Chapter 12. Christian Science Practice (Science and Health) (Eddy, Mary Baker)

Why are you cast down, O my soul [sense]? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope you in God; for I shall yet praise Him, Who is the health of my countenance and my God. PSALMS.

And these signs shall follow them that belien my name shall they cast out devihey shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Jesus.

A gospel narrative

IT is related in the seventh chapter of Luke's Gospel that Jesus was once the honored guest of a certain Pharisee, by name Simon, though he was quite unlike Simon the disciple. While they were at meat, an unusual incident occurred, as if to interrupt the scene of Oriental festivity. A "strange woman" came in. Heedless of the fact that she was debarred from such a place and such society, especially under the stern rules of rabbinical law, as positively as if she were a Hindoo pariah intruding upon the household of a high-caste Brahman, this woman (Mary Magdalene, as she has since been called) approached Jesus. According to the custom of those days, he reclined on a couch with his head towards the table and his bare feet away from it. It was therefore easy for the Magdalen to come behind the couch and reach his feet. She bore an alabaster jar containing costly and fragrant oil, sandal oil perhaps, which is in such common use in the East. Breaking the sealed jar, she perfumed Jesus' feet with the oil, wiping tem with her long hair, which hung loosely about her shoulders, as was customary with women of her grade. Parable of the creditor

Did Jesus spurn the woman? Did he repel her adoration? No! He regarded her compassionately. Nor was this all. Knowing what those around him were saying in their hearts, especially his host, that they were wondering why, being a prophet, the exalted guest did not at once detect the woman's immoral status and bid her depart, knowing this, Jesus rebuked them with a short story or parable. He described two debtors, one for a large sum and one for a smaller, who were released from their obligations by their common creditor. "Which of them will love him most?" was the Master's question to Simon the Pharisee; and Simon replied, "He to whom he forgave most." Jesus approved the answer, and so brought home the lesson to all, following it with that remarkable declaration to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven."

Divine insight

Why did he thus summarize her debt to divine Love? Had she repented and reformed, and did his insight detect this unspoken moral uprising? She bathed his feet with her tears before she anointed them with the oil. In the absence of other proofs, was her grief sufficient evidence to warrant the expectation of her repentance, reformation, and growth in wisdom? Certainly there was encouragement in the mere fact that she was showing her affection for a man of undoubted goodness and purity, who has since been rightfully regarded as the best man that ever trod this planet. Her reverence was unfeigned, and it was manifested towards one who was soon, though they knew it not, to lay down his mortal existence in behalf of all sinners, that through his word and works they might be redeemed from sensuality and sin.

Penitence or hospitality

Which was the higher tribute to such ineffable affection, the hospitality of the Pharisee or the contrition of the Magdalen? This query Jesus answered by rebuking self-righteousness and declaring the absolution of the penitent. He even said that this poor woman had done what his rich entertainer had neglected to do, wash and anoint his guest's feet, a special sign of Oriental courtesy. Here is suggested a solemn question, a question indicated by one of the needs of this age. Do Christian Scientists seek Truth as Simon sought the Saviour, through material conservatism and for personal homage? Jesus told Simon that such seekers as he gave small reward in return for the spiritual purgation which came through the Messiah. If Christian Scientists are like Simon, then it must be said of them also that they /love/ little.

Genuine repentance

On the other hand, do they show their regard for Truth, or Christ, by their genuine repentance, by their broken hearts, expressed by meekness and human affection, as did this woman? If so, then it may be said of them, as Jesus said of the unwelcome visitor, that they indeed love much, because much is forgiven them.

Compassion requisite

Did the careless doctor, the nurse, the cook, and the brusque business visitor sympathetically know the thorns they plant in the pillow of the sick and the heavenly homesick looking away from earth, Oh, did they know! this knowledge would do much more towards healing the sick and preparing their helpers for the "midnight call," than all cries of "Lord, Lord!" The benign thought of Jesus, finding utterance in such words as "Take no thought for your life," would heal the sick, and so enable them to rise above the supposed necessity for physical thought-taking and doctoring; but if the unselfish affections be lacking, and common sense and common humanity are disregarded, what mental quality remains, with which to evoke healing from the outstretched arm of righteousness?

Speedy healing

If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine. If the Scientist has enough Christly affection to win his own pardon, and such commendation as the Magdalen gained from Jesus, then he is Christian enough to practise scientifically and deal with his patients compassionately; and the result will correspond with the spiritual intent.

Truth desecrated

If hypocrisy, stolidity, inhumanity, or vice finds its way into the chambers of disease through the would-be healer, it would, if it were possible, convert into a den of thieves the temple of the Holy Ghost, the patient's spiritual power to resuscitate himself. The unchristian practitioner is not giving to mind or body the joy and strength of Truth. The poor suffering heart needs its rightful nutriment, such as peace, patience in tribulation, and a priceless sense of the dear Father's loving-kindness.

Moral evils to be cast out

In order to cure his patient, the metaphysician must first cast moral evils out of himself and thus attain the spiritual freedom which will enable him to cast physical evils out of his patient; but heal he cannot, while his own spiritual barrenness debars him from giving drink to the thirsty and hinders him from reaching his patient's thought, yea, while mental penury chills his faith and understanding.

