Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures
CHAPTER VII
PHYSIOLOGY
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your
life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment? - JESUS. |
He sent His word, and healed them, and delivered
them from their destructions. - PSALMS.
|
PHYSIOLOGY is one of the apples from "the tree of
knowledge." Evil declared that eating this fruit would open man's eyes and make
him as a god. Instead of so doing, it closed the eyes of mortals to man's
God-given dominion over the earth. |
Man not structural |
To measure intellectual capacity by the size of the
brain and strength by the exercise of muscle, is to subjugate intelligence, to
make mind mortal, and to place this so-called mind at the mercy of material
organization and non-intelligent matter. Obedience to the so-called physical
laws of health has not checked sickness. Diseases have multiplied, since
man-made material theories took the place of spiritual truth. |
Causes of sickness |
You say that indigestion, fatigue, sleeplessness,
cause distressed stomachs and aching heads. Then you consult your brain in
order to remember what has hurt you, when your remedy lies in forgetting the
whole thing; for matter has no sensation of its own, and the human mind is all
that can produce pain. As a man thinketh, so is he. Mind is all that feels,
acts, or impedes action. Ignorant of this, or shrinking from its implied
responsibility, the healing effort is made on the wrong side, and thus the
conscious control over the body is lost. |
Delusions pagan and medical
|
The Mohammedan believes in a pilgrimage to Mecca for
the salvation of his soul. The popular doctor believes in his prescription, and
the pharmacist believes in the power of his drugs to save a man's life. The
Mohammedan's belief is a religious delusion; the doctor's and pharmacist's is a
medical mistake. |
Health from reliance on
spirituality |
The erring human mind is inharmonious in itself. From
it arises the inharmonious body. To ignore God as of little use in sickness is
a mistake. Instead of thrusting Him aside in times of bodily trouble, and
waiting for the hour of strength in which to acknowledge Him, we should learn
that He can do all things for us in sickness as in health. Failing to recover
health through adherence to physiology and hygiene, the despairing invalid
often drops them, and in his extremity and only as a last resort, turns to God.
The invalid's faith in the divine Mind is less than in drugs, air, and
exercise, or he would have resorted to Mind first. The balance of power is
conceded to be with matter by most of the medical systems; but when Mind at
last asserts its mastery over sin, disease, and death, then is man found to be
harmonious and immortal. Should we implore a corporeal God to heal the sick out
of His personal volition, or should we understand the infinite divine Principle
which heals? If we rise no higher than blind faith, the Science of healing is
not attained, and Soul-existence, in the place of sense-existence, is not
comprehended. We apprehend Life in divine Science only as we live above
corporeal sense and correct it. Our proportionate admission of the claims of
good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence, our health, our
longevity, and our Christianity. |
The two masters |
We cannot serve two masters nor perceive divine
Science with the material senses. Drugs and hygiene cannot successfully usurp
the place and power of the divine source of all health and perfection. If God
made man both good and evil, man must remain thus. What can improve God's work?
Again, an error in the premise must appear in the conclusion. To have one God
and avail yourself of the power of Spirit, you must love God supremely.
|
Half-way success |
The "flesh lusteth against the Spirit." The flesh and
Spirit can no more unite in action, than good can coincide with evil. It is not
wise to take a halting and half-way position or to expect to work equally with
Spirit and matter, Truth and error. There, is but one way namely, God and His
idea which leads to spiritual being. The scientific government of the body must
be attained through the divine Mind. It is impossible to gain control over the
body in any other way. On this fundamental point, timid conservatism is
absolutely inadmissible. Only through radical reliance on Truth can scientific
healing power be realized. Substituting good words for a good life, fair
seeming for straightforward character, is a poor shift for the weak and
worldly, who think the standard of Christian Science too high for them.
|
Belief on the wrong side
|
If the scales are evenly adjusted, the removal of a
single weight from either scale gives preponderance to the opposite. Whatever
influence you cast on the side of matter, you take away from Mind, which would
otherwise outweigh all else. Your belief militates against your health, when it
ought to be enlisted on the side of health. When sick (according to belief) you
rush after drugs, search out the material so-called laws of health, and depend
upon them to heal you, though you have already brought yourself into the slough
of disease through just this false belief. |
The divine authority |
Because man-made systems insist that man becomes sick
and useless, suffers and dies, all in consonance with the laws of God, are we
to believe it? Are we to believe an authority which denies God's spiritual
command relating to perfection, an authority which Jesus proved to be false? He
did the will of the Father. He healed sickness in defiance of what is called
material law, but in accordance with God's law, the law of Mind. |
Disease foreseen |
I have discerned disease in the human mind, and
recognized the patient's fear of it, months before the so-called disease made
its appearance in the body. Disease being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal
mind, the sensation would not appear if the error of belief was met and
destroyed by truth. |
Changed mentality |
Here let a word be noticed which will be better
understood hereafter, chemicalization. By chemicalization I mean the
process which mortal mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a
material to a spiritual basis. |
Scientific foresight |
Whenever an aggravation of symptoms has occurred
through mental chemicalization, I have seen the mental signs, assuring me that
danger was over, before the patient felt the change; and I have said to the
patient, "You are healed," sometimes to his discomfiture, when he was
incredulous. But it always came about as I had foretold. I name these facts to
show that disease has a mental, mortal origin, that faith in rules of health or
in drugs begets and fosters disease by attracting the mind to the subject of
sickness, by exciting fear of disease, and by dosing the body in order to avoid
it. The faith reposed in these things should find stronger supports and a
higher home. If we understood the control of Mind over body, we should put no
faith in material means. |
Mind the only healer |
Science not only reveals the origin of all disease as
mental, but it also declares that all disease is cured by divine Mind. There
can be no healing except by this Mind, however much we trust a drug or any
other means towards which human faith or endeavor is directed. It is mortal
mind, not matter, which brings to the sick whatever good they may seem to
receive from materiality. But the sick are never really healed except by means
of the divine power. Only the action of Truth, Life, and Love can give harmony.
