# Science and Health/8 Healing the Sick

CHAPTER VIII
HEALING THE SICK.
Note. — The learner will derive more benefit from studying this science with its author, than is possible to gain from teachers in other departments of education. The metaphysical requires the elucidations of spiritual sense, and personal sense cannot apprehend the explanations of soul; hence a mere classical education leaves Spirit much out of the question, and educates man only from the personal standpoint of matter.
Observation and experience teach us, those scorning to swerve from a direct line of duty, or vainly to stoop to personal aggrandizement at the sacrifice of conscience, and make popularity paramount to Truth, are traduced by many whom that line of duty touches. In warfare with error, you attack with intent to kill, and the wounded or cornered beast bites you if he can; the sin you assail turns on you and succeeds in getting the world to condemn you, that it may justify itself. It being found necessary to uncover sin to destroy it, you must tell a sinner what his sins are before you can do him good, and if he hates you for it, it is because he is unwilling to reform. Those we attempt to raise give us their whole weight to lift, and when we let go to have them take hold, sometimes fall back on us. ​Teaching the bigoted, reforming the licentious, or exposing the hypocrite, who shall escape without censure? We commenced our labors in the simple faith that all whom we healed would acknowledge it, and those we taught would live up to our teachings if from no higher motive than to promote their success in healing; but this has not always been the case. Although it is plain the foundations of the science of being are Truth and spirituality, and the seed that brings forth much fruit, must fall into the “good and honest heart,” yet all who know this are not willing to yield to it. Truth stirs man to a better, or, temporarily, to a worse condition that afterwards leaves him better; it affects error the same as it does sickness, causing it to intermit before it yields and is destroyed.
The humanitarian is above the arrows in the quiver of ignorance, envy, or malice; they fly beneath his feet, until spent of their fury, they fall to the ground. Such as are identified with a cause, until that cause is understood, are not understood; in its birth they have travail and sorrow; in its infancy, toil and sacrifice; but clasp their nursling more tenderly when menaced, knowing when he is a man he will speak for himself and mother.
Nothing but a lack of spiritual discernment, or dishonesty, could prompt one who in the least comprehends this science, to call it mesmerism, or to practice mesmerism and call it science. When those bidden of old to the feast of Truth came not, our Master accepted such as did come. In like manner, to-day “the servant must be as his Lord,” exercising no choice of his own, but laboring for posterity, bearing all blame and scorn, ​and counting his victory in the far-off years. Healing in science has its reward even here, but the task of teaching the science of being is quite another thing. Pains of personal sense often make the sick willing to part with its errors, but those in health and at ease in their possessions are reluctant to change masters, hence the more thankless and toilsome task of teaching, compared with healing. We instruct students to recommend their patients to avoid, as much as possible, contact with minds filled with opposite physics, hygiene, etc., while under treatment of metaphysics, for it retards their recovery; but they forget the same right belongs to a teacher, and the same necessity exists for students to avoid contact with certain minds that hinder their advancement. Institutions have their by-laws to restrain the evil passions of those under their care, but we have had no such necessary protection in teaching.
Not to admit God the Principle of the science of Life, is to be ignorant of this science; and to say God is its Principle, and the discoverer, teacher, and demonstrator of the science is not taught of God, is contradictory.
Students may dwarf, or destroy for the present, their position in scientific healing through error, with falsehood, dishonesty, or sensuality; in which case their demonstration advances no higher, and their practice, if they have one, becomes mesmerism and no longer science. Such students can never reinstate themselves aright except through repentance, reformation and restitution. We should welcome back the penitent and support the weak, but to him that covereth his sins and rejoices in his iniquity let the reward of his hands be ​given; an accumulated debt more to be feared than his creditor's account. The wickedest or the best man is not understood by the age in which he lives; both are beyond its appreciation. The wickedest man commits his sins knowingly and in secret, having not grown sufficiently to be punished by Wisdom, he hides his evil in the manner we shall name; and the best man is hidden from the present age in the Wisdom of future ages. When separating tares from the wheat the mills of God grind slowly, and if the tares that Wisdom casts away, predominate we see little results, but if there be much wheat, stores are garnered because of the grinding. “Whomsoever He loveth, him he also chasteneth.”
There is but one possible way of doing wrong with a mental method of healing, and this is mesmerism, whereby the minds of the sick may be controlled with error instead of Truth. Whoever has witnessed the effects of mesmerism, has seen it make a joint stiff or a limb lame, proving beyond a doubt it can affect the body injuriously. Whispering into the minds of the sick falsehoods, will do their bodies harm if Truth poured into their minds does the body good. We have witnessed the proof of both these statements. For years we had tested the benefits of Truth on the body, and knew no opposite chance for doing evil through a mental method of healing until we saw it traduced by an erring student and made the medium of error. Introducing falsehoods into the minds of the patients prevented their recovery, and the sins of the doctor was visited on the patients, many of whom died because of this; cases that the Truth of being would have healed, his own error rendered hopeless. ​Witnessing these terrible results was our occasion for learning their cause, or discovering this mal-practice, and our students are well aware we have no difficulty in tracing the mental cause of disease. But before we discovered this mal-practice and its motives, the evil had reached so far, and held such sway over the patient's minds, when we informed one she was not recovering and had better return home, she answered with indignation, “My doctor says I am recovering,” but died before she reached her earthly home. Wholly unconscious of his secret method of turning the minds of those he manipulated, against his benefactor, or of its effects on their bodies, the patients asked us if the doctor had lost his power, not understanding it was his loss of Truth, and the hidden evil of his course that injured the patients. A student of science cannot practice mesmerism honestly, therefore successfully, as a Newton, who knows no higher method of healing. But the mal-practice we allude to was more terrible than simply a change to mesmerism; it chose darkness rather than light because its deeds were evil. Such a practitioner putting aside our moral precepts retains that portion only of our teachings which relates to the patient's belief of disease and the method of destroying this belief by the doctor's opposite, verbal, and mental argument. This is the very least of the science of being, and yet the only part the mal-practitioner can avail himself of to heal the sick. The patients have no recognition of how much error he may also mingle with this argument of Truth that will affect their minds and bodies together, and to bad results as well as good. If the sick recover from the effects of the doctor's mental ​argument opposed to theirs, it proves, on the ground of science, he has changed their belief with regard to their disease, or the body would not have responded thus; and now comes his opportunity to do evil; for, if he can change their belief relative to sickness, he can also change it with regard to an individual, or upon any subject. But, remember, it is only the manipulator and mal-practitioner that can do this, and not those who heal with the Truth of Science. First, because the latter do not manipulate the head; and secondly, because their source of healing is science and Truth, and if they should attempt to control the mind with error, they would not affect the sick, while the mal-practitioner's principal power is to do evil, and a crumb of science is all he has wherewith to heal; and his want of better success is the result of his wickedness.
We have actually stood in awe at the absolute might of Truth, when witnessing the effect a little has on the sick, and sadly remembered how much could be done by the truly wise, “who put oil in their lamps” and have not the power to abuse the science of being. Since witnessing the evil one student did in the name of science, we have utterly objected to students rubbing the head. The mal-practitioner's sin standeth “in holy places.” It is a crime against the highest tribunal of Soul, commending wrong and condemning right, it tramples on every law of justice and Truth.
In defence of mesmerism is urged, that Dr. Quimby manipulated the sick. He never studied this science, but reached his own high standpoint and grew to it through his own, and not another's progress. He was a good man, a law to himself; when we knew him he ​was growing out of mesmerism; contrasted with astudent that falls into it by forsaking the good rules of science for a mal-practice that has the power and opportunity to do evil. Dr. Quimby had passed away years before ever there was a student of this science, and never, to our knowledge, informed any one of his method of healing.
The only practitioners of this metaphysical science to-day, have been our students; but through wrong doing some have dimmed their pure sense of Truth, while others stand firm in “the hope set before them.”
We should condemn a physician for adulterating his medicine and then claiming it was genuine. The medicine in scientific healing is mind; and shall dishonesty, revenge, falsehood, or impurity, be the stronger ingredient or quality of his mind, and the practitioner say he heals with Truth, and the science of Life? Worse than poisonous drugs is the mental evil imparted through inoculation of mind. Such a practitioner is the most effectual circulator of error on earth. Even though he may change a belief of sickness to a belief of health, he has not the power to destroy error with Truth.
There are but two methods of healing, one is matter, the other, mind. The scientist heals with Truth; therefore rubbing the head, or manipulating the body is no assistance to impart Truth to heal the sick. To do evil in science is not more possible than in prayer to God. We will consider, briefly, some points of the mal-practice alluded to.
First, as a weapon of revenge. The modus operandi of the mal-practice is as follows: The doctor rubs the ​heads of his patients, communing with them mentally as he does this, but instead of speaking to them only Truth, and that which promotes harmony, he takes this opportunity to introduce into their minds side-issues, such as suit his sinister purpose, imparting his own likes and dislikes to the patients, either from vengeance or ambition. If the doctor helps the patients through head-rubbing, it is through their belief he does it, and mind is controlled either with Truth or error. And a bad effect can as certainly follow this practice as a good one, but the patients are wholly unconscious of this, or how it is produced. If he has imparted error he certainly will deny it, but if he had not done this we should never have learned what this mal-practice was. Through an erroneous influence on their minds the patients are made, in a day, worse physically, while to him whom they owe this state, even the author of it, all unconsciously they turn to be healed. We have learned this mal-practice is impossible in science, and is mesmerism demoralized. Had it been possible for us to control mind through this subtle, criminal agency, we could not have been tempted to do it, even in self-defence; the temptation, even, could not reach us, and we resorted to our pen to expose this evil that reached, for the first time, our apprehension.
Some newspaper articles falsifying the science, calling it mesmerism, etc., but especially intended, as the writer informed us, to injure its author, precipitated our examination of mesmerism in contradistinction to our metaphysical science of healing based on the science of Life. Filled with revenge and evil passions, the mal-practitioner can only depend on manipulation, and rubs ​the heads of patients years together, fairly incorporating their minds through this process, which claims less respect the more we understand it, and learn its cause. Through the control this gives the practitioner over patients, he readily reaches the mind of the community to injure another or promote himself, but none can track his foul course; the evil is felt but not understood. It can demoralize a community, and the mal-practitioner be undiscovered in his work and claim fidelity in mental healing — a sacred and solemn trust. Controlled by his will, patients haste to do his bidding, and become involuntary agents of his schemes, while honestly attesting their faith in him and his moral character. Talking one way and acting another, he occupies a position the very opposite of Truth. This is no idle picture of pen or imagination, but a faint portraiture of facts discovered through the victims of this mal-practice; facts that we submit to others for proof. Try it, whoever will, manipulate the head of an individual until you have established a mesmeric connection between you both; then direct her action, or influence her to some conclusion, arguing the case mentally, as you would audibly, and mark the result. You will find, the more honest and confiding the individual, the more she is governed by the mind of the operator. But learn the lessons of the science of Life, and through these go up higher, to the discovery of this great Truth, and do this if you can; it would be as impossible as for light to be darkness.
If you had the power that mesmerism gives to influence minds wrong as well as right, the science herein explained would take it away. To control minds with ​sinister motives, or in any but a right direction, would destroy your position in science. Influence the minds of others from motives of selfishness, revenge, impurity, or any bad motive, and you would lose your ability to heal in science, and never regain your position until you had suffered sufficiently from this error, to forever destroy it, and not venture again on ground so dangerous. A mal-practitioner can never reach the standard of scientific healing. It would be as impossible as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
To prevent the evil of this criminal outlawry growing without let or hindrance, the community should understand it; this error can lift its giant proportions above common modes of doing evil, and hold more arbitrary sway over minds than any other past or present power of sin. The science of healing is incapable of evil, but this opposite practice is as clearly proved capable of great mischief, and even crime; able, while it lays high claims to right, secretly to work out a hidden wrong against humanity, justice and Truth. Malice will sometimes show itself and defeat its own purpose; falsehood, uttered aloud, is met with rebutting testimony; but this method of injuring others by a silent, and subtle impregnation of falsehoods and prejudices in the minds of individuals, to be spoken by them to others, is “Satan let loose,” the sin that “standeth in holy places.” Law cannot restrain, or punish it as it deserves, and community will be slow to acknowledge the heinous crime, until they learn its power to work iniquity, and note its workings; “more subtle than all other beasts of the field,” it coils itself about the sleeper, fastens its fang in innocence, and kills in the ​dark. We thank Wisdom, that revealed this great error to us before these pages went to press, that the years we have labored to bless our fellow-beings be not wholly lost through this trespass upon the blessing of mental healing.
We knew of no harm that could result from rubbing the head, until we learned it of this mal-practice, and never since have permitted a student, with our consent, to manipulate. We gained the little we understand of the Truth of being through our own experiences and proofs, and learned this opposite error standing face to face with it, through another's mal-practice; shall we deny the ability of the mathematician to say wherein the mistake lies of examples wrought incorrectly, or say to the musician who gives the true tone, you are not able to say what is the discord?
Because we never manipulate the sick, the opportunity to learn any evil possible to head-rubbing was not afforded us until years after our first investigations of science. The doctor that depends on manipulation (and he cannot employ it honestly without such dependence), works from a matter basis, whence come all the evil deeds and inventions of Satan. A cure wrought in science is the spiritual predominating over the material; Truth mastering error; the very opposite of mesmerism and the mal-practice aforesaid. In science mind must rise above matter to admit the fuller effluence of Spirit, God, that heals the sick and casts out error, but manipulation prevents this result. The multitudinous minds a physician has access to, enables him, through this medium to do much good, or much evil, throughout the community. This should be ​regarded when employing a manipulator of the head, that moulds mind and controls it, though less publicly and suddenly, not less surely than the mesmerist who comes more honestly before the foot-lights with his performance. Through his mesmeric control over minds, the mal-practitioner can hold his patients and practice, whether he heals the sick or not, and he moulds some of them into a belief they are healed, but others he must keep moulding, that is, continue to treat, or they will relapse. There are certain self-evident facts; this is one of them. A student of science, understanding its high requirements, cannot be unfamiliar with the fact that the teacher must have reached it worthily who has grown to its discovery, for this cannot be without pursuing faithfully the straight and narrow path that leads to Truth. Therefore, to know this and acknowledge it, is honesty and understanding on the part of a student, and not to know it, or acknowledge it, ignorance or dishonesty, and every true student will bear testimony to this statement. Paul said, “Live peaceably with all men inasmuch as in you lies.” This is wholesome counsel, and a most desirable thing; but could he live peaceably with all men, when “that which is perfect” had come to his understanding, and that which is imperfect was to be done away? Not the learning of a Roman student spared him when he girded on the armor of Truth and rushed to battle with the age. When he “fought the good fight” and kept the faith, he passed from the forum into toil and dishonor, and from a dungeon to a scaffold and a crown.
