mind, at first cools; and afterwards it Temperature. 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 when it evaporates, but for the belief that inflammation and pain must accompany this separation.
Chills and heat are often the form in which fever manifests itself. Change the mental state, and the Malaria and fever. chills and fever disappear. The Old School physician proves this when his patient says “I am better,” but believes that matter, not mind, has helped him. The Christian Scientist demonstrates that Mind heals the case, while the hypnotist dispossesses the patient of his mind in order to control him. No person is benefited by yielding his own mentality to this mental despot. Therefore all unscientific mental practice should be detected, and so rendered fruitless. The genuine Christian Scientist is adding to his patient's mental power, while he is restoring him physically.
Palsy is a belief that matter attacks mortals, and paralyzes the body, making certain portions of it motionless. Palsy. Destroy the belief, show mortal mind that muscles have no power to be lost, for Mind is supreme, and you will cure the palsy.
Consumptive patients always show great hopefulness and courage, even when in hopeless danger. This state Consumptive hopefulness. of mind seems anomalous, except to the expert in Christian Science. The 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 an image more terrifying than most other diseases. The patient turns involuntarily from the contemplation of it; but, ​though unacknowledged, the latent fear remains strongly in thought.
Just so it is with the greatest crime. It is the most subtle, and does its work almost unperceived. The Insidious concepts. diseases deemed dangerous 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 there is more Life and Immortality in one good motive and act, than in all the blood which ever flowed through mortal veins, simulating a corporeal sense of material life.
If the body is material, it cannot, for that very reason, suffer with a fever. Because the body is mental, and Remedy for fever. governed by mortal mind, it manifests only what that mind impresses upon it. Therefore the efficient remedy is to destroy the patient's unfortunate belief, by both silently and audibly arguing the opposite facts in regard to harmonious Being, — representing man as healthful 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 the fever. Some people, mistaught as to Mind-Science, inquire of my students 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 Christianly Scientific demonstration.
If your patient believes in taking cold, mentally convince him that matter cannot take cold, and Colds. that thought governs this liability. If grief causes suffering, convince the sufferer that sorrow is ​not the master of joy, and that he should rejoice always.
Invalids flee to tropical climates, in order to save their lives; but they come back no better than they went Tropics. away. Then is the time to cure them with Christian Science, and prove that they can be healthy in all climates, when their fear of climate is driven out.
Through different states of mind, the body becomes suddenly weak or abnormally strong, showing mortal Shocks. mind to be the producer of strength or weakness. A sudden joy or grief has caused a belief in instantaneous death. Because a belief originates unseen, it produces blindly its bad effects. The author never knew a patient who did not recover when the belief of the disease was gone. Remove the leading error and governing fear of this lower mind, and you remove the cause of any disease, as well as the morbid and excited action of any organ. You also remove, in this way, what are termed organic diseases as readily as functional difficulties.
The remote cause of all disease is mental, even a mistaken belief, — a conviction of the necessity and power Terror's potency. of ill-health, and a conclusion that Mind is helpless to defend the Life of man, and wholly incompetent to control it. Without illusion 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 as its master. Disease is less than mind, and Mind can control it.
Without mind, there can be no inflammatory or torpid action of the system. Remove the error, and you destroy Power of the eye. its effects. By looking a tiger fearlessly in the eye, Sir Charles Napier sent him cowering back into the jungle. An animal may infuriate another by looking him in the eye, and both will fight for nothing. A man's gaze, fastened fearlessly on a ferocious beast, often causes him 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 hygienic drilling and drugging, adopted to cure disease, is represented by the two beasts, who quarrel on an intensely unreal basis, into which mind scarcely enters.
Disease is not an intelligence to dispute the empire of Mind, or dethrone it, and take the government into its Empire. own hands. Sickness is not a self-constituted material power, which copes astutely with Mind, and finally conquers it. God never endowed matter with power to disable Mind, and chill harmony with a long and cold night of discord. Such a power, without the divine permission, is inconceivable; and if divinely directed, such a power manifests less wisdom than we usually find displayed in human governments.
If disease can attack and control the body, without the consent of mortal mind, sin can do the same; Consent needful. for both are errors, and were 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 Mind.
A felon, on whom certain English students experimented, fancied himself bleeding to death, and died The college experiment. through that belief, when there was only a stream of warm water trickling over his arm. Had he known this was but a belief, he would have risen above it. 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 had been shed. Then let her learn the opposite Principle 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 suffering from her belief that blood is destroying her life. The so-called vital current does not affect the invalid's health, but her belief produces the very results she dreads.
Fevers are forms of various types. The quickened pulse, coated tongue, febrile heat, dry skin, pain in the Fevers. head and limbs, are pictures depicted by mortal mind on the body. The images, held in this disturbed mind, frighten conscious thought. 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, may rest at length on some receptive thought, unless destroyed through Science, and become a fever case, which ends in a belief called death, to be finally conquered by Life. Truth is always the victor. Sickness and sin fall by their own weight. Truth ​is the rock of ages, the headstone of the corner, “but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.”
Contending for the evidence of the inharmonious and corporeal senses, we virtually contend against the Misdirected contention. control of Mind over body, and deny the ability of mental power to produce a desired result. This false method is as if the defendant should argue for the plaintiff, and in favor of a decision which he knows will be turned against himself.
The physical effects of fear illustrate its illusion. Gazing at a chained lion, crouched for a spring, would Animal timidity. not scare a man. The body is affected only by the belief of disease, held before a mind ignorant of metaphysics, which chains disease. Nothing but the power of Truth can prevent the fear of death, and prove man's dominion over it.
Many years ago the author made a spiritual discovery whose evidence in Science has accumulated, to prove A higher discovery. that the divine Mind produces in man health, harmony, and immortality. Gradually this testimony 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 lie endows this opposing power with strength to be used against Himself, against health, harmony, and immortality.
Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of God. In Wrong bias. ignorance of our God-given rights, we submit to unjust decrees, and the bias of education enforces this slavery. Be no more willing to suffer ​the illusion that you are sick, or that some disease is developing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temptation, on the ground that sin has its necessities.
When infringing some supposed law, you say there is danger; and this fear causes, of itself, the danger, and Broken law. induces the physical effects. We cannot suffer in reality from breaking any law, except it be a moral or spiritual law. The 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, wherewith men die. God legislates, but God is not the author of barbarous codes. In the realm governed by Him, there is no sickness.
Think less of the enactments of mortal mind, and you will sooner grasp man's God-given dominion. You must True way. 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. Man's moral right is to annul an unjust sentence, a sentence never inflicted by divine authority.
Expose the error which would impose penalties for transgressions of the physical laws of health, — Penalties. supposed laws of matter, opposed to the harmonies of Spirit, lacking divine authority, and having only human approval for their sanction.
If half the attention given to hygiene were given to the study of Christian Science, and its elevation of ​thought, this alone would usher in the millennium. Bathing and rubbing, to alter the secretions, or remove Hygiene. unhealthy exhalations from the cuticle, receive a useful rebuke from Christian healing. We must beware of making clean merely the outside of the platter.
He who is ignorant of what is termed hygienic law, is more receptive of spiritual power, and faith in one God, Blissful ignorance. than the devotee of this supposed law, who comes to teach him. Must we not then call 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, writes to me:
I should have died, but for the glorious Principle you teach, — supporting the power of Mind over the body, and showing me the nothingness of the so-called pleasures and pains of sense. The treatises I had read and the medicines I had taken only abandoned me to more hopeless suffering and despair. Adherence to hygiene was useless. Mortal mind needed to be set right. The ailment was not bodily, but mental, and I was cured when I learned my way in Christian Science.
