Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures
CHAPTER VI
SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, MEDICINE
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 unto leaven, which a
woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was
leavened. - JESUS. |
Christian Science discovered
|
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 |
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." 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 unto 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 craving,
"the price of learning love," establish the truism that the only sufferer is
mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer. |
Demonstrable evidence |
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 Science: that all real being is in God, the divine Mind,
and that Life, Truth, and Love are all-powerful and ever-present; 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 |
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 fulfilled: "Unto us a child is
born, . . . and his name shall be called Wonderful." Jesus once said of his
lessons: "My 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
|
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 lengthy examination of my discovery and it
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 |
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 today, 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, "Thou shalt 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 today, 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
|
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 example: There 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
|
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
|
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
says: "The 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. SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF IMMORTAL MIND |
Divine synonyms |
GOD: Divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul,
Spirit, Mind. |
Divine image |
MAN: God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect,
eternal. |
Divine reflection |
IDEA: An image in Mind; the immediate object of
understanding.Webster. SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF MORTAL MIND First
Degree: Depravity. |
Unreality |
PHYSICAL. Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear,
depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin,
sickness, disease, death. Second Degree: Evil beliefs disappearing.
|
Transitional qualities
|
MORAL. Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope,
faith, meekness, temperance. Third Degree: Understanding. |
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. 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. 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 |
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 hath not heard, nor hath lip 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 demon strating
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
|
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 |
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 arises: Is 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
|
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
|
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
spake, 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 |
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
|
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
|
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 parts: 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 so-called 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 |
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
|
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. 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 |
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 shalt Thou 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
|
The point at issue between Christian Science on the
one hand and popular theology on the other is this: Shall 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 |
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. |
Practical Science |
The term Science, properly understood, refers only to
the laws of God and to His government of the universe, inclusive of man. From
this it follows that business men and cultured scholars have found that
Christian Science enhances their endurance and mental powers, enlarges their
perception of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness and an
ability to exceed their ordinary capacity. The human mind, imbued with this
spiritual understanding, becomes more elastic, is capable of greater endurance,
escapes somewhat from itself, and requires less repose. A knowledge of the
Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It
extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher
realms. It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity.
An odor becomes beneficent and agreeable only in proportion to its escape into
the surrounding atmosphere. So it is with our knowledge of Truth. If one would
not quarrel with his fellow-man for waking him from a cataleptic nightmare, he
should not resist Truth, which banishes yea, forever destroys with the higher
testimony of Spirit the so-called evidence of matter. |
Mathematics and scientific logic
|
Science relates to Mind, not matter. It rests on fixed
Principle and not upon the judgment of false sensation. The addition of two
sums in mathematics must always bring the same result. So is it with logic. If
both the major and the minor propositions of a syllogism are correct, the
conclusion, if properly drawn, cannot be false. So in Christian Science there
are no discords nor contradictions, because its logic is as harmonious as the
reasoning of an accurately stated syllogism or of a properly computed sum in
arithmetic. Truth is ever truthful, and can tolerate no error in premise or
conclusion. |
Truth by inversion |
If you wish to know the spiritual fact, you can
discover it by reversing the material fable, be the fable pro or
con, be it in accord with your preconceptions or utterly contrary to
them. |
Antagonistic theories
|
Pantheism may be defined as a belief in the
intelligence of matter, a belief which Science overthrows. In those days there
will be "great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world;"
and earth will echo the cry, "Art thou [Truth] come hither to torment us before
the time?" Animal magnetism, hypnotism, spiritualism, theosophy, agnosticism,
pantheism, and infidelity are antagonistic to true being and fatal to its
demonstration; and so are some other systems. |
Ontology needed |
We must abandon pharmaceutics, and take up ontology,
"the science of real being." We must look deep into realism instead of
accepting only the outward sense of things. Can we gather peaches from a
pine-tree, or learn from discord the concord of being? Yet quite as rational
are some of the leading illusions along the path which Science must tread in
its reformatory mission among mortals. The very name, illusion, points to
nothingness. |
Reluctant guests |
The generous liver may object to the author's small
estimate of the pleasures of the table. The sinner sees, in the system taught
in this book, that the demands of God must be met. The petty intellect is
alarmed by constant appeals to Mind. The licentious disposition is discouraged
over its slight spiritual prospects. When all men are bidden to the feast, the
excuses come. One has a farm, another has merchandise, and therefore they
cannot accept. |
Excuses for ignorance
|
It is vain to speak dishonestly of divine Science,
which destroys all discord, when you can demonstrate the actuality of Science.
