Chapter 05. Animal Magnetism Unmasked (Science and Health) (Eddy, Mary Baker)

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemihese are the things which defile a man. Jesus.

Earliest investigations

1 MESMERISM or animal magnetism was first brought into notice by Mesmer in Germany in 1775. According to the American Cyclopaedia, he regarded this so-called force, which he said could be exerted by one living organism over another, as a means of alleviating disease. His propositions were as follo "There exists a mutual influence between the celestial bodies, the earth, and animated things. Animal bodies are susceptible to the influence of this agent, disseminating itself through the substance of the nerves." In 1784, the French government ordered the medical faculty of Paris to investigate Mesmer's theory and to report upon it. Under this order a commission was appointed, and Benjamin Franklin was one of the commissioners. This commission reported to the government as follo "In regard to the existence and utility of animal magnetism, we have come to the unanimous conclusions that there is no proof of the existence of the animal magnetic fluid; that the violent effects, which are observed in the public pratice of magnetism, are due to manipulations, or to the excitement of the imagination and the impressions made upon the senses; and that there is one more fact to be recorded in the history of the errors of the human mind, and an important experiment upon the power of the imagination."

Clairvoyance, magnetism

In 1837, a committee of nine persons was appointed, among whom were Roux, Bouillaud, and Cloquet, which tested during several sessions the phenomena exhibited by a reputed clairvoyant. Their report stated the results as follo "The facts which had been promised by Monsieur Berna [the magnetizer] as conclusive, and as adapted to throw light on physiological and therapeutical questions, are certainly not conclusive in favor of the doctrine of animal magnetism, and have nothing in common with either physiology or therapeutics."

This report was adopted by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris.

Personal conclusions

1 The author's own observations of the workings of animal magnetism convince her that it is not a remedial agent, and that its effects upon those who practise it, and upon their subjects who do not resist it, lead to moral and to physical death.

If animal magnetism seems to alleviate or to cure disease, this appearance is deceptive, since error cannot remove the effects of error. Discomfort under error is preferable to comfort. In no instance is the effect of animal magnetism, recently called hypnotism, other than the effect of illusion. Any seeming benefit derived from it is proportional to one's faith in esoteric magic.

Mere negation

1 Animal magnetism has no scientific foundation, for God governs all that is real, harmonious, and eternal, and His power is neither animal nor human. Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in sense it is an unreal concept of the socalled mortal mind.

1 There is but one real attraction, that of Spirit. The pointing of the needle to the pole symbolizes this allembracing power or the attraction of God, divine Mind.

1 The planets have no more power over man than over his Maker, since God governs the universe; but man, reflecting God's power, has dominion over all the earth and its hosts.

Hidden agents

The mild forms of animal magnetism are disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires. The following is an extract from the Boston Hera "Mesmerism is a problem not lending itself to an easy explanation and development. It implies the exercise of despotic control, and is much more likely to be abused by its possessor, than otherwise employed, for the individual or society."

Mental despotism

1 Mankind must learn that evil is not power. Its socalled despotism is but a phase of nothingness. Christian Science despoils the kingdom of evil, and pre-eminently promotes affection and virtue in families and therefore in the community. The Apostle Paul refers to the personification of evil as "the god of this world," and further defines it as dishonesty and craftiness. Sin was the Assyrian moon-god.

Liberation of mental powers

1 The destruction of the claims of mortal mind through Science, by which man can escape from sin and mortality, blesses the whole human family. As in the beginning, however, this liberation does not scientifically show itself in a knowledge of both good and evil, for the latter is unreal. On the other hand, Mind-science is wholly separate from any half-way impertinent knowledge, because Mindscience is of God and demonstrates the divine Principle, working out the purposes of good only. The maximum of good is the infinite God and His idea, the All-in-all. Evil is a suppositional lie.

The genus of error

1 As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful. This belief has not one quality of Truth. It is either ignorant or malicious. The malicious form of hypnotism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal Mind sustain man, and they annihilate the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust.