We need a clean body and a clean mind, — a body Grooming. rendered pure by Mind, not by matter. One says: “I take good care of my body.” No doubt he attends to it with as much care as he would to ​the grooming of his horse; and possibly the animal sensation of scrubbing has more meaning, to such a man, than the pure and exalting influence of the divine Mind; but 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 present with the Lord.”
A hint may be taken from the emigrant, whose filth does not affect his happiness, inasmuch as mind and body Dirt and happiness. rest on the same basis. To the mind equally gross, dirt gives no uneasiness. It is the native element of such a mind, symbolized, and not chafed, by its surroundings; but impurity and uncleanliness, which do not trouble the gross, could not be borne by the refined.
The tobacco-user, eating or smoking poison for half a century, sometimes tells you that the weed preserves Tobacco. his health; but does this make it so? Does his assertion prove the use of tobacco to be a salubrious habit, and man the better for it? Such instances only prove the illusive physical effect of belief, confirming the Scriptural conclusion, “As a man 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 Massage. 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, act without mind?
We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought that we have transgressed a material law, and must of necessity pay the penalty. Let us reassure ​ourselves with the law of Love. God never punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for deeds of Corporeal penalties. kindness, though they expose him to fatigue, cold, heat, contagion. If he incurs the penalty through matter, it 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, he will prove to himself, through small beginnings, the grand verities of Being.
If exposure to a draught of air, while in a state of perspiration, is followed by chills, dry cough, influenza, Weather. 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 will not follow from the 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 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.
This is an established fact in Science, which all the evidence before the senses can never overrule. Sickness Quailing and philanthropy. 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 they derive from divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and endurance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the penalty 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 to wrongdoing.
Unremitting toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, if without sin, can be relieved without Sole source of suffering. suffering. Whatever it is your duty to do, can be done without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed.
You say you have not slept well, or have overeaten. You are a law unto yourself. Saying this, and believing Our sleep and food. it, you will suffer in proportion to your belief and fear. Your sufferings are not the penalty for having broken a material law, for it was a law of mortal mind which you disobeyed. You say, or think, because you have partaken of salt fish, that you must be thirsty, and you are thirsty accordingly; while the opposite belief would produce the opposite result.
Any supposed information, coming from the body or from inert matter, as if they were intelligent, is an illusion Doubtful evidence. of mortal mind, — one of its dreams. Realize that the evidence of the senses is not to be accepted in the case of sickness, any more than it is in the case of sin.
Expose the body to certain temperatures, and belief ​says that you catch cold and have catarrh; but no such result occurs without mind to demand it and produce it. Climate. While 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 healed diseases in too many instances, through the action of Truth on the mind, and its corresponding effects on the body, not to know that what she says is true.
A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a friend, occasions the same grief that his Erroneous despatch. real death would bring. You think your anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another despatch, correcting the mistake, heals that grief, and you learn that your suffering was merely the result of your belief. Thus it is with all sorrow, sickness, and death. You will learn at length that there is no cause for grief, and divine Wisdom will then be understood. Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on earth.
If a Christian Scientist had said, while you were laboring under the influence of this belief, “Your Mourning. sorrow is without cause,” you would not have understood him, although the correctness of the assertion might be afterwards proven to you. So when cur friends pass from our sight, and we lament, that lamentation is needless and causeless. We shall know this to be true, when we grow into the understanding of Life.
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 is carried sufficiently far; but when we realize that Brain-disease. immortal Mind is ever active, and that spiritual energies cannot wear out, or trespass upon God-given powers and resources, we are able to rest in Truth, refreshed by the assurances of immortality, opposed to mortality.
Our thinkers do not die early because they faithfully perform the natural functions of Being. If printers and Right never punishable. authors have the shortest span of earthly existence, it is not because they occupy most important posts and perform the most vital functions of society. That man does not pay the severest penalty who does the most good. By holding on to the facts 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, not matter, which causes all things discordant.
The history of Christianity furnishes sublime proofs of the supporting influence and protecting power Christian history. bestowed on man by his heavenly Father, omnipotent Mind, who gives him 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 loss 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 they could kill the body with matter, independently of mind.
Admit the common hypothesis, that food is what sustains life, and there follows the necessity for another Sustenance. admission, in the opposite direction, — namely, that food has power to destroy life, through its deficiency or excess, in quality or quantity. This is a specimen of the ambiguous character of all material health-theories. They are self-contradictory and self-destructive, — “a kingdom divided against itself, which is brought to desolation.” If food preserves life, it cannot destroy it.
The fact is, food does not affect the real existence of man; and this becomes self-evident, when we learn that God is our Life. Because sin and sickness are Hasten slowly! 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 more goodness, and a clearer comprehension of the living God. In that perfect day of understanding, we shall neither eat to live, nor live to eat.
If mortals think that food disturbs the harmonious functions of mind and body, either the food or this thought Diet and digestion. must be dispensed with. Which shall it be? If this decision be not destroyed, it may some day say that they are dying from want of food; for the penalty is thus coupled with the thought. The less we ​know or think about hygiene, the less we are predisposed to sickness. Recollect — it is not the body, but mortal mind, which reports food as undigested. Matter does not inform you of bodily derangements, but mortal mind does so; and this pseudo-mental testimony can be destroyed only by the better results of the opposite testimony.
Our dietetic theories first admit that food sustains the life of man, and then discuss the certainty that food can Scripture rebukes. kill him. This false reasoning is rebuked, in Scripture, by the metaphors about the fount and stream, the tree and its fruit, and the kingdom divided against itself. If God has — as prevalent theories maintain — instituted laws that food shall support human life. He cannot annul these regulations by an opposite law, that food shall be inimical to existence.
Materialists contradict their own statements. Their belief in such laws, and in penalties for their infraction, Ancient confusion. 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 Cholera morbus. chronic liver-complaint, and was then suffering from a complication of symptoms connected with this belief. I cured her in a few minutes. One instant she spoke despairingly of herself. The next minute she said, “My food is all digested, and I should like something more to eat.”
We cannot deny that Life is self-sustained; and we should never deny the everlasting harmony of Soul ​simply because, to the outward senses, there is seeming discord. It is our ignorance of God, the divine Ultimate results. Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony. Truth will at length compel us all to exchange the pleasures of sense for the joys of Soul.
When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the senses by Divine Science. Let your Unnecessary prostration. 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, or laid upon a bed of suffering, in payment of the last farthing, the last penalty demanded by error. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him.” Suffer no claim of sin or sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it, with an abiding conviction that its claims are 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.
“Agree to disagree” with approaching symptoms of chronic or acute disease, whether cancer, consumption, Incipient disease. or small-pox. Meet the incipient stages of disease with such powerful eloquence 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 matter, or mortal mind, 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, the judge will say, “Well done!”
​Instead of blind and calm submission to the incipient or advanced stages of disease, rise in rebellion against Righteous rebellion. them. Banish the belief that you can possibly entertain a single intruding pain which cannot be ruled out by the might of Mind, and thus you can prevent its development on the body. No law of God hinders this result. It is error to suffer for aught but your own sins. God, or Truth, will destroy all other supposed suffering; and real suffering, for your own sins, will cease, in proportion as the sin ceases.
Justice is the moral signification of law. Injustice declares the absence of law. When the body is supposed Plea of guilty. to say, “I am sick,” never plead guilty. Since matter cannot talk, it must be mortal mind which so 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. You alone can sentence yourself. Therefore make your own terms with sickness; and be just, if not generous, to yourself.