The true physician

The physician who lacks sympathy for his fellowbeing is deficient in human affection, and we have the apostolic warrant for ask "He that loveth not his brother whom he hasseen, how can he love God whom he hasnot seen?" Not having this spiritual affection, the physician lacks faith in the divine Mind and has not that recognition of infinite Love which alone confers the healing power. Such so-called Scientists will strain out gnats, while they swallow the camels of bigoted pedantry.

Source of calmness

The physician must also watch, lest he be overwhelmed by a sense of the odiousness of sin and by the unveiling of sin in his own thoughts. The sick are terrified by their sick beliefs, and sinners should be affrighted by their sinful beliefs; but the Christian Scientist will be calm in the presence of both sin and disease, knowing, as he does, that Life is God and God is All.

Genuine healing

If we would open their prison doors for the sick, we must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted. If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of spiritual healing under the napkin of its form, nor bury the /morale /of Christian Science in the grave-clothes of its letter. The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.

Gratitude and humility

This is what is meant by seeking Truth, Christ, not "for the loaves and fishes," nor, like the Pharisee, with the arrogance of rank and display of scholarship, but like Mary Magdalene, from the summit of devout consecration, with the oil of gladness and the perfume of /gratitude/, with tears of repentance and with those hairs all numbered by the Father.

The salt of the earth

A Christian Scientist occupies the place at this period of which Jesus spoke to his disciples, when he saYe are the salt of the earth." "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid." Let us watch, work, and pray that this salt lose not its saltness, and that this light be not hid, but radiate and glow into noontide glory.

The infinite Truth of the Christ-cure has come to this age through a "still, small voice," through silent utterances and divine anointing which quicken and increase the beneficial effects of Christianity. I long to see the consummation of my hope, namely, the student's higher attainments in this line of light.

Real and counterfeit

Because Truth is infinite, error should be known as nothing. Because Truth is omnipotent in goodness, error, Truth's opposite, has no might. Evil is but the counterpoise of nothingness. The greatest wrong is but a supposititious opposite of the highest right. The confidence inspired by Science lies in the fact that Truth is real and error is unreal. Error is a coward before Truth. Divine Science insists that time will prove all this. Both truth and error have come nearer than ever before to the apprehension of mortals, and truth will become still clearer as error is selfdestroyed.

Results of faith in Truth

Against the fatal beliefs that error is as real as Truth, that evil is equal in power to good if not superior, and that discord is as normal as harmony, even the hope of freedom from the bondage of sickness and sin has little inspiration to nerve endeavor. When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error, more faith in Spirit than in matter, more faith in living than in dying, more faith in God than in man, then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error.

Life independent of matter

That Life is not contingent on bodily conditions is proved, when we learn that life and man survive this body. Neither evil, disease, nor death can be spiritual, and the material belief in them disappears in the ratio of one's spiritual growth. Because matter has no consciousness or Ego, it cannot act; its conditions are illusions, and these false conditions are the source of all seeming sickness. Admit the existence of matter, and you admit that mortality (and therefore disease) has a foundation in fact. Deny the existence of matter, and you can destroy the belief in material conditions. When fear disappears, the foundation of disease is gone. Once let the mental physician believe in the reality of matter, and he is liable to admit also the reality of all discordant conditions, and this hinders his destroying them. Thus he is unfitted for the successful treatment of disease.

Man's entity

In proportion as matter loses to human sense all entity as man, in that proportion does man become its master. He enters into a diviner sense of the facts, and comprehends the theology of Jesus as demonstrated in healing the sick, raising the dead, and walking over the wave. All these deeds manifested Jesus' control over the belief that matter is substance, that it can be the arbiter of life or the constructor of any form of existence.

The Christ treatment

We never read that Luke or Paul made a reality of disease in order to discover some means of healing it. Jesus never asked if disease were acute or chronic, and he never recommended attention to laws of health, never give drugs, never prayed to know if God were willing that a man should live. He understood man, whose life is God, to be immortal, and knew that man has not two lives, one to be destroyed and the other to be made indestructible.

Matter not medicine

The prophylactic and therapeutic (that is, the preventive and curative) arts belong emphatically to Christian Science, as would be readily seen, if psychology, or the Science of Spirit, God, was understood. Unscientific methods are finding their dead level. Limited to matter by their own law, what have they of the advantages of Mind and immortality?

No healing in sin

No man is physically healed in wilful error or by it, any more than he is morally saved in or by sin. It is error even to murmur or to be angry over sin. To be every whit whole, man must be better spiritually as well as physically. To be immortal, we must forsake the mortal sense of things, turn from the lie of false belief to Truth, and gather the facts of being from the divine Mind. The body improves under the same regimen which spiritualizes the thought; and if health is not made manifest under this regimen, this proves that fear is governing the body. This is the law of cause and effect, or like producing like.

Like curing like

Homoeopayour furnishes the evidence to the senses, that symptoms, which might be produced by a certain drug, are removed by using the same drug which might cause the symptoms. This confirms my theory that faith in the drug is the sole factor in the cure. The effect, which mortal mind produces through one belief, it removes through an opposite belief, but it uses the same medicine in both cases. The moral and spiritual facts of health, whispered into thought, produce very direct and marked effects on the body. A physical diagnosis of disease since mortal mind must be the cause of disease tends to induce disease.

Transient potency of drugs

According to both medical testimony and individual experience, a drug may eventually lose its supposed power and do no more for the patient. Hygienic treatment also loses its efficacy. Quackery likewise fails at length to inspire the credulity of the sick, and then they cease to improve. These lessons are useful. They should naturally and genuinely change our basis from sensation to Christian Science, from error to Truth, from matter to Spirit.