Thought-transference

In reality there is no /mortal/ mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power. Life and being are of God. In Christian Science, man can do no harm, for scientific thoughts are true thoughts, passing from God to man.

When Christian Science and animal magnetism are both comprehended, as they will be at no distant date, it will be seen why the author of this book has been so unjustly persecuted and belied by wolves in sheep's clothing.

Agassiz, the celebrated naturalist and author, has wisely saEvery great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next, they say it has been discovered before. Lastly, they say they have always believed it."

Perfection of divine government

Christian Science goes to the bottom of mental action, and reveals the theodicy which indicates the rightness of all divine action, as the emanation of divine Mind, and the consequent wrongness of the opposite so-called action, evil, occultism, necromancy, mesmerism, animal magnetism, hypnotism.

Adulteration of Truth

The medicine of Science is divine Mind; and dishonesty, sensuality, falsehood, revenge, malice, are animal propensities and by no means the mental qualities which heal the sick. The hypnotizer employs one error to destroy another. If he heals sickness through a belief, and a belief originally caused the sickness, it is a case of the greater error overcoming the lesser. This greater error thereafter occupies the ground, leaving the case worse than before it was grasped by the stronger error.

Motives considered

Our courts recognize evidence to prove the motive as well as the commission of a crime. Is it not clear that the human mind must move the body to a wicked act? Is not mortal mind the murderer? The hands, without mortal mind to direct them, could not commit a murder.

Mental crimes

1 Courts and juries judge and sentence mortals in order to restrain crime, to prevent deeds of violence or to punish them. To say that these tribunals have no jurisdiction over the carnal or mortal mind, would be to contradict precedent and to admit that the power of human law is restricted to matter, while mortal mind, evil, which is the real outlaw, defies justice and is recommended to mercy. Can matter commit a crime? Can matter be punished? Can you separate the mentality from the body over which courts hold jurisdiction? Mortal mind, not matter, is the criminal in every case; and human law rightly estimates crime, and courts reasonably pass sentence, according to the motive.

Important decision

When our laws eventually take cognizance of mental crime and no longer apply legal rulings wholly to physical offences, these words of Judge Parmenter of Boston will become historI see no reason why metaphysics is not as important to medicine as to mechanics or mathematics."

Evil let loose

Whoever uses his developed mental powers like an escaped felon to commit fresh atrocities as opportunity occurs is never safe. God will arrest him. Divine justice will manacle him. His sins will be millstones about his neck, weighing him down to the depths of ignominy and death. The aggravation of error foretells its doom, and confirms the ancient axi "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

The misuse of mental power

1 The distance from ordinary medical practice to Christian Science is full many a league in the line of light; but to go in healing from the use of inanimate drugs to the criminal misuse of human willpower, is to drop from the platform of common manhood into the very mire of iniquity, to work against the free course of honesty and justice, and to push vainly against the current running heavenward.

Proper self-government

1 Like our nation, Christian Science has its Declaration of Independence. God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience. Man is properly selfgoverned only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love.

1 Man's rights are invaded when the divine order is interfered with, and the mental trespasser incurs the divine penalty due this crime.

Right methods

1 Let this age, which sits in judgment on Christian Science, sanction only such methods as are demonstrable in Truth and known by their fruit, and classify all others as did St. Paul in his great epistle to the Galatians, when he wrote as follo "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, /witchcraft/, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such lif the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperangainst such there is no law."

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul.

The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. Jesus.

Christian Science discovered

1 In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science. God had been graciously preparing me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing.

Mission of Christian Science

This apodictical Principle points to the revelation of Immanuel, "God with us," the sovereign ever-presence, delivering the children of men from every ill "that flesh is heir to." Through Christian Science, religion and medicine are inspired with a diviner nature and essence; fresh pinions are given to faith and understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God.

Discontent with life

1 Feeling so perpetually the false consciousness that life inheres in the body, yet remembering that in reality God is our Life, we may well tremble in the prospect of those days in which we must say, "I have no pleasure in them."