Mentally contradict every complaint from the body; and rise to the true consciousness of Life as Love, — as Cure in morality. being all that is pure, and bearing the fruits of Spirit. Sin is the foundation of sickness, and you can master sin through divine Mind; hence it is through divine Mind that you overcome disease. Remember that only while sin remains can it bring forth death. You cannot cure a bodily ailment, a moral law being broken, unless you repent and forsake the sin, and Divine Science will readjust the balance. The only safe ​course is to take antagonistic grounds against all that is opposed to the health and harmony of mind and body.
The physical affirmation of disease should always be met with the mental negation. Whatever mortal mind Nervous illusions. desires to produce on the body, it should express mentally, and hold 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 illusion. If you believe that consumption is hereditary in your family, unless Science shows you otherwise, you are liable to the development of that belief, in the form of what is termed pulmonary disease. If you decide climate or atmosphere to be unhealthy, it will be so to you. Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take.
Reverse the case. Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in Barring the door. bodily results, you may 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, shutting out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors, and the body cannot suffer therefrom. The issues of pain or pleasure must come through mind; and — like a watchman forsaking his post — we admit the intruder, forgetting that the divine Mind can guard this entrance.
The body seems to be self-acting, only because mortal mind is ignorant of itself and its own action, and of their Vitiated strength. results, — ignorant that the predisposing, remote, and exciting occasion of all bad effects, supposed to arise from climate or accident, is a law of ​mortal mind, not of matter. Mind is the master of the corporeal senses, and can conquer sickness, just as it conquers sin. Exercise this authority. Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise, in the strength of Spirit, to resist all that is unlike God. He has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed.
Be firm in your understanding that the divine Mind governs, and man should reflect His government. Have Tree and telegraph. no fears that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed, from a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain or 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 Eyesight. Mind, not upon the complex humors, lenses, muscles, the iris and pupil, constituting the visual organism.
Man is never sick; for Mind is not sick, and matter cannot be. A false belief is both the tempter and the No real disease. 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 it, is best of all, for it is the universal and perfect remedy.
By conceding to discord such great power, 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 Recuperation. to act in the direction which Mind points out. The admission that any hodily 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 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 medical systems in general, — that their theories are Medical fallacies. 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? Are material means the only refuge from evil chances? Is there no divine permission to conquer error of every kind, with Truth and Love?
We should remember that Life is God, and that God is omnipotent. Not understanding Christian Science, Argument and faith. the sick usually have little faith in it till they feel its beneficent influence. This shows that faith is not the healer in their 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 harmony.
Like Jesus, the healer should speak to disease as one ​having authority over it, leaving Soul to master the false evidences of the corporeal senses, and assert its claims Authority. over mortality and sickness. The same Principle cures both sin and sickness. When Christianity overcomes faith in Materia medica, and divine faith destroys faith in drugs, and other material methods of healing, sickness will disappear.
Prayers in which God is not asked to heal, but is besought to take the patient to Himself, do not benefit Aids in sickness. the sick. An ill-tempered or complaining person should not be a nurse. The nurse should be full of cheerfulness, faith, light, — a believer in God, Truth.
It is mental quackery to make disease a reality, hold it as something seen and felt, and then attempt its Mental quackery. 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. Such practice fastens disease on the patient, and it will reappear in some other more alarming form.
The knowledge that brain-lobes cannot kill a man, or affect the functions of mind, would prevent the brain Brainology. from becoming diseased; though a moral offence is indeed the worst of diseases. One should never hold in mind the image of disease, but efface all its forms and types in thought, both for one's own sake and for the patient's.
Avoid talking illness to the patient. Make no unnecessary inquiries relative to feelings or disease. Never startle with a discouraging remark about recovery, or ​draw attention to certain symptoms as unfavorable, or speak aloud the name of the disease. Never say beforehand Talking disease. how much you have to contend with in a case, or encourage, in the patient's thought, the expectation of growing worse before the crisis is passed.
The refutation of the testimony of material sense is no difficult task, in view of its conceded falsity. The Sensation refuted. refutation becomes arduous, not because the testimony is true, but only on account of the tenacity of belief in its truth, because of 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.
Explain to the sick the power which error exercises over their bodies. Give them divine and wholesome Healthful explanation. understanding, wherewith to fight against their erroneous sense, and so efface the images of disease from mortal mind. Keep distinctly in thought that man is the offspring of Soul, not body, — of God, not man; that man is spiritual, not material; and that soul is not in matter, giving it life and sensation, and producing disease. To break the dream of disease, understand that sickness is formed by the human mind, and not by matter.
By not perceiving vital metaphysical points, not seeing how mortal mind affects the body, — acting Misleading methods. beneficially or injuriously on health, as well as on the morals and the happiness of mortals, — we are misled in our methods. We throw the mental influence on the wrong side, thereby actually injuring those whom we mean to bless.
​Suffering is no less a mental condition than enjoyment is. You cause bodily sufferings, and increase Accidents. 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 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 God, as all which the Scriptures have declared Him to be.
To heal the sick, one must be familiar with the great verities of Being. Mortal mind is no more material Independent mentality. in our waking hours than it is when it acts, walks, sees, hears, enjoys, or suffers in a dream. 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, understanding yourselves and your Maker better than before.
Sometimes Jesus called a disease by name, as when he said to the epileptic boy, “Thou dumb and deaf spirit, Naming maladies. I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.” It is added that “the spirit [demon] 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, not dead but sleeping, he simply said, “Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise!” To the sufferer with the withered hand he only said, “Stretch forth thy hand!” and it “was restored whole, like as the other.”
Homœopathic remedies, sometimes not containing a particle of medicine, are known to relieve the symptoms The action of faith. of disease. What produces the change? It is the faith of mortal mind, which reduces its own 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 resides in mortal mind, not in matter. So also faith, co-operating with time and medicine, will soothe fear and change belief. Faith removes bodily ailments for a season; or else it changes those ills into new and more difficult forms of disease, until at length the Science of Mind comes to the rescue and works a radical cure, and then we understand the mystery. Not only does belief seem to bring on disease, but to remove it temporarily, or change its location and form.
You say that certain material combinations produce disease; but if the material body causes disease, can Corporeal combinations. matter cure what matter itself causes? 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 or combination can operate, apart from the action of mortal thought.
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 Mind. If Mind is the only Automatic mechanism. 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 primitive, mortal mind. Without this mind the body is devoid of action; and this deadness shows where the belief of life was, — namely, in mind, not in matter.
According to Christian Science there is no mortal mind out of which to make mortal beliefs, springing Mental strength. from illusion. Mortal mind is not an entity. It is only a false sense of matter, since matter is not sensible. The One Mind contains no mortal opinions. All that is real is included in this Mind.
Our Master asked: “How can one enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods, except he first bind the Parabolic confirmation. strong man?” In other words: How can I heal the body, without beginning with mortal mind, which directly controls it? When disease is once destroyed in mind, the fear of it is gone, and therefore it is thoroughly cured. Mortal error is “the strong man,” which must be held in subjection before its influence upon health and morals can be touched. This error conquered, we can despoil “the strong man” of his goods, — namely, sin and disease.
Mortals obtain the harmony of health, only as they forsake discord, acknowledge the supremacy of Mind, Unconscious thought-evil. 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 its development and heredity. This task becomes easy, if you understand that every disease is an error, and has no character or type, except what mortal mind assigns to it. By lifting the mind above error, or disease, and contending persistently against it, you destroy it.
When we remove disease by addressing the mortal mind, giving no heed to the body, we prove that mortal Retina. mind 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 mortal mind needs to be controlled by the divine Mind, to bring out the harmony of Being. Without this control there is discord, — manifest as sin, sickness, and death.
The Scriptures plainly declare the baneful influence of mortal mind on the body. Even our Master felt it. It Inside enemy. is recorded that in certain localities he did not many mighty works, “because of their unbelief” in Truth. If mortal mind is its own enemy, and works against itself, it does little in the right direction, and much in the wrong. Cherishing evil passions and malicious purposes, this mind is not a healer, but engenders disease and death.