|
Modes of matter |
Whatever teaches man to have other laws and to
acknowledge other powers than the divine Mind, is anti-Christian. The good that
a poisonous drug seems to do is evil, for it robs man of reliance on God,
omnipotent Mind, and according to belief, poisons the human system. Truth is
not the basis of theogony. Modes of matter form neither a moral nor a spiritual
system. The discord which calls for material methods is the result of the
exercise of faith in material modes, faith in matter instead of in Spirit.
|
Physiology unscientific
|
Did Jesus understand the economy of man less than
Graham or Cutter? Christian ideas certainly present what human theories exclude
the Principle of man's harmony. The text, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me
shall never die," not only contradicts human systems, but points to the
self-sustaining and eternal Truth. The demands of Truth are spiritual, and
reach the body through Mind. The best interpreter of man's needs said: "Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink." If there are
material laws which prevent disease, what then causes it? Not divine law, for
Jesus healed the sick and cast out error, always in opposition, never in
obedience, to physics. |
Causation considered
|
Spiritual causation is the one question to be
considered, for more than all others spiritual causation relates to human
progress. The age seems ready to approach this subject, to ponder somewhat the
supremacy of Spirit, and at least to touch the hem of Truth's garment. The
description of man as purely physical, or as both material and spiritual, but
in either case dependent upon his physical organization, is the Pandora box,
from which all ills have gone forth, especially despair. Matter, which takes
divine power into its own hands and claims to be a creator, is a fiction, in
which paganism and lust are so sanctioned by society that mankind has caught
their moral contagion. |
Paradise regained |
Through discernment of the spiritual opposite of
materiality, even the way through Christ, Truth, man will reopen with the key
of divine Science the gates of Paradise which human beliefs have closed, and
will find himself unfallen, upright, pure, and free, not needing to consult
almanacs for the probabilities either of his life or of the weather, not
needing to study brainology to learn how much of a man he is. |
A closed question |
Mind's control over the universe, including man, is
no longer an open question, but is demonstrable Science. Jesus illustrated the
divine Principle and the power of immortal Mind by healing sickness and sin and
destroying the foundations of death. |
Matter versus Spirit
|
Mistaking his origin and nature, man believes himself
to be combined matter and Spirit. He believes that Spirit is sifted through
matter, carried on a nerve, exposed to ejection by the operation of matter. The
intellectual, the moral, the spiritual, yea, the image of infinite Mind,
subject to non-intelligence! No more sympathy exists between the flesh and
Spirit than between Belial and Christ. The so-called laws of matter are nothing
but false beliefs that intelligence and life are present where Mind is not.
These false beliefs are the procuring cause of all sin and disease. The
opposite truth, that intelligence and life are spiritual, never material,
destroys sin, sickness, and death. The fundamental error lies in the
supposition that man is a material outgrowth and that the cognizance of good or
evil, which he has through the bodily senses, constitutes his happiness or
misery. |
Godless Evolution |
Theorizing about man's development from mushrooms to
monkeys and from monkeys into men amounts to nothing in the right direction and
very much in the wrong. Materialism grades the human species as rising from
matter upward. How then is the material species maintained, if man passes
through what we call death and death is the Rubicon of spirituality? Spirit can
form no real link in this supposed chain of material being. But divine Science
reveals the eternal chain of existence as uninterrupted and wholly spiritual;
yet this can be realized only as the false sense of being disappears. |
Degrees of development
|
If man was first a material being, he must have
passed through all the forms of matter in order to become man. If the material
body is man, he is a portion of matter, or dust. On the contrary, man is the
image and likeness of Spirit; and the belief that there is Soul in sense or
Life in matter obtains in mortals, alias mortal mind, to which the
apostle refers when he says that we must "put off the old man." |
Identity not lost |
What is man? Brain, heart, blood, bones, etc., the
material structure? If the real man is in the material body, you take away a
portion of the man when you amputate a limb; the surgeon destroys manhood, and
worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb or injury to a tissue is sometimes
the quickener of manliness; and the unfortunate cripple may present more
nobility than the statuesque athlete, teaching us by his very deprivations,
that "a man's a man, for a' that." |
When man is man |
When we admit that matter (heart, blood, brain, acting
through the five physical senses) constitutes man, we fail to see how anatomy
can distinguish between humanity and the brute, or determine when man is
really man and has progressed farther than his animal progenitors.
|
Individualization |
When the supposition, that Spirit is within what it
creates and the potter is subject to the clay, is individualized, Truth is
reduced to the level of error, and the sensible is required to be made manifest
through the insensible. What is termed matter manifests nothing but a material
mentality. Neither the substance nor the manifestation of Spirit is obtainable
through matter. Spirit is positive. Matter is Spirit's contrary, the absence of
Spirit. For positive Spirit to pass through a negative condition would be
Spirit's destruction. |
Man not structural |
Anatomy declares man to be structural. Physiology
continues this explanation, measuring human strength by bones and sinews, and
human life by material law. Man is spiritual, individual, and eternal; material
structure is mortal. Phrenology makes man knavish or honest according to the
development of the cranium; but anatomy, physiology, phrenology, do not define
the image of God, the real immortal man. Human reason and religion come slowly
to the recognition of spiritual facts, and so continue to call upon matter to
remove the error which the human mind alone has created. The idols of
civilization are far more fatal to health and longevity than are the idols of
barbarism. The idols of civilization call into action less faith than Buddhism
in a supreme governing intelligence. The Esquimaux restore health by
incantations as consciously as do civilized practitioners by their more studied
methods. Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow
down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air? Nothing
save divine power is capable of doing so much for man as he can do for himself.