1 Whence came to me this heavenly conviction, a conviction antagonistic to the testimony of the physical senses? According to St. Paul, it was "the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effectual working of His power." It was the divine law of Life and Love, unfolding to me the demonstrable fact that matter possesses neither sensation nor life; that human experiences show the falsity of all material things; and that immortal cravings, "the price of learning love," establish the truism that the only sufferer is mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer.

Demonstrable evidence

1 My conclusions were reached by allowing the evidence of this revelation to multiply with mathematical certainty and the lesser demonstration to prove the greater, as the product of three multiplied by three, equalling nine, proves conclusively that three times three duodecillions must be nine duodecillions, not a fraction more, not a unit less.

Light shining in darkness

When apparently near the confines of mortal existence, standing already within the shadow of the death-valley, I learned these truths in divine Scienhat all real being is in God, the divine Mind, and that Life, Truth, and Love are all-powerful and everpresent; that the opposite of Truth, called error, sin, sickness, disease, death, is the false testimony of false material sense, of mind in matter; that this false sense evolves, in belief, a subjective state of mortal mind which this same so-called mind names /matter/ thereby shutting out the true sense of Spirit.

New lines of thought

1 My discovery, that erring, mortal, misnamed /mind/ produces all the organism and action of the mortal body, set my thoughts to work in new channels, and led up to my demonstration of the proposition that Mind is All and matter is naught as the leading factor in Mind-science.

Scientific evidence

Christian Science reveals incontrovertibly that Mind is All-in-all, that the only realities are the divine Mind and idea. This great fact is not, however, seen to be supported by sensible evidence, until its divine Principle is demonstrated by healing the sick and thus proved absolute and divine. This proof once seen, no other conclusion can be reached.

Solitary research

For three years after my discovery, I sought the solution of this problem of Mind-healing, searched the Scriptures and read little else, kept aloof from society, and devoted time and energies to discovering a positive rule. The search was sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing. I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced in primitive Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith; but I must know the Science of this healing, and I won my way to absolute conclusions through divine revelation, reason, and demonstration. The revelation of Truth in the understanding came to me gradually and apparently through divine power. When a new spiritual idea is borne to earth, the prophetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly fulfill "To us a child is born, . . . and his name shall be called Wonderful."

Jesus once said of his lessoMy doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." (John vii. 16,17.)

God's allness learned

The three great verities of Spirit, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, Spirit possessing all power, filling all space, constituting all Science, contradict forever the belief that matter can be actual. These eternal verities reveal primeval existence as the radiant reality of God's creation, in which all that He has made is pronounced by His wisdom good.

Thus it was that I beheld, as never before, the awful unreality called evil. The equipollence of God brought to light another glorious proposition, man's perfectibility and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Scriptural foundations

In following these leadings of scientific revelation, the Bible was my only textbook. The Scriptures were illumined; reason and revelation were reconciled, and afterwards the truth of Christian Science was demonstrated. No human pen nor tongue taught me the Science contained in this book, Science and Health; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it. This book may be distorted by shallow criticism or by careless or malicious students, and its ideas may be temporarily abused and misrepresented; but the Science and truth therein will forever remain to be discerned and demonstrated.

The demonstration lost and found

Jesus demonstrated the power of Christian Science to heal mortal minds and bodies. But this power was lost sight of, and must again be spiritually discerned, taught, and demonstrated according to Christ's command, with "signs following." Its Science must be apprehended by as many as believe on Christ and spiritually understand Truth.

Mystical antagonists

No analogy exists between the vague hypotheses of agnosticism, pantheism, theosophy, spiritualism, or millenarianism and the demonstrable truths of Christian Science; and I find the will, or sensuous reason of the human mind, to be opposed to the divine Mind as expressed through divine Science.