If faith in the Truth of Being, which you impart mentally, while destroying error, causes chemicalization (as Alkali and acid. when an alkali is destroying an acid), it is because one must neutralize the other, for the purpose of forming a higher combination. 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 mentally.
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, as in a fermenting fluid, allowing impurities to pass away.
The only effect produced by medicine is dependent upon mental action. If the mind were parted from the Medicine and brain. body, could you produce any effect upon the brain by applying the drug thereto? Would the drug restore will and intelligence to cerebrum and cerebellum?
Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy of Mind, it is better to leave the adjustment of Surgery. broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while you confine yourself chiefly to mental reconstruction, and the prevention of inflammation or protracted confinement. Christian Science is always the most skilful surgeon, but surgery is the branch of its healing which will be last demonstrated. 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 dislocated joints and spinal vertebrae.
The time approaches when mortal mind will forsake its corporeal, structural, and material basis, when immortal Perspective. Mind, and its formations, will be apprehended in Science, and material beliefs will not interfere with spiritual facts. Man is indestructible and eternal. Some time it will be learned that mind constructs the body, and with its own materials. Hence ​no breakage or dislocation can really occur. You say that accidents, injuries, and disease kill man; but this is not true. The life of the man is Mind. The material body manifests only what mortal mind admits, whether it be a broken bone, disease, or sin.
We say that one mortal mind can influence another, and thereby affect the body; but we rarely remember The evil of mesmerism. that we govern our own bodies. The social error of mesmerism — or hypnotism, to use the recent term — illustrates the fact just stated. The operator makes his subjects believe they cannot act voluntarily and handle themselves as they are accustomed to; and they may yield to this influence unless their belief is better instructed and emancipated by understanding. Hence the proof that hypnotism is not scientific. Science cannot produce both disorder and order. Here inaction is proven to be a belief without an adequate cause.
So the sick, through belief, have induced their own stiff joints and cramped muscles. The great difference Hypnotism over self. between a wrong intention and a mistake in practice is that one should and does cause the perpetrator to suffer, and the other carefully instructs him. In the one case it is understood that the deformity or disease is a mental illusion; while in the other, it is believed that the misfortune is a material effect. Mortal mind is employed to remove the illusion in one case, but matter is appealed to in the other. Really, both have their origin in mortal mind, and are healed by immortal Mind.
You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception, and not the Truth of Being. Mortal mind is constantly producing ​on mortal body the results of false opinions; and it will continue to do so, until mortal error is deprived of its Gossamer. imaginary powers by Truth, which sweeps away the gossamer web of mortal illusion. The most Christian state is one of rectitude and understanding, and this is best adapted for healing the sick. Never conjure up some new discovery from the dark forebodings, and then acquaint your patient with it.
If mortal mind produces disease, immortal Mind can remove this dis-ease. Mortal mind determines the Disease-production. nature of a case; and the practitioner improves or injures the case, in proportion to the Truth or error which influences his conclusions. The mental conception and development of disease are not understood by the patient; but the physician should be familiar with mental action and its effect, in order to judge the case according to Christian Science.
If a man is an inebriate, a slave to tobacco, or the special servant of any one of the myriad forms of sin, meet and destroy those errors with the Truth Appetites. of Being, — by exhibiting, to the wrong-doer, the suffering that his submission to such habits brings, and 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 only destroy them 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 only as God's law is fulfilled, and reformation cancels the crime.
The Temperance reform, felt all over our land, results ​from Metaphysical Healing, that cuts down every tree which brings not forth good fruit. This conviction, that Temperance. 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 the ability to master evil and to love Good.
Healing the sick and reforming the sinner are one and the same thing in Christian Science. Both cures Sin the root. require the same method, and are inseparable in Truth. Lust, hatred, and dishonesty make a man sick; and neither medicine nor Mind can help him permanently, even in body, unless they make him better morally, and so deliver him from his destroyers. Mortal body and mind are one. The heat of hatred, inflaming brutal propensities, the indulgence of evil motives and aims, will make any man (who is above the very lowest type of manhood) a hopeless sufferer. They consume the body with the fires of Hell.
Christian Science commands man to master these propensities, — to hold hatred in abeyance with kindness, Conspirators. to conquer 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 the officer (justice), and the law's sentence 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.” This is sin's necessity, — to destroy itself, and so yield at last to the government of God, wherein is no power to sin.
You had better be exposed to every plague on earth, than endure the cumulative effects of a guilty Cumulative repentance. conscience. The abiding consciousness of wrong-doing 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 self-destruction. You are conquered by the moral penalties you incur, or by the ills you bring. The pains of sense are less harmful than its pleasures. Belief in material suffering causes mortal mind to retreat from its own error, to flee from body to Spirit, and appeal to divine sources outside of itself.
The Bible contains the recipe for all healing. “The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” The leaves of healing. Sin and sickness are both healed on the same principle. The tree is typical of Divine Principle, which is equal to every necessity and emergency, offering full salvation from sin, sickness, and death. Sin will submit to Christian Science when, in place of creeds and professions, the divine Principle of Being is understood and demonstrated, healing mortal mind.
The Science of Being unveils the errors of sense; and spiritual perception, aided by Science, reaches Truth. Sickness and sin. Then error disappears. Sin and sickness will abate, and seem less real, as we approach the scientific period, which rebukes mortal sense, when we shall no more fall into sickness than into sin. The moral man has no fear of committing a murder, and he should be as strong on the question of disease.
​Resist evil — error, of whatever sort — and it will flee from you. Error is opposed to Life. We can and Resistance. ultimately shall, so rise as to avail ourselves of the supremacy of Truth over error. Life over death, and Good over evil, in every direction; and this growth will go on until we no more fear that we shall be sick and die, than that we shall steal, murder, or commit suicide. Sickness, as well as sin, involves weakness, temptation, and fall, — a loss of control over the body.
The depraved appetite for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, is destroyed only by the mastery of Morbid craving. Mind over 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 animal except a loathsome worm, is at least disgusting.
Man's enslavement to the most relentless masters — passion, appetite, and hatred — is conquered only by a Panacea. mighty struggle. Every hour of delay makes the struggle more severe. If man is not victorious over them, they crush out happiness, health, and manhood. Here Christian Science is the sovereign panacea, giving strength to the weakness of mortal mind, — strength from the immortal and omnipotent Mind, — and lifting humanity above itself, into purer desires, even into spiritual power and good-will to man.
Let the slave of wrong desire learn the lessons of ​Christian Science, and he will get the better of that desire, and ascend a degree in the scale of health, happiness, and existence.
If delusion says, “I have lost my memory,” contradict it. No faculty is lost. In Science, all Being is spiritual, Memory. 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 Mind, not matter, Life, not death, into the world.
There are many species of insanity. All sin is insanity in different degrees. Sin is only spared from this Sin a form of insanity. classification, because its method of madness is in consonance with common mortal belief. Every sort of sickness is a degree of insanity; that is, sickness is always hallucination. This view is not altered by the fact that it is not acknowledged or discovered to be so by those affected by it.
There is a universal insanity, which mistakes fable for fact throughout the entire round of the material senses; but this general craze cannot, in a spiritual diagnosis, shield the individual case from the special name of insanity. Those unfortunate people who are committed to insane asylums are only so many well-defined instances of the baneful effects of illusion on mortal minds and bodies.