|
Rise of thought |
The footsteps of thought, rising above material
stand-points, are slow, and portend a long night to the traveller; but the
angels of His presence the spiritual intuitions that tell us when "the night is
far spent, the day is at hand" are our guardians in the gloom. Whoever opens
the way in Christian Science is a pilgrim and stranger, marking out the path
for generations yet unborn. The thunder of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount
are pursuing and will overtake the ages, rebuking in their course all error and
proclaiming the kingdom of heaven on earth. Truth is revealed. It needs only to
be practised. |
Medical errors |
Mortal belief is all that enables a drug to cure
mortal ailments. Anatomy admits that mind is somewhere in man, though out of
sight. Then, if an individual is sick, why treat the body alone and administer
a dose of despair to the mind? Why declare that the body is diseased, and
picture this disease to the mind, rolling it under the tongue as a sweet morsel
and holding it before the thought of both physician and patient? We should
understand that the cause of disease obtains in the mortal human mind, and its
cure comes from the immortal divine Mind. We should prevent the images of
disease from taking form in thought, and we should efface the outlines of
disease already formulated in the minds of mortals. |
Novel Diseases |
When there are fewer prescriptions, and less thought
is given to sanitary subjects, there will be better constitutions and less
disease. In old times who ever heard of dyspepsia, cerebro-spinal meningitis,
hay-fever, and rose-cold? What an abuse of natural beauty to say that a rose,
the smile of God, can produce suffering! The joy of its presence, its beauty
and fragrance, should uplift the thought, and dissuade any sense of fear or
fever. It is profane to fancy that the perfume of clover and the breath of
new-mown hay can cause glandular inflammation, sneezing, and nasal pangs.
|
No ancestral dyspepsia
|
If a random thought, calling itself dyspepsia, had
tried to tyrannize over our forefathers, it would have been routed by their
independence and industry. Then people had less time for selfishness, coddling,
and sickly after-dinner talk. The exact amount of food the stomach could digest
was not discussed according to Cutter nor referred to sanitary laws. A man's
belief in those days was not so severe upon the gastric juices. Beaumont's
"Medical Experiments" did not govern the digestion. |
Pulmonary misbeliefs |
Damp atmosphere and freezing snow empurpled the plump
cheeks of our ancestors, but they never indulged in the refinement of inflamed
bronchial tubes. They were as innocent as Adam, before he ate the fruit of
false knowledge, of the existence of tubercles and troches, lungs and lozenges.
|
Our modern Eves |
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,"
says the English poet, and there is truth in his sentiment. The action of
mortal mind on the body was not so injurious before inquisitive modern Eves
took up the study of medical works and unmanly Adams attributed their own
downfall and the fate of their offspring to the weakness of their wives. The
primitive custom of taking no thought about food left the stomach and bowels
free to act in obedience to nature, and gave the gospel a chance to be seen in
its glorious effects upon the body. A ghastly array of diseases was not paraded
before the imagination. There were fewer books on digestion and more "sermons
in stones, and good in everything." When the mechanism of the human mind gives
place to the divine Mind, selfishness and sin, disease and death, will lose
their foothold. Human fear of miasma would load with disease the air of Eden,
and weigh down mankind with superimposed and conjectural evils. Mortal mind is
the worst foe of the body, while divine Mind is its best friend. |
Diseases not to be classified
|
Should all cases of organic disease be treated by a
regular practitioner, and the Christian Scientist try truth only in cases of
hysteria, hypochon dria, and hallucination? One disease is no more real than
another. All disease is the result of education, and disease can carry its
ill-effects no farther than mortal mind maps out the way. The human mind, not
matter, is supposed to feel, suffer, enjoy. Hence decided types of acute
disease are quite as ready to yield to Truth as the less distinct type and
chronic form of disease. Truth handles the most malignant contagion with
perfect assurance. |
One basis for all sickness
|
Human mind produces what is termed organic disease as
certainly as it produces hysteria, and it must relinquish all its errors,
sicknesses, and sins. I have demonstrated this beyond all cavil. The evidence
of divine Mind's healing power and absolute control is to me as certain as the
evidence of my own existence. |
Mental and physical oneness
|
Mortal mind and body are one. Neither exists without
the other, and both must be destroyed by immortal Mind. Matter, or body, is but
a false concept of mortal mind. This so-called mind builds its own
superstructure, of which the material body is the grosser portion; but from
first to last, the body is a sensuous, human concept. |
The effect of names |
In the Scriptural allegory of the material creation,
Adam or error, which represents the erroneous theory of life and intelligence
in matter , had the naming of all that was material. These names indicated
matter's properties, qualities, and forms. But a lie, the opposite of Truth,
cannot name the qualities andeffects of what is termed matter, and create the
so-called laws of the flesh, nor can a lie hold the preponderance of power in
any direction against God, Spirit and Truth. |
Poison defined mentally
|
If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and
the patient dies even though physician and patient are expecting favorable
results, does human belief, you ask, cause this death? Even so, and as directly
as if the poison had been intentionally taken. In such cases a few persons
believe the potion swallowed by the patient to be harmless, but the vast
majority of mankind, though they know nothing of this particular case and this
special person, believe the arsenic, the strychnine, or whatever the drug used,
to be poisonous, for it is set down as a poison by mortal mind. Consequently,
the result is controlled by the majority of opinions, not by the infinitesimal
minority of opinions in the sick-chamber. Heredity is not a law. The remote
cause or belief of disease is not dangerous because of its priority and the
connection of past mortal thoughts with present. The predisposing cause and the
exciting cause are mental. Perhaps an adult has a deformity produced prior to
his birth by the fright of his mother. When wrested from human belief and based
on Science or the divine Mind, to which all things are possible, that chronic
case is not difficult to cure. |
Animal magnetism destroyed
|
Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensation in
matter, is animal magnetism; but this so-called mind, from which comes all