It is unwise to doubt if reality is in perfect harmony with God, divine
Principle, if Science, when understood and demonstrated, will destroy all
discord, since you admit that God is omnipotent; for from this premise it
follows that good and its sweet concords have all-power. |
Children and adults |
Christian Science, properly understood, would disabuse
the human mind of material beliefs which war against spiritual facts; and these
material beliefs must be denied and cast out to make place for truth. You
cannot add to the contents of a vessel already full. Laboring long to shake the
adult's faith in matter and to inculcate a grain of faith in God, an inkling of
the ability of Spirit to make the body harmonious, the author has often
remembered our Master's love for little children, and understood how truly such
as they belong to the heavenly kingdom. |
All evil unnatural |
If thought is startled at the strong claim of Science
for the supremacy of God, or Truth, and doubts the supremacy of good, ought we
not, contrariwise, to be astounded at the vigorous claims of evil and doubt
them, and no longer think it natural to love sin and unnatural to forsake it,
no longer imagine evil to be ever-present and good absent? Truth should not
seem so surprising and unnatural as error, and error should not seem so real as
truth. Sickness should not seem so real as health. There is no error in
Science, and our lives must be governed by reality in order to be in harmony
with God, the divine Principle of all being. |
The error of carnality
|
When once destroyed by divine Science, the false
evidence before the corporeal senses disappears. Hence the opposition of
sensuous man to the Science of Soul and the significance of the Scripture, "The
carnal mind is enmity against God." The central fact of the Bible is the
superiority of spiritual over physical power. THEOLOGY |
Churchly neglect |
Must Christian Science come through the Christian
churches as some persons insist? This Science has come already, after the
manner of God's appointing, but the churches seem not ready to receive it,
according to the Scriptural saying, "He came unto his own, and his own received
him not." Jesus once said: "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." As
aforetime, the spirit of the Christ, which taketh away the ceremonies and
doctrines of men, is not accepted until the hearts of men are made ready for
it. |
John the Baptist, and the Messiah
|
The mission of Jesus confirmed prophecy, and explained
the so-called miracles of olden time as natural demonstrations of the divine
power, demonstrations which were not understood. Jesus' works established his
claim to the Messiahship. In reply to John's inquiry, "Art thou he that should
come," Jesus returned an affirmative reply, recounting his works instead of
referring to his doctrine, confident that this exhibition of the divine power
to heal would fully answer the question. Hence his reply: "Go and show John
again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight and
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised
up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever
shall not be offended in me." In other words, he gave his benediction to any
one who should not deny that such effects, coming from divine Mind, prove the
unity of God, the divine principle which brings out all harmony. |
Christ rejected |
The Pharisees of old thrust the spiritual idea and the
man who lived it out of their synagogues, and retained their materialistic
beliefs about God. Jesus' system of healing received no aid nor approval from
other sanitary or religious systems, from doctrines of physics or of divinity;
and it has not yet been generally accepted. Today, as of yore, unconscious of
the reappearing of the spiritual idea, blind belief shuts the door upon it, and
condemns the cure of the sick and sinning if it is wrought on any but a
material and a doctrinal theory. Anticipating this rejection of idealism, of
the true idea of God, this salvation from all error, physical and mental, Jesus
asked, "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"
|
John's misgivings |
Did the doctrines of John the Baptist confer healing
power upon him, or endow him with the truest conception of the Christ? This
righteous preacher once pointed his disciples to Jesus as "the Lamb of God;"
yet afterwards he seriously questioned the signs of the Messianic appearing,
and sent the inquiry to Jesus, "Art thou he that should come?" |
Faith according to works
|
Was John's faith greater than that of the Samaritan
woman, who said, "Is not this the Christ?" There was also a certain centurion
of whose faith Jesus himself declared, "I have not found so great faith, no,
not in Israel." In Egypt, it was Mind which saved the Israelites from belief in
the plagues. In the wilderness, streams flowed from the rock, and manna fell
from the sky. The Israelites looked upon the brazen serpent, and straightway
believed that they were healed of the poisonous stings of vipers. In national
prosperity, miracles attended the successes of the Hebrews; but when they
departed from the true idea, their demoralization began. Even in captivity
among foreign nations, the divine Principle wrought wonders for the people of
God in the fiery furnace and in kings' palaces. |
Judaism antipathetic
|
Judaism was the antithesis of Christianity, because
Judaism engendered the limited form of a national or tribal religion. It was a
finite and material system, carried out in special theories concerning God,
man, sanitary methods, and a religious cultus. That he made "himself equal with
God," was one of the Jewish accusations against him who planted Christianity on
the foundation of Spirit, who taught as he was inspired by the Father and would
recognize no life, intelligence, nor substance outside of God. |
Priestly learning |
The Jewish conception of God, as Yawah, Jehovah, or
only a mighty hero and king, has not quite given place to the true knowledge of
God. Creeds and rituals have not cleansed their hands of rabbinical lore. Today
the cry of bygone ages is repeated, "Crucify him!" At every advancing step,
truth is still opposed with sword and spear. |
Testimony of martyrs
|
The word martyr, from the Greek, means
witness; but those who testified for Truth were so often persecuted unto
death, that at length the word martyr was narrowed in its significance
and so has come always to mean one who suffers for his convictions. The new
faith in the Christ, Truth, so roused the hatred of the opponents of
Christianity, that the followers of Christ were burned, crucified, and
otherwise persecuted; and so it came about that human rights were hallowed by
the gallows and the cross. |
Absence of Christ-power
|
Man-made doctrines are waning. They have not waxed
strong in times of trouble. Devoid of the Christ-power, how can they illustrate
the doctrines of Christ or the miracles of grace? Denial of the possibility of
Christian healing robs Christianity of the very element, which gave it divine
force and its astonishing and unequalled success in the first century.
|
Basis of miracles |
The true Logos is demonstrably Christian Science, the
natural law of harmony which overcomes discord, not because this Science is
supernatural or preternatural, nor because it is an infraction of divine law,
but because it is the immutable law of God, good. Jesus said: "I knew that Thou
hearest me always;" and he raised Lazarus from the dead, stilled the tempest,
healed the sick, walked on the water. There is divine authority for believing
in the superiority of spiritual power over material resistance. |
Lawful wonders |
A miracle fulfils God's law, but does not violate that
law. This fact at present seems more mysterious than the miracle itself. The
Psalmist sang: "What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? Thou Jordan,
that thou wast driven back? Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams, and ye
little hills, like lambs? Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at
the presence of the God of Jacob." The miracle introduces no disorder, but
unfolds the primal order, establishing the Science of God's unchangeable law.
Spiritual evolution alone is worthy of the exercise of divine power. |
Fear and sickness identical
|
The same power which heals sin heals also sickness.
This is "the beauty of holiness," that when Truth heals the sick it casts out
evils, and when Truth casts out the evil called disease, it heals the sick.