If virtue forgives vice, it cannot love it; if charity ​overlooks a multitude of sins, it hath no fellowship with sin; and if honesty endures patiently and long the abuses of dishonesty, it hath the prudence at length to get out of its hands. These are separate qualities of character, that circumstance or duty compelling to meet for a time, must part company through a law of being, and often with a tremendous explosion.
The exhibitor of mesmerism startles you with his power, but you are satisfied to conclude it is ridiculous, and you are not its subject; his experiments, however, are honorable, being open, and illustrative of the influence he has through it over the thoughts and actions of others. But the dishonest mesmerist of which we speak, is the mal-practitioner, who claims to take a place in science, but sinks to a secret assassin in society. So important are the rules of mental scientific healing, that even repeated they do good, but we gather not grapes of thorns, the tone of the individual's mind inculcating them, overshadows them, and if his mind be not in accordance with them, it imparts its own hue to the patient; then who shall say which effect is strongest, the good he says, or the evil behind it that he imparts. If the mal-practitioner says mentally to the patient, as he rubs his head, “be healed!” and she recovers, or is improved morally, influenced in that direction, you say this is a moral and physical gain, and behold the proof that he practices very wisely. But suppose he says to her mentally, as he rubs her head, something wrong to do, or believe, and designates this wrong, directing her thought and action in that channel, and she unconsciously obeys him, feeling this hidden spring to action as readily as the other. What, then, are your ​conclusions of this practice? that you should be subject to evil because you are sometimes subject to good? Never trust human nature in the dark, if this nature is so dark it covers its footprints.
Manipulating the head, we discovered, establishes between patient and practitioner a mental communication not in the least understood by the patients or the people. Through this medium the doctor holds more direct influence over their minds than the united power of education and public sentiment. Mesmeric power is stronger for evil, than good, in contradistinction to the enlargement of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual being that science imparts to individuals, elevating the capacity to do good, above others.
In proportion to the mal-practitioner's power to govern the minds of his patients from selfish motives, is his ability in science diminished. Whoso doeth evil that good might come, incurs the sentence, “his damnation is just.”
Witnessing this abuse of metaphysics, a friend anxiously said to us, “You discovered metaphysical healing, and have also discovered this abuse of it, and the evil done through mesmerism; now why do you not forestall this wrong by controlling the minds of individuals or the community to disbelieve its falsehoods?” To this we replied, “We have neither divine authority, nor the power to control minds for any other than their own benefit, and we are giving the results of our moral, spiritual, and metaphysical researches to the world as fast as possible, but the footsteps of falsehood and error are swift, those of honesty and Truth slow, and strong. The community must understand the ​science of being to appreciate it, and they must detect the wicked mal-practice to appreciate that; therefore the true verdict is not yet given, and Truth can wait, for it is used to waiting. Will should be impotent except in ‘good will to man,’ and this involves open action and upright conduct; science is not a blind Samson, shorn of his strength.”
The silent argument used in his own behalf, as he manipulates the head, the mal-practitioner would blush to make audibly. Suppose he has a juror for a patient, and establishes the mesmeric connection between them, he can influence more than law or evidence, the verdict of that honest juror. If a bargain is to ratify, or a purpose to accomplish for himself, or his reputation at stake, he looks out for an opportunity to manipulate the head of some party concerned, and controls their actions or conclusions to suit the occasion and meet his desires. Friendship is not too sacred for his depredations; the friends of many years he separates, covering all recognition of his villainy and raising himself in the esteem of those very individuals to whom he has done irreparable injury.
Our rebuke to a false student elicited his revenge, and through this we discovered the mal-practice we expose. We have seen manipulating the head form a habit more pernicious than opium-eating, in which the treatment must be continued, or the patient go back to a worse condition than the first.
It is more difficult to heal the sick, subject to this mal-practice, than under treatment of drugs; and yet the patients are strangely attached to their doctor. We have started patients at once out of disease on the ​road to recovery, on whom this mal-practitioner has produced a relapse.
Scientific treatment fills the mind with Truth that heals the sick; but the mal-practitioner impregnates it with error that produces new disease; rubbing the head, he keeps his cases constantly on hand, because of the struggle between the little Truth he brings to bear on the case, and the error he introduces. To have barely sufficient right to make the wrong plausible, is more fatal to science than the unmasked error. No enthusiasm or praise is as zealous or fullsome as this mal-practitioner can elicit, while nothing is more relentless and unyielding than the prejudice he can arouse; but mesmerism governs them both, and enables the doctor to gain his point in sin, but not in science. Surely “the fool hath said in his heart, no God.” Manipulating the head, even to a thinness that would reveal the brains, can never heal the sick in science. This mental mal-practice is a shameless waste of time and opportunity, an abuse of ignorance or good nature inconsistent with science, the economy of Soul and the harmony of man. This secret trespassor on human rights manipulates the head to carry out, on a small scale, a sort of popery that takes away voluntary action instead of encouraging the science of self-control, and sets himself up for a doctor who is a base quack. For intermeddling with what should be the independent functions of society, the mal-practitioner gets his fee, but the involuntary agents of his schemes get bad pay for their services.
Conservatism or dishonesty, either in the statement or demonstration of science, is clearly impossible; where Principle is concerned there is no secret; explanation ​and proof are required, and no concessions made to persons or opinions. The relation of Truth to man, improving him physically and morally, we have stated as we discovered it, and submit our statement to proof. Having first convinced ourself through demonstration of the Principle of our discovery and its ability to heal the sick and bring out the harmony of being, we deem it worthy the name of science. Healing disease on this basis, we learned beyond a doubt, that mind governs the body and is more potent than matter to heal the sick.
To admit personal sense a source of pleasure is to deny it is a source of pain also, and vice versa, for “the same fountain sendeth not forth sweet and bitter waters.”
Personal sense embracing both sin and happiness, sickness and health, Life and death, according to the teachings of Jesus, contradicts itself, and therefore destroys its own existence. Jesus cast out error and healed the sick through his God-being, well-knowing that harmony cannot produce discord; hence he denied personal sense, and admitted but one Intelligence, and this, not the author of evil. To suppose evil and good, discord and harmony proceed from the same fountain, is contrary to revelation. The common acceptation of Truth is that whatever produces sin, is error. Then wherefore admit that materia medica, physiology, anatomy, etc., are science when they take the opposite ground that insists on personal sense governing man, whence cometh all discord.
God is not the author of sin; Soul is not the source of sickness, sin and death; rather does it destroy these to make man immortal. The body defined as personal ​sense, is mortal; and that which is mortal is error. That sin proceeds from personal sense, we know, and this proves the fountain evil, and the streams evil also, therefore Wisdom never produced either; hence, God is not the author of personal sense. We say food sustains the Life of man; and again, that a heavy meal kills him. Here the old theory that opposed Christ, Truth, is reproduced in affirming the same fountain sendeth forth sweet and bitter waters. If the All-wise hath a law demanding food to preserve the Life of man, He hath no law by which food can destroy him. We must take the opposite ground of personal sense in regard to sin, sickness and death, to fully destroy them; a physical demand is not to be admitted, but destroyed, only the demands of Soul are to be heard; the body cannot speak for itself, being unintelligent.
Is it mind or body that declares undigested food irritates the nervous tissues producing a terrible sense of pain, faintness, oppression, etc., and that your remedy is to expel the food, or digest it? This is mental testimony, and there is none other, 't is a law of belief, mis-named a law of matter; the body cannot define cause and effect.
A case of extreme suffering from food, came under our observation. The lady had said, but a few moments before we came to her assistance, “I shall die unless the food is expelled,” and in ten minutes thereafter was rid of her sufferings, and when questioned in regard to her feelings, replied, “I have no pain now, and would like to eat again.” By contending mentally against a physical position you can change it and destroy it through mind, even as you have produced it thus. The ​sick argue for their own suffering, by admitting its reality; they are ignorant of this fact, however, or that their mental position is what produces the physical, and their friends often strengthen this error and quarrel with you for trying to help them out of it.
Mind, and not matter, embraces all suffering; we prove this when,removing the suffering on this basis, or through mind. Our Principle heals the sick, therefore it produces a better physical effect than the opposite views that make sickness; then why not adopt it, or judge of it by our Master's rule, the “fruits.” If you understood the science of being, your body would be harmonious and immortal. The balance adjusted by science falls on the side of happiness and Life.
Delirium tremens embraces error of two sorts; the plea of personal sense for strong drink, and the belief that it diseases the brain. Both these mental positions are mastered with metaphysical science; first, because there is no pleasure in intoxication, or produced by matter, and secondly, that matter, or the brain, is not inflamed. The belief of pain is more easily eradicated than an appetite, or belief of pleasure, owing to the strong desire the patient has to be rid of one, and his reluctance to part with the other; both of which are the self-inflicted positions of mind, and not matter. Disputing the grounds of personal sense, that alcoholic drinks intoxicate the brain, giving pleasure or pain to matter, and rising above this error, Soul, versus sense, gets the case and relieves the patient. But the severer task is to destroy the belief of the inebriate with regard to the so-called pleasure of sense in drunkenness, while this is all that will reform him. Destroy the belief that ​pleasure is derived from intoxicating drink, and the habit yields at once, but until this is done, it intermits and lingers, proving intoxication a mental, and not a physical error. Here are two points we desire you to note; first, the moral advantage this healing has over other methods, and the falsity of the arguments of personal sense, assuming drunkenness enjoyment. This admission, however, is not more false than to conclude a liquid distilled from matter is capable of destroying body and brain.
The belief that pain and pleasure, good and evil, God and devil, fraternize, is a hoary mistake meeting us at every point. Pleasure or pain in matter is aself-evident falsehood. Lifting yourself, somewhat, to the understanding of the Life that is Wisdom, Love, and Truth, you will break the spell of personal sense. The Truth of being, coming to their consciousness, opens the prison doors to the sick and affects the body as nothing else can. One mind, partly rid of the errors of personal sense, touches another with the science of being that reproduces harmony, causing what we term a chemical change in the body that goes on to form a new basis of being; even as when an acid and alkali meet that form a neutral salt. But remember, the opposites that destroy each other are without spiritual affinity. To admit the positions of personal sense, would never destroy them. To reform the drunkard, or heal the sick, or turn the sinner from his way, we must argue against their positions; nothing else destroys them.
That mind controls matter, is the fundamental strength of morality, for it gives man control over sin, sickness, and death, whereas the old systems take it ​away. To understand that brains never killed a man would prevent his ever having disease of the brain; but this result is not gained, simply repeating this fact to the sick, or to one's self; it must be a mental conviction reached through science and admitted only because it is understood. If a doubt exists in regard to a patient's recovery, there should be none about the method of promoting it; no fears entertained that Intelligence is not sufficient to govern the body and make it harmonious.The fact seems to us self-evident, that the body cannot destroy the body, or consign it to dust, and so put out the image of Soul. Besides, there is no justice in law that punishes a man for doing good, for honest labor, or deeds of kindness. Through the eternal law of right, we are exempt from all sentences not passed on sin.
When the sick are made to realize the lie of personal sense the body is healed. Faith generally lies in the direction of material means; therefore the suffering or sick are apt to overlook the fact, that science heals them, and impute their recovery to some extraneous circumstance. The action of mind on the body is not more perceptible to personal sense than the origin of the wind, or the chambers of the hail. Turn to the eighth chapter of John, and you find the following reply to the testimony of personal sense. “Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do; he was a murderer from the beginning” (referring to Cain, the first offspring of Adam, error), “and abode not in the Truth; when he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
If there be any mystery in healing the sick on this ​platform laid down by Jesus, it is the mystery of Godliness, ambiguous only to the sinner, or to personal sense. Time alone is required to bring out the practical proof of our statements; and because they are not understood to-day, it is no sign the time for their appearing has not arrived. Truth comes when it is needed, and not because of a personal demand.
A new birth is the work of ages instead of a moment. Until the belief of Life, Intelligence, and substance in matter is destroyed, man has not “passed from death unto Life.” A change of being's basis from sense to Soul requires time and understanding; it is nothing short of man's perfection, and what Jesus said was requisite to see the kingdom of heaven. The reign of harmony that science will establish, will explain the great difference between the moral effects of the present mode of healing and that of science, and the different receptions they have met from the world of sense and sin.
First comes the apprehension in science, of Life that is Soul, wholly independent of the body or sense. Next, its demonstration is commenced in living more of God, and having sounder bodies and purer minds, until we go up through higher understanding even as Elijah, to the Life that is God and knows no death. But we are little in danger of such goodness and its demonstration in this century. Loosing worldly approval indicates not only true Christianity, but the approach of this scientific stage of being; therefore we should welcome it as our dearest hope and highest aim. The only link to Life is through science; Life is never gained through death. The chemical changes that Truthintroduces into the body through mind, is what destroys ​error and brings to light immortality. The works of our Master convinced Nicodemus their origin was God, the Principle of harmonious man. So when he inquired of him how he healed, this was the reply, “Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven;” except he understands Life outside of personal sense he will never gain the harmony of being. But this was not the Pharisee's Christianity, nor the Rabbi's choice; to them sense was more desirable than Soul; matter had more claims than Spirit, and man, than God. Said the Master, “Because I tell you the Truth, ye believe me not, but he that is of God heareth God's words,” i. e., the truly spiritual will understand the things that belong to Spirit, but the more material find this very difficult.