Optical illustration of Science

1 Christian Science is natural, but not physical. The Science of God and man is no more supernatural than is the science of numbers, though departing from the realm of the physical, as the Science of God, Spirit, must, some may deny its right to the name of Science. The Principle of divine metaphysics is God; the practice of divine metaphysics is the utilization of the power of Truth over error; its rules demonstrate its Science. Divine metaphysics reverses perverted and physical hypotheses as to Deity, even as the explanation of optics rejects the incidental or inverted image and shows what this inverted image is meant to represent.

Pertinent proposal

A prize of one hundred pounds, offered in Oxford University, England, for the best essay on Natural Science, an essay calculated to offset the tendency of the age to attribute physical effects to physical causes rather than to a final spiritual cause, is one of many incidents which show that Christian Science meets a yearning of the human race for spirituality.

Confirmatory tests

After a lengyour examination of my discovery and its demonstration in healing the sick, this fact became evident to me, that Mind governs the body, not partially but wholly. I submitted my metaphysical system of treating disease to the broadest practical tests. Since then this system has gradually gained ground, and has proved itself, whenever scientifically employed, to be the most effective curative agent in medical practice.

One school of Truth

1 Is there more than one school of Christian Science? Christian Science is demonstrable. There can, therefore, be but one method in its teaching. Those who depart from this method forfeit their claims to belong to its school, and they become adherents of the Socratic, the Platonic, the Spencerian, or some other school. By this is meant that they adopt and adhere to some particular system of human opinions. Although these opinions may have occasional gleams of divinity, borrowed from that truly divine Science which eschews man-made systems, they nevertheless remain wholly human in their origin and tendency and are not scientifically Christian.

Unchanging Principle

From the infinite One in Christian Science comes one Principle and its infinite idea, and with this infinitude come spiritual rules, laws, and their demonstration, which, like the great Giver, are "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever;" for thus are the divine Principle of healing and the Christ-idea characterized in the epistle to the Hebrews.

On sandy foundations

Any theory of Christian Science, which departs from what has already been stated and proved to be true, affords no foundation upon which to establish a genuine school of this Science. Also, if any so-called new school claims to be Christian Science, and yet uses another author's discoveries without giving that author proper credit, such a school is erroneous, for it inculcates a breach of that divine commandment in the Hebrew Decalogue, "You will not steal."

Principle and practice

God is the Principle of divine metaphysics. As there is but one God, there can be but one divine Principle of all Science; and there must be fixed rules for the demonstration of this divine Principle. The letter of Science plentifully reaches humanity to-day, but its spirit comes only in small degrees. The vital part, the heart and soul of Christian Science, is Love. Without this, the letter is but the dead body of Science, pulseless, cold, inanimate.

Reversible propositions

1 The fundamental propositions of divine metaphysics are summarized in the four following, to me, /self-evident/ propositions. Even if reversed, these propositions will be found to agree in statement and proof, showing mathematically their exact relation to Truth. De Quincey says mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.

1. God is All-in-all. 2. God is good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. 4. Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good, omnipotent God, Life.

Which of the denials in proposition four is true? Both are not, cannot be, true. According to the Scripture, I find that God is true, "but every [mortal] man a liar."

Metaphysical inversions

The divine metaphysics of Christian Science, like the method in mathematics, proves the rule by inversion. For examphere is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and no mind in matter; no matter in Life, and no life in matter; no matter in good, and no good in matter.

Definition of mortal mind

1 Usage classes both evil and good together as /mind/; therefore, to be understood, the author calls sick and sinful humanity /mortal mind/, meaning by this term the flesh opposed to Spirit, the human mind and evil in contradistinction to the divine Mind, or Truth and good. The spiritually unscientific definition of mind is based on the evidence of the physical senses, which makes minds many and calls /mind/ both human and divine.

In Science, Mind is /one/, including noumenon and phenomena, God and His thoughts.

Imperfect terminology

1 Mortal mind is a solecism in language, and involves an improper use of the word /mind/. As Mind is immortal, the phrase /mortal mind/ implies something untrue and therefore unreal; and as the phrase is used in teaching Christian Science, it is meant to designate that which has no real existence. Indeed, if a better word or phrase could be suggested, it would be used; but in expressing the new tongue we must sometimes recur to the old and imperfect, and the new wine of the Spirit has to be poured into the old bottles of the letter.