When Christ cast out the devil of dumbness, "it came to pass, when the devil
was gone out, the dumb spake." There is today danger of repeating the offence
of the Jews by limiting the Holy One of Israel and asking: "Can God furnish a
table in the wilderness?" What cannot God do? |
The unity of Science and
Christianity |
It has been said, and truly, that Christianity must be
Science, and Science must be Christianity, else one or the other is false and
useless; but neither is unimportant or untrue, and they are alike in
demonstration. This proves the one to be identical with the other. Christianity
as Jesus taught it was not a creed, nor a system of ceremonies, nor a special
gift from a ritualistic Jehovah; but it was the demonstration of divine Love
casting out error and healing the sick, not merely in the name of
Christ, or Truth, but in demonstration of Truth, as must be the case in the
cycles of divine light. |
The Christ-mission |
Jesus established his church and maintained his
mission on a spiritual foundation of Christ-healing. He taught his followers
that his religion had a divine Principle, which would cast out error and heal
both the sick and the sinning. He claimed no intelligence, action, nor life
separate from God. Despite the persecution this brought upon him, he used his
divine power to save men both bodily and spiritually. |
Ancient spiritualism
|
The question then as now was, How did Jesus heal the
sick? His answer to this question the world rejected. He appealed to his
students: "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" That is: Who or what is
it that is thus identified with casting out evils and healing the sick? They
replied, "Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others,
Jeremias, or one of the prophets." These prophets were considered dead, and
this reply may indicate that some of the people believed that Jesus was a
medium, controlled by the spirit of John or of Elias. This ghostly fancy was
repeated by Herod himself. That a wicked king and debauched husband should have
no high appreciation of divine Science and the great work of the Master, was
not surprising; for how could such a sinner comprehend what the disciples did
not fully understand? But even Herod doubted if Jesus was controlled by the
sainted preacher. Hence Herod's assertion: "John have I beheaded: but who is
this?" No wonder Herod desired to see the new Teacher. |
Doubting disciples |
The disciples apprehended their Master better than did
others; but they did not comprehend all that he said and did, or they would not
have questioned him so often. Jesus patiently persisted in teaching and
demonstrating the truth of being. His students saw this power of Truth heal the
sick, cast out evil, raise the dead; but the ultimate of this wonderful work
was not spiritually discerned, even by them, until after the crucifixion, when
their immaculate Teacher stood before them, the victor over sickness, sin,
disease, death, and the grave. Yearning to be understood, the Master repeated,
"But whom say ye that I am?" This renewed inquiry meant: Who or what is
it that is able to do the work, so mysterious to the popular mind? In his
rejection of the answer already given and his renewal of the question, it is
plain that Jesus completely eschewed the narrow opinion implied in their
citation of the common report about him. |
A divine response |
With his usual impetuosity, Simon replied for his
brethren, and his reply set forth a great fact: "Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God!" That is: The Messiah is what thou hast declared, Christ,
the spirit of God, of Truth, Life, and Love, which heals mentally. This
assertion elicited from Jesus the benediction, "Blessed art thou, Simon
Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father
which is in heaven;" that is, Love hath shown thee the way of Life! |
The true and living rock
|
Before this the impetuous disciple had been called
only by his common names, Simon Bar-jona, or son of Jona; but now the Master
gave him a spiritual name in these words: "And I say also unto thee, That thou
art Peter; and upon this rock [the meaning of the Greek word petros, or
stone] I will build my church; and the gates of hell [hades, the
under-world, or the grave] shall not prevail against it." In
other words, Jesus purposed founding his society, not on the personal Peter as
a mortal, but on the God-power which lay behind Peter's confession of the true
Messiah. |
Sublime summary |
It was now evident to Peter that divine Life, Truth,
and Love, and not a human personality, was the healer of the sick and a rock, a
firm foundation in the realm of harmony. On this spiritually scientific basis
Jesus explained his cures, which appeared miraculous to outsiders. He showed
that diseases were cast out neither by corporeality, by materia medica,
nor by hygiene, but by the divine Spirit, casting out the errors of mortal
mind. The supremacy of Spirit was the foundation on which Jesus built. His
sublime summary points to the religion of Love. |
New era in Jesus |
Jesus established in the Christian era the precedent
for all Christianity, theology, and healing. Christians are under as direct
orders now, as they were then, to be Christlike, to possess the Christ-spirit,
to follow the Christ-example, and to heal the sick as well as the sinning. It
is easier for Christianity to cast out sickness than sin, for the sick are more
willing to part with pain than are sinners to give up the sinful, so-called
pleasure of the senses. The Christian can prove this today as readily is it was
proved centuries ago. |
Healthful theology |
Our Master said to every follower: "Go ye into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature! . . . Heal the sick! . . . Love
thy neighbor as thyself!" It was this theology of Jesus which healed the sick
and the sinning. It is his theology in this book and the spiritual meaning of
this theology, which heals the sick and causes the wicked to "forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts." It was our Master's theology which the
impious sought to destroy. |
Marvels and reformations
|
From beginning to end, the Scriptures are full of
accounts of the triumph of Spirit, Mind, over matter. Moses proved the power of
Mind by what men called miracles ; so did Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha. The
Christian era was ushered in with signs and wonders. Reforms have commonly been
attended with bloodshed and persecution, even when the end has been brightness
and peace; but the present new, yet old, reform in religious faith will teach
men patiently and wisely to stem the tide of sectarian bitterness, whenever it
flows inward. |
Science obscured |
The decisions by vote of Church Councils as to what
should and should not be considered Holy Writ; the manifest mistakes in the
ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament,
and the three hundred thousand in the New, these facts show how a mortal and
material sense stole into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some
extent the inspired pages. But mistakes could neither wholly obscure the divine
Science of the Scriptures seen from Genesis to Revelation, mar the
demonstration of Jesus, nor annul the healing by the prophets, who foresaw that
"the stone which the builders rejected" would become "the head of the corner."
|
Opponents benefited |
Atheism, pantheism, theosophy, and agnosticism are
opposed to Christian Science, as they are to ordinary religion; but it does not
follow that the profane or atheistic invalid cannot be healed by Christian
Science. The moral condition of such a man demands the remedy of Truth more
than it is needed in most cases; and Science is more than usually effectual in
the treatment of moral ailments. |
God invisible to the senses
|
That God is a corporeal being, nobody can truly
affirm. The Bible represents Him as saying: "Thou canst not see My face; for
there shall no man see Me and live." Not materially but spiritually we know Him
as divine Mind, as Life, Truth, and Love. We shall obey and adore in proportion
as we apprehend the divine nature and love Him understandingly, warring no more
over the corporeality, but rejoicing in the affluence of our God. Religion will
then be of the heart and not of the head. Mankind will no longer be tyrannical
and proscriptive from lack of love, straining out gnats and swallowing camels.