When Jesus introduced Christianity that cut off right hands and plucked out right eyes, demanding the control of our bodies and a nobler existence, they said, “He is a Samaritan and hath a devil,” i. e., we know his origin, and for him to claim, “I and the Father are one,” indicating he is God, is imposition. Pride said, then as now, Truth must come from the rulers, be clad in soft raiment, and nothing else should be found Truth. But Wisdom foreseeing this error, said, “Out of the mouth of babes hast thou perfected praise,” and “except you become as a little child, you cannot enter into harmony; i. e., unless we yield our educated opinions and beliefs, and reject the positions of personal sense, we shall neither discern our true being, nor understand the omnipotence of Spirit.
Standing at the bed of death, we need these words and their meaning to re-assure us and raise up the dying. ​“He that believeth in me shall never see death.” The little trust we have in Spirit, and the strong faith we hold in matter, will meet us at this point with theinquiry, “Adam, where art thou,” cherishing the belief of Life in matter, or holding firmly on to Life that is Spirit? and the answer we honestly give will show us where we stand. The last enemy to be overcome is death; therefore much is to be understood before we gain this great point in science. Laying aside thebeliefs that so easily beset us, we should not regard acondition of matter able to destroy man, mind or body, for both are immortal. A wasted form lies before you; the doctor calls his disease consumption, but the scientist finding no identity in discord, regards the disease a belief, and cures it thus; for understanding in part the Life that is Soul, he will destroy this belief of sense with the science of being. Never consent to the death of man, but rise to the supremacy of Spirit over matter, and denying the claims of personal sense, prove what it is to be a Christian whose Life is “hid with Christ in God;” therefore wholly spiritual. What if the lungs are ulcerated or decayed, mind has done this; action is produced by mind and not matter; change, therefore, your belief in the case, combat the error and belief of Life in matter, with the Truth that Life is Soul and not sense, and you will form the lungs anew, and they will resume their healthy functions. We know this to be true, and state it because we have proved it. Disease is a belief, its origin mental instead of physical, and it matters not what the body indicates, in reality all is mind, there is no matter, and mortal things are beliefs, and not the science of man in which he is immortal.
​That pain or pleasure, Life or death, belongs to the body, is but a belief. Immortal Soul is the producer of all things, and never made out of itself, mortality, or a suffering body. Speak to disease as one having authority over it, having Soul, and not sense, on your side, and you will master this belief; and immortality, which is the Truth of man, will assert its claims over mortality, and the sick recover. God, Spirit, is your stronghold in this extremity, and you feel how vain a thing is death pitted against the immortality of Soul and body. Life is the law of Soul; and personal sense, or matter, has no law. Holding on to the Truth of being is your only hope whereby to destroy its error. The science of being raises the dead; fear ye not, therefore, death; you may raise up the dying if minds around you are not strongly opposing this Truth, so little understood to-day; and sometime over this wave of the troubled sea, your God-being, that destroys all error, sin and death, will walk fearlessly; showing how real is Life, and how unreal, death. But there were some people so bigoted or material they even hindered the Master doing many mighty works because of their unbelief.
When healing the sick make your mental plea, or better, take your spiritual position that heals, silently at first, until you begin to win the case, and Truth is getting the better of error, then your patient is fit to listen, and you can say to him, “Thou art whole,” without his scorn. Explain to him, audibly, sometimes, the power mind has over the body, and give him a foundation in the understanding to lean upon, that he may brace himself against old opinions. The battle lies ​wholly between minds, and not bodies, to break down the beliefs of personal sense or pain in matter, and stop its supposed utterances, so that the voice of Soul, the immortality of man, is heard. The belief of Life and sensation in matter is the source of all suffering and sin. The science of being reveals Life, conscious Soul and not sense, Spirit and not matter, and this leaves man safe in Soul, where there is no recognition of sickness, sin, or death. To raise the dead, restore the sick, or reform the sinner, we should understand science in its first statement, namely, that nothing is real but God, and His idea; aught beside is illusion, error andbelief, that disappear. Recognizing the nothingness of sickness, sin, and death, is all that will ever bring out the harmony of man, or enable him to conquer them. With this scientific starting-point we shall master disease and temptation, or blush to be conquered by what is unreal. Understanding discord unreal, and harmony the only reality, emboldens us to fight the good fight.
Never admit error real as Truth, for if you do you will have more difficulty to get right than you need have. To turn a sinner from his error or belief, is more difficult than to turn the sick from theirs; for the latter, weary of suffering from it, yearn to relinquish it, and when the sinner reaches this point he is reformed. If science destroys not sickness, sin, and death, they are immortal. The only remedy for sin, sickness, or death, is obedience to the law of Life, and if Christ, Truth, be insufficient to cure sickness and destroy death, man is mortal. If we learn in part, even, the science of Life, it begins at once to destroy mental and physical discord.
​The demonstrations and explanations of Jesus embraced all the theology or materia medica necessary to heal the sick or make Christians, and because he never recommended materia medica, hygiene, physiology, etc., we infer these methods are anti-Christian. If, as the Scripture saith, and science confirms, Jesus did the will of God, we are not doing his will who follow not his example, but resort to methods all our own.
“Herbs for the healing of the nations” typified the “balm in Gilead” and a physician there, even Soul the healer, and science the balm, which was Spirit triumphing over matter. Truth neither destroys Truth, nor creates error to be destroyed. Life never destroys Life, nor creates death to destroy it. Truth, or Life, is not the author of sin or death, and there is neither power nor Intelligence in matter. Sickness and death are the opposites of harmony and Life, and no law can support what Christ, Truth, destroys. The only law in existence, or that we should acknowledge, is God, the Principle of man, controlling man and matter. Spirit is not personality, nor persons that have passed away; and nature is God, hence it is Spirit and not matter. Intelligence governs man and the universe, but never instituted material law to govern them, and Spirit never produced matter. The Bible contains all our recipes for healing, and this is one of them:
“Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison; verily I say unto you, thou shalt not come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.”
​This was one of our Master's rules for casting out error and healing the sick. It referred, however, not to legal proceedings, or processes material, but to a mental tribunal and judgment. The adversary was not man, but error; and the directions, how to proceed with sin or sickness that would impose through belief apenalty for transgressing law that is not law, insomuch as justice is the moral signification of law, and injustice implies its absence. Shall a teacher pay the penalty of sickness for performing well and faithfully her tasks? or a great mind, because of the good it has done, fall soonest a prey to disease? must man suffer at the hands of God, for steadfastly doing right? Shall the mother droop, or suffer, because of maternity, if such is the design of her being? Because of fatigue, exposure to cold, or some supposed infringement of the so-called laws of health, we ignorantly admit there is danger of being sick, and this mental position decides the physical one; therefore, “agree with thine adversary quickly;” say to this belief, “Get behind me, satan, for thou savorest not the things that are of God, but those that are of man;” it is not a broken moral law to which your penalty is attached, but a condition of matter, a demand from something wholly unintelligent and incapable of justice. God has no law of injustice, wrong proceeds from belief, and not Truth.
To conclude quickly on the treatment of error, was the rule our Master left for casting it out. He never recommended laws of health to our knowledge. On a law that is not God's, we have a moral right to pass judgment, and to commute its sentence; every instance of matter, or the body, governing man, is justly ​condemned, and morally impossible insomuch as it manifests a want of Wisdom that renders it null and void. The only hope in sickness or sin, is to agree quickly with thine adversary; that is, if tempted, or if disease appears, to banish the temptation, or the disease, at once from the mind, and suffer it not to plead in its own behalf lest you fall a prey to your belief in the case. On this mental basis, when the first symptoms of disease appear, knowing they gain their ground in mind before they can in body, “agree quickly with thine adversary,” i. e., dismiss the first mental admissionthat you are sick; dispute sense with science, and, if you can annul the false process of law, alias your belief in the case, you will not be cast into prison or confinement. The sick must never plead guilty; in other words, admit they are sick, for then are they subject to sentence and imprisonment, according to the law of belief. Take the ground of science in the first instance, never admit sensation in matter, or that the body can be pained, or has any claims of its own, or power to make man suffer; adhere to this scientific position and battle the old belief with it until you destroy it, and you will get well.
To agree quickly with thine adversary in the first instance of sickness, is to take antagonistic grounds to it, and prove your superiority over it. Not to admit disease, is to conquer it; and if you understood the science of being, you would admit no reality to aught but God and his idea. When you say, “I am sick,” you plead guilty, that is, you admit matter has sensation and will be delivered to the judge, in other words, into the hands of this belief that will deliver ​thee to the officer (disease), the ruler of mortal man that casts him into prison and fetters his entire being. But disease has no Intelligence of its own, or law, whereby to do this. You sentence yourself unwittingly, therefore, “agree with thine adversary quickly;” meet every circumstance as its master, and watch your belief, instead of your body; think less of laws material, that you may appreciate better the spiritual law of being, yea, the dominion of man over matter. Meet every adverse circumstance with science, instead of the beliefs of sense, and you will master it.
Error is a coward before Truth, and death is but another phase of the dream of Life in matter, wherein we meet at every point the consciousness of continued existence, with the same beliefs to conquer, and the same errors of sense to master through science. We must understand our way out of difficulties, or we never in reality are out, and the harmony and immortality of man are never understood until every error of sense is destroyed. To apprehend the economy and capacity of man's being, metaphysics must take the place of physics, and mind, instead of matter, be consulted in sickness. Fear, and its effects on the body are involuntary. Fear of disease and love of sin are the foundations of man's enslavement; but for these he could triumph over his body. Mind acts on the subject before disease becomes apparent on the body; but the individual has no recognition of his belief producing disease until it is developed physically. We look to personal sense for the evidence of disease, but there is no personal sense, unless matter is intelligent and holds the issues of Life. Because mind acts unconsciously to ​sense, the sick say how can mind have caused disease, “I never thought of the disease until it appeared on my body.” But mind is first, and causation; nothing commences in matter; the plant springs from the eternal Intelligence before we call it matter; but our mortal blindness and its sharp consequences, prove our need to understand the action of mind and its effects; we should study mind more and matter less, if we would avail ourselves of Soul in its control over sense. We can destroy sickness, the same as sin, by learning its origin and nature in mind, instead of body, and finding the belief that occasions it.
You can prevent or cure scrofula, hereditary disease, etc., in just the ratio you expel from mind a belief in the transmission of disease, and destroy its mental images; this will forestall the disease before it takes tangible shape in mind, that forms its corresponding image on the body. The science of being destroys the errors of sense with the Truth of man, and this is “casting out devils and healing the sick.” Unconscious matter cannot dictate terms to conscious mind, causing either pain or pleasure; and matter is unconscious. The belief that our body forms conditions of its own, independent of mind, is the error of mortal man that makes him mortal.
You say the body feels, but the fact that pain is not felt without mind, and can be removed through it, proves mind the origin and cause of suffering. All the diseases on earth, (and there are none in heaven), never interfered for a moment with man's Life and its harmonious phenomena. Man is the same after, as before a bone is broken, or a head chopped off. Casualties ​has no reality to Soul; it exists only as belief, and is apparent only to personal sense. Accidents are unknown to God. If the science of Soul was reached, immortality would be gained, and there would be no chance for suffering. Soul and body are inseparable and eternal; if one is indestructible, so is the other. Understanding this, exempts man from disease and death, that anatomy and physiology regard positive claims on Life. Denying the Truth of being, measurablyprevents its benefits on the body, by hindering its action in mind. It is not faith, but understanding, we need in science, and, “whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before the Father.” This beautiful text refers not to a person, but the Principle of man that embraces the Truth of being, that casts out error and heals the sick. Reason discounts on revelation when it denies God the things that are His, and contradicts the omnipotence of Soul over sense; but whoso reasons aright on this point, and hesitates not to declare his views, i. e., “to confess me before men,” becomes harmonious. When reason accords with the declaration of Scripture that man has dominion over earth, we shall recognize this, and turn in triumph from the seemingly impossible, to “all things are possible,” and demonstrate this.
“He that denieth me before men,” refers to a denial, or an open acknowledgment of our honest convictions that effectually hinders or aids man's progress.Because the science of being is not yet understood, and the age is not yet awake to this subject, if we but half desire to understand it, and conceal this desire, we shall be unable to demonstrate it. A hypocrite or liar ​has no part in the science of Life; whosoever overlooks moral honesty for worldly policy, has not gained an insight into science sufficient to heal through it. If he has learned its rules, he has not understood them, and must have gained them of one whose experiences have gone up higher.
For a broken bone, or dislocated joint, 't is better to call a surgeon, until mankind are farther advanced in the treatment of mental science. To attend to the mechanical part, a surgeon is needed to-day, but let the scientist see that inflammation, or long confinement, do not ensue. The time cometh when science will be our only surgeon, but, “suffering these things to be so now,” let a bone be set, after the manner of men, then let science facilitate the knitting process, and re-construct the body without pain or inflammation as much as possible in these days of ignorance.
The time approaches when mind alone will adjust joints, and broken bones, (if such things were possible then), but in the present infancy of this Truth so new to the world, let us act consistent with its small foothold on the mind. We greatly mistake the nature of being to conclude that which is real, is inharmonious or mortal. Sickness is not real, from the very fact it is discord and mortality, and these, errors and beliefs, things of sense that constitute the dream of Life in matter, but have no reality to God, the Soul of man. Meet discord and death with the opposite Truth of being, and it wakens, in part, from the dream of Life, to the realization of Life whereby we learn all discord is illusion. We say sickness is something to be feared; but this belief regarding it is what does the harm. Disease ​must be admitted in mind before it appears as matter; for body manifests only what mind embraces, whether it be fever, consumption, or theft. The doctor tells his patients their symptoms are feverish, and they vibrate between this opinion and its belief, until the physician says the fever is established; then the sick are confirmed, and go into confinement and serve out this mental sentence executing the body, more surely than the sentences of our courts.
Because science contradicts personal sense and sickness, you have no more moral right to dispute the proof that science is right, than of a rule of mathematics; and yet you will, for such is the case with all new discoveries. Cures wrought in science, are naturally misconstrued by sense, imputed to something besides the Principle producing them; hence, they must be understood to be appreciated. We may understand, perfectly well, how we heal the sick, but because others do not, they may interpret our cure on some other basis; and this not only works against the recovery of the sick, because it is antagonistic to Truth, but prevents their perception of it.