Causation mental

Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical. It lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body. It shows the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of being, and sets free the imprisoned thought. In divine Science, the universe, including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. Science shows that what is termed /matter/ is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author /mortal mind/.

Philological inadequacy

Apart from the usual opposition to everything new, the one great obstacle to the reception of that spirituality, through which the understanding of Mind-science comes, is the inadequacy of material terms for metaphysical statements, and the consequent difficulty of so expressing metaphysical ideas as to make them comprehensible to any reader, who has not personally demonstrated Christian Science as brought forth in my discovery. Job saThe ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat." The great difficulty is to give the right impression, when translating material terms back into the original spiritual tongue.

1 SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF IMMORTAL MIND

Divine synonyms

Givine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind.

Divine image

1 Mod's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal.

Divine reflection

IDn image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. /Webster/.

SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF MORTAL MIND

/First DegrDepravity.

Unreality

1 PHYSICAL. Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, disease, death.

/Second DegrEvil beliefs disappearing.

Transitional qualities

MORAL. Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. /Third DegrUnderstanding.

Reality

SPIRITUAL. Wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.

Spiritual universe

In the third degree mortal mind disappears, and man as God's image appears. Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses, as to make this Scriptural testimony true in our hearts, "The last shall be first, and the first last," so that God and His idea may be to us what divinity really is and must of necessity be, all-inclusive.

Aim of Science

A correct view of Christian Science and of its adaptation to healing includes vastly more than is at first seen. Works on metaphysics leave the grand point untouched. They never crown the power of Mind as the Messiah, nor do they carry the day against physical enemies, even to the extinction of all belief in matter, evil, disease, and death, nor insist upon the fact that God is all, therefore that matter is nothing beyond an image in mortal mind.

Divine personality

Christian Science strongly emphasizes the thought that God is not /corporeal/, but /incorporeal/, that is, bodiless. Mortals are corporeal, but God is incorporeal.

1 As the words /person/ and /personal/ are commonly and ignorantly employed, they often lead, when applied to Deity, to confused and erroneous conceptions of divinity and its distinction from humanity. If the term personality, as applied to God, means infinite personality, then God is infinite /Person/, in the sense of infinite personality, but not in the lower sense. An infinite Mind in a finite form is an absolute impossibility.

1 The term /individuality/ is also open to objections, because an individual may be one of a series, one of many, as an individual man, an individual horse; whereas God is /One/, not one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.

Spiritual language

1 God is Spirit; therefore the language of Spirit must be, and is, spiritual. Christian Science attaches no physical nature and significance to the Supreme Being or His manifestation; mortals alone do this. God's essential language is spoken of in the last chapter of Mark's Gospel as the new tongue, the spiritual meaning of which is attained through "signs following."

The miracles of Jesus

Ear hasnot heard, nor haslip spoken, the pure language of Spirit. Our Master taught spirituality by similitudes and parables. As a divine student he unfolded God to man, illustrating and demonstrating Life and Truth in himself and by his power over the sick and sinning. Human theories are inadequate to interpret the divine Principle involved in the miracles (marvels) wrought by Jesus and especially in his mighty, crowning, unparalleled, and triumphant exit from the flesh.

Opacity of the senses

1 Evidence drawn from the five physical senses relates solely to human reason; and because of opacity to the true light, human reason dimly reflects and feebly transmits Jesus' works and words. Truth is a revelation.

Leaven of Truth

Jesus bade his disciples beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, which he defined as human doctrines. His parable of the "leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened," impels the inference that the spiritual leaven signifies the Science of Christ and its spiritual interpretation, an inference far above the merely ecclesiastical and formal applications of the illustration. Did not this parable point a moral with a prophecy, foretelling the second appearing in the flesh of the Christ, Truth, hidden in sacred secrecy from the visible world?