evil, contradicts itself, and must finally yield to the eternal Truth, or the
divine Mind, expressed in Science. In proportion to our understanding of
Christian Science, we are freed from the belief of heredity, of mind in matter
or animal magnetism; and we disarm sin of its imaginary power in proportion to
our spiritual understanding of the status of immortal being. Ignorant of the
methods and the basis of metaphysical healing, you may attempt to unite with it
hypnotism, spiritualism, electricity; but none of these methods can be mingled
with metaphysical healing. Whoever reaches the understanding of Christian
Science in its proper signification will perform the sudden cures of which it
is capable; but this can be done only by taking up the cross and following
Christ in the daily life. |
Absent patients |
Science can heal the sick, who are absent from their
healers, as well as those present, since space is no obstacle to Mind. Immortal
Mind heals what eye hath not seen; but the spiritual capacity to apprehend
thought and to heal by the Truth-power, is won only as man is found, not in
self-righteousness, but reflecting the divine nature. |
Horses mistaught |
Every medical method has its advocates. The preference
of mortal mind for a certain method creates a demand for that method, and the
body then seems to require such treatment. You can even educate a healthy horse
so far in physiology that he will take cold without his blanket, whereas the
wild animal, left to hisinstincts, sniffs the wind with delight. The epizootic
is a humanly evolved ailment, which a wild horse might never have. |
Medical works objectionable
|
Treatises on anatomy, physiology, and health,
sustained by what is termed material law, are the promoters of sickness and
disease. It should not be proverbial, that so long as you read medical works
you will be sick. The sedulous matron studying her Jahr with homoeopathic
pellet and powder in hand, ready to put you into a sweat, to move the bowels,
or to produce sleep is unwittingly sowing the seeds of reliance on matter, and
her household may erelong reap the effect of this mistake. Descriptions of
disease given by physicians and advertisements of quackery are both prolific
sources of sickness. As mortal mind is the husbandman of error, it should be
taught to do the body no harm and to uproot its false sowing. |
The invalid's outlook
|
The patient sufferer tries to be satisfied when he
sees his would-be healers busy, and his faith in their efforts is somewhat
helpful to them and to himself; but in Science one must understand the
resuscitating law of Life. This is the seed within itself bearing fruit after
its kind, spoken of in Genesis. Physicians should not deport themselves as if
Mind were non-existent, nor take the ground that all causation is matter,
instead of Mind. Ignorant that the human mind governs the body, its phenomenon,
the invalid may unwittingly add more fear to the mental reservoir already
overflowing with that emotion. |
Wrong and right way |
Doctors should not implant disease in the thoughts of
their patients, as they so frequently do, by declaring disease to be a fixed
fact, even before they go to work to eradicate the disease through the material
faith which they inspire. Instead of furnishing thought with fear, they should
try to correct this turbulent element of mortal mind by the influence of divine
Love which casteth out fear. When man is governed by God, the ever-present Mind
who understands all things, man knows that with God all things are possible.
The only way to this living Truth, which heals the sick, is found in the
Science of divine Mind as taught and demonstrated by Christ Jesus. |
The important decision
|
To reduce inflammation, dissolve a tumor, or cure
organic disease, I have found divine Truth more potent than all lower remedies.
And why not, since Mind, God, is the source and condition of all existence?
Before deciding that the body, matter, is disordered, one should ask, "Who art
thou that repliest to Spirit? Can matter speak for itself, or does it hold the
issues of life?" Matter, which can neither suffer nor enjoy, has no partnership
with pain and pleasure, but mortal belief has such a partnership. |
Manipulation unscientific
|
When you manipulate patients, you trust in
electricity and magnetism more than in Truth; and for that reason, you employ
matter rather than Mind. You weaken or destroy your power when you resort to
any except spiritual means. It is foolish to declare that you manipulate
patients but that you lay no stress on manipulation. If this be so, why
manipulate? In reality you manipulate because you are ignorant of the baneful
effects of magnetism, or are not sufficiently spiritual to depend on Spirit. In
either case you must improve your mental condition till you finally attain the
understanding of Christian Science. |
Not words but deeds |
If you are too material to love the Science of Mind
and are satisfied with good words instead of effects, if you adhere to error
and are afraid to trust Truth, the question then recurs, "Adam, where art
thou?" It is unnecessary to resort to aught besides Mind in order to satisfy
the sick that you are doing something for them, for if they are cured, they
generally know it and are satisfied. "Where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also." If you have more faith in drugs than in Truth, this faith will
incline you to the side of matter and error. Any hypnotic power you may
exercise will diminish your ability to become a Scientist, and vice
versa. The act of healing the sick through divine Mind alone, of casting
out error with Truth, shows your position as a Christian Scientist. |
Physiology or Spirit
|
The demands of God appeal to thought only; but the
claims of mortality, and what are termed laws of nature, appertain to matter.
Which, then, are we to accept as legitimate and capable of producing the
highest human good? We cannot obey both physiology and Spirit, for one
absolutely destroys the other, and one or the other must be supreme in the
affections. It is impossible to work from two standpoints. If we attempt it, we
shall presently "hold to the one, and despise the other." The hypotheses of
mortals are antagonistic to Science and cannot mix with it. This is clear to
those, who heal the sick on the basis of Science. |
No material law |
Mind's government of the body must supersede the
so-called laws of matter. Obedience to material law prevents full obedience to
spiritual law, the law which overcomes material conditions and puts matter
under the feet of Mind. Mortals entreat the divine Mind to heal the sick, and
forthwith shut out the aid of Mind by using material means, thus working
against themselves and their prayers and denying man's Godgiven ability to
demonstrate Mind's sacred power. Pleas' for drugs and laws of health come from
some sad incident, or else from ignorance of Christian Science and its
transcendent power. To admit that sickness is a condition over which God has no
control, is to presuppose that omnipotent power is powerless on some occasions.