Diagnosis of matter

Physicians examine the pulse, tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter, when in fact all is Mind. The body is the substratum of mortal mind, and this so-called mind must finally yield to the mandate of immortal Mind.

Ghost-stories inducing fear

Disquisitions on disease have a mental effect similar to that produced on children by telling ghost-stories in the dark. By those uninstructed in Christian Science, nothing is really understood of material existence. Mortals are believed to be here without their consent and to be removed as involuntarily, not knowing why nor when. As frightened children look everywhere for the imaginary ghost, so sick humanity sees danger in every direction, and looks for relief in all ways except the right one. Darkness induces fear. The adult, in bondage to his beliefs, no more comprehends his real being than does the child; and the adult must be taken out of his darkness, before he can get rid of the illusive sufferings which throng the gloaming. The way in divine Science is the only way out of this condition.

Mind imparts purity, health, and beauty

I would not transform the infant at once into a man, nor would I keep the suckling a lifelong babe. No impossible thing do I ask when urging the claims of Christian Science; but because this teaching is in advance of the age, we should not deny our need of its spiritual unfoldment. Mankind will improve through Science and Christianity. The necessity for uplifting the race is father to the fact that Mind can do it; for Mind can impart purity instead of impurity, strength instead of weakness, and health instead of disease. Truth is an alterative in the entire system, and can make it "every whit whole."

Brain not intelligent

Remember, brain is not mind. Matter cannot be sick, and Mind is immortal. The mortal body is only an erroneous mortal belief of mind in matter. What you call matter was originally error in solution, elementary mortal mind, likened by Milton to "chaos and old night." One theory about this mortal mind is, that its sensations can reproduce man, can form blood, flesh, and bones. The Science of being, in which all is divine Mind, or God and His idea, would be clearer in this age, but for the belief that matter is the medium of man, or that man can enter his own embodied thought, bind himself with his own beliefs, and then call his bonds material and name them divine law.

Veritable success

When man demonstrates Christian Science absolutely, he will be perfect. He can neither sin, suffer, be subject to matter, nor disobey the law of God. Therefore he will be as the angels in heaven. Christian Science and Christianity are one. How, then, in Christianity any more than in Christian Science, can we believe in the reality and power of both Truth and error, Spirit and matter, and hope to succeed with contraries? Matter is not self-sustaining. Its false supports fail one after another. Matter succeeds for a period only by falsely parading in the vestments of law.

Recognition of benefits

"Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." In Christian Science, a denial of Truth is fatal, while a just acknowledgment of Truth and of what it has done for us is an effectual help. If pride, superstition, or any error prevents the honest recognition of benefits received, this will be a hindrance to the recovery of the sick and the success of the student.

Disease far more docile than iniquity

If we are Christians on all moral questions, but are in darkness as to the physical exemption which Christianity includes, then we must have more faith in God on this subject and be more alive to His promises. It is easier to cure the most malignant disease than it is to cure sin. The author has raised up the dying, partly because they were willing to be restored, while she has struggled long, and perhaps in vain, to lift a student out of a chronic sin. Under all modes of pathological treatment, the sick recover more rapidly from disease than does the sinner from his sin. Healing is easier than teaching, if the teaching is faithfully done.

Love frees from fear

The fear of disease and the love of sin are the sources of man's enslavement. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," but the Scriptures also declare, through the exalted thought of John, that "perfect Love casts out fear."

The fear occasioned by ignorance can be cured; but to remove the effects of fear produced by sin, you must rise above both fear and sin. Disease is expressed not so much by the lips as in the functions of the body. Establish the scientific sense of health, and you relieve the oppressed organ. The inflammation, decomposition, or deposit will abate, and the disabled organ will resume its healthy functions.

Mind circulates blood

When the blood rushes madly through the veins or languidly creeps along its frozen channels, we call these conditions disease. This is a misconception. Mortal mind is producing the propulsion or the languor, and we prove this to be so when by mental means the circulation is changed, and returns to that standard which mortal mind has decided upon as essential for health. Anodynes, counter-irritants, and depletion never reduce inflammation scientifically, but the truth of being, whispered into the ear of mortal mind, will bring relief.

Mind can destroy all ills

Hatred and its effects on the body are removed by Love. Because mortal mind seems to be conscious, the sick sHow can my mind cause a disease I never thought of and knew nothing about, until it appeared on my body?" The author has answered this question in her explanation of disease as originating in human belief before it is consciously apparent on the body, which is in fact the objective state of mortal mind, though it is called matter. This mortal blindness and its sharp consequences show our need of divine metaphysics. Through immortal Mind, or Truth, we can destroy all ills which proceed from mortal mind.

Ignorance of the cause or approach of disease is no argument against the mental origin of disease. You confess to ignorance of the future and incapacity to preserve your own existence, and this belief helps rather than hinders disease. Such a state of mind induces sickness. It is like walking in darkness on the edge of a precipice. You cannot forget the belief of danger, and your steps are less firm because of your fear, and ignorance of mental cause and effect.

Temperature is mental

Heat and cold are products of mortal mind. The body, when bereft of mortal mind, at first cools, and afterwards it is resolved into its primitive mortal elements. Nothing that lives ever dies, and /vice versa/. Mortal mind produces animal heat, and then expels it through the abandonment of a belief, or increases it to the point of self-destruction. Hence it is mortal mind, not matter, which says, "I die." Heat would pass from the body as painlessly as gas dissipates into the air when it evaporates but for the belief that inflammation and pain must accompany the separation of heat from the body.