Ages pass, but this leaven of Truth is ever at work. It must destroy the entire mass of error, and so be eternally glorified in man's spiritual freedom.

The divine and human contrasted

In their spiritual significance, Science, Theology, and Medicine are means of divine thought, which include spiritual laws emanating from the invisible and infinite power and grace. The parable may import that these spiritual laws, perverted by a perverse material sense of law, are metaphysically presented as three measures of meal, that is, three modes of mortal thought. In all mortal forms of thought, dust is dignified as the natural status of men and things, and modes of material motion are honored with the name of /laws/. This continues until the leaven of Spirit changes the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal.

Certain contradictions

The definitions of material law, as given by natural science, represent a kingdom necessarily divided against itself, because these definitions portray law as physical, not spiritual. Therefore they contradict the divine decrees and violate the law of Love, in which nature and God are one and the natural order of heaven comes down to earth.

Unescapable dilemma

1 When we endow matter with vague spiritual power, that is, when we do so in our theories, for of course we cannot really endow matter with what it does not and cannot possess, we disown the Almighty, for such theories lead to one of two things. They either presuppose the self-evolution and self-government of matter, or else they assume that matter is the product of Spirit. To seize the first horn of this dilemma and consider matter as a power in and of itself, is to leave the creator out of His own universe; while to grasp the other horn of the dilemma and regard God as the creator of matter, is not only to make Him responsible for all disasters, physical and moral, but to announce Him as their source, thereby making Him guilty of maintaining perpetual misrule in the form and under the name of natural law.

God and nature

In one sense God is identical with nature, but this nature is spiritual and is not expressed in matter. The lawgiver, whose lightning palsies or prostrates in death the child at prayer, is not the divine ideal of omnipresent Love. God is natural good, and is represented only by the idea of goodness; while evil should be regarded as unnatural, because it is opposed to the nature of Spirit, God.

The sun and Soul

In viewing the sunrise, one finds that it contradicts the evidence before the senses to believe that the earth is in motion and the sun at rest. As astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar system, so Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body and makes body tributary to Mind. Thus it is with man, who is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems otherwise to finite sense. But we shall never understand this while we admit that soul is in body or mind in matter, and that man is included in non-intelligence. Soul, or Spirit, is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man coexists with and reflects Soul, God, for man is God's image.

Reversal of testimony

Science reverses the false testimony of the physical senses, and by this reversal mortals arrive at the fundamental facts of being. Then the question inevitably ariss a man sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? No! for matter can make no conditions for man. And is he well if the senses say he is sick? Yes, he is well in Science in which health is normal and disease is abnormal.

Health and the senses

1 Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on the subject of health. The Science of Mind-healing shows it to be impossible for aught but Mind to testify truly or to exhibit the real status of man. Therefore the divine Principle of Science, reversing the testimony of the physical senses, reveals man as harmoniously existent in Truth, which is the only basis of health; and thus Science denies all disease, heals the sick, overthrows false evidence, and refutes materialistic logic.

Any conclusion /pro/ or /con/, deduced from supposed sensation in matter or from matter's supposed consciousness of health or disease, instead of reversing the testimony of the physical senses, confirms that testimony as legitimate and so leads to disease.

Historic illustrations

1 When Columbus gave freer breath to the globe, ignorance and superstition chained the limbs of the brave old navigator, and disgrace and starvation stared him in the face; but sterner still would have been his fate, if his discovery had undermined the favorite inclinations of a sensuous philosophy.

Copernicus mapped out the stellar system, and before he said, astrography was chaotic, and the heavenly fields were incorrectly explored.

Perennial beauty

The Chaldean Wisemen read in the stars the fate of empires and the fortunes of men. Though no higher revelation than the horoscope was to them displayed upon the empyrean, earth and heaven were bright, and bird and blossom were glad in God's perennial and happy sunshine, golden with Truth. So we have goodness and beauty to gladden the heart; but man, left to the hypotheses of material sense unexplained by Science, is as the wandering comet or the desolate star "a weary searcher for a viewless home."