Jesus, wiser than his persecutors, said, “If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom did your fathers cast them out?” knowing they acknowledged the prophets, but not the carpenter; this question was difficult to answer because the prophets healed as he did, and he introduced the comparison on account of this. Those calling the demonstration of the science of being demoniac over eighteen centuries ago, might to-day tone down the judgment to imposition. Jesus, reasoning clearly on this subject, although misapprehended by ​the materialistic age, introduced the following comparison to explain his healing. “How can one enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his goods.” In other words, how can I cast out devils without bearding error, attacking the beliefs thatproduce all this discord through ignorance of Soul and body, and then are you sometimes “offended because of me.”
Jesus employed neither technicalities, the logic of the schools, nor formulas of medicine to heal; he knew, if others did not, Soul's superiority over matter, to heal the body, and that harmony is reached, only as we understand its real basis, Spirit, and not matter, Soul, not sense; and acknowledge the supremacy of Intelligence. Personal sense is the strong man that the Truth of being binds, before destroying error. It being impossible to heal on the Principle of science, and admit the grounds taken by personal sense; therefore, bind this strong man. hold sense in subjection to Soul, and pain, as much under control of mind as a temptation to sin; then can you despoil his goods, i. e., prevent sin and suffering.
When the mental control we hold over our bodies for good or evil, touching sickness, sin, and death, has been preached one-hundredth part as long as man's salvation through faith, we shall have men and women approaching to the image and likeness of God. Until personal sense is doubted, it will never be controlled. The ages may go on, admitting personal sense and its control over man, and fighting it with drugs, laws of health, etc., when, instead of pleasure, it utters itself ​in pain, but this will only sustain disease in mind, and then it will show itself in matter. Man will not be found harmonious until the belief of personal sense yields to the science of Soul.
Deplorable cases of passion mastering man, should arouse one to the responsibility of governing his body. A person whom we snatched from this oblivion of Soul, said to us, “I should have died, but for the Principle you teach showing me the nothingness and falsity of sense; medicine, and treatises on my case, only abandoned me to more hopeless sufferings, and slavery;adherence to hygiene was of no avail, and I was cured only when I learned my way in science.”
At present we must accept the statements of science relative to personal sense, on the inductive method, admitting the whole, because a part, involving the entire Principle is proved. Pains of the body, or matter, are unreal, but not more so than its pleasures; both cheat man into a belief of their reality, but only as the mountain mirage that seemeth what it is not, or the terrible incubus from which he finds it difficult to awake. Admitting the entire grounds of the science of being, it quickly follows our poor demonstration looks us in the face; but to this we reply, enough has been understood and proved, to reveal it science, and to prove, measurably, the blessing it brings. When speaking of this subject to others, instead of admitting the proofs we have already given of its Truth, we are often met with demands for more proof; therefore, we recommend you to read carefully what we have written, understand for yourselves, and establish your own evidence through demonstration; at the same time the ​necessity exists for a teacher of this science, the same as for music or mathematics, that must be explained to be understood, and understood to be demonstrated.
Pioneering what is new, or of great value to the world, is like a traveller on the desert of Arabia in company with one who becoming alarmed, his heat and sufferings increase and his courage fails; but the explorer, despite the hardships, and convinced he will come out right, accepts the situation more calmly, and encourages his friend, assuring him the only danger is his fear, then points anew the path; at length they reach an oasis, where, resting and slaking their thirst, they are ready with new vigor to push on. But here the more helpless traveller turns to his guide, saying, are you not sometimes alarmed on this desert route? “Yes,” is the ready response; but, replied the other, you told me my danger consisted in my fear, therefore you have no more practical Wisdom than myself; forgetting his guide carried the baggage, met the intricacies of the way, and was attacked by brigands, plundered, and hindered in his course, his fellow-traveller following not, until the danger was over. Bearing others' burdens, if you undertake more than you can well carry, and are tried or over-wrought, they name it a hopeless task, and desert you; few arms are extended to your support, until you can help yourself and others, and have no need of aid.
We learn in science, food neither helps nor harms man; admitting its power in one direction, we must in another. But here it were unwise to disparage the Principle, or proof of this statement, because youcontinue to eat, not having mastered the belief that Life ​depends on eating. This were like denying the Principle of harmony, because man is not yet harmonious, or saying Soul is not immortal, because Personal sense takes no cognizance of this fact. Man's Life is Soul, that eats not to live, and immortal man is the idea of Soul instead of sense. We have no evidence of food sustaining Life, except false evidence, even the belief of Life in matter, and this belief an error. A telegram announcing incorrectly the death of a friend, produces the same sorrow the reality would give; but you say your anguish is occasioned by your loss, until another message arrives, informing you it is a mistake, and your friend lives. Now did you not experience the same sufferings the reality would have brought, and did you not say it was the death of your friend that caused these sufferings; but afterwards learn your mistake, realizing you suffered from a belief, and not a reality. Thus it is with all sufferings; belief and not Truth occasions them. Had a scientist attempted to calm the grief of your supposed bereavement before the second news arrived, whereby you learned the sufferings were produced by error and not Truth, would you have thanked your comforter, though she gave you relief, until this fact was made plain to your understanding. The body or matter never yet informed man of disease; a belief carries the telegram to the body, and the body manifests only the sufferings of mind. Never a formation of Truth was diseased, or needed to be destroyed; error is all that suffers, sins or dies. The body manifests only what mind embraces. The mortal body is mortal error, even a belief of Life in matter; Truth holds man immortal, and no portion of him lost; ​Science and Scripture declare this, “He that believeth in me shall never see death”; we are exempt from error or belief, and immortal only as we understand God. Giving heed to inharmony is personal sense that in its ignorance of God silences the voice of Soul; in other words is “total depravity.” Soul and personal sense are antagonists, one disputes every position of the other — which evidence do you accept? Reason instructs us immortality is the friend of man. Hear the opposite testimonies of personal sense and Soul.
Sense; I am intelligent matter, a body of sickness, sin and death that constitutes a mortal intelligence. The lungs, with alarming resonance, repeat this warning;the fevered throbbing of arteries tells how fast the sands of life are running; the failing pulse, that the places once knowing man shall know him no more forever; the inevitable law of Life is death; that aught is beyond this who knoweth. The evidence changes — mortal man is in health, at ease in his possessions, and sense says, eat, drink, and be merry; what a happy life is this. I am unjust, and no person knoweth it, take vengeance on my fellow beings, cheat, lie, and propagate this species; am brutish, but this is obedience to the nature God hath given me. What a nice thing is sin, what a joy, sense; my kingdom is of this world, and I am at peace. But a touch, an accident, one wheel in the mechanism stopped, all is lost, for I am mortal!
Soul; I am the Spirit of man that giveth understanding, beauty and Omnipotence, full of unutterable perfections, height upon height of holiness, the wonder of being, imperishable glory, for I am God, grasping, and gathering in all bliss, for I am Love, giving immortality ​to man, for I am Truth, without beginning and without end, for I am Life, supreme over all, for I am Intelligence,and the Substance of all, because I am.
Does an M. D. examine the body, feel the pulse, and look at the tongue, to ascertain the condition of Soul, the Life of man, or the condition of his body, alias matter, and according to signs material give his opinion of Life, God, and the prospect for his continuing? If man was before God, and matter superior to mind, such methods were consistent, but not otherwise. Mind, instead of body is the fount of all suffering; but we forget this in sickness, when the mental condition is not regarded and wholly unknown to patient or physician, while its physical effect alone is taken up. Opinions and theories have so misguided judgment on these points, the Truth of being is lost sight of, and illusion taken for fact. However much the schools insist that discord rules harmony, and laws of matter govern the Life of man; science reveals Life otherwise, and gives an opportunity for this proof. Laws of God were never known to kill man, for this would destroy immortality. Man is the image and likeness, therefore the reflex shadow of God, and if one is mortal, why not the other? If man is lost his Principle is lost, and God is not left. Doctors fasten disease on the body, mapping it out in mind; when the mental picture is complete the patient will be sick. A belief of disease is liable to be made manifest at any time on the body.
If disease is Intelligence that produces results of Itself, or the body can make its own conditions, despite the mental protest, we will admit the superiority of disease over man, and its power to make him sick, or ​kill him, but not otherwise. Mind produces all effects on the body; personal sense has neither pleasure nor pain except to belief, which is all there is to it. A mental image of disease, fully formed, is already painted on the body, whereas another picture of mind we transfer to canvas; 't is the patient's fear that draws the picture, and the artist, mind, executes it fully on the body, but the patient is ignorant of his fear, or what mind's images are, until they are drawn on the body. If no mental image of disease was formed, there could be no manifestation of disease. The belief that disease is a power or Intelligence superior to man, is ever ready to reproduce some image of disease before the mind, and this image causes the fear, and the fear quickens or retards action, producing inflammation or whatever the nature or type of disease that prevails in the general thought, and comes to you entirely unbidden, and with no particular association to call it up. Again, disease comes through association, even as thoughts appear. For instance, your mental condition is a fixed belief, that, exposed to severe cold or dampness, you take cold; hence, the circumstance being this, you suffer the effects of a belief through association. If fevers are abroad, you say, I am liable to have them; and this mental condition, through association, produces the result.
Disease comes after the manner that one thought calls up another. If her child is exposed to conditions deemed dangerous, the mother says, my child will be sick, and her belief reaches her offspring to this very end; but she calls it the circumstances. You say, I have eaten too much, and shall find it difficult to ​digest such a quantity of food; or, I have consumptive parents, hence am predisposed to this disease, and the result follows, in natural sequence. The conditions of your belief are re-produced on your body. The remote cause of all disease, is a belief in it, and a fear of it; the present, or exciting one, the circumstance you say will produce it.
Exposed to contagion, having consumptive parents, being over-wrought, mentally or physically, eating too much, fasting too long, etc., you say, are dangerous to health, and you are a law to your body in the case, for the body could not suffer from these without mind, and a mind, that did not embrace these beliefs, would not suffer; the seeds of disease, germinated by circumstances, are sown in mind, not matter. Even as thoughts on other subjects are re-produced by association, so are diseases; and your belief regarding disease, and not the circumstance, is what affects your body.
Parents, nurses, and doctors, not perceiving these vital points in science, throw their mental weight in the wrong scale, and injure those they would bless. Pursuing an opposite course, and ruling out all mental admissions of disease, they would save the sickness they now occasion. We should recollect suffering is no less a mental condition, than enjoying. When an accident happens, you think, or exclaim, “he is hurt ;” but to prevent the result you fear, you should oppose your own, and the frightened one's admission he is harmed. Contending you are not hurt, your body obedient to mental control, will yield to this fact.
When destroying scientifically the sufferings of children, oftentimes the mother will revive in their ​memory what you are blotting out, and describe how badly her child was hurt; or how much disease she has, etc., little knowing the effect of this is like fire to a burn. We should inquire only into our fears and beliefs regarding sickness, and disregard all else.
Matter cannot give testimony, therefore we should not believe personal sense; mind alone reports physical conditions and produces them. The sick argue against themselves by saying, “I am sick”; the physical affirmative should be met with a mental negative; all discord is error, insomuch as harmony is the only Truth of being; we must take a mental position, the very oppositeof the physical one, to control the body to a change of action. We inform the muscles how to move, and they act in obedience to the mind, or there would be no action; so does the entire system. The sick are frightened, whether they do, or do not understand this, and the body, like a frightened man, runs too fast or too slow, partially palsied, or inflamed with fear, the action is naturally increased or diminished.
To advance in the understanding of Truth, we must live up to our present perceptions of it; and improving the present, we need take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for us, and afford more light as we advance toward the light. When you know already, dishonesty is error, discipline yourself to meet consequences rather than do wrong or hide a wrong. Truth is nearly worthless to him who seldom uses it.
When physical action is inflammatory, mind is the cause; some fear has taken possession of you, although this fear is not recognized by the sick, yet the physical ​effects show us it exists, and the results are the same as if it existed consciously. Disease, originating in mind before it can be manifested on the body, is arrested, or ruled out of the latter, by destroying the belief that occasioned it. Fear causes the face to grow suddenly red, or pallid, proving the circulation of the blood is controlled by this mental condition; the body becomes weak, or suddenly strong, through fear, showing that weakness or strength is the result of mind, instead of matter. A mother, informed of the imprisonment of her son, instantly falls dead; here organic action has stopped from no other than a mental cause, and yet we are so buried in the rubbish of supposed Life in matter, we cannot, or do not, let this falling apple point to the Principle it reveals. Fear changes the entire secretions of the system; not only controls the functions of the brain, but the internal vicera, and the entire mechanism of the obedient body. Remove the fear of disease, and disease will disappear; for the body is restored through a change of mind; fear exists when the mind is wholly unconscious of it, and produces disease involuntarily. We never knew the patient that did not recover when the fear of his disease was utterly destroyed. The stronger never yields to the weaker, except through fear, or voluntary choice; and mind is mightier than matter, and controls the body, whether e do, or do not, admit this.
The ills we fear are the only ones that conquer us. The body becomes inharmonious through mind alone; no law, outside of mind, governs the body. The law of God is the only absolute or inevitable, and this law never produces sickness, sin, or death, as its ​consequences.. There is no pain without mind; matter cannot suffer or produce suffering. Disease is a fear expressed physically, not by the lips, but the functions of the body. Mitigate the fear, and you relieve the affected organ; destroy it, and the body regains its healthy functions. However impossible this may appear to our educated views on this subject, it is, nevertheless, a fact in science that we have tested sufficiently to declare it, as unhesitatingly as any other demonstrable Truth. That man is unconscious of his fear, neither changes its effects on the body nor the mental fact; ignorance of the cause, or approach of disease, not in the least militates against its mental origin. More or less fear accompanies all ignorance; who that understands the power of mind over body, its impelling force, and how controlled, and this very ignorance, like walking in darkness on the edge of a precipice, is an ever-present involuntary fear.