|
The true worship |
We worship spiritually, only as we cease to worship
materially. Spiritual devoutness is the soul of Christianity. Worshipping
through the medium of matter is paganism. Judaic and other rituals are but
types and shadows of true worship. "The true worshippers shall worship the
Father in spirit and in truth." |
Anthropomorphism |
The Jewish tribal Jehovah was a man-projected God,
liable to wrath, repentance, and human changeableness. The Christian Science
God is universal, eternal, divine love, which changeth not and causeth no evil,
disease, nor death. It is indeed mournfully true that the older Scripture is
reversed. In the begining God created man in His, God's, image; but mortals
would procreate man, and make God in their own human image. What is the god of
a mortal, but a mortal magnified? |
More than profession required
|
This indicates the distance between the theological
and ritualistic religion of the ages and the truth preached by Jesus. More than
profession is requisite for Christian demonstration. Few understand or adhere
to Jesus' divine precepts for living and healing. Why? Because his precepts
require the disciple to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye,
that is, to set aside even the most cherished beliefs and practices, to leave
all for Christ. |
No ecclesiastical monopoly |
All revelation (such is the popular thought!) must
come from the schools and along the line of scholarly and ecclesiastical
descent, as kings are crowned from a royal dynasty. In healing the sick and
sinning, Jesus elaborated the fact that the healing effect followed the
understanding of the divine Principle and of the Christ-spirit which governed
the corporeal Jesus. For this Principle there is no dynasty, no ecclesiastical
monopoly. Its only crowned head is immortal sovereignty. Its only priest is the
spiritualized man. The Bible declares that all believers are made "kings and
priests unto God." The outsiders did not then, and do not now, understand this
ruling of the Christ; therefore they cannot demonstrate God's healing power.
Neither can this manifestation of Christ be comprehended, until its divine
Principle is scientifically understood. |
A change demanded |
The adoption of scientific religion and of divine
healing will ameliorate sin, sickness, and death. Let our pulpits do justice to
Christian Science. Let it have fair representation by the press. Give to it the
place in our institutions of learning now occupied by scholastic theology and
physiology, and it will eradicate sickness and sin in less time than the old
systems, devised for subduing them, have required for self-establishment and
propagation. |
Two claims omitted |
Anciently the followers of Christ, or Truth, measured
Christianity by its power over sickness, sin, and death; but modern religions
generally omit all but one of these powers, the power over sin. We must seek
the undivided garment, the whole Christ, as our first proof of Christianity,
for Christ, Truth, alone can furnish us with absolute evidence. |
Selfishness and loss |
If the soft palm, upturned to a lordly salary, and
architectural skill, making dome and spire tremulous with beauty, turn the poor
and the stranger from the gate, they at the same time shut the door on
progress. In vain do the manger and the cross tell their story to pride and
fustian. Sensuality palsies the right hand, and causes the left to let go its
grasp on the divine. |
Temple cleansed |
As in Jesus' time, so today, tyranny and pride need to
be whipped out of the temple, and humility and divine Science to be welcomed
in. The strong cords of scientific demonstration, as twisted and wielded by
Jesus, are still needed to purge the temples of their vain traffic in worldly
worship and to make them meet dwelling-places for the Most High. MEDICINE
|
Question of precedence
|
Which was first, Mind or medicine? If Mind was first
and self-existent, then Mind, not matter, must have been the first medicine.
God being All-in-all, He made medicine; but that medicine was Mind. It could
not have been matter, which departs from the nature and character of Mind, God.
Truth is God's remedy for error of every kind, and Truth destroys only what is
untrue. Hence the fact that, today, as yesterday, Christ casts out evils and
heals the sick. |
Methods rejected |
It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene,
nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed
them in his healing. The sick are more deplorably lost than the sinning, if the
sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinning can. The divine Mind never
called matter medicine, and matter required a material and human belief
before it could be considered as medicine. |
Error not curative |
Sometimes the human mind uses one error to medicine
another. Driven to choose between two difficulties, the human mind takes the
lesser to relieve the greater. On this basis it saves from starvation by theft,
and quiets pain with anodynes. You admit that mind influences the body
somewhat, but you conclude that the stomach, blood, nerves, bones, etc., hold
the preponderance of power. Controlled by this belief, you continue in the old
routine. You lean on the inert and unintelligent, never discerning how this
deprives you of the available superiority of divine Mind. The body is not
controlled scientifically by a negative mind. |
Impossible coalescence
|
Mind is the grand creator, and there can be no power
except that which is derived from Mind. If Mind was first chronologically, is
first potentially, and must be first eternally, then give to Mind the glory,
honor, dominion, and power everlastingly due its holy name. Inferior and
unspiritual methods of healing may try to make Mind and drugs coalesce, but the
two will not mingle scientifically. Why should we wish to make them do so,
since no good can come of it? If Mind is foremost and superior, let us rely
upon Mind, which needs no cooperation from lower powers, even if these
so-called powers are real. Naught is the squire, when the king is nigh;
Withdraws the star, when dawns the sun's brave light. |
Soul and sense |
The various mortal beliefs formulated in human
philosophy, physiology, hygiene, are mainly predicated of matter, and afford
faint gleams of God, or Truth. The more material a belief, the more obstinately
tenacious its error; the stronger are the manifestations of the corporeal
senses, the weaker the indications of Soul. |
Will-power detrimental
|
Human will-power is not Science. Human will belongs to
the so-called material senses, and its use is to be condemned. Willing the sick
to recover is not the metaphysical practice of Christian Science, but is sheer
animal magnetism. Human will-power may infringe the rights of man. It produces
evil continually, and is not a factor in the realism of being. Truth, and not
corporeal will, is the divine power which says to disease, "Peace, be still."
|
Conservative antagonism
|
Because divine Science wars with so-called physical
science, even as Truth wars with error, the old schools still oppose it.
Ignorance, pride, or prejudice closes the door to whatever is not stereotyped.