The supposition that we can correct insanity by the use of purgatives and narcotics is in itself a mild species Drugs and brain-lobes. of insanity. Can drugs go of their own accord to the brain, and so destroy the inflammation of its disordered functions, — thus reaching mortal mind through matter? Truth does not distribute ​drugs through the blood, and thence derive a supposed effect on intelligence and sentiment. A dislocation of the tarsal joint would produce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the brain, were it not that mortal mind thinks this joint less intimately connected with the mind than is the brain. Reverse this belief, and the results would be perceptibly different.
The unconscious thought, in the corporeal substratum of mortal mind, produces nothing; and that condition of Substratum of the mind. the body which we call sensation, is erroneous; but mortal mind is ignorant of itself, — ignorant of the errors it includes, and of their effects upon the body. 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, as animate error, — called mind, nerves, brain, — the more prolific does it become in sin and disease-beliefs.
Unconscious mortal mind, alias matter, cannot dictate terms to conscious mind, or say, “I am sick.” The Dictation of error. belief that the unconscious substratum of mortal mind, termed the body, suffers and reports disease, independently of this conscious mind, is the error which prevents mortal man from knowing how to govern his body.
The conscious mortal mind is superior to its unconscious substratum, matter, and the stronger never yields Superiority. to the weaker, except through fear or choice. The animate stratum of mortal mind should govern the inanimate material substratum. Man is perfect and immortal; and the mortal and imperfect ​“children of men” are but poor counterfeits, to be laid aside for the pure reality. This mortal is put away, and the reality of existence is attained, no faster than we realize the great end of man, and seek a higher model for ourselves.
We have no right to say that life depends on matter now, but will not depend on it after death. We cannot Death's defects. spend our days here in ignorance of the Science of Life, and expect to find beyond the grave a reward for this ignorance and sloth. Death will not make us harmonious and immortal, as a recompense for unfaithfulness. If we give no earthly heed to the Life which is spiritual and eternal, we shall not be ready for it hereafter.
“This is Life eternal,” says Jesus, — is, not shall be; and then he defines everlasting Life as a present knowledge Life eternal and present. of his Father and himself, — “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 clearly that Truth is the Life of man; but the world objects to making this teaching practical.
Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger. The more difficult seems the material condition to be Fear an outcast. 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. If an abuse appears, this is not from Truth or Misuse and fear. Christian Science, but from error. If mental practice is used for any purpose but healing morally and physically, its power will diminish, until the practitioner's healing ability is wholly lost. Christian Scientific practice begins with the keynote of harmony, “Be not afraid!” Said Job: “The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me.”
Let the author allude to a phenomenon which she discovered in 1867. If you mentally and silently call Naming diseases. the disease by name, as you argue against it, as a general rule the body will respond more quickly, — just as a person replies more readily when his name is spoken; but this is because you are not perfectly attuned to Divine Science, and need the arguments of Truth for reminders. To let Spirit, through the power of divine Love, bear witness, without arguments, to the healing Truth, is the more excellent way.
It is recorded that once Jesus asked the name of a disease, — a disease moderns would call dementia. The Legion. 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-destroyed.
The efficient cause and foundation of all sickness is error, arising either from ignorance or sin. It is always a false sense entertained, not resisted, which induces ​disease, — an image of thought externalized. The mental Fear as the foundation. state is called a material state; and whatever is cherished in mortal mind as the physical condition is imaged forth on the body.
Always begin your treatment by allaying the fear of patients. Silently reassure the patient as to his Unspoken pleading. 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 wisely governs all, never punishing aught but sin, is your standpoint, whence to advance and destroy the human fear of sickness. Plead the case in Science and for Truth, mentally and silently. 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, and you will finally be the winner.
You may call the disease by name when you mentally deny it; but by naming it audibly, you are liable to Danger from audibleness. impress it upon the thought. The silence of Christian Science and Love is eloquent. It is powerful to unclasp the hold of disease, and reduce its cause to nothingness.
To prevent disease or to cure it mentally, let Spirit destroy this dream of sense. If you wish to heal by Insistence. argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical. Argue with the patient (mentally, not audibly) that he has no disease, and conform the argument to the evidence. Mentally insist that health is the everlasting fact, and sickness the temporal falsity. ​
Then realize the presence of health, and the corporeal senses will respond, “So be it!”
If the case is that of a young child or an infant, it needs to be met mainly through the parent's thought, Infants. silently or audibly, on the basis of Christian Science. The Scientist knows there can be no hereditary disease, since matter cannot transmit good or evil intelligence to man, and Mind produces no pain in matter. The act of yielding one's thoughts to the undue contemplation of physical wants induces those very desires. A single requirement, beyond what is necessary to meet the simplest needs of the babe, is hurtful. Mind regulates the condition of the stomach, bowels, food, and temperature of children and men, and matter does not. The views of parents and other people on these subjects produce their good or bad results in the health of children.
The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural or necessary, than would be the process of taking Ablutions. a fish out of water every day, and covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive more vigorously thereafter in its native 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.
Giving drugs to infants, noticing every symptom of flatulency, and constantly directing the mind to such Juvenile ailments. signs, — that mind being laden with illusions about disease, health-laws, and death, — these actions convey mental images to children's bodies, and often stamp them there, making it probable, at any ​time, that such ills may be reproduced in the very ailments feared. A child can have worms, if you say so, — or any other malady, timorously holden in the beliefs of those about him, relative to his body. Thus are laid the foundations of the belief in disease and death, and children are educated into discord.
The treatment of insanity is especially interesting. However obstinate the case, it yields more naturally Dementia. than most diseases to the salutary action of Truth, which counteracts error. The leading arguments to be used in curing insanity are the same as in other diseases: namely, the impossibility that matter should control mind, or suffer; the need of mortal mind to be guided by Truth; the fact that Christ is Truth, and Truth can establish a healthy state, and destroy all error, whether that error be called physical or mental, dementia or dysentery.
To fix Truth steadfastly in your patients' thoughts, explain Christian Science to them; but not too soon, — Argument. not until your patients are prepared for it, — lest you array the sick against their own interests, by troubling and perplexing thought. The Mind-healer's argument rests on the Christianly Scientific basis of Being. The Scripture declares that “God [Good] is all, and there is none beside Him.” Even so, harmony is universal, and discord is unreal. Christian Science declares that Mind is Substance, but that matter neither feels, suffers, nor enjoys. Hold these points strongly in view. Keep in mind the verities 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 and unreal.
Matter cannot be inflamed. Inflammation is an excited stage of mortal mind that is not normal. Immortal Inflammation. Mind is the only cause, therefore disease is not a cause or effect. And 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 thus and leaps or halts when it contemplates unpleasant things, or when the individual comes upon some object which he dreads. Inflammation never appears in a part which mortal thought does not reach. That is why opiates relieve it. They calm the thought by inducing stupefaction, — by resorting to error instead of Truth. Opiates do not remove the pain, in any proper sense of the word. They only render mortal mind temporarily less fearful.
Note how thought makes the face pallid. It either retards the circulation or quickens it, causing a pale Influence of terror. cheek or a flushed. Even so it increases or diminishes the secretions, the breathing, the action of the bowels, the action of the heart. The muscles, moving quickly or slowly, 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 instruct mortal mind with immortal Truth.
Etherization will apparently cause the body to disappear. Before the thoughts are fully at rest, the limbs Etherization. will vanish from consciousness. Nay, 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 it, be removed by divine Mind, the Truth of Being.
A hypodermic injection of morphine is administered to a patient, and in twenty minutes the sufferer is Sedative injections. quietly asleep. To him there is no longer any pain. Yet any physiciau — allopathic, homœopathic, botanic, eclectic — will tell you that the troublesome material cause is unremoved, and that in a few hours, 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 disappeared. Where is the pain while the patient sleeps?