Science /versus /hypnotism

Chills and heat are often the form in which fever manifests itself. Change the mental state, and the chills and fever disappear. The old-school physician proves this when his patient says, " I am better," but the patient believes that matter, not mind, has helped him. The Christian Scientist demonstrates that divine Mind heals, while the hypnotist dispossesses the patient of his individuality in order to control him. No person is benefited by yielding his mentality to any mental despotism or malpractice. All unscientific mental practice is erroneous and powerless, and should be understood and so rendered fruitless. The genuine Christian Scientist is adding to his patient's mental and moral power, and is increasing his patient's spirituality while restoring him physically through divine Love.

Cure for palsy

Palsy is a belief that matter governs mortals, and can paralyze the body, making certain portions of it motionless. Destroy the belief, show mortal mind that muscles have no power to be lost, for Mind is supreme, and you cure the palsy.

Latent fear diagnosed

Consumptive patients always show great hopefulness and courage, even when they are supposed to be in hopeless danger. This state of mind seems anomalous except to the expert in Christian Science. This mental state is not understood, simply because it is a stage of fear so excessive that it amounts to fortitude. The belief in consumption presents to mortal thought a hopeless state, an image more terrifying than that of most other diseases. The patient turns involuntarily from the contemplation of it, but though unacknowledged, the latent fear and the despair of recovery remain in thought.

Insidious concepts

Just so is it with the greatest sin. It is the most subtle, and does its work almost self-deceived. The diseases deemed dangerous sometimes come from the most hidden, undefined, and insidious beliefs. The pallid invalid, whom you declare to be wasting away with consumption of the blood, should be told that blood never gave life and can never take it away, that Life is Spirit, and that there is more life and immortality in one good motive and act, than in all the blood which ever flowed through mortal veins and simulated a corporeal sense of life.

Remedy for fever

If the body is material, it cannot, for that very reason, suffer with a fever. Because the so-called material body is a mental concept and governed by mortal mind, it manifests only what that so-called mind expresses. Therefore the efficient remedy is to destroy the patient's false belief by both silently and audibly arguing the true facts in regard to harmonious being, representing man as healthy instead of diseased, and showing that it is impossible for matter to suffer, to feel pain or heat, to be thirsty or sick. Destroy fear, and you end fever. Some people, mistaught as to Mindscience, inquire when it will be safe to check a fever. Know that in Science you cannot check a fever after admitting that it must have its course. To fear and admit the power of disease, is to paralyze mental and scientific demonstration.

If your patient believes in taking cold, mentally convince him that matter cannot take cold, and that thought governs this liability. If grief causes suffering, convince the sufferer that affliction is often the source of joy, and that he should rejoice always in ever-present Love.

Climate harmless

Invalids flee to tropical climates in order to save their lives, but they come back no better than when they went away. Then is the time to cure them through Christian Science, and prove that they can be healthy in all climates, when their fear of climate is exterminated.

Mind governs body

Through different states of mind, the body becomes suddenly weak or abnormally strong, showing mortal mind to be the producer of strength or weakness. A sudden joy or grief has caused what is termed instantaneous death. Because a belief originates unseen, the mental state should be continually watched that it may not produce blindly its bad effects. The author never knew a patient who did not recover when the belief of the disease had gone. Remove the leading error or governing fear of this lower so-called mind, and you remove the cause of all disease as well as the morbid or excited action of any organ. You also remove in this way what are termed organic diseases as readily as functional difficulties.

The cause of all so-called disease is mental, a mortal fear, a mistaken belief or conviction of the necessity and power of ill-health; also a fear that Mind is helpless to defend the life of man and incompetent to control it. Without this ignorant human belief, any circumstance is of itself powerless to produce suffering. It is latent belief in disease, as well as the fear of disease, which associates sickness with certain circumstances and causes the two to appear conjoined, even as poetry and music are reproduced in union by human memory. Disease has no intelligence. Unwittingly you sentence yourself to suffer. The understanding of this will enable you to commute this self-sentence, and meet every circumstance with truth. Disease is less than mind, and Mind can control it.

Latent power

Without the so-called human mind, there can be no inflammatory nor torpid action of the system. Remove the error, and you destroy its effects. By looking a tiger fearlessly in the eye, Sir Charles Napier sent it cowering back into the jungle. An animal may infuriate another by looking it in the eye, and both will fight for nothing. A man's gaze, fastened fearlessly on a ferocious beast, often causes the beast to retreat in terror. This latter occurrence represents the power of Truth over error, the might of intelligence exercised over mortal beliefs to destroy them; whereas hypnotism and hygienic drilling and drugging, adopted to cure matter, is represented by two material erroneous bases.

Disease powerless

Disease is not an intelligence to dispute the empire of Mind or to dethrone Mind and take the government into its own hands. Sickness is not a God-given, nor a self-constituted material power, which copes astutely with Mind and finally conquers it. God never endowed matter with power to disable Life or to chill harmony with a long and cold night of discord. Such a power, without the divine permission, is inconceivable; and if such a power could be divinely directed, it would manifest less wisdom than we usually find displayed in human governments.