The law of Christ, or Truth, makes all things possible to Spirit; but the
so-called laws of matter would render Spirit of no avail, and demand obedience
to materialistic codes, thus departing from the basis of one God, one lawmaker.
To suppose that God constitutes laws of inharmony is a mistake; discords have
no support from nature or divine law, however much is said to the contrary. Can
the agriculturist, according to belief, produce a crop without sowing the seed
and awaiting its germination according to the laws of nature? The answer is no,
and yet the Scriptures inform us that sin, or error, first caused the
condemnation of man to till the ground, and indicate that obedience to God will
remove this necessity. Truth never made error necessary, nor devised a law to
perpetuate error. |
Laws of nature spiritual
|
The supposed laws which result in weariness and
disease are not His laws, for the legitimate and only possible action of Truth
is the production of harmony. Laws of nature are laws of Spirit; but mortals
commonly recognize as law that which hides the power of Spirit. Divine Mind
rightly demands man's entire obedience, affection, and strength. No reservation
is made for any lesser loyalty. Obedience to Truth gives man power and
strength. Submission to error superinduces loss of power. |
Belief and understanding
|
Truth casts out all evils and materialistic methods
with the actual spiritual law, the law which gives sight to the blind, hearing
to the deaf, voice to the dumb, feet to the lame. If Christian Science
dishonors human belief, it honors spiritual understanding; and the one Mind
only is entitled to honor. The so-called laws of health are simply laws of
mortal belief. The premises being erroneous, the conclusions are wrong. Truth
makes no laws to regulate sickness, sin, and death, for these are unknown to
Truth and should not be recognized as reality. Belief produces the results of
belief, and the penalties it affixes last so long as the belief and are
inseparable from it. The remedy consists in probing the trouble to the bottom,
in finding and casting out by denial the error of belief which produces a
mortal disorder, never honoring erroneous belief with the title of law nor
yielding obedience to it. Truth, Life, and Love are the only legitimate and
eternal demands on man, and they are spiritual lawgivers, enforcing obedience
through divine statutes. |
Laws of human belief |
Controlled by the divine intelligence, man is
harmonious and eternal. Whatever is governed by a false belief is discordant
and mortal. We say man suffers from the effects of cold, heat, fatigue. This is
human belief, not the truth of being, for matter cannot suffer. Mortal mind
alone suffers, not because a law of matter has been transgressed, but because a
law of this so-called mind has been disobeyed. I have demonstrated this as a
rule of divine Science by destroying the delusion of suffering from what is
termed a fatally broken physical law. A woman, whom I cured of consumption,
always breathed with great difficulty when the wind was from the east. I sat
silently by her side a few moments. Her breath came gently. The inspirations
were deep and natural. I then requested her to look at the weather-vane. She
looked and saw that it pointed due east. The wind had not changed, but her
thought of it had and so her difficulty in breathing had gone. The wind had not
produced the difficulty. My metaphysical treatment changed the action of her
belief on the lungs, and she never suffered again from east winds, but was
restored to health. |
A so-called mind-cure
|
No system of hygiene but Christian Science is purely
mental. Before this book was published, other books were in circulation, which
discussed "mental medicine" and "mind-cure," operating through the power of the
earth's magnetic currents to regulate life and health. Such theories and such
systems of so-called mind-cure, which have sprung up, are as material as the
prevailing systems of medicine. They have their birth in mortal mind, which
puts forth a human conception in the name of Science to match the divine
Science of immortal Mind, even as the necromancers of Egypt strove to emulate
the wonders wrought by Moses. Such theories have no relationship to Christian
Science, which rests on the conception of God as the only Life, substance, and
intelligence, and excludes the human mind as a spiritual factor in the healing
work. |
Jesus and hypnotism |
Jesus cast out evil and healed the sick, not only
without drugs, but without hypnotism, which is the reverse of ethical and
pathological Truth-power. Erroneous mental practice may seem for a time to
benefit the sick, but the recovery is not permanent. This is because erroneous
methods act on and through the material stratum of the human mind, called
brain, which is but a mortal consolidation of material mentality and its
suppositional activities. |
False stimulus |
A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed
only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by emptying his thought of
the false stimulus and reaction of will-power and filling it with the divine
energies of Truth. Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the
understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work determines health.
Erring human mind-forces can work only evil under whatever name or pretence
they are employed; for Spirit and matter, good and evil, light and darkness,
cannot mingle. |
Evil negative and self-destructive
|
Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of
truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It is unreal,
because it presupposes the absence of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent.
Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil. Evil
is self-assertive. It says: "I am a real entity, overmastering good." This
falsehood should strip evil of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to
destroy itself. It can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil to
destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily punishing the
evil-doer. If we concede the same reality to discord as to harmony, discord has
as lasting a claim upon us as has harmony. If evil is as real as good, evil is
also as immortal. If death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth. If pain
is as real as the absence of pain, both must be immortal; and if so, harmony
cannot be the law of being. |
Ignorant idolatry |
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be
self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it would be better. Since
it must believe in something besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity. The
human mind has been an idolater from the beginning, having other gods and
believing in more than the one Mind. As mortals do not comprehend even mortal
existence, how ignorant must they be of the all-knowing Mind and of His
creations. Here you may see how so-called material sense creates its own forms
of thought, gives them material names, and then worships and fears them. With
pagan blindness, it attributes to some material god or medicine an ability
beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and enslave it, and then
impute this result to another illusive personification, named Satan. |
Action of mortal mind
|
The valves of the heart, opening and closing for the
passage of the blood, obey the mandate of mortal mind as directly as does the
hand, admittedly moved by the will. Anatomy allows the mental cause of the
latter action, but not of the former. We say, "My hand hath done it." What is
this my but mortal mind, the cause of all materialistic action? All
voluntary, as well as miscalled involuntary, action of the mortal body
is governed by this so-called mind, not by matter. There is no involuntary
action. The divine Mind includes all action and volition, and man in Science is
governed by this Mind. The human mind tries to classify action as voluntary and
involuntary, and suffers from the attempt. |
Death and the body |
If you take away this erring mind, the mortal
material body loses all appearance of life or action, and this so-called mind
then calls itself dead; but the human mind still holds in belief a body,
through which it acts and which appears to the human mind to live, a body like
the one it had before death. This body is put off only as the mortal, erring
mind yields to God, immortal Mind, and man is found in His image. |
Embryonic sinful thoughts
|
What is termed disease does not exist. It is neither
mind nor matter. The belief of sin, which has grown terrible in strength and
influence, is an unconscious error in the beginning, an embryonic thought
without motive; but afterwards it governs the so-called man. Passion, depraved
appetites, dishonesty, envy, hatred, revenge ripen into action, only to pass
from shame and woe to their final punishment. |
Disease a dream |
Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in
matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the dream we have
in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of
mind. In both the waking, and the sleeping dream, the dreamer thinks that his
body is material and the suffering is in that body. The smile of the sleeper
indicates the sensation produced physically by the pleasure of a dream. In the
same way pain and pleasure, sickness and care, are traced upon mortals by
unmistakable signs. Sickness is a growth of error, springing from mortal
ignorance or fear. Error rehearses error. What causes disease cannot cure it.
The soil of disease is mortal mind, and you have an abundant or scanty crop of
disease, according to the seedlings of fear. Sin and the fear of disease must
be uprooted and cast out. |
Sense yields to understanding
|
When darkness comes over the earth, the physical
senses have no immediate evidence of a sun. The human eye knows not where the
orb of day is, nor if it exists. Astronomy gives the desired information
regarding the sun. The human or material senses yield to the authority of this
science, and they are willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of the
sun's influence over the earth. If the eyes see no sun for a week, we still
believe that there is solar light and heat. Science (in this instance named
natural) raises the human thought above the cruder theories of the human mind,
and casts out a fear. In like manner mortals should no more deny the power of
Christian Science to establish harmony and to explain the effect of mortal mind
on the body, though the cause be unseen, than they should deny the existence of
the sun light when the orb of day disappears, or doubt that the sun will
reappear. The sins of others should not make good men suffer. |
Ascending the scale |
We call the body material; but it is as truly mortal
mind, according to its degree, as is the material brain which is supposed to
furnish the evidence of all mortal thought or things. The human mortal mind, by
an inevitable perversion, makes all things start from the lowest instead of
from the highest mortal thought. The reverse is the case with all the
formations of the immortal divine Mind. They proceed from the divine source;
and so, in tracing them, we constantly ascend in infinite being. |
Human reproduction |
From mortal mind comes the reproduction of the
species, first the belief of inanimate, and then of animate matter. According
to mortal thought, the development of embryonic mortal mind commences in the
lower, basal portion of the brain, and goes on in an ascending scale by
evolution, keeping always in the direct line of matter, for matter is the
subjective condition of mortal mind. Next we have the formation of so-called
embryonic mortal mind, afterwards mortal men or mortals, all this while matter
is a belief, ignorant of itself, ignorant of what it is supposed to produce.
The mortal says that an inanimate unconscious seedling is producing mortals,
both body and mind; and yet neither a mortal mind nor the immortal Mind is
found in brain or elsewhere in matter or in mortals. |
Human stature |
This embryonic and materialistic human belief called
mortal man in turn fills itself with thoughts of pain and pleasure, of life and
death, and arranges itself into five so-called senses, which presently measure
mind by the size of a brain and the bulk of a body, called man. |
Human frailty |
Human birth, growth, maturity, and decay are as the
grass springing from the soil with beautiful green blades, afterwards to wither
and return to its native nothingness. This mortal seeming is temporal; it never
merges into immortal being, but finally disappears, and immortal man, spiritual
and eternal, is found to be the real man. The Hebrew bard, swayed by mortal
thoughts, thus swept his lyre with saddening strains on human existence:
|
As for man, his days are as grass: As a
flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is
gone; And the place thereof shall know it no more. |
When hope rose higher in the human heart, he sang:
As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness. I shall be
satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness. For with Thee is the fountain of
life; In Thy light shall we see light. |
The brain can give no idea of God's man. It can take
no cognizance of Mind. Matter is not the organ of infinite Mind. As mortals
give up the delusion that there is more than one Mind, more than one God, man
in God's likeness will appear, and this eternal man will include in that
likeness no material element. |
The immortal birth |
As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a
misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns
upon human thought, and leads it to "where the young child was," even to the
birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life
includes. This the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of
light, chasing away the darkness of error. |
Spiritual freedom |
The human thought must free itself from self-imposed
materiality and bondage. It should no longer ask of the head, heart, or lungs:
What are man's prospects for life? Mind is not helpless. Intelligence is not
mute before non-intelligence. By its own volition, not a blade of grass springs
up, not a spray buds within the vale, not a leaf unfolds its fair outlines, not
a flower starts from its cloistered cell. The Science of being reveals man and
immortality as based on Spirit. Physical sense defines mortal man as based on
matter, and from this premise infers the mortality of the body. |
No physical affinity
|
The illusive senses may fancy affinities with their
opposites; but in Christian Science, Truth never mingles with error. Mind has
no affinity with matter, and therefore Truth is able to cast out the ills of
the flesh. Mind, God, sends forth the aroma of Spirit, the atmosphere of
intelligence. The belief that a pulpy substance under the skull is mind is a
mockery of intelligence, a mimicry of Mind. We are Christian Scientists, only
as we quit our reliance upon that which is false and grasp the true. We are not
Christian Scientists until we leave all for Christ. Human opinions are not
spiritual. They come from the hearing of the ear, from corporeality instead of
from Principle, and from the mortal instead of from the immortal. Spirit is not
separate from God. Spirit is God. |
Human power a blind force
|
Erring power is a material belief, a blind miscalled
force, the offspring of will and not of wisdom, of the mortal mind and not of
the immortal. It is the headlong cataract, the devouring flame, the tempest's
breath. It is lightning and hurricane, all that is selfish, wicked, dishonest,
and impure. |
The one real power |
Moral and spiritual might belong to Spirit, who holds
the "wind in His fists;" and this teaching accords with Science and harmony. In
Science, you can have no power opposed to God, and the physical senses must
give up their false testimony. Your influence for good depends upon the weight
you throw into the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you the only
power obtainable. Evil is not power. It is a mockery of strength, which erelong
betrays its weakness and falls, never to rise. We walk in the footsteps of
Truth and Love by following the example of our Master in the understanding of
divine metaphysics. Christianity is the basis of true healing. Whatever holds
human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power.