Astronomic unfoldings

The earth's diurnal rotation is invisible to the physical eye, and the sun seems to move from east to west, instead of the earth from west to east. Until rebuked by clearer views of the everlasting facts, this false testimony of the eye deluded the judgment and induced false conclusions. Science shows appearances often to be erroneous, and corrects these errors by the simple rule that the greater controls the lesser. The sun is the central stillness, so far as our solar system is concerned, and the earth revolves about the sun once a year, besides turning daily on its own axis.

As thus indicated, astronomical order imitates the action of divine Principle; and the universe, the reflection of God, is thus brought nearer the spiritual fact, and is allied to divine Science as displayed in the everlasting government of the universe.

Opposing testimony

1 The evidence of the physical senses often reverses the real Science of being, and so creates a reign of discord, assigning seeming power to sin, sickness, and death; but the great facts of Life, rightly understood, defeat this triad of errors, contradict their false witnesses, and reveal the kingdom of heaven, the actual reign of harmony on earth. The material senses' reversal of the Science of Soul was practically exposed nineteen hundred years ago by the demonstrations of Jesus; yet these so-called senses still make mortal mind tributary to mortal body, and ordain certain sections of matter, such as brain and nerves, as the seats of pain and pleasure, from which matter reports to this so-called mind its status of happiness or misery.

Testimony of the senses

1 The optical focus is another proof of the illusion of material sense. On the eye's retina, sky and tree-tops apparently join hands, clouds and ocean meet and mingle. The barometer, that little prophet of storm and sunshine, denying the testimony of the senses, points to fair weather in the midst of murky clouds and drenching rain. Experience is full of instances of similar illusions, which every thinker can recall for himself.

Spiritual sense of life

1 To material sense, the severance of the jugular vein takes away life; but to spiritual sense and in Science, Life goes on unchanged and being is eternal. Temporal life is a false sense of existence.

Ptolemaic and psychical error

Our theories make the same mistake regarding Soul and body that Ptolemy made regarding the solar system. They insist that soul is in body and mind therefore tributary to matter. Astronomical science has destroyed the false theory as to the relations of the celestial bodies, and Christian Science will surely destroy the greater error as to our terrestrial bodies. The true idea and Principle of man will then appear. The Ptolemaic blunder could not affect the harmony of being as does the error relating to soul and body, which reverses the order of Science and assigns to matter the power and prerogative of Spirit, so that man becomes the most absolutely weak and inharmonious creature in the universe.

Seeming and being

The verity of Mind shows conclusively how it is that matter seems to be, but is not. Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves /things/ into /thoughts/, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas.

The term CHRISTIAN SCIENCE was introduced by the author to designate the scientific system of divine healing.

The revelation consists of two par 1. The discovery of this divine Science of Mind- healing, through a spiritual sense of the Scriptures and through the teachings of the Comforter, as promised by the Master. 2. The proof, by present demonstration, that the socalled miracles of Jesus did not specially belong to a dispensation now ended, but that they illustrated an ever-operative divine Principle. The operation of this Principle indicates the eternality of the scientific order and continuity of being.

Scientific basis

1 Christian Science differs from material science, but not on that account is it less scientific. On the contrary, Christian Science is pre-emimently scientific, being based on Truth, the Principle of all science.

Physical science a blind belief

1 Physical science (so-called) is human knowledge, a law of mortal mind, a blind belief, a Samson shorn of his strength. When this human belief lacks organizations to support it, its foundations are gone. Having neither moral might, spiritual basis, nor holy Principle of its own, this belief mistakes effect for cause and seeks to find life and intelligence in matter, thus limiting Life and holding fast to discord and death. In a word, human belief is a blind conclusion from material reasoning. This is a mortal, finite sense of things, which immortal Spirit silences forever.