The material body, which you call me, is mortal mind; and this mind is material in its sensation, even as the Physical ego. body is material, which has originated from this material sense, and been developed according to it. This materialism of parent and child is only in mortal mind, as the dead body proves; for when the law of this mind has doomed it to decay, that body is no longer the parent, even in appearance.
The sick know nothing of the mental process by which they are depleted, and next to nothing of the metaphysical Depletion with thought. 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 bodies are sustained by Spirit, not matter, and they will find rest in God, divine Love, more than in oblivious sleep.
Give sick people credit for sometimes knowing more than their doctors. Always support their trust in the Helpful encouragement. power of Mind to sustain the body. Never tell the sick they have more courage than strength. Tell them, rather, that their strength is in proportion to their courage. If you make them realize this great truism, there will be no reaction from over-exertion, or from excited conditions. Maintain the facts of Christian Science: that Mind is God, and therefore cannot be sick; that what is termed matter cannot be sick; that all causation is Spirit, 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 the immortal man.
To the Christian Science healer, sickness is a dream, from which the patient needs to be awakened. Medical outlook. 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.
Explain audibly to your patients (as soon as they can Unfoldings. bear it) the utter 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 them an underlying understanding to support them, and shield them against the baneful effects of their own beliefs. Show them that the conquest over sickness, as well as over sin, depends on mentally destroying all belief in these errors.
Stick to the Truth of Being, in contradistinction to the error that life, substance, or intelligence can be in Christian pleading. 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 Christianity is half equal to the virtue of your plea, you will heal the sick.
It must be clear to you that sickness is no more the reality of Being than sin is. This mortal dream of Reality and repudiation. 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, that 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 you entertain, you will heal the sick.
Include moral as well as physical belief in your efforts to destroy error. Cast out all manner of evil. Morality. “Preach the Gospel to every nation.” Speak the Truth to every form of error. Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed spines, ​are all dream-shadows, dark images of mortal thought, which will flee before the light.
A moral question may hinder the recovery of the sick. Lurking error, envy, revenge, and malice will perpetuate, or even create 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 lasting.
If, from any cause, your patient suffers a relapse, meet the cause mentally and courageously, knowing that there Relapse. can be no reaction in Truth. Neither disease itself nor fear has the power to cause disease to relapse. Disease has no intelligence wherewith to move itself about, or to change itself from one form to another. Meet every adverse circumstance as its master. Observe mind, instead of body, lest aught unfit for development should enter it. Think less of material conditions, and more of spiritual.
Mind produces all action. If the action proceeds from Truth, from immortal Mind, there is harmony; but The phases of disease. mortal mind is liable to any phase of belief. A relapse cannot in reality come from other minds, for there is but one Mind. It may come from yourself, because you are not bringing out, in your deeds, the divine Principle of metaphysics, but departing from its rules. To succeed in healing, you must conquer your own beliefs and fears, as well as those of your patients, and you must rise daily into higher and holier consciousness.
Instruct the sick that they are not helpless victims; for, if they will only learn how, they can resist ​disease and ward it off, just as positively as they can the temptation to sin. This fact of Christian Science Reassurance. 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 of the new idea. This fact reassures depressed mortal mind. It imparts a healthy stimulus to the body, and regulates the system. It increases or diminishes the action, as the case may require, better than any drug, alterative, or tonic.
Mind is the natural stimulus of the body; but mortal belief, taken at its best, is not promotive of health Stimulus. or happiness. Tell the sick that they can meet sickness fearlessly, if they only realize their mental power over every physical action and condition.
If it becomes necessary to startle mortal mind, in order to break its dream of suffering, vehemently tell Patient startled. 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 a mere belief. The only difference is, that insanity implies belief in a diseased brain, while physical ailments (so called) arise from belief that some other portions of the body are deranged. Derangement, or disarrangement, is a word which conveys the true definition of human belief in ill-health, — disturbed harmony. Should you thus startle the mind, in order to remove its beliefs, afterwards make known to the patient your motive for this shock, showing him that it was to facilitate recovery.
If a crisis occurs in your treatment, you must treat the patient less for the disease, and more for the mental A crisis. fermentation, and subdue the symptoms, by removing the belief that this chemicalization produces pain. Insist vehemently on the great fact which covers the whole ground, — namely, God is all, that there is none beside Him. 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 fear and confusion induced by chemicalization, which is the alterative effect produced by Truth on error; and sometimes explain the symptoms and their cause to the patient.
It is no more Christianly Scientific to see disease than it is to experience it. If you would destroy the sense of Vision and perversion. disease, you should not build it up by wishing to see the forms it assumes, or by applying 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 mathematical. Wiser than his persecutors, Jesus said: “If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out?”
If the reader of this book observes a great stir throughout the whole system, and certain moral and physical Effect of this book. symptoms seem aggravated, these indications are favorable. Continue to read, and the book will become the physician, allaying the tremor which Truth often brings to error when destroying it.
Patients unfamiliar with the cause of this commotion, and ignorant that it is a favorable omen, may be alarmed ​If such be the case, explain to them the law of this action. As when an acid and alkali meet and ferment, Commotion in reconstruction. bringing out a third condition, so mental and moral fermentation change the material base of man, giving more spirituality to mortal sense, and causing it to depend less on material evidence. The changes which go on in mortal mind serve to reconstruct the body. Thus Christian Science, by the alchemy of Spirit, neutralizes disease.
Let us suppose two parallel cases of bone-disease, both similarly produced, and attended with the same Bone-healing by surgery. symptoms. A surgeon is employed in one case, and a Christian Scientist in the other. The surgeon, believing that matter forms its own conditions, and renders them fatal at certain points, entertains fears and doubts as to the ultimation 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 neither should be communicated to the patient, either verbally or otherwise, for thus the tendency towards a favorable result is greatly diminished. Remember that the unexpressed belief oftentimes affects the sensitive patient more strongly than the expressed belief.
The Christian Scientist, understanding that all is Mind, commences with mental causation, the Truth of Scientific corrective. Being, to destroy the error. This corrective is an alterative, reaching to every part of the human system. According to Scripture, it searches ​“the bones and marrow,” and it restores the harmony of man.
The matter-physician deals with matter, as both his foe and his remedy. He regards the ailment as weakened Coping with difficulties. or strengthened, according to the evidence this foe presents. The Scientist — making Mind his basis of operation, irrespective of matter, and regarding the Truth and harmony of Being as superior to its 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 courage and consciousness are now at work in the economy of Being, — according to the law of Mind, which ultimately asserts its absolute supremacy.
Ossification, or any unusual condition of the body, is as directly the action of mortal error as insanity. Bones Formation and malformation. have only the substantiality of thought which formed them. They are only an appearance, a subjective state of mortal mind. 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, that takes possession of itself and its own bones.
Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief, and unite Accidents. with the one Mind, in order to change this notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction, and bring out harmony. Under Providence there can be no accident, since there is no room for imperfection in perfection.
In medical practice objections would be raised if one ​doctor should administer a drug to counteract the working of a remedy prescribed by another. It is equally Opposing mentality. 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 Mind can remove any obstacle, you yet need the ear of your auditor. It is more difficult to make yourself heard mentally when others are thinking about your patients, or conversing with them. Therefore you should seek to be alone with God and the sick, while treating the cases confided to your care.
To prevent or cure scrofula, and other so-called hereditary diseases, you must destroy the belief in these ills, Scrofula. 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 before him. Mortal mind, not matter, induces this conclusion and its results. You will have humors, just as long as you believe them either to be safety-valves or to be ineradicable.
If the case to be mentally treated is consumption, take up the leading points included (according to belief) in Consumption. this disease. Show that it is not inherited; that inflammation, tubercles, hemorrhage, and decomposition are beliefs, images of mortal thoughts, superimposed upon the body; that they are not the Truth of man; that they should be treated as error, and put out of thought. Then these ills will disappear.