When the Science of being is universally understood, every man will be his own
physician, and Truth will be the universal panacea. |
Ancient healers |
It is a question today, whether the ancient inspired
healers understood the Science of Christian healing, or whether they caught its
sweet tones, as the natural musician catches the tones of harmony, without
being able to explain them. So divinely imbued were they with the spirit of
Science, that the lack of the letter could not hinder their work; and that
letter, without the spirit, would have made void their practice. |
The struggle and victory
|
The struggle for the recovery of invalids goes on, not
between material methods, but between mortal minds and immortal Mind. The
victory will be on the patient's side only as immortal Mind through Christ,
Truth, subdues the human belief in disease. It matters not what material method
one may adopt, whether faith in drugs, trust in hygiene, or reliance on some
other minor curative. |
Mystery of godliness
|
Scientific healing has this advantage over other
methods, that in it Truth controls error. From this fact arise its ethical as
well as its physical effects. Indeed, its ethical and physical effects are
indissolubly connected. If there is any mystery in Christian healing, it is the
mystery which godliness always presents to the ungodly, the mystery always
arising from ignorance of the laws of eternal and unerring Mind. |
Matter versus matter
|
Other methods undertake to oppose error with error,
and thus they increase the antagonism of one form of matter towards other forms
of matter or error, and the warfare between Spirit and the flesh goes on. By
this antagonism mortal mind must continually weaken its own assumed power.
|
How healing was lost
|
The theology of Christian Science includes healing the
sick. Our Master's first article of faith propounded to his students was
healing, and he proved his faith by his works. The ancient Christians were
healers. Why has this element of Christianity been lost? Because our systems of
religion are governed more or less by our systems of medicine. The first
idolatry was faith in matter. The schools have rendered faith in drugs the
fashion, rather than faith in Deity. By trusting matter to destroy its own
discord, health and harmony have been sacrificed. Such systems are barren of
the vitality of spiritual power, by which material sense is made the servant of
Science and religion becomes Christlike. |
Drugs and divinity |
Material medicine substitutes drugs for the power of
God even the might of Mind to heal the body. Scholasticism clings for salvation
to the person, instead of to the divine Principle, of the man Jesus; and his
Science, the curative agent of God, is silenced. Why? Because truth divests
material drugs of their imaginary power, and clothes Spirit with supremacy.
Science is the "stranger that is within thy gates," remembered not, even when
its elevating effects practically prove its divine origin and efficacy.
|
Christian Science as old as God
|
Divine Science derives its sanction from the Bible,
and the divine origin of Science is demonstrated through the holy influence of
Truth in healing sickness and sin. This healing power of Truth must have been
far anterior to the period in which Jesus lived. It is as ancient as "the
Ancient of days." It lives through all Life, and extends throughout all
space. |
Reduction to system |
Divine metaphysics is now reduced to a system, to a
form comprehensible by and adapted to the thought of the age in which we live.
This system enables the learner to demonstrate the divine Principle, upon which
Jesus' healing was based, and the sacred rules for its present application to
the cure of disease. Late in the nineteenth century I demonstrated the divine
rules of Christian Science. They were submitted to the broadest practical test,
and everywhere, when honestly applied under circumstances where demonstration
was humanly possible, this Science showed that Truth had lost none of its
divine and healing efficacy, even though centuries had passed away since Jesus
practised these rules on the hills of Judaea and in the valleys of Galilee.
|
Perusal and practice
|
Although this volume contains the complete Science of
Mind-healing, never believe that you can absorb the whole meaning of the
Science by a simple perusal of this book. The book needs to be
studied, and the demonstration of the rules of scientific healing will
plant you firmly on the spiritual groundwork of Christian Science. This proof
lifts you high above the perishing fossils of theories already antiquated, and
enables you to grasp the spiritual facts of being hitherto unattained and
seemingly dim. |
A definite rule discovered
|
Our Master healed the sick, practised Christian
healing, and taught the generalities of its divine Principle to his students;
but he left no definite rule for demonstrating this Principle of healing and
preventing disease. This rule remained to be discovered in Christian Science. A
pure affection takes form in goodness, but Science alone reveals the divine
Principle of goodness and demonstrates its rules. |
Jesus' own practice |
Jesus never spoke of disease as dangerous or as
difficult to heal. When his students brought to him a case they had failed to
heal, he said to them, "O faithless generation," implying that the requisite
power to heal was in Mind. He prescribed no drugs, urged no obedience to
material laws, but acted in direct disobedience to them. |
The man of anatomy and of theology
|
Neither anatomy nor theology has ever described man as
created by Spirit, as God's man. The former explains the men of men, or
the "children of men," as created corporeally instead of spiritually and as
emerging from the lowest, instead of from the highest, conception of being.
Both anatomy and theology define man as both physical and mental, and place
mind at the mercy of matter for every function, formation, and manifestation.
Anatomy takes up man at all points materially. It loses Spirit, drops the true
tone, and accepts the discord. Anatomy and the ology reject the divine
Principle which produces harmonious man, and deal the one wholly, the other
primarily with matter, calling that man which is not the counterpart,
but the counterfeit, of God's man. Then theology tries to explain how to make
this man a Christian, how from this basis of division and discord to produce
the concord and unity of Spirit and His likeness. |
Physiology deficient |
Physiology exalts matter, dethrones Mind, and claims
to rule man by material law, instead of spiritual. When physiology fails to
give health or life by this process, it ignores the divine Spirit as unable or
unwilling to render help in time of physical need. When mortals sin, this
ruling of the schools leaves them to the guidance of a theology which admits
God to be the healer of sin but not of sickness, although our great Master
demonstrated that Truth could save from sickness as well as from sin. |
Blunders and blunderers
|
Mind as far outweighs drugs in the cure of disease as
in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is divine Science in every case. Is
materia medica a science or a bundle of speculative human theories? The
prescription which succeeds in one instance fails in another, and this is owing
to the different mental states of the patient. These states are not
comprehended and they are left without explanation except in Christian Science.
