Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/19

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PREFACE.
xi

Many imagine that the phenomena of physical healing in Christian Science only present a phase of the action of the human mind, which, in some unexplained way, results in the cure of sickness. On the contrary, Christian Science rationally explains that all other pathological methods are the fruits of human faith in matter, in the workings, not of Spirit, but of the fleshly mind, which must yield to Science.

The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness, and so disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light, and sin to reformation. Now, as then, they are not supernatural, but supremely natural. They are those “mighty works,” which were the sign of Immanuel, or “God with us,” — an influence ever present in human consciousness, and coming now again, as was promised aforetime,

To preach deliverance to the captives [of sense],
And recovering of sight to the blind, —
To set at liberty them that are bruised.

When God called her to proclaim His Gospel to this age, there came also the charge to plant and water His vineyard.

The first school of Christian Science Mind-healing was begun by the author in Lynn, Massachusetts, about the year 1867, with only one student. In 1881 she opened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, in Boston, under the seal of the Commonwealth, — a law relative to colleges having been passed, which enabled her to get this institution chartered for medical purposes.