We say, my body suffers, and mind has nothing to do with it; this is simply impossible. The martyr, burning at the stake, conquers his body with mind, and silences personal sense with Soul. So the opposite extreme of stolidity meets his punishment with less torture than a mind touched to finer issues. Death has occurred from imaginary phlebotomy; individuals have died of contagions, hydrophobia, etc., believing they had been exposed to them, when such was not the case. Many instances of the mind's control over body, producing death, prove this control absolute, instead of partial. Physicians are ready to admit mind affects the body somewhat; but this is but a small part of the fact; science reveals all action produced and controlled by ​mind, and a single instance of this proved, as when people die from mental causes, justifies this statement.
If mind is the only actor, how do we explain mechanism, apparently acting of itself, or through what we term matter power. Simply that mind has constructed this mechanism and carries it on. A mill at work, or the action of water on a wheel, is secondary, and not the primary cause; mind caused the mill and constructed the machinery. The eternal mind first “divided the waters,” and controlled the wave. Mind is the primitive,and the derivative would not continue without mind to put it in operation; perpetual motion in matter is a failure; but perpetual motion of mind is science. Intelligence is the motive power, or procurer of all action. Take away mind and the body is without action; therefore it is but logical to conclude mind produces its action; but when we go farther, and cure diseased action through mind, that medicine could not remove, we gain this undeniable evidence.
Mind, like a telegraph office, holds the message conveyed to the body, and to prevent any bad results we must be careful the telegram is from science instead of sense. Deprived of this despatch, the body returns no answer of inflammation or disease, from the fact matter has no Intelligence of its own. The body is not an independent sovereignty, or reigning autocrat over man; any supposed government matter holds over Intelligence, is wholly mythical. The belief our body is substance, is not more true than that it is Life and Intelligence. What a material world we address; but Truth must be spoken; if not at all times, at some time, and we seem destined to take the enemy's first ​fire, for speaking it this time. We have faith this book will do its work, though not fully understood, in the nineteenth century. The revelator read its history in the little book, “Sweet in the mouth, and bitter in the belly.” Though but a hint in time, it is a tale for eternity. Materiality must and will go out, though it be slowly; the spiritual era advances when physical effects will no longer be attributed to physical causes, but discerned in their final spiritual cause.
When fear causes the blood to bound through veins and arteries, or languidly to move the palsied mechanism, destroy the fear, and the system regains its equilibrium; anodynes, counter-irritants, or depletion can never reduce inflammation like the Truth of being. Faith, or belief, is a poor equivalent for science; we must understand man metaphysically, before we can control him aright, physically. Ignorance, coupled with a smattering of metaphysical learning, is a shocking bore; the Truth of being reduced to a petty cross-fire on every poor cripple and invalid, sending into him the cold bullet, “nothing ails you,” had better be unsaid until it be understood. If a boil appears suddenly, that you say is painful, does it ache? The boil does not ache, for matter has no sensation; it is mind that feels, and that boil bespeaks your belief of heat, pain, swelling, and inflammation, but you call it the boil. Heat is a product of fear; warmth is the normal condition of Truth, cold or heat is not; body bereft of mind is cold at first, and afterwards nothing. Fearproduces the heat, and another phase of belief tries to expel it through yet another form of belief, called a boil, that now appears on the body, mind holding at ​the same time the conclusion that boils are painful, but prolong Life, alias Intelligence. An error of premises produces error in conclusion, mental error occasions all the discords of body.
Heat would pass off as painless from the body as gas expelled from boiling water, but for our oppositebeliefs. Chills are the effects of heat; ulcers, boils, etc., are heat coming to the surface; but mind, and not matter, creates this heat and forms all the identity disease has. The invalid may conclude a humor in the blood causes boils, and when this humor is brought to the surface the system is relieved; but mind, and not matter, has formed this conclusion and its results. You will have these forms of disease so long as you regard them channels for disease, or inevitable results of matter, Cherish any particular belief of disease and you are in danger of reproducing it on the body. Reverse the case and destroy your belief in this modus operandi of matter, and your fear of disease will not engender the heat to be thrown off; and what you thought before was scrofula, bile, and physical causes, you will learn was fear and mind acting on the body.
Disease, destroyed in its origin, viz., mind, never reappears again, and is cured effectually; but matter can never destroy it. A mental position taken doubtingly, is a very weak one; you must understand these points in science, or you are never thoroughly persuaded in your own mind of the power of belief and its sad effect on the body; neither can you discern the Principle bringing out the capabilities and harmony of being, that enables you to hold what you understand. In the positive belief and fear of disease yourself, it ​were vain to attempt, mentally, to remove another's fear or disturbed condition; as soon attempt to destroy heat with fire. To succeed in the science of Life, you must be found in it, having not on a belief, but the garment of Truth, and this will give you self-possession, and ability to bring out the full amount of the Life that is Christ healing the sick. Eschewing the belief you are Intelligent matter, you gain the capabilities of Spirit and the freedom of the sons of God.
Men of business have said this science was of great advantage from a secular point of view. It not only enhanced their physical and mental endurance, but control of man and perception of character. They have told us they could meet better the exigencies of business, by meeting mind on its own grounds, perceiving thoughts and their relation to men's acts. The science of Life not only brings out latent possibilities and capacities, but extends the atmosphere, or aroma of mind, giving man vent in broader and higher being. An odor, confined by a stopper, is not so benevolent as when the stopper is removed and it scents the room. Remove the belief of Intelligence beneath a skull bone, of Soul in body, and matter the master of man, and there quickly follows more of a man or woman, because they understand themselves and others better. Getting outside the evidence of personal sense to judge of men and things, is a vast gain to manhood and Godhood. We are suffocated by beliefs and 'isms, whereas a living Soul is liberty and Life; understanding can grasp even the infinite idea. We are conscious of intelligent Spirit; then away with the dream of intelligent matter, or that Intelligence dwells in non-intelligence.
​Soul and body are different, but concordant, and one cannot be lost and the other left. To apprehend completeness and perfection, we must reach them, and bring out our model thus. Thinking of sin, sickness and death is not the method to conquer them, and form your model of Life; destroy them in mind and they are gone forever; get rid of the fear of sickness, or the love of sin, and you are rid of these errors in physical manifestation. Action should proceed from Principle, not idea, from Soul, and not personal sense, and mind instead of matter; when this is so, we shall govern our bodies and bring out harmony. Principle controls its idea harmoniously, governed alone as it is by the supreme Intelligence, but for this, 'ology or 'ism would make a sick globe. The belief that Spirit dwells in matter, and that matter has Intelligence, causes all discord; man is not sick; for mind is not sick, and matter cannot be; a belief is the tempter and tried, the sin and sinner, disease and its cause, death and the dying. Shock this belief by some expression, or impression, of Truth, start it from its fixed centre, and it will relieve the body at once. A tooth ceases to pain you before the forceps, a greater fear having silenced, for a moment, the lesser, showing the effects of mind on the body, and that “our greater evils medicine the less.”
A bigot's circumference of mind is very small; personality and matter he believes in, but talk to him beyond these, of Principle and idea, and you get no response. Ignorance is the greatest foe to metaphysical science.
Never converse on sickness, watch its symptoms, recommend matter remedies, or seek to learn its cause ​in matter; and you will find it easier for mind to destroy, and to enjoy health yourself, and help others to do so. The basis of all disease, is error or belief; destroy the belief and the sick will recover. To be cheerful in sickness is well, to be hopeful is better, but to understand the nothingness of disease destroys it utterly. An invalid is a deplorable instance of mesmerism, with which one belief controls another, and error re-produces error. We admit one mind can control another mind, and thereby control the body, but never calculate we do this daily with our own body. The mesmerizer causes his subject pain without any physical cause, proving he produces this sensation through the subject's belief, and not that it existed in the body; then, to the belief of pain were he to add a belief of disease in any part, and keep up this state of mind sufficiently long, the disease would certainly appear there. The mesmerizer makes a limb rigid by making his subject believe he cannot move it. Thus it is with the sick; they mesmerize their bodies unconsciously, through their beliefs, to conditions of stiffened joints, disease, and death, and the only difference is, the cause in one instance, is understood to be mind, or belief, producing the results, and in the other case, believed to be matter; hence mind is employed to remove one, and matter the other condition, whereas both have their origin in mind, and are removed through mind. The lame man mesmerizes his body through the belief an accident or disease caused him lameness, and so long as this belief lasts, his lameness continues.
Sometimes faith in medicine, or the lapse of time wears away fear to such an extent the belief changes ​with regard to the disease, sufficiently to remove the bodily ailment. Remove the belief that holds the limb rigid and it is restored. But, says one, no man can mesmerize me. This may be true, and because you mesmerize your body so positively, others are negative to you; but such an individual would be difficult to cure with other's mesmerism, or materia medica, unless he had more faith in them than himself. Science would heal him more readily through the understanding, for such minds are generally self-reliant and assured, holdingstrong, if preoccupied grounds. There is no law of matter that governs Intelligence; mind alone is supreme law. What we term laws of nature, governing man, are nothing more or less than man's belief, producing the results of mind on his body and not matter. Life is not evolved, but evolves phenomena. Life is eternal, giving forth its representation as the sun emits its rays. That Life is supported by food, drink, air, etc., that it is organic, or in the least dependent on matter, or sustained by it, is a myth.
Soul has a body when all matter is destroyed; the mortal body is a thing of belief called man, an error from its origin to its end; the Truth of being is immortal Soul and body. Expose the body mortal to certain temperatures, and belief says it has colds and catarrhs; to severe labor, and fatigue follows; to prick a vein lets out Life, and this man is at the mercy of a bodkin! putting aside mind, no such results follow to man. So long as the belief remains that dampness or cold produces catarrhs, fevers, rheumatism, or consumption, these effects will follow, and the air of tropical climes will afford exemption from them; but change the belief ​with regard to this, and the effects will change, and you will find the body manifests only what mind says, on these, and all other points. Matter is governed by mind.
Man, pursuing zealously the conditions of his belief, (and this is all there is to mesmerism), if told how mind affects the body, and, to illustrate, you quote the evidence of this in mesmerism, replies, “no man can mesmerize me.” And yet he calls his body this me, and that body is just what his parents first, and secondly himself, has made it; and these parents were not matter, but mind, as the body proves, that is no longer thy parent, if mind has departed.
When we reach the science of Life, we shall learn Truth casts out devils and heals the sick, also, that Jesus gave disease and devil one signification. Those fear not they shall murder, whose perceptions reach the average of goodness, and if our spiritual perceptions were up to the standard of Christians, we should no more fear sickness, sin, or death. It is not less wise to fear sickness than to fear we shall steal; both are admissions of moral weakness, and a loss of control over the body that we should not permit. Let the slave to a wrong desire learn the science of Life, and he never more will cherish this desire, but rise higher in the scale of being. Allowing Soul to govern sense, is science, wherein we are a law of Wisdom to our body, of Life and not death.
Let mankind study this science with half the avidity they peruse volumes on disease, and try the different drugs and drills for health, and they will advance not from one disease to another, nor to decrepitude and death, but beyond sickness into harmony and Life. ​When “in him we live, move, and have being,” is it impossible to conclude God is equal to camphor or a sweat? Life is proved Spirit, and not matter; and the only possible objection to our eagerly accepting this munificence of being is, that it requires a better demonstration of Life. The centuries are slowly, but surely, tumbling down the old corner stones, and building on better foundations. Not far distant, the hour looks down on us when sickness, sin, and death will be admitted error, and the Truth that destroys them sought instead of drugs.
Mind is the only alterative of the body; every secretion and function of the human system depend on mind and are controlled by it. The pallid invalid supposed to be dying from a bad state of blood, is restored to strength and health by changing her belief on this subject; it matters not whether she knows or does not know the working of mind and its bad effect on her body, she will recover when mind is set right on the physical question, and the blood will circulate naturally and healthily. The Oxford students furnished this precedent, who caused a felon to die of the belief he was bled to death; when not a drop of blood had flowed. This single case proved the superiority of belief over matter and blood, to kill a man. The belief that Life is contingent on matter, or that certain conditions of the blood and organic structure are fatal to man, must be met and mastered, before Life is understood, or found immortal. Mind causes all conditions of the body, and you can change them effectually and permanently only through this medium. To heal the sick with science, has this advantage over ​physiology, drugs, mesmerism, etc.; it is the Truth of being opposed to its error, by which man goes up higher in the scale of being; other methods are error opposing error, that have a temporary advantage only. Belief is on their side to be sure, for error coincides with error, strengthens it and weighs against the science of Life; but this has no advantage in the scale of Truth. The perception of man's possibilities enlarges his being, giving higher aims and broader scope to manhood. If there were no other and higher motives for acquainting ourself with God, the Principle of man, than to be rid of sickness, this would seem sufficient.
A student once said, “this science has made me all I am,” and that was saying more, perhaps, than he was aware. There is infinite room in the science of man, for here the limits of personality confine not Intelligence.
Disease is one of the beliefs of personal sense that Truth finally destroys. No scientific work can treat of disease as an identity, or power. Any allusion to disease, or confession that you are sick, should be avoided, as you would shun telling ghost stories to children in the dark. Shut out from the light, a child suffers from thoughts of danger, and so does the adult who comprehends not his own being; the child must be taken out of darkness to get rid of his fear, and the suffering it occasions, and so must the man. The universal belief that suffering is physical, and not a creation of mind, produces suffering, owing to our ignorance of its origin. That Life is not dependent on matter we prove when Life goes on and matter is destroyed. Spiritually, I cannot perceive sickness, sin or death; and recognize these only as beliefs of matter. ​Sickness is error, its remedy Truth; and the science of being reveals that our body is sensationless, and that Spirit sees, hears, feels, acts, and enjoys, but cannot suffer; and this makes Soul and body harmonious and immortal. To conclude our body is Life, Substance, or Intelligence, and this body matter, that sees, hears, feels, acts, enjoys and suffers, makes sickness, sin and death autocrats over Soul, and man a slave to personal sense. To Soul there is neither matter, sickness, sin, or death; but to personal sense these are realities, that even govern Spirit; what a mistake! we know this is error, and error a belief, destitute of understanding; and change the belief, the error changes, destroy it, and the error is gone. You see through solid walls, hear without sound, walk over water, and have your body with you in clairvoyance; but in the opposite belief of sense, your body remains in statu quo, and your mind goes without a body. Let the mesmerizer experience what we term the fears of personal sense, its pains or its pleasures, and his subject has those same sensations, which proves they are produced by mind and not matter, and are beliefs instead of the reality of things. Sickness is not imagination; it is more than this, it is a belief, a conviction of mind instead of a fancy. One animal looking another in the eye may cause a quarrel; but notice the superiority of Soul over sense, when the eye of man fastened fearlessly on the beast, starts him away with terror. This illustrates the effect of Spirit looking disease steadfastly in the face to destroy it, compared with our physiological drills, drugs, and mesmerism, which is the quarrel between beasts. When we submit topersonal sense that we admit is the author of sickness, sin ​and death, we do not govern our bodies; we must turn to spiritual sense for happiness and immortality. Thinking less of what we term substance-matter, and more of substance in Spirit, we become a law to our bodies of Life, and not death, of harmony instead of discord, and of Truth instead of error.