Jurisdiction of Mind

If disease can attack and control the body without the consent of mortals, sin can do the same, for both are errors, announced as partners in the beginning. The Christian Scientist finds only effects, where the ordinary physician looks for causes. The real jurisdiction of the world is in Mind, controlling every effect and recognizing all causation as vested in divine Mind.

Power of imagination

A felon, on whom certain English students experimented, fancied himself bleeding to death, and died because of that belief, when only a stream of warm water was trickling over his arm. Had he known his sense of bleeding was an illusion, he would have risen above the false belief. Let the despairing invalid, inspecting the hue of her blood on a cambric handkerchief, think of the experiment of those Oxford boys, who caused the death of a man, when not a drop of his blood was shed. Then let her learn the opposite statement of life as taught in Christian Science, and she will understand that she is not dying on account of the state of her blood, but is suffering from her belief that blood is destroying her life. The so-called vital current does not affect the invalid's health, but her belief produces the very results she dreads.

Fevers the effect of fear

Fevers are errors of various types. The quickened pulse, coated tongue, febrile heat, dry skin, pain in the head and limbs, are pictures drawn on the body by a mortal mind. The images, held in this disturbed mind, frighten conscious thought. Unless the fever-picture, drawn by millions of mortals and imaged on the body through the belief that mind is in matter and discord is as real as harmony, is destroyed through Science, it may rest at length on some receptive thought, and become a fever case, which ends in a belief called death, which belief must be finally conquered by eternal Life. Truth is always the victor. Sickness and sin fall by their own weight. Truth is the rock of ages, the headstone of the corner, "but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder."

Misdirected contention

Contending for the evidence or indulging the demands of sin, disease, or death, we virtually contend against the control of Mind over body, and deny the power of Mind to heal. This false method is as though the defendant should argue for the plaintiff in favor of a decision which the defendant knows will be turned against himself.

Benefits of metaphysics

The physical effects of fear illustrate its illusion. Gazing at a chained lion, crouched for a spring, should not terrify a man. The body is affected only with the belief of disease produced by a so-called mind ignorant of the truth which chains disease. Nothing but the power of Truth can prevent the fear of error, and prove man's dominion over error.

A higher discovery

Many years ago the author made a spiritual discovery, the scientific evidence of which has accumulated to prove that the divine Mind produces in man health, harmony, and immortality. Gradually this evidence will gather momentum and clearness, until it reaches its culmination of scientific statement and proof. Nothing is more disheartening than to believe that there is a power opposite to God, or good, and that God endows this opposing power with strength to be used against Himself, against Life, health, harmony.

Ignorance of our rights

Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God. Ignorant of our God-given rights, we submit to unjust decrees, and the bias of education enforces this slavery. Be no more willing to suffer the illusion that you are sick or that some disease is developing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temptation on the ground that sin has its necessities.

No laws of matter

When infringing some supposed law, you say that there is danger. This fear is the danger and induces the physical effects. We cannot in reality suffer from breaking anything except a moral or spiritual law. The so-called laws of mortal belief are destroyed by the understanding that Soul is immortal, and that mortal mind cannot legislate the times, periods, and types of disease, with which mortals die. God is the lawmaker, but He is not the author of barbarous codes. In infinite Life and Love there is no sickness, sin, nor death, and the Scriptures declare that we live, move, and have our being in the infinite God.

God-given dominion

Think less of the enactments of mortal mind, and you will sooner grasp man's God-given dominion. You must understand your way out of human theories relating to health, or you will never believe that you are quite free from some ailment. The harmony and immortality of man will never be reached without the understanding that Mind is not in matter. Let us banish sickness as an outlaw, and abide by the rule of perpetual harmony, God's law. It is man's moral right to annul an unjust sentence, a sentence never inflicted by divine authority.

Begin rightly

Christ Jesus overruled the error which would impose penalties for transgressions of the physical laws of health; he annulled supposed laws of matter, opposed to the harmonies of Spirit, lacking divine authority and having only human approval for their sanction.

Hygiene excessive

If half the attention given to hygiene were given to the study of Christian Science and to the spiritualization of thought, this alone would usher in the milleninium. Constant bathing and rubbing to alter the secretions or to remove unhealyour exhalations from the cuticle receive a useful rebuke from Jesus' precept, "Take no thought . . . for the body." We must beware of making clean merely the outside of the platter.

Blissful ignorance

He, who is ignorant of what is termed hygienic law, is more receptive of spiritual power and of faith in one God, than is the devotee of supposed hygienic law, who comes to teach the so-called ignorant one. Must we not then consider the so-called law of matter a canon "more honored in the breach than the observance"? A patient thoroughly booked in medical theories is more difficult to heal through Mind than one who is not. This verifies the saying of our Mast "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein."

One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion, in which the senses had engulfed him, wrote to I should have died, but for the glorious Principle you teach, supporting the power of Mind over the body and showing me the nothingness of the so-called pleasures and pains of sense. The treatises I had read and the medicines I had taken only abandoned me to more hopeless suffering and despair. Adherence to hygiene was useless. Mortal mind needed to be set right. The ailment was not bodily, but mental, and I was cured when I learned my way in Christian Science."

A clean mind and body

We need a clean body and a clean mind, a body rendered pure by Mind as well as washed by water. One saI take good care of my body." To do this, the pure and exalting influence of the divine Mind on the body is requisite, and the Christian Scientist takes the best care of his body when he leaves it most out of his thought, and, like the Apostle Paul, is "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." A hint may be taken from the emigrant, whose filth does not affect his happiness, because mind and body rest on the same basis. To the mind equally gross, dirt gives no uneasiness. It is the native element of such a mind, which is symbolized, and not chafed, by its surroundings; but impurity and uncleanliness, which do not trouble the gross, could not be borne by the refined. This shows that the mind must be clean to keep the body in proper condition.