Right interpretation

The universe, like man, is to be interpreted by Science from its divine Principle, God, and then it can be understood; but when explained on the basis of physical sense and represented as subject to growth, maturity, and decay, the universe, like man, is, and must continue to be, an enigma.

All force mental

Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle, and support the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, "Thus far and no farther."

Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls them forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification.

Corporeal changes

The elements and functions of the physical body and of the physical world will change as mortal mind changes its beliefs. What is now considered the best condition for organic and functional health in the human body may no longer be found indispensable to health. Moral conditions will be found always harmonious and health-giving. Neither organic inaction nor overaction is beyond God's control; and man will be found normal and natural to changed mortal thought, and therefore more harmonious in his manifestations than he was in the prior states which human belief created and sanctioned.

1 As human thought changes from one stage to another of conscious pain and painlessness, sorrow and joy, from fear to hope and from faith to understanding, the visible manifestation will at last be man governed by Soul, not by material sense. Reflecting God's government, man is self-governed. When subordinate to the divine Spirit, man cannot be controlled by sin or death, thus proving our material theories about laws of health to be valueless.

The time and tide

1 The seasons will come and go with changes of time and tide, cold and heat, latitude and longitude. The agriculturist will find that these changes cannot affect his crops. "As a vesture will yOu change them and they shall be changed." The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air. The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars, he will look out from them upon the universe; and the florist will find his flower before its seed.

Mortal nothingness

Thus matter will finally be proved nothing more than a mortal belief, wholly inadequate to affect a man through its supposed organic action or supposed existence. Error will be no longer used in stating truth. The problem of nothingness, or "dust to dust," will be solved, and mortal mind will be without form and void, for mortality will cease when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass.

A lack of originality

All Science is divine. Human thought never projected the least portion of true being. Human belief has sought and interpreted in its own way the echo of Spirit, and so seems to have reversed it and repeated it materially; but the human mind never produced a real tone nor sent forth a positive sound.

Antagonistic questions

1 The point at issue between Christian Science on the one hand and popular theology on the other is thhall Science explain cause and effect as being both natural and spiritual? Or shall all that is beyond the cognizance of the material senses be called supernatural, and be left to the mercy of speculative hypotheses?

Biblical basis

I have set forth Christian Science and its application to the treatment of disease just as I have discovered them. I have demonstrated through Mind the effects of Truth on the health, longevity, and morals of men; and I have found nothing in ancient or in modern systems on which to found my own, except the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master and the lives of prophets and apostles. The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in "the straight and narrow way" of Truth.

Science and Christianity

If Christendom resists the author's application of the word Science to Christianity, or questions her use of the word Science, she will not therefore lose faith in Christianity, nor will Christianity lose its hold upon her. If God, the All-in-all, be the creator of the spiritual universe, including man, then everything entitled to a classification as truth, or Science, must be comprised in a knowledge or understanding of God, for there can be nothing beyond illimitable divinity.

Scientific terms

1 The terms Divine Science, Spiritual Science, Christ Science or Christian Science, or Science alone, she employs interchangeably, according to the requirements of the context. These synonymous terms stand for everything relating to God, the infinite, supreme, eternal Mind. It may be said, however, that the term Christian Science relates especially to Science as applied to humanity. Christian Science reveals God, not as the author of sin, sickness, and death, but as divine Principle, Supreme Being, Mind, exempt from all evil. It teaches that matter is the falsity, not the fact, of existence; that nerves, brain, stomach, lungs, and so forth, have as matter no intelligence, life, nor sensation.

No physical science

There is no physical science, inasmuch as all truth proceeds from the divine Mind. Therefore truth is not human, and is not a law of matter, for matter is not a lawgiver. Science is an emanation of divine Mind, and is alone able to interpret God aright. It has a spiritual, and not a material origin. It is a divine utterance, the Comforter which leadeth into all truth. Christian Science eschews what is called natural science, in so far as this is built on the false hypotheses that matter is its own lawgiver, that law is founded on material conditions, and that these are final and overrule the might of divine Mind. Good is natural and primitive. It is not miraculous to itself.