​If the lungs are disappearing, this is but one of the beliefs of mortal mind. Mortal man will be less mortal, The lungs reformed. when he learns that lungs never sustained existence, and can never destroy God, who is our Life. When this is understood, mankind will be more godlike. What if the lungs are ulcerated? God is more to a man than his lungs; and the less we acknowledge matter or its laws, the more immortality we possess. Consciousness constructs a better body, when it has conquered our faith in matter. Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew. You will never fear again, except to offend God, and will never believe that lungs, or any portion of the body, can destroy you.
If you have sound and capacious lungs, and want them to remain so, be always ready with the mental Soundness maintained. 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, as directly as error can forbid the feet to walk, or impel the hands to steal.
The discoverer of Christian Science finds the path less wearisome when she has the high goal always Our footsteps heavenward. before her thoughts, than when she only counts her bleeding footsteps in reaching that goal. If the destination is desirable, the vision speeds our footsteps. The outlook on Truth makes us strong instead of weak, and rests instead of wearying us. Now if the belief in death were only obliterated, and the understanding could obtain that we live on without death, ​this would be a Tree of Life, known by its fruits. We should renew our energies and endeavors, and see the folly of hypocrisy, while also learning the necessity of working out our own salvation. When we learn that sickness cannot kill us, and that we are not saved from sin or sickness by death, this understanding will quicken us. It will master our dread of the grave, and tend to destroy the ills of mortal existence.
The relinquishment of all faith in death, and also of the fear of its sting, would raise the standard of health Eternal banner. and morals far beyond its present elevation, and would enable us to hold the banner of Christianity aloft with unflinching faith in Life eternal. Sin brought death, and death will disappear with the disappearance of sin. Man is immortal, and the body cannot die, because it has no life to surrender. The illusions named death, disease, sickness, and sin are all that can be destroyed.
If it be true that man lives, this fact can never change to the opposite belief, that he dies. Life is the law of Life never contingent. Soul, even the law of the Spirit of Truth; and Soul is never without its representative. Man's individual Being can no more die, or disappear in unconsciousness, than can Soul, for both are immortal. If we believe in death now, we must disbelieve it when we learn there is no reality in death, for 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 its harmony obtained.
Death is but another phase of the dream that existence can be structural. Nothing can interfere with ​the harmony of Being, or end the existence of man. He is the same after as before a bone is broken, or Mortality vanquished. 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 in ourselves and others. One difficulty lies in our ignorance of what sin is. God, Truth, and Love make man undying. Immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so called, as well as in the spiritual.
Called to the bed of death, what material remedy have we, when all such remedies have already failed? Spirit Last resort. is our last resort; but it should have been our first and only resort, not the last. The dream of death is to be mastered by Mind. Thought will waken from its own material declaration, “I am dead,” to catch this trumpet-word of Truth, “There is no death, no inaction, over-action, nor reaction.”
Life is real, and death is the illusion. A demonstration of the facts of Soul, in Jesus' way, resolves the Visions vanishing. dark visions of material sense into harmony and immortality. Our privilege, at this supreme moment, is to prove the words of our Master: “If any one keep my word, he will never see death.” To so divest our thought of false trusts and material evidences, in order that the spiritual facts of Being may appear, — that is the great attainment whereby we may sweep away the false and give place to the true. Thus we may establish in Truth the temple, or body, “whose builder and maker is God.”
​We should consecrate existence, not “to the unknown God,” whom we “ignorantly worship,” but to the eternal Consecration. builder, the everlasting Father, — the Life which mortal sense cannot impair, or mortal belief destroy. We must realize the ability of mental might to offset human misconceptions, and replace them with the Life which is spiritual, not material.
The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal. We must hold The present immortality. forever the consciousncss of existence; and sooner or later, aided by Christian Science, we must master sin, disease, and death. The evidence of man's immortality will become more apparent, as material beliefs are given up, and the immortal facts of Being are admitted.
The author has healed hopeless disease, and raised the dying to life and health, through the understanding Careful guidance. 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 the Spirit. We must begin, however, with the more simple demonstrations of control; and the sooner we begin, the better. This final demonstration takes time for its accomplishment. When walking, we are guided by the eye. We look before our feet; and we look beyond a single step, if we are wise.
The corpse, deserted by thought, is cold and decays, but it never suffers. Science declares that man is Clay to clay. 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 this is not so. Mortals waken from the dream of death, with bodies unseen by those who think they bury the body.
If man did not exist before the material organization began, he could not exist after the body is disintegrated. Ethics and pre-existence. If we live after death, and are immortal, we must have lived before birth; for if Life ever had any beginning, it must have also 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 not understood generally by our ethical instructors.
Jesus said (John viii. 52), “If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.” That statement is not Life all-inclusive. 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, appears. Our faith should enlarge its borders and strengthen its base, by resting upon Spirit instead of matter. When mortal mind gives up its belief in death, it will advance more rapidly towards God, Life, and Love. Belief in sickness and death, as certainly as a belief in sin, shuts out a true sense of Life and Heaven from our experiences. When will mortals wake to this great fact of Science?
I here present my readers with an allegory illustrative of the law of divine Mind, and the supposed laws of matter and hygiene, wherein the plea of Christian Science heals the sick.
​Suppose a mental case to be on trial, as cases are tried in court. A man is charged with liver-complaint. The A mental court case. patient feels ill, ruminates, and the trial commences. Personal Sense is the plaintiff. Mortal Man is the defendant. Belief is the attorney for Personal Sense. Mortal Minds constitute the jury. Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, and Hypnotism are the pretended friends of Man. The court-room 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. Testimony of Health-laws. 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 should 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 thirsty, he gave him drink. During all this time he attended to his daily labors, partaking of food at irregular intervals, sometimes retiring to sleep immediately after a heavy meal. At last he had the liver-complaint; which I considered criminal, inasmuch as the offence is deemed punishable with death. Therefore I arrested Mortal Man arrested. Mortal Man in behalf of the state (i. e. Body) and cast him into prison. At the time of the arrest the prisoner summoned Physiology, Materia Medica, and Hypnotism to hinder his punishment. The struggle, on their part, was long. Material missiles were employed vigorously, but unavailingly. Materia Medica held out the longest; but at length all these assistants gave up their weapons to me as a representative of Health-laws, and I succeeded in getting Mortal Man into close confinement.
​The next witness is called:—
I am Coated Tongue. I am covered with a foul fur, placed False witnesses. on me the night of the liver-attack. Morbid Secretion hypnotized the prisoner and took control of his mind, making him despondent, — that his fate might the sooner be decided.
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 bad-looking, 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 Generalissimo over 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, and am on intimate terms with Error, who is a relative of the prisoner.
Another witness is called for by the Court, 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 Judge and governor. possible for anybody 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 night of the liver-attack, by the officer of the Board of Health, who protested “The last enemy.” 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 his purpose, and he decided at once that the prisoner should die.
The testimony for the plaintiff, Personal Sense, being closed, Judge Medicine arises, and with great solemnity Judge Medicine charges the jury. addresses the jury of Mortal Minds. He analyzes the offence, reviews the testimony, and explains the law relating to liver-complaint; the conclusion of which 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. They must regard, in such cases, only the evidence of Personal Sense against Mortal Man.
As the Judge proceeds, the prisoner grows restless. His sallow face blanches with fear, and a look of despair and death settles upon it. The case is given to the jury. A brief consultation ensues; and the jury returns a verdict of “Guilty of liver-complaint in the first degree.”