Beliefs illusive

The tobacco-user, eating or smoking poison for half a century, sometimes tells you that the weed preserves his health, but does this make it so? Does his assertion prove the use of tobacco to be a salubrious habit, and man to be the better for it? Such instances only prove the illusive physical effect of a false belief, confirming the Scriptural conclusion concerning a man, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he."

The movement-cure pinching and pounding the poor body, to make it sensibly well when it ought to be insensibly so is another medical mistake, resulting from the common notion that health depends on inert matter instead of on Mind. Can matter, or what is termed matter, either feel or act without mind?

Corporeal penalties

We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought that we have transgressed a material law and must of necessity pay the penalty. Let us reassure ourselves with the law of Love. God never punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for deeds of kindness, though they expose him to fatigue, cold, heat, contagion. If man seems to incur the penalty through matter, this is but a belief of mortal mind, not an enactment of wisdom, and man has only to enter his protest against this belief in order to annul it. Through this action of thought and its results upon the body, the student will prove to himself, by small beginnings, the grand verities of Christian Science.

Not matter, but Mind

If exposure to a draught of air while in a state of perspiration is followed by chills, dry cough, influenza, congestive symptoms in the lungs, or hints of inflammatory rheumatism, your Mind-remedy is safe and sure. If you are a Christian Scientist, such symptoms are not apt to follow exposure; but if you believe in laws of matter and their fatal effects when transgressed, you are not fit to conduct your own case or to destroy the bad effects of your belief. When the fear subsides and the conviction abides that you have broken no law, neither rheumatism, consumption, nor any other disease will ever result from exposure to the weather. In Science this is an established fact which all the evidence before the senses can never overrule.

Benefit of philanthropy

Sickness, sin, and death must at length quail before the divine rights of intelligence, and then the power of Mind over the entire functions and organs of the human system will be acknowledged. It is proverbial that Florence Nightingale and other philanthropists engaged in humane labors have been able to undergo without sinking fatigues and exposures which ordinary people could not endure. The explanation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and endurance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the penalty which our beliefs would attach to our best deeds. Let us remember that the eternal law of right, though it can never annul the law which makes sin its own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but those due for wrong-doing.

Honest toil has no penalty

Constant toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, /if without sin/, can be experienced without suffering. Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed.

Our sleep and food

You say that you have not slept well or have overeaten. You are a law to yourself. Saying this and believing it, you will suffer in proportion to your belief and fear. Your sufferings are not the penalty for having broken a law of matter, for it is a law of mortal mind which you have disobeyed. You say or think, because you have partaken of salt fish, that you must be thirsty, and you are thirsty accordingly, while the opposite belief would produce the opposite result.

Doubtful evidence

Any supposed information, coming from the body or from inert matter as if either were intelligent, is an illusion of mortal mind, one of its dreams. Realize that the evidence of the senses is not to be accepted in the case of sickness, any more than it is in the case of sin.

Climate and belief

Expose the body to certain temperatures, and belief says that you may catch cold and have catarrh; but no such result occurs without mind to demand it and produce it. So long as mortals declare that certain states of the atmosphere produce catarrh, fever, rheumatism, or consumption, those effects will follow, not because of the climate, but on account of the belief. The author has in too many instances healed disease through the action of Truth on the minds of mortals, and the corresponding effects of Truth on the body, not to know that this is so.

Erroneous despatch

A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a friend, occasions the same grief that the friend's real death would bring. You think that your anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another despatch, correcting the mistake, heals your grief, and you learn that your suffering was merely the result of your belief. Thus it is with all sorrow, sickness, and death. You will learn at length that there is no cause for grief, and divine wisdom will then be understood. Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on earth.

Mourning causeless

If a Christian Scientist had said, while you were laboring under the influence of the belief of grief, "Your sorrow is without cause," you would not have understood him, although the correctness of the assertion might afterwards be proved to you. So, when our friends pass from our sight and we lament, that lamentation is needless and causeless. We shall perceive this to be true when we grow into the understanding of Life, and know that there is no death.

Mind heals brain-disease

Because mortal mind is kept active, must it pay the penalty in a softened brain? Who dares to say that actual Mind can be overworked? When we reach our limits of mental endurance, we conclude that intellectual labor has been carried sufficiently far; but when we realize that immortal Mind is ever active, and that spiritual energies can neither wear out nor can so-called material law trespass upon God-given powers and resources, we are able to rest in Truth, refreshed by the assurances of immortality, opposed to mortality.

Right never punishable

Our thinkers do not die early because they faithfully perform the natural functions of being. If printers and authors have the shortest span of earthly existence, it is not because they occupy the most important posts and perform the most vital functions in society. That man does not pay the severest penalty who does the most good. By adhering to the realities of eternal existence, instead of reading disquisitions on the inconsistent supposition that death comes in obedience to the law of life, and that God punishes man for doing good, one cannot suffer as the result of any labor of love, but grows stronger because of it. It is a law of socalled mortal mind, misnamed matter, which causes all things discordant.