I pity him more who is sick than him who is a sinner, for we rely on God to help man in the latter, but not the former case. If sense masters man in sickness, it may in sin, and Soul is out of office. Because personal sense reports you poor, it may tempt you to steal; or exposed to fatigue, or cold, say you must be sick; but should you believe it in one case more than in the other? in both cases it misguides and deludes. The belief that sickness is a necessity, or the master of man, disappears in science where our normal control over the body reappears. Bathing, friction, dietetics, air, exercise, electricity, etc., never yet made man harmonious; drugging or pounding the poor body to make it sensibly feel well, that ought to be insensibly well, is a sorry equivalent for the control of Spirit over matter. Has brains, blood, heart, lungs, stomach, bones, nerves, drugs, whiskey or sin, reduced thee to the slave of matter; rememberthese are not as strong as thou, and rise to thy God-given dominion; man is not the tool of personal sense, the Truth of being declares this. Sickness, as well as sin, is error, and can matter err? Sickness is a jar, an abnormal action, inharmonious, and what is the corrective of this? matter cannot resuscitate, without mind, it cannot act of itself. We say it can; that certain combinations, gasses, secretions, acute or morbid conditions of matter produce inharmony, and bodily ​sufferings also; but this is not so, if the body causes pain it can also cure it, but matter neither caused nor cured disease; not a gas accumulates, or a secretion takes place, or a combination occurs without mind. We admit the voluntary action of mind controls muscles, bones and nerves, but conclude, when these please to rebel against mind, as in case of lameness or contraction, they will not obey, however much we desire it, and mind has no more control over them; but this makes muscles and bones superior to man in one instance, and in another his servant, which is unnatural and not equal to the economy of human governments. If muscles are capable of action without the mind, we might say they are capable of inaction also, on this same premises, but not otherwise; and if they are able to inact of themselves at any time, they are at all times, and man has no control over them, and one state is as much their normal condition as the other; hence a stiffened joint or paralyzed limb is as natural as its opposite. But if mind controls muscles in one case, it does in all cases. When Shakespeare said, “Throw physic to the dogs,” I have some faith he added to the cast-aways, the belief of intelligent matter. Sometimes in fevers, consumptions, etc., the patient seems full of courage, and we say, “how calm he is; how can he be suffering from fear; his body is the victim of disease, but the mind is unmoved.” Mind that in sickness we deem tranquil, is frightened with its own images; fear heats the insensible body and dashes the blood in mad currents; but Christ, Truth, stills this tempest, with its “peace be still.” If disease can attack and control the body without man's consent, so can sin; both are error ​to be destroyed; dare you admit Spirit cannot govern the body when error of any nature takes it in hand? Destroy the belief of fever and the fear it occasions, and blood will circulate again mildly, and the body be at peace. Personal sense takes no cognizance of what is going on in mind; it is blind to the cause of effects; to comprehend our explanation of man you must perceive its Principle in science, that demands understanding and demonstration; whereas personal sense requires belief only.
The metaphysical physician looks for effects where the physical doctor thinks he finds causes. The former finds all causation mind, the latter looks for cause only in matter; the former heals on the scientific basis of being, whereby mind governs the body, the latter through the belief that matter controls man.Metaphysical pathology rests on psychology, or the science of Soul; but the signification of psychology is perverted whenever construed mesmerism instead of science. The metaphysical method of healing the sick labors under this disadvantage, that mortal belief apprehends matter only, and not Spirit; and disparages the metaphysical, and gives the physical precedence in all things, throwing all the weight of belief in the scale of personal sense, and on the side of matter. Meeting the affirmative to disease with a negative, neutralizes the positive belief and its effects on the body, making discord become negative to harmony, and introducing the science of being. A patient thoroughly booked in physiology, materia medica, etc., is more difficult to heal with science, than one having never bowed the knee so methodically to matter.
​In case of insanity you argue, mentally and verbally, against the belief that brains are diseased, the same as in other cases of physical disorders, for all physical inharmonies proceed from mental causes; insanity is but another form of mental error. We could afford to scorn a bold denial of personal sense if proof was wanting; but when it is not, and this reversed idea of man restores harmony to mind and body, as nothing else can, we must admit it science. Did not this Truth of being silence personal sense and the so-called laws material, man were lost, and discord, sin and death, immortal. Insanity is a very interesting case to treat metaphysically, it being a clearer case, and affords better evidence of the effects of mind on the body. The only good effect you can produce on body or brain is the result of mind instead of matter, through the Truth of being that destroys error; but you cannot introduce the science of being that restores health, through manipulation; as soon teach man mathematics by rubbing his head. If the physician is scientific he is morally and practically fit for healing, without manipulation or medicine, and speaks as one having authority, possessing the Truth that destroys error. Under some circumstances it is well to converse with the patient audibly, explaining to him the science of his course; but under others, it arrays him and his sect against you and thus retards his recovery. Should a nurse or the friends of the sick think lightly of metaphysical healing, or despair of the patient's recovery, you should inform them as much as they can comprehend, of its basis and results, requesting them, for the sake of the sick, to leave the patient out of their thoughts as much as ​possible, that the influence one mind holds over another may be obviated. You have as much better opportunity to be heard mentally, when speaking alone, as physically; we admit one cannot be heard when others are speaking louder than himself, or talking on other subjects; and this is why the physician needs to be alone with the patient, when mentally healing him. A scientific practitioner never converses on other subjects when he is treating the sick; you cannot gain the spiritual sense of your patient if you are addressing his personal senses, by manipulating him; besides you need to learn your patient's mind, and to do this you must be silent and still; manipulation, or conversation on other topics are injurious. The spirituality that abstracts all attention from the body, never manipulates and is the only positive position of scientific healing. The demonstrator of the science of healing is to-day an Atlas with the world on his shoulders, and the only reason he heals in one or a majority of cases is, not that law material or a single opinion or prejudice is in his favor, but because it is the Truth of being demonstrated by its fruits. Understanding the science of music, we have firm reliance on our ability to practice it; so with the science of Life, the only difference is, the latter demonstrates God controlling man, and the former, God controlling music; but the latter meets with more opposition because it tends to destroy all error, and is not understood at present.
The Scientist sees more clearly the cause of disease in mind, than the anatomist can in body; the latter examines the body to learn how matter is committing suicide, and the former reads mind to find what beliefs ​are destroying the body. The scientist is a law to himself; he would not do wrong knowingly, and if he has not reached this standpoint, he cannot give the more wonderful demonstrations of healing. Whosoever justifies an evil-doer, and does not expose his iniquity, is a partaker of his sin, and will have his reward. Whenever we have discovered a dishonest student claiming to be scientific, we have first explained to him his error, and next, rebuked him; and if neither explanation nor rebuke are heeded, and he does not reform, he becomes our enemy. The greatest hindrance this science can meet will arise from backsliding students, those claiming to practice it who do not adhere to its moral obligations, who have not yet realized until the fountain is purer, the stream will be turbid; mind must be right or its action on others will be inharmonious.
A mental condition, or error of belief unknown to both patient and physician, is not readily removed, and to gain a scientific perception of it, or apprehend the mental condition of the sick, you must hold the reins over your own body. Our Master knew the thoughts of others, solely because of his goodness and spirituality; therefore, mind-reading, with him, was very far from clairvoyance. To be able to discern the cause of sickness after the scientific mode of our Master, depends on your spirituality, obedience to your higher nature, after acquiring the rules of science that guide you aright. If you are becoming spiritually minded, you will discern the things that belong to Spirit; and in the ratio that you are not carnally minded, and according as you surrender error, will your spiritual discernment increase.
​Mental healing may be done both right and wrong; the wrong method is capable of evil, and is mesmerism, of which the lowest natures are capable. The scientific method is without power to do evil; it is Soul, not personal sense, or manipulation that destroys belief and fear and heals the sick, in which mind-reading is not only found important to your success, but especially characterizing the demonstration. When once you understand disease has no identity, you will perceive sickness is but a belief. You should instruct the sick that Soul is Substance, and body its idea; that disease is not in the idea of Soul or immortality, nor can it exist in shadow, the body of Soul, therefore it has no existence.
The mental co-operation of the sick will promote their recovery. To move mind from its central error, viz., that Intelligence and Life are in the body, and matter is the master of man, is the great point in metaphysical healing. Every invalid has an especial fear, in which some disease and its approaching symptoms are more alarming than others; not because the disease is more dangerous, but more feared; remove the fear, and the danger is gone, for mind will master the disease. Physical phenomena epitomize the mental, in which a fearful object troubles us until it is removed from our observation. Disease is an image of mind, that must be removed from mental sight, or the fear it occasions will increase, and this will increase the inflammatory or morbid symptoms. A belief is the seed within itself that propagates all physical, because all mental discord. We know this is difficult to admit before it isunderstood, when the proof is ample; demonstration is all ​that convinces us of this fact, and until this proof is made, you cannot be safe. Conversing on disease, reading, or thinking about it, should be sedulously avoided. If doctors knew one half the harm done by medical books they would abandon works on disease, and never speak again of sickness to their patients. Thinking of disease and pointing out its character makes it liable to appear on the body; such conversations or ruminations should be repugnant as obscene thoughts or words.
Mind engenders all disease, in which case your only hope lies in thinking and hearing less about it, or in understanding the science that absolutely prevents it. When you employ a material remedy you must have more faith in it than the disease, and believe you are getting cured with more tenacity than you believe you are growing worse, that the balance of your faith in recovery or the remedy, may restore you; this condition of mind, neutralizing the effects of your fear, relieves the body. The whole is a mental operation, and matter has nothing to do with it.
The mortal body is but a phenomenon of mortal belief. Watch, then, mind more, and the body less. In case of sickness, or sin, to destroy the one, or remedy the other, we should begin in mind instead of matter; “pluck the beam out of our own eye, that we may see clearly to cast the mote out of our brother's eye.” Unless we are rid of blindness ourself, we are the blind leading the blind, whereby both fall into the ditch.
The study of materia medica, physiology, etc., should give place to metaphysical research, whereby we gain an insight into the power mind holds over matter. ​Mental power, governed by science instead of personal sense, by Truth instead of error, makes man eternal, and will destroy sickness, sin and death; while the material methods for reaching the ultimate harmony of man, have failed to accomplish this. The attention given medicine, laws of health, and saving souls, bestowed upon the moral elevation of man, or the metaphysical understanding of him, would usher in the millennium. Jesus understood this, but the Rabbis did not; hence their scorn of the glorious Nazarene and his demonstration above theirs. Soul takes care of the body in science, where God is an ever-present help in times of trouble. Keeping the body, or “the outside of the platter, clean,” is only done by keeping the mind right. Bathing and brushing to remove exhalations from the cuticle, receive a useful hint from Christianity, and another from the Irish emigrant, who is in health, although in filth; showing that the physical must correspond with the mental. When dirt gives no uneasiness, body and mind are equally gross, and the result is not so chafing. Filthiness that harms not the filthy in mind, could not be borne with impunity by the refined or pure; but what we need is the clean body and clean mind, and the body rendered pure by mind and not matter, for the latter can never do it permanently. One saith, “I take good care of my body,” and repeats his decalogue with all the zeal of a devotee; but the scientist knows he has taken best care of his body who leaves it most out of his thoughts; hence the demand, absent from the body and present with God.
John Quincy Adams, and hundreds of others were instances of health and physiology; so the tobacconist ​who has taken poison for half a century, assures you it preserves his health; but does this assertion make it so, or establish the fact that tobacco is a good thing, or prevent the conclusion he would have been better without it? Such instances only prove the power of belief over the body, and fasten our conclusions in science, “as a man thinketh, so is he.” Mind decides the effect of drugs, regimen, physiology, etc., on the body; for man is governed by mind instead of matter. The only condition of health and happiness, is ignorance of the so-called laws of matter, and understanding God, hence more confidence in Soul governing sense, and rising above selfishness, or mere personal considerations, in which pleasure or pain of the body is taken so largely into account, into the atmosphere of Spirit instead of matter.
A highly opinionated man, booked in the old school systems, has little room for enlarged reasoning; metaphysical science being intangible to touch or taste, he casts it overboard. His treasures laid up in sects, pride, person, or popularity, are in earthen vessels, that yield little space to God. The man of avoirdupois is shocked at our small estimate of exquisite viands; the diminutive intellect, alarmed at our exclusive appeals to mind, and the man of sense, sad at the prospect of Soul only! thus, when the world is bidden come to the feast and Truth of being, one has a farm, another a merchandise, and another a wife, therefore they cannot come; but ere long Truth compels us to come in ways we least expect. When sickness overtakes man, he is weak with all his imaginary strong-holds of matter, having nothing but material law to lean upon, and this, he owns he has ​transgressed, where can he look for immortality? Is it to person or Principle, to matter or Spirit, to body or Soul, he finally flees?