|
Mind cures hip-disease
|
I was called to visit Mr. Clark in Lynn, who had been
confined to his bed six months with hip-disease, caused by a fall upon a wooden
spike when quite a boy. On entering the house I met his physician, who said
that the patient was dying. The physician had just probed the ulcer on the hip,
and said the bone was carious for several inches. He even showed me the probe,
which had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The doctor went
out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and sightless. The dew of death was on
his brow. I went to his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its
death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids closed gently and the
breathing became natural; he was asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his
eyes and said: "I feel like a new man. My suffering is all gone." It was
between three and four o'clock in the afternoon when this took place. I told
him to rise, dress himself, and take supper with his family. He did so. The
next day I saw him in the yard. Since then I have not seen him, but am informed
that he went to work in two weeks. The discharge from the sore stopped, and the
sore was healed. The diseased condition had continued there ever since the
injury was received in boyhood. Since his recovery I have been informed that
his physician claims to have cured him, and that his mother has been threatened
with incarceration in an insane asylum for saying: "It was none other than God
and that woman who healed him." I cannot attest the truth of that report, but
what I saw and did for that man, and what his physician said of the case,
occurred just as I have narrated. It has been demonstrated to me that Life is
God and that the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its strength with matter
or with human will. Reviewing this brief experience, I cannot fail to discern
the coincidence of the spiritual idea of man with the divine Mind. |
Change of belief |
A change in human belief changes all the physical
symptoms, and determines a case for better or for worse. When one's false
belief is corrected Truth sends a report of health over the body. Destruction
of the auditory nerve and paralysis of the optic nerve are not necessary to
ensure deafness and blindness; for if mortal mind says, "I am deaf and blind,"
it will be so without an injured nerve. Every theory opposed to this fact (as I
learned in metaphysics) would presuppose man, who is immortal in spiritual
understanding, a mortal in material belief. |
Power of habit |
The authentic history of Kaspar Hauser is a useful
hint as to the frailty and inadequacy of mortal mind. It proves beyond a doubt
that education constitutes this so-called mind, and that, in turn, mortal mind
manifests itself in the body by the false sense it imparts. Incarcerated in a
dungeon, where neither sight nor sound could reach him, at the age of seventeen
Kaspar was still a mental infant, crying and chattering with no more
intelligence than a babe, and realizing Tennyson's description: |
An infant crying in the night, An infant crying
for the light, And with no language but a cry. |
His case proves material sense to be but a belief
formed by education alone. The light which affords us joy gave him a belief of
intense pain. His eyes were inflamed by the light. After the babbling boy had
been taught to speak a few words, he asked to be taken back to his dungeon, and
said that he should never be happy elsewhere. Outside of dismal darkness and
cold silence he found no peace. Every sound convulsed him with anguish. All
that he ate, except his black crust, produced violent retchings. All that gives
pleasure to our educated senses gave him pain through those very senses,
trained in an opposite direction. |
Useful knowledge |
The point for each one to decide is, whether it is
mortal mind or immortal Mind that is causative. We should forsake the basis of
matter for meta-physical Science and its divine Principle. Whatever furnishes
the semblance of an idea governed by its Principle, furnishes food for thought.
Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics, thought
passes naturally from effect back to cause. Academics of the right sort are
requisite. Observation, invention, study, and original thought are expansive
and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is
mortal. It is the tangled barbarisms of learning which we deplore, the mere
dogma, the speculative theory, the nauseous fiction. Novels, remarkable only
for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity,
fill our young readers with wrong tastes and sentiments. Literary commercialism
is lowering the intellectual standard to accommodate the purse and to meet a
frivolous demand for amusement instead of for improvement. Incorrect views
lower the standard of truth. If materialistic knowledge is power, it is not
wisdom. It is but a blind force. Man has "sought out many inventions," but he
has not yet found it true that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of
knowledge. The power of mortal mind over its own body is little understood.
|
Sin destroyed through suffering
|
Better the suffering which awakens mortal mind from
its fleshly dream, than the false pleasures which tend to perpetuate this
dream. Sin alone brings death, for sin is the only element of destruction.
"Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell," said Jesus. A
careful study of this text allows that here the word soul means a false sense
or material consciousness. The command was a warning to beware, not of Rome,
Satan, nor of God, but of sin. Sickness, sin, and death are not concomitants of
Life or Truth. No law supports them. They have no relation to God wherewith to
establish their power. Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven.
|
Dangerous shoals avoided
|
Such books as will rule disease out of mortal mind,
and so efface the images and thoughts of disease, instead of impressing them
with forcible descriptions and medical details, will help to abate sickness and
to destroy it. Many a hopeless case of disease is induced by a single post
mortem examination, not from infection nor from contact with material
virus, but from the fear of the disease and from the image brought before the
mind; it is a mental state, which is afterwards outlined on the body. |
Pangs caused by the press
|
The press unwittingly sends forth many sorrows and
diseases among the human family. It does this by giving names to diseases and
by printing long descriptions which mirror images of disease distinctly in
thought. A new name for an ailment affects people like a Parisian name for a
novel garment. Every one hastens to get it. A minutely described disease costs
many a man his earthly days of comfort. What a price for human knowledge! But
the price does not exceed the original cost. God said of the tree of knowledge,
which bears the fruit of sin, disease, and death, "In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die." |
Higher standard for mortals
|
The less that is said of physical structure and laws,
and the more that is thought and said about moral and spiritual law, the higher
will be the standard of living and the farther mortals will be removed from
imbecility or disease. We should master fear, instead of cultivating it. It was
the ignorance of our forefathers in the departments of knowledge now broadcast
in the earth, that made them hardier than our trained physiologists, more
honest than our sleek politicians. |
Diet and dyspepsia |
We are told that the simple food our forefathers ate
helped to make them healthy, but that is a mistake. Their diet would not cure
dyspepsia at this period. With rules of health in the head and the most
digestible food in the stomach, there would still be dyspeptics. Many of the
effeminate constitutions of our time will never grow robust until individual
opinions improve and immortal belief loses some portion of its error. |
Harm done by physicians
|
The doctor's mind reaches that of his patient. The
doctor should suppress his fear of disease, else his belief in its reality and
fatality will harm his patients even more than his calomel and morphine, for
the higher stratum of mortal mind has in belief more power to harm man than the
substratum, matter. A patient hears the doctor's verdict as a criminal hears
his death-sentence. The patient may seem calm under it, but he is not. His
fortitude may sustain him, but his fear, which has already developed the
disease that is gaining the mastery, is increased by the physician's words.
|
Disease depicted |
The materialistic doctor, though humane, is an artist
who outlines his thought relative to disease, and then fills in his
delineations with sketches from textbooks. It is better to prevent disease from
forming in mortal mind afterwards to appear on the body; but to do this
requires attention. The thought of disease is formed before one sees a doctor
and before the doctor undertakes to dispel it by a counter-irritant, perhaps by
a blister, by the application of caustic or croton oil, or by a surgical
operation. Again, giving another direction to faith, the physician prescribes
drugs, until the elasticity of mortal thought haply causes a vigorous reaction
upon itself, and reproduces a picture of healthy and harmonious formations. A
patient's belief is more or less moulded and formed by his doctor's belief in
the case, even though the doctor says nothing to support his theory. His
thoughts and his patient's commingle, and the stronger thoughts rule the
weaker. Hence the importance that doctors be Christian Scientists. |
Mind over matter |
Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are
strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise has produced this result
or that a less used arm must be weak. If matter were the cause of action, and
if muscles, without volition of mortal mind, could lift the hammer and strike
the anvil, it might be thought true that hammering would enlarge the muscles.
The trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles
are as material as wood and iron? Because nobody believes that mind is
producing such a result on the hammer. Muscles are not self-acting. If mind
does not move them, they are motionless. Hence the great fact that Mind alone
enlarges and empowers man through its mandate, by reason of its demand for and
supply of power. Not because of muscular exercise, but by reason of the
blacksmith's faith in exercise, his arm becomes stronger. |
Latent fear subdued |
Mortals develop their own bodies or make them sick,
according as they influence them through mortal mind. To know whether this
development is produced consciously or unconsciously, is of less importance
than a knowledge of the fact. The feats of the gymnast prove that latent mental
fears are subdued by him. The devotion of thought to an honest achievement
makes the achievement possible. Exceptions only confirm this rule, proving that
failure is occasioned by a too feeble faith. Had Blondin believed it impossible
to walk the rope over Niagara's abyss of waters, he could never have done it.
His belief that he could do it gave his thoughtforces, called muscles, their
flexibility and power which the unscientific might attribute to a lubricating
oil. His fear must have disappeared before his power of putting resolve into
action could appear. |
Homer and Moses |
When Homer sang of the Grecian gods, Olympus was dark,
but through his verse the gods became alive in a nation's belief. Pagan worship
began with muscularity, but the law of Sinai lifted thought into the song of
David. Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of
matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by
immortal Mind. |
A mortal not man |
Whoever is incompetent to explain Soul would be wise
not to undertake the explanation of body. Life is, always has been, and ever
will be independent of matter; for life is God, and man is the idea of God, not
formed materially but spiritually, and not subject to decay and dust. The
Psalmist said: "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands.
Thou hast put all things under his feet." The great truth in the Science of
being, that the real man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is
incontrovertible; for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither
inverted nor subverted, but upright and Godlike. The suppositional antipode of
divine infinite Spirit is the so-called human soul or spirit, in other words
the five senses, the flesh that warreth against Spirit. These so called
material senses must yield to the infinite Spirit, named God. St. Paul said:
"For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him
crucified." (I Cor. ii. 2.) Christian Science says: I am determined not to know
anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him glorified. |
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