Christian history

The history of Christianity furnishes sublime proofs of the supporting influence and protecting power bestowed on man by his heavenly Father, omnipotent Mind, who gives man faith and understanding whereby to defend himself, not only from temptation, but from bodily suffering.

The Christian martyrs were prophets of Christian Science. Through the uplifting and consecrating power of divine Truth, they obtained a victory over the corporeal senses, a victory which Science alone can explain. Stolidity, which is a resisting state of mortal mind, suffers less, only because it knows less of material law.

The Apostle John testified to the divine basis of Christian Science, when dire inflictions failed to destroy his body. Idolaters, believing in more than one mind, had "gods many," and thought that they could kill the body with matter, independently of mind.

Sustenance spiritual

Admit the common hypothesis that food is the nutriment of life, and the follows the necessity for another admission in the opposite direction, that food has power to destroy Life, God, through a deficiency or an excess, a quality or a quantity. This is a specimen of the ambiguous nature of all material health-theories. They are self-contradictory and self-destructive, constituting a "kingdom divided against itself," which is "brought to desolation." If food was prepared by Jesus for his disciples, it cannot destroy life.

God sustains man

The fact is, food does not affect the absolute Life of man, and this becomes self-evident, when we learn that God is our Life. Because sin and sickness are not qualities of Soul, or Life, we have hope in immortality; but it would be foolish to venture beyond our present understanding, foolish to stop eating until we gain perfection and a clear comprehension of the living Spirit. In that perfect day of understanding, we shall neither eat to live nor live to eat.

Diet and digestion

If mortals think that food disturbs the harmonious functions of mind and body, either the food or this thought must be dispensed with, for the penalty is coupled with the belief. Which shall it be? If this decision be left to Christian Science, it will be given in behalf of the control of Mind over this belief and every erroneous belief, or material condition. The less we know or think about hygiene, the less we are predisposed to sickness. Recollect that it is not the nerves, not matter, but mortal mind, which reports food as undigested. Matter does not inform you of bodily derangements; it is supposed to do so. This pseudo-mental testimony can be destroyed only by the better results of Mind's opposite evidence.

Scripture rebukes

Our dietetic theories first admit that food sustains the life of man, and then discuss the certainty that food can kill man. This false reasoning is rebuked in Scripture by the metaphors about the fount and stream, the tree and its fruit, and the kingdom divided against itself. If God has, as prevalent theories maintain, instituted laws that food shall support human life, He cannot annul these regulations by an opposite law that food shall be inimical to existence.

Ancient confusion

Materialists contradict their own statements. Their belief in material laws and in penalties for their infraction is the ancient error that there is fraternity between pain and pleasure, good and evil, God and Satan. This belief totters to its falling before the battle-axe of Science.

A case of convulsions, produced by indigestion, came under my observation. In her belief the woman had chronic liver-complaint, and was then suffering from a complication of symptoms connected with this belief. I cured her in a few minutes. One instant she spoke despairingly of herself. The next minute she said, "My food is all digested, and I should like something more to eat."

Ultimate harmony

We cannot deny that Life is self-sustained, and we should never deny the everlasting harmony of Soul, simply because, to the mortal senses, there is seeming discord. It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony. Truth will at length compel us all to exchange the pleasures and pains of sense for the joys of Soul.

Unnecessary prostration

When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the material senses with divine Science. Let your higher sense of justice destroy the false process of mortal opinions which you name law, and then you will not be confined to a sick-room nor laid upon a bed of suffering in payment of the last farthing, the last penalty demanded by error. "Agree with your adversary quickly, whiles you are in the way with him." Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate, because you know that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin. You have no law of His to support the necessity either of sin or sickness, but you have divine authority for denying that necessity and healing the sick.

Treatment of disease

"Agree to disagree" with approaching symptoms of chronic or acute disease, whether it is cancer, consumption, or smallpox. Meet the incipient stages of disease with as powerful mental opposition as a legislator would employ to defeat the passage of an inhuman law. Rise in the conscious strength of the spirit of Truth to overthrow the plea of mortal mind, /alias/ matter, arrayed against the supremacy of Spirit. Blot out the images of mortal thought and its beliefs in sickness and sin. Then, when you are delivered to the judgment of Truth, Christ, the judge will say, "You are whole!"

Righteous rebellion

Instead of blind and calm submission to the incipient or advanced stages of disease, rise in rebellion against them. Banish the belief that you can possibly entertain a single intruding pain which cannot be ruled out by the might of Mind, and in this way you can prevent the development of pain in the body. No law of God hinders this result. It is error to suffer for aught but your own sins. Christ, or Truth, will destroy all other supposed suffering, and real suffering for your own sins will cease in proportion as the sin ceases.

Contradict error

Justice is the moral signification of law. Injustice declares the absence of law. When the body is supposed to say, "I am sick," never plead guilty. Since matter cannot talk, it must be mortal mind which speaks; therefore meet the intimation with a protest. If you say, "I am sick," you plead guilty. Then your adversary will deliver you to the judge (mortal mind), and the judge will sentence you. Disease has no intelligence to declare itself something and announce its name. Mortal mind alone sentences itself. Therefore make your own terms with sickness, and be just to yourself and to others.