If matter is the identity of man, existence is but a continuation of personal sense that proves itself the source of pain. To contend for personal sense, and against mind's control over the body, is like the defendant arguing for the plaintiff, and in favor of a law that sentences him to suffer. Sin, sickness, and death, would destroy man; then why should we sustain these by a supposition of their inherent power and control over man, making him amenable to laws that destroy him. Until metaphysical science becomes popular, the weak or vain will never advocate it, however much they are benefited by it. Those of a very different mould are commissioned for its hours of depreciation and struggles. The final proof that all is Spirit hastens. Life will be demonstrated ere long according to our statement of it, viz., Spirit and not matter; then shall we marvel at the tenacity of opposite opinions, that with the law and prophets and science, we must at length learn Truth of the things we suffer. Because science is in advance of the age we should not say, “adhere to personal sense to-day, for our present life depends on matter.” If this is the case, man is mortal; but it is not so, and we cannot advance in science until we lose this belief. Error is not a necessity at present or in the future, and to-day is the acceptable time of Truth; the present, even as the future, demands the science of being. To stop utterly eating and drinking until your belief changes in regard to these things, were error; get rid of your beliefs as fast as possible, and admit ​the Principle, for it is the platform of health, joy and immortality. To reach this proof by degrees, and only as we are capable of doing so with increasing health, harmony and happiness, is the only proper method. We would not, for we could not transform the infant at once to a man, or keep the suckling a life-long babe. Man need not spend his days in ignorance of the science of Life, expecting death will make him harmonious and immortal, for it will not; we advance to Life understandingly, therefore we cannot step at once from death to Life, or from matter to Spirit. Only as we understand the Principle of being, and reach perfection, are we Spirit, and eternal.
Death cannot advance man, but one step towards a higher existence, insomuch as it changes not his belief but in one thing, namely, that he died, and of the disease he supposed was killing him. Mortal man is the same after as before the change called death; his body is the same belief of man, the same supposed personal sense, Substance in matter, and Life in the body, as before death; and so long as this error remains, mind being the same, the body remains mortal. We are never Spirit until we are God; there are no individual “spirits.” Until we find Life Soul, and not sense, we are not sinless, harmonious, or undying. We become Spirit only as we reach being in God; not through death or any change of matter, but mind, do we reach Spirit, lose sin and death, and gain man's immortality; hence the need to commence Life's lesson to-day. We gain no higher experiences from death except to learn we die not, and this we gain of Life only and not death. The science of being reveals Substance, Intelligence ​and Life, not matter but Spirit. Herein also we learn the immense disparity between the belief of Life in matter and the reality of being. Science makes the demonstration of Life perfection; and this we all must show before we have any grounds to say we understand Life, or are Spirit. Instead of this science requiring too much of man, at present we do not perceive one half the rightful claims it has upon us, or we should urge them at once on our own acceptance. The Scriptures inform us man liveth “not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Truth is the Life of man, but the age objects to making this practical, which is generally the case with all high requirements. We ask, consistently with the demands of God, and to-day, that less thought be given to what we shall eat, drink, or wear, that we live more simple and primitively, for this will increase longevity and morality. If we admit food can disturb the harmonious functions of mind and body, either the food or the belief must be dispensed with before man is harmonious. The belief that matter governs the Life of man must be met and mastered on some basis before man is learned immortal. Sickness is abject slavery; an invalid haunted by the belief of physical suffering that masters him at all points and on all occasions, is the most pitiful object on earth. Laws of health constitute a government of matter over man wholly unnatural; they attach penalties to our best deeds.
We ought to learn from history and experience the less we believe these so-called laws the less we suffer from their infringement, and the better we obey God's spiritual law. People who know nothing of physiology, ​hygiene, or materia medica, until missionaries give them of this “tree of knowledge,” suffer not as we do from the so-called laws that we say must be obeyed or they kill us, and they enjoy better health than those obeying them. What, then, shall we say of law “more honored in the breach than the observance?” Slavery must yield to innate right, and destroyed in mind, it will die out of forms of government; ignorance of our inalienable rights makes us slaves. If we recognized all being, God, we would perceive our dominion over sickness, sin and death; for governments oppressive and unjust Wisdom layeth its hand upon to destroy, and they fall forever before the might of understanding. The watchword of freedom from the bondage of sickness and sin is not taken up; it has no inspiration for mankind.
This is owing to the fatal belief that error is as real as Truth; that evil has equal power and claims with good, and discord is as normal and real as harmony; such admissions work badly. That matter is solid Substance, and Spirit essence inside of matter; that Spirit is Life, but dwells in decay and death; that Spirit is God, but cannot make man without partnership with matter; that man is not man until he is matter; are false admissions and contradictory statements that seem too absurd to be permitted a place in reason. If man is matter, he is not mind, and dust is as intelligent as Deity. If Intelligence or Spirit is in matter, the infinite is in the finite, and Spirit is less than matter, for we cannot place the greater within the less. If man existed not forever, and before material structure, he does not exist after his body is disintegrated. If we ​live after death we lived before birth. Life has no beginning, therefore no end; all that is material must disappear before man is found immortal. How strange, then, to conclude man would have had no individual being unless he had been individualized through matter, an impossible beginning of Intelligence.
The body never affected the Life of man for a moment; eating never made him live, nor abstaining from food caused him to die. Do you believe this? No! Do you understand it? No! and this is the only reason that you doubt it; the cadaverous dyspeptic learning this, has a sweet face without a sour stomach, and is nearer the kingdom of heaven than you. We are attracted or repelled mentally without knowing the thoughts that lead to this. We weep because others weep, and laugh because they laugh, and have small-pox on this ground, for disease is not hereditary or contagious only through mind. The more spiritual we are, the more conscious to us is an error of belief. Surrounded by minds filled with thoughts of disease, constantly dwelling upon their bodies, and with some complaint always ready, the spiritual suffer greatly in this mental atmosphere; such involuntary agents of pain to themselves and others, must be reformed. When mental contagion is understood, these people will be avoided as we now avoid small-pox. To stop the manufacture of disease and give us a better mental atmosphere, is worthy the present age of progress. We would sooner risk our health, inhaling the miasma of a rice swamp, than be obliged to listen constantly to complaints of sickness, or through sympathy or society be kept in the mental atmosphere of the sick; some natures may stand it, but ours has a struggle.
​We admit man is immortal,—our only evidence of this, however, we gain from his harmony; discord, sickness or death never begat this conclusion. Immortality was never demonstrated to personal sense; but apprehending in the least, Soul and science, no man doubts his eternal existence. Physical effects proceed from mental causes; the belief we can move our hand moves it, and the belief we cannot do this renders it impossible during this state of mind. Palsy is a belief that attacks mind, and holds a limb inactive independent of the mind's consent, but the fact that a limb is moved only with mind proves the opposite, namely, that mind renders it also immovable. Medical works fill the mind with images of disease that are liable sooner or later to be re-produced on the body. The consent of mind must first be given that palsy is practical, then the circumstance said to produce it, and the result follows you have it developed.
Ossification, or any abnormal formation of bone, is produced by mind alone; for a bone never grew independent of mind, and the cause producing this can remove it. What the physician and others determine is fatal in a case, and above all what the patient believes regarding this, is the only obstacle in the way of the recovery. A condition of matter must first have been a condition of mind; hence to destroy the former we must begin with the latter, and when the cause is removed its effects disappear. We will suppose two parallel cases of bone disease, both produced similarly and attended by the same symptoms; for one we employ a surgeon, and for the other a scientist. The surgeon, believing matter forms its own conditions, entertains doubts or fears in ​regard to the case, and his state of mind is communicated to the patient, whether verbally or otherwise. While we vainly suppose the sick feel the effects only of thoughts expressed, they feel more surely the unexpressed fear, doubt, or anxiety, inasmuch as it is more intense. The scientist, understanding how mind alone forms every condition of matter, gives courage and strength to the patient while imparting to his understanding the Truth of being that destroys error, and restores the limb without stiffness, displacement, or unnatural formations; whereas the surgeon's similar case will terminate, if not fatally, in some unnatural condition of the joint. Understanding the cause of disease wholly mental, a scientist will never for a moment admit general opinions regarding it, or take physical symptoms into account, except as mental conditions or beliefs to be destroyed through mind.
Personal sense and science clash, of course, in this statement, for they are opposites and without affinity, and this quarrel will wax warmer until it is over, and sense yields to science. Pride, ignorance, prejudice or passion will close the door on science until future centuries open it wide to man, and he regains the harmony of being. If Life and Intelligence depend on organization, man is material; and stop the functions of the body, or let the body be spiritual, and man is annihilated; and there must be a new creation of man. If Life escapes from matter it is not Spirit, and must return again to matter, in which case there is no spiritual existence. If material existence is real, the spiritual is unreal, and vice versa; if Life is matter, or in matter, it cannot continue outside of matter; and material decomposition ​must reduce material man to dust. Even the worm begotten of death, springing from corruption, we name Life in matter; making Life a product of death and death a product of Life. When will the age awake to reason on being, as fairly as on other subjects.
We should object to natural history leaping thus the barrier of species. There is neither vegetable, animal, nor organic Life, if Life is Spirit, and the testimony of Scripture and demonstration of Life prove that it is. Called to the bed of death — the Truth of being is your only resource to restore health and raise up the so-called dying; on its basis alone can you recognize immortality, and dispute personal sense or the apparent fact of death, with Soul; man is not dying if Intelligence is Life; man's being is mightier far than death, for Truth is mightier than error. Your privilege is to prove “He that believeth in me,” i. e., understandeth the Truth of being, “shall never see death.” Understanding Life, destroys death. We have demonstrated the effect of this statement of science on the sick sufficiently to establish its practical value. Though we admit man is immortal, we apprehend Life only as a thing material, or escaping from the body; this is not correct; personal belief and error is responsible for this wrong statement of God. Death is but another phase or belief of the dream of life in matter; and while there is no reality in either, both will continue until the science herein stated is understood. The obsequies of the dead are a pitiful part of this dream, when we remember Life has neither beginning nor end. The so-called dead, although liberated from their belief that Life has ended, or even changed to them, are separated ​from our opinions and recognition of them; and they have no more cognizance of the body we are disposing of than we of their actual existence; these two dreams of Life are separated never to unite again until we pass into their phase of belief, or at length reach the understanding of Life and yield the error of personal sense, or matter-man, for Life that is God.
Science reveals immortality in such a light it precludes the possibility of Life in mortality. The lessons of earth should lift the affections and understanding to a spiritual base whereby we lose error to gain Truth, for, “he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” Electric currents never passed from Spirit to matter; Spirit evolves the idea of Life, and this idea has no fellowship with matter or decay; to this final understanding we are all hastening.
We will suppose a case on the docket of mind, in which a man is charged with liver complaint. The patient feels ill, ruminates, and the trial commences. Personal Sense is plaintiff; Man, the defendant; Belief, the attorney for Personal Sense; Mortal Minds, the jury, and Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Mesmerism, and Mediumship the judges. The evidence for the plaintiff being called, testifies:
“I am Laws of Health, was present on the nights the prisoner (patient) watched with the sick, and, although I have the superintendence of human affairs, was personally abused on those occasions, and informed 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 ​them drink, and when sick, and in prison, he visited them;” at the same time attending to his daily labors, partaking of food at irregular intervals, sometimes retiring immediately after a heavy meal, etc., etc., until he was guilty of liver complaint, that we construe crime, inasmuch as we deem it punishable with death; therefore I arrested the man in behalf of the State (body) and cast him into prison. At the time of the arrest he summoned Physiology, Materia Medica, Mesmerism, and a masked individual named Mediumship, to prevent his punishment or imprisonment. The struggle, on their part, was long; missives of matter were employed vigorously but unavailingly; Materia Medica held out the longest, however, being paid for it; but at length they all gave up their weapons to me (Laws of Health) and I succeeded in getting Man into close confinement.” The next witness being called, stated:
“I am Coated Tongue, covered with a foul fur placed on me the night of the liver complaint, Morbid Secretions, Irregular Appetite, Constipation, Foul Stomach, and Debility being witnesses. Morbid Secretions mesmerized the prisoner, took control of his mind, producing somnolence, etc., making him despondent, also, the sooner to precipitate his fate.” Another witness being called, took the stand and testified:
“I am Sallow Skin, dry, hot, and chilled by turns since the night of the liver complaint. I have lost my healthy hue and become bad-looking, although nothing on my part occasioned this; I have daily ablutions, and perform my functions as usual, but I am robbed of my good looks.” The next witness testified:
“I am Nerves, generalissimo of man, intimately ​acquainted with the plaintiff, Personal Sense, and know him to be truthful and upright, while Man (the prisoner at the bar) is capable of falsehood. I was witness to the crime of liver-complaint; knew the prisoner would commit it, for I convey messages from my residence in matter, alias brains, to the body, and am on intimate terms with Error, a personal acquaintance of the prisoner, but a foe to Man.” The name of this third person was called for by the court, and the reply was, “Mortality, governor of the state (body) in which Man is supposed to reside.” In this state there is a statute regarding disease, namely, that Man upon whose person disease is found should be treated as a criminal and punished with death.
Judge. “Did Man, by doing good to his neighbor possess himself of disease, transgress your laws and merit punishment?” “He did.” The deposition of Bowels was then read, they being too inactive to be present. Another witness took the stand, and testified as follows: “I am Ulceration; was sent for shortly after the night of the liver-complaint, by Laws of Health, who protested the prisoner had abused him, and my presence was required to make valid his testimony. One of the judges, (Materia Medica) was present when I arrived, endeavoring to assist the prisoner to escape from the hands of what he termed justice, alias nature's law; but my sudden appearance with a message from Laws of Health changed his purpose, and he decided at once the prisoner (patient) should die.”
The testimony for the plaintiff (Personal Sense) being closed, Materia Medica arose and with greatsolemnity addressed the jury, (Mortal Minds) analyzing ​the offence, reviewing the testimony, and explaining the law relating to liver-complaint, the conclusion of which was, that laws of nature render disease homicide. In compliance with a stern duty, Materia Medica said he must charge the jury not to allow judgment to be warped by the petty suggestions of Soul; to regard in such cases only the mortal evidence of Personal Sense against Man. As the judge proceeded, the prisoner (patient) grew restless, his sallow face blanched with fear, and a look of despair and death settled upon it. A brief consultation ensued, when the jury, Mortal Minds, returned a verdict of guilty, the prisoner being charged with liver-complaint in the first degree. Materia Medica then proceeded to pronounce the solemn sentence of death upon the patient, who, for loving his neighbor as himself, was found guilty of benevolence in the first degree, that led to the committal of the second crime, liver-complaint, that matter-laws construe homicide, for which crimes we sentence this man to be tortured until he is dead, and may God have mercy on his soul.