​Judge Medicine then proceeds to pronounce the solemn sentence of death upon the patient. Because of Mortal Man sentenced. loving his neighbor as himself, Mortal Man was guilty of benevolence in the first degree; and this has led him into the commission of the second crime, liver-complaint, which material laws regard as homicide. For this crime Mortal Man is sentenced to the torture until he is dead. “May God have mercy on his Soul,” is the Judge's solemn peroration.
The prisoner is then remanded to his cell (sick-bed), and Scholastic Theology sent for to prepare the frightened sense of Life, God, — which sense must be immortal, — for death, the Body having no longer any friends.
Ah! but Christ, the true idea of Life, the friend of Man, can open wide those prison-doors, and set the Appeal to a higher tribunal. 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 order.” Others say, “The law of Christ supersedes our laws; let us follow that.”
After much debate and opposition, permission is obtained for a trial in the Court of Spirit, where Christian Counsel for defence. Science is allowed to appear as counsel for the unfortunate prisoner. Witnesses, judges, and jurors, who were at the previous Material Court of Common Errors, are now summoned to appear at the bar of Truth.
When the case for Mortal Man versus Personal Sense is opened, his counsel regards the prisoner with the utmost tenderness; his earnest, solemn eyes, kindling with hope and triumph, are uplifted. Then Christian Science turns ​suddenly to the supreme tribunal, and opens the argument for the defence:—
The prisoner at the bar has been sentenced unjustly. His trial was a tragedy, and is morally illegal. Mortal Man has Scientific argument. had no proper counsel in the case. All the testimony has been on the side of Personal Sense, and we will 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 Soul alias Spirit to heavenly mercy, — Spirit which is God Himself, and Man's only lawgiver! Who or what has sinned? Has the body committed a criminal deed? Counsellor Belief has argued that the body should die, while Mortal Mind, which alone is capable of sin and suffering, Reverend Theology would console. 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.
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 induced by trampling on Laws of Health, it was a good deed; for the agent of those laws is an outlaw, an interferer with Mortal Man's liberty and rights, and he should be sentenced to die.
Watching beside the couch of pain, in the exercise of a love that “fulfils the whole law,” — doing “unto others as ye would that they should do unto you,” — is no infringement of law; for no demand, human or divine, renders it just to punish a man for doing right. If mortals sin, our Supreme Judge in equity decides what penalty is due for the sin, and Mortal Man ​can suffer ouly for sin. For nought else can he be punished, according to the laws of Spirit, God.
Then what jurisdiction had his honor, Judge Medicine, in this case? To him I might say, in Bible language, “Sittest Material misjudgment. thou to judge a man after the law, and commandest him to be smitten contrary to the law?” The only jurisdiction to which the prisoner can submit is that of Truth, Life, and Love. If these condemn him not, neither shall Judge Medicine condemn him; and I ask that he 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 Mockery of Divine law. 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 to it. 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 holy 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 Injustice. his committing liver-complaint; and thus to save his arrest. But they brought Fear, the sheriff, to precipitate the result. It was he 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 therefor. 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 those very deeds which the divine law compels him 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 a 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 Perjury. testified that he was on intimate terms with the plaintiff, and knew Personal Sense to be truthful; that he knew Man, and he 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 Intelligence. 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 bearing false testimony.
Man self-destroyed; the testimony of matter respected; Spirit not allowed a hearing; Soul a slave, though recommended Terrible summary. to mercy; the helpless innocent body tortured, — these are the terrible records of your Material Court of Common Errors, and I ask that the higher Court of Spirit reverse this decision.
Here the opposite counsel, Belief, called Christian Science to order, for contempt of court. Various notables Contempt of court. — Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Scholastic Theology, and Jurisprudence — rose to the question of expelling Christian Science from the bar, for such high-handed illegality. He 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 are not allowed at the bar of Truth, which ranks above the lower Court of Error.
The attorney, Christian Science, then read from the Ruling of justice. supreme statute-book, the Bible, — remarking that it was better authority than Blackstone, — certain extracts on the Rights of Man:—
Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, and let him have dominion over all the earth.
And I give you power over all things, that nothing shall by any means harm you.
Whoso believeth in Me shall not see death.
Then Christian Science proved the witness, Nerve, to be a perjurer. Instead of a ruler in the Province of Nerve a liar. Body, wherein 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 separate counts: perjury, treason, and conspiracy against the rights and existence of man.
Then Christian Science continued:—
Another witness, equally unimportant, said that a garment of foul fur was spread over him by Morbid Secretion, on the night of the liver-attack; while the facts in the case show that this ​fur is a foreign substance, imported by Belief, the attorney for Personal Sense, who is in partnership with Error, and smuggles Testimony destroyed. his goods into market without the inspection of Soul's government officers. Whenever the Court of Truth summons Furred Tongue to appear for examination he disappears, and is never more heard of.
Morbid Secretion is not an importer or dealer in fur, but we have heard Materia Medica explain how it is manufactured, and know the witness 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 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 patrons.
Death testified that he was absent from the Province of Body, when a message came from 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 his attempts to save him. Materia Medica was a misguided participant in the misdeed for which the Health-officer had Mortal Man in custody, though Mortal Man was innocent of all crime.
Christian Science then turned from the abashed witnesses, his words flashing as lightning in the perturbed faces of these worthies, Scholastic Theology, Materia Medica, Physiology, the felon Hypnotism, and the masker Mediumship, 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 is ​innocent. You aided and abetted Fear and Personal Sense. You betrayed Mortal Man, meanwhile declaring Disease to be Divine law. God's servant, and the righteous executor of His laws. Our higher statutes declare you all, witnesses, jurors, and judges, to be offenders, only awaiting the sentence which General Progress and Divine Love will pronounce.
We send our very best detectives to whatever locality is reported to be haunted by Disease; but, 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, Belief, whom Truth arraigns before the supreme bar of Soul, to answer for his bloodshed. Morbid Secretion is taught how to make sleep befool reason, before sacrificing mortals to their false gods.
Mortal Minds were hypnotized by your attorney, Belief, and compelled 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 a 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, as 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 fellowman, in obedience to higher law? You cannot trample upon the Supreme Bench. Mortal Man has his appeal to Spirit, God, who sentences only for sin.
The false and unjust beliefs of your material mental legislators compel them to enact laws of sickness, and then render obedience to these laws punishable as crimes. 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 any more suits against Mortal Man, 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 whereof be has been deprived.
Here the counsel for the defence closed; and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with benign and imposing presence, comprehending and defining all law and Charge of the Chief Justice. evidence, explained from his statute-book, the Bible, that any law is null and void if it undertakes to punish aught but sin.
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 Belief we deem unworthy of a hearing. Let what Belief utters, now and forever, fall into oblivion, “unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.” According to our statute, Material Law cannot bear witness against Mortal Man; neither can Fear arrest him, nor Disease cast him into prison. Our law refuses to recognize Man as sick or dying, but holds him forever to be 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, Physiology, Health-laws, and Hypnotism, whose aliases are Oriental Witchcraft, Esoteric Magic, Mesmerism, 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 Mortal Man. Your personal jurors, in the Material Court of Error, are myths. ​Your attorney, 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 is no spiritual statute relating thereto. Spiritual law is our only code; Life, Truth, and Love our government. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
The jury of Spiritual Senses agreed at once upon a verdict; and there resounded throughout the vast Divine verdict. 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 who bringeth glad tidings.
If necessary to treat against mental malpractice or mesmerism know, that disease or its symptoms cannot change forms, nor go from one part to another. There is no metastasis to the heart, no stoppage of harmonious action, no paralysis. Truth, not error, Love, not hate, governs man. If students do not readily restore themselves, they should early call an experienced student practitioner. If they are unwilling to do this, they need to know that malicious minds cannot produce this reluctance.