The rule and its perfection of operation never vary in Science. If you fail to
succeed in any case, it is because you have not demonstrated the life of
Christ, Truth, more in your own life, because you have not obeyed the rule and
proved the Principle of divine Science. |
Old-school physician |
A physician of the old school remarked with great 18
gravity: "We know that mind affects the body somewhat, and advise our patients
to be hopeful and cheerful and to take as little medicine as possible; but mind
can never cure organic difficulties." The logic is lame, and facts contradict
it. The author has cured what is termed organic disease as readily as she has
cured purely functional disease, and with no power but the divine Mind.
|
Tests in our day |
Since God, divine Mind, governs all, not partially but
supremely, predicting disease does not dignify therapeutics. Whatever guides
thought spiritually benefits mind and body. We need to understand the
affirmations of divine Science, dismiss superstition, and demonstrate truth
according to Christ. Today there is hardly a city, village, or hamlet, in which
are not to be found living witnesses and monuments to the virtue and power of
Truth, as applied through this Christian system of healing disease. |
The main purpose |
Today the healing power of Truth is widely
demonstrated as an immanent, eternal Science, instead of a phenomenal
exhibition. Its appearing is the coming anew of the gospel of "on earth peace,
good-will toward men." This coming, as was promised by the Master, is for its
establishment as a permanent dispensation among men; but the mission of
Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, is not
primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought
in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to
demonstrate its divine origin, to attest the reality of the higher mission of
the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world. |
Exploded doctrine |
The science (so-called) of physics would have one
believe that both matter and mind are subject to disease, and that, too, in
spite of the individual's protest and contrary to the law of divine Mind. This
human view infringes man's free moral agency; and it is as evidently erroneous
to the author, and will be to all others at some future day, as the practically
rejected doctrine of the predestination of souls to damnation or salvation. The
doctrine that man's harmony is governed by physical conditions all his earthly
days, and that he is then thrust out of his own body by the operation of
matter, even the doctrine of the superiority of matter over Mind, is fading
out. |
Disease mental |
The hosts of AEsculapius are flooding the world with
diseases, because they are ignorant that the human mind and body are myths. To
be sure, they sometimes treat the sick as if there was but one factor in the
case; but this one factor they represent to be body, not mind. Infinite Mind
could not possibly create a remedy outside of itself, but erring, finite, human
mind has an absolute need of something beyond itself for its redemption and
healing. |
Intentions respected |
Great respect is due the motives and philanthropy of
the higher class of physicians. We know that if they understood the Science of
Mind-healing, and were in possession of the enlarged power it confers to
benefit the race physically and spiritually, they would rejoice with us. Even
this one reform in medicine would ultimately deliver mankind from the awful and
oppressive bondage now enforced by false theories, from which multitudes would
gladly escape. |
Man governed by Mind |
Mortal belief says that death has been occasioned by
fright. Fear never stopped being and its action. The blood, heart, lungs,
brain, etc., have nothing to do with Life, God. Every function of the real man
is governed by the divine Mind. The human mind has no power to kill or to cure,
and it has no control over God's man. The divine Mind that made man maintain
His own image and likeness. The human mind is opposed to God and must be put
off, as St. Paul declares. All that really exists is the divine Mind and its
idea, and in this Mind the entire being is found harmonious and eternal. The
straight and narrow way is to see and acknowledge this fact, yield to this
power, and follow the leadings of truth. |
Mortal mind dethroned
|
That mortal mind claims to govern every organ of the
mortal body, we have overwhelming proof. But this so called mind is a myth, and
must by its own consent yield to Truth. It would wield the sceptre of a
monarch, but it is powerless. The immortal divine Mind takes away all its
supposed sovereignty, and saves mortal mind from itself. The author has
endeavored to make this book the AEsculapius of mind as well as of body, that
it may give hope to the sick and heal them, although they know not how the work
is done. Truth has a healing effect, even when not fully understood. |
All activity from thought
|
Anatomy describes muscular action as produced by mind
in one instance and not in another. Such errors beset every material theory, in
which one statement contradicts another over and over again. It is related that
Sir Humphry Davy once apparently cured a case of paralysis simply by
introducing a thermometer into the patient's mouth. This he did merely to
ascertain the temperature of the patient's body; but the sick man supposed this
ceremony was intended to heal him, and he recovered accordingly. Such a fact
illustrates our theories. |
The author's experiments in
medicine |
The author's medical researches and experiments had
prepared her thought for the metaphysics of Christian Science. Every material
dependence had failed her in her search for truth; and she can now understand
why, and can see the means by which mortals are divinely driven to a spiritual
source for health and happiness. |
Homoeopathic attenuations
|
Her experiments in homoeopathy had made her skeptical
as to material curative methods. Jahr, from Aconitum to Zincum
oxydatum, enumerates the general symptoms, the characteristic signs,
which demand different remedies; but the drug is frequently attenuated to such
a degree that not a vestige of it remains. Thus we learn that it is not the
drug which expels the disease or changes one of the symptoms of disease.
|
Only salt and water |
The author has attenuated Natrum muriaticum
(common table-salt) until there was not a single saline property left. The salt
had "lost his savour;" and yet, with one drop of that attenuation in a goblet
of water, and a teaspoonful of the water administered at intervals of three
hours, she has cured a patient sinking in the last stage of typhoid fever. The
highest attenuation of homoeopathy and the most potent rises above matter into
mind. This discovery leads to more light. From it may be learned that either
human faith or the divine Mind is the healer and that there is no efficacy in a
drug. |
Origin of pain |
You say a boil is painful; but that is impossible, for
matter without mind is not painful. The boil simply manifests, through
inflammation and swelling, a belief in pain, and this belief is called a boil.
Now administer mentally to your patient a high attenuation of truth, and it
will soon cure the boil. The fact that pain cannot exist where there is no
mortal mind to feel it is a proof that this so-called mind makes its own pain
that is, its own belief in pain. |
Source of contagion |
We weep because others weep, we yawn because they
yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but mortal mind, not matter,
contains and carries the infection. When this mental contagion is understood,
we shall be more careful of our mental conditions and we shall avoid loquacious
tattling about disease, as we would avoid advocating crime. Neither sympathy
nor society should ever tempt us to cherish error in any form, and certainly we
should not be error's advocate. Disease arises, like other mental conditions,
from association. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should
be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association, calling
up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation
in the body. |
Imaginary cholera |
This fact in metaphysics is illustrated by the
following incident: A man was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a
cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared,
and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material
contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed. |
Children's ailments |
If a child is exposed to contagion or infection, the
mother is frightened and says, "My child will be sick." The law of mortal mind
and her own fears govern her child more than the child's mind governs itself,
and they produce the very results which might have been prevented through the
opposite understanding. Then it is believed that exposure to the contagion
wrought the mischief. That mother is not a Christian Scientist, and her
affections need better guidance, who says to her child: "You look sick," "You
look tired," "You need rest," or "You need medicine." Such a mother runs to her
little one, who thinks she has hurt her face by falling on the carpet, and
says, moaning more childishly than her child, "Mamma knows you are hurt." The
better and more successful method for any mother to adopt is to say: "Oh, never
mind! You're not hurt, so don't think you are." Presently the child forgets all
about the accident, and is at play. |
Drug-power mental |
When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the
law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which heals; and
according to this faith will the effect be. Even when you take away the
individual confidence in the drug, you have not yet divorced the drug from the
general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the druggist, the doctor, and the
nurse equip the medicine with their faith, and the beliefs which are in the
majority rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate drug as doing
this or that, individual dissent or faith, unless it rests on Science, is but a
belief held by a minority, and such a belief is governed by the majority.