The prisoner, (patient) was then remanded to his cell (sick bed) and Theology sent for to prepare Soul that is immortal, for death! the body, called Man, having no friends. Ah! but Christ, Truth, was there; the friend of man, to open wide those prison doors and set the captive free. Swift on the wings of Love a message came, “Delay the execution! the prisoner is not guilty.” Consternation filled the court-room, some exclaiming, it is contrary to law and order; others, “Christ walks over our laws, let us follow Him.”
After much debate and opposition, permission was ​obtained for a trial at the bar of Spirit, where Science should appear as counsel for the poor prisoner. Witnesses, judges, and jurors of the Mental Court of Common Errors were summoned to appear at the bar of Truth. When the case for man versus matter opened, his counsel was regarding the prisoner with the utmost tenderness, but that solemn, serene look changed, the earnest eyes kindling with hope and triumph uplifted for a single moment, turned suddenly to the Mental Court of Common Pleas, and Science opened the argument by saying: “The prisoner at the bar has been sentenced unjustly; his trial was a mocking tragedy, morally illegal; Man has had no counsel in the case; all the testimony was on the side of matter, and we will unearth this foul conspiracy against the liberty and life of Man. The only valid testimony in the case proved the alleged crime was never committed, and the prisoner unworthy of death or of bonds. Your Honor, Materia Medica, has sentenced Man, the image of God, to die, denying justice to the body, has recommended mercy for Spirit who is infinite Wisdom and Man's only law-giver! Here you will please inform us who or what has sinned; has the body committed a deed? Your counsel, Belief, argues, that which never sinned should die, while mind, that is capable of sin and suffering you comfort and commend to mercy. The body committed no offence, and man in just obedience to higher law, helped his fellow man, which should result in good to himself. The law of our Supreme Court decrees, whoso sinneth shall die, but good deeds immortalize man, bringing joy instead of grief, pleasure instead of pain, and life instead of death. If liver ​complaint was induced, trampling upon Laws of Health, it was a good deed, the witness is a usurper of man's liberty and rights, and should be consigned to oblivion. Watching beside the couch of pain in the exercise of Love, that fulfills the whole law, doing unto others as ye would they should do unto you, is no infringement of law, for no demand, human or divine, renders it right to punish a man for doing right. If man sins, our Supreme Judge of equity decides the penalty due to sin; but he can suffer only for sin, and for naught else can he be punished according to the laws of God; then what jurisdiction has your Honors, Materia Medica and Physiology in the case? ‘Sittest thou to judge a man after the law, and commandest him to be smitten contrary to the law?’ The only jurisprudence to which the prisoner shall be made to submit is Truth, Life and Love, and if these condemn him not, neither shalt thou condemn him, but shall restore to him the liberty against which you have conspired.
“Your principal witness (Laws of Health) deposed he was an eye-witness to the good deeds for which you sentence a man to die, and even betrayed him into the hands of your law, then disappeared on that occasion to reappear on this, against Man, and in support of Personal Sense, a known criminal. The Supreme Court of Spirit, versus matter, finds the prisoner, on the night of the alleged offence, acting within the limits, and in obedience to the divine statute, upon which ‘hangs all law and testimony, giving a cup of cold water in my name,’ etc.; and thus laying down his life, he should find it; such deeds bear the justification, and are under the protection of the Most High ruler. Prior ​to the night of the arrest the prisoner summoned two judges, Materia Medica and Physiology, to prevent his committing liver-complaint; but they employed their sheriff, Fear, who handcuffed him and precipitated the deed you would now punish, leaving Man no alternative but to believe your law, fear its consequences, and be punished for all this. The judges struggled hard to rescue the prisoner from the penalty they considered justly due; but failing in this, ordered him to be taken into custody, tried and condemned, whereupon these abettors appear at the bench to sit in judgment against him, and recommend the jury, Mortal Minds, to find the prisoner guilty. Their Honors sentence Man to die for the offence they compel him to commit; construing obedience to the law of Love disobedience to the law of Life, claiming to wrest Man from the penalty of law at one time, and at another sentencing him by it.
“One of your principal witnesses, Nerves, testified he is a ruler of the State, (body) in which he says Man resides; that he is on intimate terms with the plaintiff, and knows Personal Sense to be just and truthful, but man, the image of God, a criminal. This is a foul aspersion on his Maker, unworthy a worm; it blots the fair escutcheon of Intelligence; 'tis a malice aforethought to condemn Man in defence of matter. At the Bar of Truth, in the presence of Justice the judge of our Supreme Court, and before its jurors, Spiritual Senses, I proclaim this witness, Nerves, destitute of Intelligence, without Truth, possessing no reality, and bearing the messages of Error only. Man self-destroyed, the testimony of matter respected, Intelligence not ​allowed a hearing, Soul a slave recommended to mercy, whose body is supposed to be executed — are the terrible records of your mental Court of Common Pleas.”
Here the opposite counsel, Belief, called Science to order, for contempt of court, and their Honors, Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Mediumship, and Mesmerism rose to the question of expelling Science from the bar, for high-handed treason, and stopping the judicial proceedings. But Justice, the judge of the Supreme Court of Spirit, overruled their motion on the ground that parliamentary usages are not allowed at the bar of Truth, that holds jurisdiction over the petite Court of Error.
Science then read from his own statute, the Bible, remarking it was better authority than Blackstone, extracts from the Rights of Man. “And I give you power over all things that nothing shall by any means harm you.” “Let us make man in our image, and let him have dominion over all the earth.” “Whoso believeth in me shall not see death,” etc.; proving the witness, Nerves, a perjurer, and instead of a governor of the state, (body), wherein man was falsely reported to reside, an insubordinate subject, prefering false claims to office, and bearing false witness against Man. Then turning suddenly to Personal Sense, (by this time silent) Science continued, I order your arrest in the name of Almighty God, on three separate charges: perjury, treason, and conspiracy against the rights and existence of God's image and likeness. Another testimony, equally unimportant, said that a garment of foul fur was spread over this witness, by Morbid Secretions, on the night of the liver-complaint, while the facts in the case proved ​this fur was foreign, and imported by Belief, the attorney for Personal Sense, who is in company with Error, and smuggles 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 their Honors, Materia Medica and Mediumship explain how it is manufactured, and know they are on friendly terms with the firm of Personal Sense and error, receiving pay for their goods, and introducing them into market. Also be it known, that Belief, counsel for the plaintiff, Personal Sense, is a procurer for this firm; manufactures for it, keeps a furnishing store, and advertises largely for this firm. Ulceration testified he was absent from the state (body) when a message came from Belief, commanding him to take part in the homicide; at this request he repaired to the spot of liver-complaint, frightened away Materia Medica who was manacling the prisoner under pretence of saving him, but this ignorance, not malice, was in fact an unconscious participation in the deed, for which Laws of Health has had Man, innocent of all crime in the case, imprisoned, tried and condemned to die.
Science then turned from the abashed witnesses, with words like sharpened steel, pointed at the hearts of Materia Medica, Physiology, the felon Mesmerism, and the masked form, Mediumship, saying: God should have smitten thee, thou whited walls, sitting to judge in justice, but condemning in thine ignorance the prisoner who sought your aid in his struggles against the deed whereof you accuse him, then coming to his rescue ​only to fasten, through false testimony, an offence on the prisoner of which he is innocent; aiding and abetting that for which you would sacrifice man, declaring your executioner, Disease, to be God's servant and the executor of His laws, when our statute decides your witnesses, jurors, and judges condemned, by higher law, and only awaiting the executioner, Progress. We send our very best detectives to whatever locality you report your Disease, but visiting the spot, they learn it was never there, or it could not elude their discovery. Your Mental Court of Errors, at which you condemn or acquit man on the ground of disease, is the oleaginous machinations of your counsel, Belief, that Science arraigns before the supreme bar of Soul, to answer for his blood-shed. You taught Morbid Secretions to make sleep befool his reason, before sacrificing man to your gods; your jurors, Mortal Minds, were mesmerized by your attorney, Belief, and compelled to deliver man to his open-jawed packs. You would transform good deeds into crimes, to which you attach penalties; but no warping of justice renders disobedience to Laws of Matter, disobedience to God, or an act of homicide; for matter cannot kill what Spirit has made.
Even penal law construes homicide under stress of circumstances justifiable, and what greater justification hath a deed than that it did good to our neighbor, wherefore, then, we ask in the name of outraged justice, do you sentence Man for ministering to the wants of his fellow man, in obedience to higher law? You cannot walk over the supreme bench; Man is amenable only to God, who sentences for sin only. The false and unjust beliefs of your Mental Court of Errors enact ​a law of sickness, then render obedience to this law punishable as crime; such are the spurious enactments of “knowledge.” In the presence of the supreme lawgiver, standing at the bar of Truth and in accordance with its statutes, I repudiate the false testimony of Personal Sense, forbid his entering more suits against man to be tried at the bar of matter, and appeal to the just and equitable decisions of Spirit to restore the prohibited rights of the body.
Here the counsel for the defence closed, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with benign and imposing presence, appropriating, comprehending, and defining all law and evidence explained from His statute, the Bible, how law punishing aught but sin is null and void. Also that the plaintiff, Personal Sense, is not permitted to enter suits at the bar of Soul, but required to keep perpetual silence, and in case of temptation, to give heavy bonds for good behavior. The plea of Belief we deem unworthy a hearing upon all occasions; therefore, let the things it has uttered, now and forever, fall into oblivion, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. According to our statute, Laws of Matter cannot bear witness against man, neither can Fear arrest him, nor Disease cast him into prison; our law refuses to recognize man sick or dying, but holds him the image and likeness of immortal Soul; reversing the testimony of Personal Sense, and the decrees of the Court of Error in favor of matter versus man, we decide in favor of man and against matter; therefore, we recommend that Materia Medica, Physiology, Laws of Health, Mesmerism and Mediumship be given a public execution at the hands of our Sheriff, Progress. The supreme bench ​decides in favor of Intelligence, and that no law outside of mind can punish man. Your personal judges of the Mental Court of Common Pleas are chimeras, your attorney, Belief, an imposter persuading Mortal Minds to return a verdict contrary to law and Gospel, while your plaintiff, Personal Sense, is recorded in our Book of books, a perjurer. Our Teacher of spiritual jurisprudence said of him, “You were a liar from the beginning.” We have no trials for Disease at the tribunals of Spirit, and man is adjudged innocent of transgressing physical laws, because there is no spiritual statute relating thereto. The law of Christ, Truth, is our only code, and “will not the judge of the whole earth do right?”
The plea of Science closed, and the jury of Immortal Mind agreed at once upon a verdict, and there resounded throughout the vast audience chamber of Soul, “NOT GUILTY”; then the prisoner (patient) rose up strong, free, and glorious. We noticed as he shook hands with his counsel, Science of Life, all sallowness and debility had disappeared, his form was erect and commanding, his countenance beaming with health and happiness; dominion had taken the place of fear, and man no longer sick and in prison walked forth, “whose feet were beautiful upon the mountains.”
The above allegory illustrates the effect of mind on the body, how the testimony of personal sense and the plea of belief would punish man; while the plea of Science commutes the sentence of error, with Truth.
When symptoms of sickness are present, meet them with the resistance of mind against matter, and you will ​control them. Life, that is Soul, must triumph over sense at some time, and it is wise to-day to learn this of scientific being. Silently or audibly, according to the circumstances, you should dispute the reality of disease on the basis of the explanations herein given; when healing mentally call each symptom by name, and contradict its claims, as you would a falsehood uttered to your injury. Here is a phenomenon I will state just as I discovered it; if you call not the disease by name when you address it mentally, the body will no more respond by recovery, than a person will reply whose name is not spoken; and you cannot heal the sick by argument, unless you get the name of the disease; but the higher method of healing in Christian science is, so to live that your Life, “hid with Christ in God,” is the Life of Soul that destroys the errors of sense. Agree not with sickness, meet the physical condition with a mental protest, that destroys it as one property destroys another in chemistry; understanding this in science, your mind will neutralize the disease, destroy the fear, and the system will regain its equilibrium.
I have seen a dose of Truth, regarding disease, produce stronger physical effects than ever I witnessed from a dose of drugs. The opposite negative neutralizes the affirmative of disease, and thus destroys it. We have before told you all is mind; therefore, what you term physical effects, are purely mental ones. The mental admission produces what is named the physical effect; hence the fatal results of treatises, admitting, describing, or locating disease. Diagnosing symptoms physical, to learn the actual cause of bodily discord, when mind is the only causation, is error, proved ​already the procurer, instead of destroyer of disease. I never presume on statements diametrically opposed to personal sense, unless I have proved their Truth beyond a doubt. I have tested this mode of healing with scientific certainty, in many cases, and in no case has it failed to prove a benefit to the sick. The task, herculean, of introducing a science has before been tested by patient discoverers; but when the Truth of being is learned, it will be proved. It was said to us, “The whole world feels you, and why are you not more widely known?” Could they have seen the little time we have to be known, and how our work is done, in the closet with the door shut, “seen by Him who seeth in secret,” they would have understood why. To make a specialty of healing is really impossible for us, when our time, means, and health are required for the fuller investigation of this subject; to teach, write, establish practices for students, or halt, perhaps, at measures to be adopted, because of persecution. None should reject Truth because it exposes some past poverty of opinion, or requires the surrender of present beliefs. Indifference to Christian science surprises one when we know it is the eternal right in which God holds the scales, and adjusts all harmonious balances. Even doctrines and beliefs are to-day reaching forth their hands for the science of being; and that which reveals Truth ought not to be misjudged because of ignorance or prejudice.
Some of our present readers may wish to tone down the radical points in this work, others to cast them overboard; yet science will reproduce itself, and as mind changes base from matter to Spirit, there will be ​severe chemicalization. Truth cannot be lost; if not admitted to-day in its fullness, the error that shuts it out will occasion such discord in sickness, sin, etc., that future years will point it out, and restore at length the fair proportions and radical claims of Christian Science.
FINIS.