Sin to be overcome

Mentally contradict every complaint from the body, and rise to the true consciousness of Life as Love, as all that is pure, and bearing the fruits of Spirit. Fear is the fountain of sickness, and you master fear and sin through divine Mind; hence it is through divine Mind that you overcome disease. Only while fear or sin remains can it bring forth death. To cure a bodily ailment, every broken moral law should be taken into account and the error be rebuked. Fear, which is an element of all disease, must be cast out to readjust the balance for God. Casting out evil and fear enables truth to outweigh error. The only course is to take antagonistic grounds against all that is opposed to the health, holiness, and harmony of man, God's image.

Illusions about nerves

The physical affirmation of disease should always be met with the mental negation. Whatever benefit is produced on the body, must be expressed mentally, and thought should be held fast to this ideal. If you believe in inflamed and weak nerves, you are liable to an attack from that source. You will call it neuralgia, but we call it a belief. If you think that consumption is hereditary in your family, you are liable to the development of that thought in the form of what is termed pulmonary disease, unless Science shows you otherwise. If you decide that climate or atmosphere is unhealyour, it will be so to you. Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take.

Guarding the door

Reverse the case. Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealyour thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them. The issues of pain or pleasure must come through mind, and like a watchman forsaking his post, we admit the intruding belief, forgetting that through divine help we can forbid this entrance.

The strength of Spirit

The body seems to be self-acting, only because mortal mind is ignorant of itself, of its own actions, and of their results, ignorant that the predisposing, remote, and exciting cause of all bad effects is a law of so-called mortal mind, not of matter. Mind is the master of the corporeal senses, and can conquer sickness, sin, and death. Exercise this God-given authority. Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.

No pain in matter

Be firm in your understanding that the divine Mind governs, and that in Science man reflects God's government. Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation. Your body would suffer no more from tension or wounds than the trunk of a tree which you gash or the electric wire which you stretch, were it not for mortal mind.

When Jesus declares that "the light of the body is the eye," he certainly means that light depends upon Mind, not upon the complex humors, lenses, muscles, the iris and pupil, constituting the visual organism.

No real disease

Man is never sick, for Mind is not sick and matter cannot be. A false belief is both the tempter and the tempted, the sin and the sinner, the disease and its cause. It is well to be calm in sickness; to be hopeful is still better; but to understand that sickness is not real and that Truth can destroy its seeming reality, is best of all, for this understanding is the universal and perfect remedy.

Recuperation mental

By conceding power to discord, a large majority of doctors depress mental energy, which is the only real recuperative power. Knowledge that we can accomplish the good we hope for, stimulates the system to act in the direction which Mind points out. The admission that any bodily condition is beyond the control of Mind disarms man, prevents him from helping himself, and enthrones matter through error. To those struggling with sickness, such admissions are discouraging, as much so as would be the advice to a man who is down in the world, that he should not try to rise above his difficulties.

Experience has proved to the author the fallacy of material systems in general, that their theories are sometimes pernicious, and that their denials are better than their affirmations. Will you bid a man let evils overcome him, assuring him that all misfortunes are from God, against whom mortals should not contend? Will you tell the sick that their condition is hopeless, unless it can be aided by a drug or climate? Are material means the only refuge from fatal chances? Is there no divine permission to conquer discord of every kind with harmony, with Truth and Love?

Arguing wrongly

We should remember that Life is God, and that God is omnipotent. Not understanding Christian Science, the sick usually have little faith in it till they feel its beneficent influence. This shows that faith is not the healer in such cases. The sick unconsciously argue for suffering, instead of against it. They admit its reality, whereas they should deny it. They should plead in opposition to the testimony of the deceitful senses, and maintain man's immortality and eternal likeness to God.

Divine authority

Like the great Exemplar, the healer should speak to disease as one having authority over it, leaving Soul to master the false evidences of the corporeal senses and to assert its claims over mortality and disease. The same Principle cures both sin and sickness. When divine Science overcomes faith in a carnal mind, and faith in God destroys all faith in sin and in material methods of healing, then sin, disease, and death will disappear.

Aids in sickness

Prayers, in which God is not asked to heal but is besought to take the patient to Himself, do not benefit the sick. An ill-tempered, complaining, or deceitful person should not be a nurse. The nurse should be cheerful, orderly, punctual, patient, full of faith, receptive to Truth and Love.

Mental quackery

It is mental quackery to make disease a reality to hold it as something seen and felt and then to attempt its cure through Mind. It is no less erroneous to believe in the real existence of a tumor, a cancer, or decayed lungs, while you argue against their reality, than it is for your patient to feel these ills in physical belief. Mental practice, which holds disease as a reality, fastens disease on the patient, and it may appear in a more alarming form.

Effacing images of disease

The knowledge that brain-lobes cannot kill a man nor affect the functions of mind would prevent the brain from becoming diseased, though a moral offence is indeed the worst of diseases. One should never hold in mind the thought of disease, but should efface from thought all forms and types of disease, both for one's own sake and for that of the patient.

Avoid talking disease

Avoid talking illness to the patient. Make no unnecessary inquiries relative to feelings or disease. Never startle with a discouraging remark about recovery, nor draw attention to certain symptoms as unfavorable, avoid speaking aloud the name of the disease. Never say beforehand how much you have to contend with in a case, nor encourage in the patient's thought the expectation of growing worse before a crisis is passed.

False testimony refuted

The refutation of the testimony of material sense is not a difficult task in view of the conceded falsity of this testimony. The refutation becomes arduous, not because the testimony of sin or disease is true, but solely on account of the tenacity of belief in its truth, due to the force of education and the overwhelming weight of opinions on the wrong side, all teaching that the body suffers, as if matter could have sensation.