|
Belief in physics |
The universal belief in physics weighs against the
high and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This erroneous general belief,
which sustains medicine and produces all medical results, works against
Christian Science; and the percentage of power on the side of this Science must
mightily outweigh the power of popular belief in order to heal a single case of
disease. The human mind acts more powerfully to offset the discords of matter
and the ills of flesh, in proportion as it puts less weight into the material
or fleshly scale and more weight into the spiritual scale. Homoeopathy
diminishes the drug, but the potency of the medicine increases as the drug
disappears. |
Nature of drugs |
Vegetarianism, homoeopathy, and hydropathy have
diminished drugging; but if drugs are an antidote to disease, why lessen the
antidote? If drugs are good things, is it safe to say that the less in quantity
you have of them the better? If drugs possess intrinsic virtues or intelligent
curative qualities, these qualities must be mental. Who named drugs, and what
made them good or bad for mortals, beneficial or injurious? |
Dropsy cured without drugs
|
A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into
my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and yet, as she
lay in her bed, the patient looked like a barrel. I prescribed the fourth
attenuation of Argentum nitratum with occasional doses of a high
attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then
somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, and learning that her
former physician had prescribed these remedies, I began to fear an aggravation
of symptoms from their prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was
unwilling to give up the medicine while she was recovering. It then occurred to
me to give her unmedicated pellets and watch the result. I did so, and she
continued to gain. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one
day, and risk the effects. After trying this, she informed me that she could
get along two days without globules; but on the third day she again suffered,
and was relieved by taking them. She went on in this way, taking the
unmedicated pellets, and receiving occasional visits from me, but employing no
other means, and she was cured. |
A stately advance |
Metaphysics, as taught in Christian Science, is the
next stately step beyond homoeopathy. In metaphysics, matter disappears from
the remedy entirely, and Mind takes its rightful and supreme place. Homoeopathy
takes mental symptoms largely into consideration in its diagnosis of disease.
Christian Science deals wholly with the mental cause in judging and destroying
disease. It succeeds where homoeopathy fails, solely because its one recognized
Principle of healing is Mind, and the whole force of the mental element is
employed through the Science of Mind, which never shares its rights with
inanimate matter. |
The modus of homoeopathy
|
Christian Science exterminates the drug, and rests on
Mind alone as the curative Principle, acknowledging that the divine Mind has
all power. Homoeopathy mentalizes a drug with such repetition of
thought-attenuations, that the drug becomes more like the human mind than the
substratum of this so-called mind, which we call matter; and the drug's power
of action is proportionately increased. |
Drugging unchristian |
If drugs are part of God's creation, which (according
to the narrative in Genesis) He pronounced good, then drugs cannot be
poisonous. If He could create drugs intrinsically bad, then they should never
be used. If He creates drugs at all and designs them for medical use, why did
Jesus not employ them and recommend them for the treatment of disease? Matter
is not self-creative, for it is unintelligent. Erring mortal mind confers the
power which the drug seems to possess. Narcotics quiet mortal mind, and so
relieve the body; but they leave both mind and body worse for this submission.
Christian Science impresses the entire corporeality, namely, mind and body, and
brings out the proof that Life is continuous and harmonious. Science both
neutralizes error and destroys it. Mankind is the better for this spiritual and
profound pathology. |
Mythology and materia medica
|
It is recorded that the profession of medicine
originated in idolatry with pagan priests, who besought the gods to heal the
sick and designated Apollo as "the god of medicine." He was supposed to have
dictated the first prescription, according to the "History of Four Thousand
Years of Medicine." It is here noticeable that Apollo was also regarded as the
sender of disease, "the god of pestilence." Hippocrates turned from image-gods
to vegetable and mineral drugs for healing. This was deemed progress in
medicine; but what we need is the truth which heals both mind and body. The
future history of material medicine may correspond with that of its material
god, Apollo, who was banished from heaven and endured great sufferings upon
earth. |
Footsteps to intemperance
|
Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes
for the dignity and potency of divine Mind and its efficiency to heal. It is
pitiful to lead men into temptation through the byways of this wilderness
world, to victimize the race with intoxicating prescriptions for the sick,
until mortal mind acquires an educated appetite for strong drink, and men and
women become loathsome sots. |
Advancing degrees |
Evidences of progress and of spiritualization greet us
on every hand. Drug-systems are quitting their hold on matter and so letting in
matter's higher stratum, mortal mind. Homoeopathy, a step in advance of
allopathy, is doing this. Matter is going out of medicine; and mortal mind, of
a higher attenuation than the drug, is governing the pellet. |
Effects of fear |
A woman in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts, was
etherized and died in consequence, although her physicians insisted that it
would be unsafe to perform a needed surgical operation without the ether. After
the autopsy, her sister testified that the deceased protested against inhaling
the ether and said it would kill her, but that she was compelled by her
physicians to take it. Her hands were held, and she was forced into submission.
The case was brought to trial. The evidence was found to be conclusive, and a
verdict was returned that death was occasioned, not by the ether, but by fear
of inhaling it. |
Mental conditions to be heeded
|
Is it skilful or scientific surgery to take no heed of
mental conditions and to treat the patient as if she were so much mindless
matter, and as if matter were the only factor to be consulted? Had these
unscientific surgeons understood metaphysics, they would have considered the
woman's state of mind, and not have risked such treatment. They would either
have allayed her fear or would have performed the operation without ether. The
sequel proved that this Lynn woman died from effects produced by mortal mind,
and not from the disease or the operation. |
False source of knowledge
|
The medical schools would learn the state of man from
matter instead of from Mind. They examine the lungs, tongue, and pulse to
ascertain how much harmony, or health, matter is permitting to matter, how much
pain or pleasure, action or stagnation, one form of matter is allowing another
form of matter. Ignorant of the fact that a man's belief produces disease and
all its symptoms, the ordinary physician is liable to increase disease with his
own mind, when he should address himself to the work of destroying it through
the power of the divine Mind. The systems of physics act against metaphysics,
and vice versa. When mortals forsake the material for the spiritual
basis of action, drugs lose their healing force, for they have no innate power.
