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"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" AND "MIND CURE"
The method of Mrs. Eddy's reasoning may be seen in the following extracts:
The ineradicable belief that pain is located in a limb which has been removed, when really the sensation is believed to be in the nerves, is an added proof of the unreliability of physical testimony.... Electricity is not a vital fluid, but an element of mortal mind,—the thought-essence that forms the link between what is termed matter and mortal mind. Both are different strata of human belief. The grosser substratum is named matter. The more ethereal is called human mind, which is the nearer counterfeit of the Immortal Mind, and hence the more accountable and sinful belief.... You say, "Toil fatigues me." But what is this you or me? Is it muscle or mind? Which one is tired and so speaks? Without mind, could the muscles be tired? Do the muscles talk, or do you talk for them? Matter is non-intelligent. Mortal mind does the talking, and that which affirms it to be tired first made it so.
Having adopted a theory, she does not shrink from its logical sequences:
You would not say that a wheel is fatigued; and yet, the body is just as material as the wheel. Setting aside what the human mind says of the body, it would never be weary any more than the inanimate wheel. Understanding this great fact rests you more than hours of repose.
Her most frequently repeated assertions are such as these:
God is supreme; is mind; is principle, not person; includes all and is reflected by all that is real and eternal; is Spirit, and Spirit is infinite; is the only substance; is the only life. Man was and is the idea of God; therefore mind can never be in man. Divine Science shows that matter and mortal body are the illusions of human belief, which seem to appear and disappear to mortal sense alone. When this belief changes, as in dreams, the material body changes with it, going wherever we wish, and becoming whatsoever belief may decree. Human mortality proves