Unsupported by the faith reposed in it, the inanimate drug becomes powerless.
|
Obedient muscles |
The motion of the arm is no more dependent upon the
direction of mortal mind, than are the organic action and secretion of the
viscera. When this so-called mind quits the body, the heart becomes as torpid
as the hand. |
Anatomy and mind |
Anatomy finds a necessity for nerves to convey the
mandate of mind to muscle and so cause action; but what does anatomy say when
the cords contract and become immovable? Has mortal mind ceased speaking to
them, or has it bidden them to be impotent? Can muscles, bones, blood, and
nerves rebel against mind in one instance and not in another, and become
cramped despite the mental protest? Unless muscles are self-acting at all
times, they are never so, never capable of acting contrary to mental direction.
If muscles can cease to act and become rigid of their own preference, be
deformed or symmetrical, as they please or as disease directs, they must be
self-directing. Why then consult anatomy to learn how mortal mind governs
muscle, if we are only to learn from anatomy that muscle is not so governed?
|
Mind over matter |
Is man a material fungus without Mind to help him? Is
a stiff joint or a contracted muscle as much a result of law as the supple and
elastic condition of the healthy limb, and is God the lawgiver? You say,
"I have burned my finger." This is an exact statement, more exact than
you suppose; for mortal mind, and not matter, burns it. Holy inspiration has
created states of mind which have been able to nullify the action of the
flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the
Babylonian furnace; while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous
combustion. |
Restrictive regulations
|
In 1880, Massachusetts put her foot on a proposed
tyrannical law, restricting the practice of medicine. If her sister States
follow this example in harmony with our Constitution and Bill of Rights, they
will do less violence to that immortal sentiment of the Declaration, "Man is
endowed by his Maker with certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The oppressive state statutes touching
medicine remind one of the words of the famous Madame Roland, as she knelt
before a statue of Liberty, erected near the guillotine: "Liberty, what crimes
are committed in thy name!" |
Metaphysics challenges physics
|
The ordinary practitioner, examining bodily symptoms,
telling the patient that he is sick, and treating the case according to his
physical diagnosis, would naturally induce the very disease he is trying to
cure, even if it were not already determined by mortal mind. Such unconscious
mistakes would not occur, if this old class of philanthropists looked as deeply
for cause and effect into mind as into matter. The physician agrees with his
"adversary quickly," but upon different terms than does the metaphysician; for
the matter-physician agrees with the disease, while the metaphysician agrees
only with health and challenges disease. |
Truth an alterative |
Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of
Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative,
neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors,
dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness.
The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on
which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind. |
Practical success |
Experiments have favored the fact that Mind governs
the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. The indestructible
faculties of Spirit exist without the conditions of matter and also without the
false beliefs of a so-called material existence. Working out the rules of
Science in practice, the author has restored health in cases of both acute and
chronic disease in their severest forms. Secretions have been changed, the
structure has been renewed, shortened limbs have been elongated, ankylosed
joints have been made supple, and carious bones have been restored to healthy
conditions. I have restored what is called the lost substance of lungs, and
healthy organizations have been established where disease was organic.
Christian Science heals organic disease as surely as it heals what is called
functional, for it requires only a fuller understanding of the divine Principle
of Christian Science to demonstrate the higher rule. |
Testimony of medical teachers
|
With due respect for the faculty, I kindly quote from
Dr. Benjamin Rush, the famous Philadelphia teacher of medical practice. He
declared that "it is impossible to calculate the mischief which Hippocrates has
done, by first marking Nature with his name, and afterward letting her loose
upon sick people." Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, Professor in Harvard University,
declared himself "sick of learned quackery." Dr. James Johnson, Surgeon to
William IV, King Of England, said: |
"I declare my conscientious opinion, founded on
long observation and reflection, that if there were not a single physician,
surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug on the face of the
earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality."
|
Dr. Mason Good, a learned Professor in London, said :
|
"The effects of medicine on the human system are
in the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that it has already destroyed
more lives than war, pestilence, and famine, all combined."
|
Dr. Chapman, Professor of the Institutes and Practice
of Physic in the University of Pennsylvania, in a published essay said
: |
"Consulting the records of our science, we cannot
help being disgusted with the multitude of hypotheses obtruded upon us at
different times. Nowhere is the imagination displayed to a greater extent; and
perhaps so ample an exhibition of human invention might gratify our vanity, if
it were not more than compensated by the humiliating view of so much absurdity,
contradiction, and falsehood. To harmonize the contrarieties of medical
doctrines is indeed a task as impractical as to arrange the fleeting vapors
around us, or to reconcile the fixed and repulsive antipathies of nature. Dark
and perplexed, our devious career resembles the groping of Homer's Cyclops
around his cave." |
Sir John Forbes, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal
College of Physicians, London, said: |
"No systematic or theoretical classification of
diseases or of therapeutic agents, ever yet promulgated, is true, or anything
like the truth, and none can be adopted as a safe guidance in practice."
|
It is just to say that generally the cultured class of
medical practitioners are grand men and women, therefore they are more
scientific than are false claimants to Christian Science. But all human systems
based on material premises are minus the unction of divine Science. Much yet
remains to be said and done before all mankind is saved and all the mental
microbes of sin and all diseased thought-germs are exterminated. If you or I
should appear to die, we should not be dead. The seeming decease, caused by a
majority of human beliefs that man must die, or produced by mental assassins,
does not in the least disprove Christian Science; rather does it evidence the
truth of its basic proposition that mortal thoughts in belief rule the
materiality mis-called life in the body or in matter. But the forever fact
remains paramount that Life, Truth, and Love save from sin, disease, and death.
"When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall
have put on immortality [divine Science], then shall be brought to pass the
saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory" (St. Paul). |
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