Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/263

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"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" AND "MIND CURE"
249

His cure is reduced to its simplest form as follows: "The senses say matter can suffer pain; God says matter is insensible. The senses declare a man sick; God says the real man knows nothing of disease." Under the head of Sin and Death he says: "Scientific Christianity does not recognize the definition of theology, but holds that, strictly speaking, there is no sin." He finally describes the cure thus: "A mental cure is the discovery made by a sick person that he is well."

W. F. Evans, a voluminous writer, formerly an evangelical minister, then a Swedenborgian, and lately a mental healer, remarks:

The process is essentially a spiritual work; it is held that there is a part of us that is never sick, and this part is mentally worked upon so as to control the sick person's consciousness, this destroys the sickness, for mind cures matter. A disciple of this school is sick—no, he is not sick, for that is something which he will not admit; he has a belief that he is sick; he then says mentally to the rebellious body, "What are you? You have no power over me; you are merely the covering given to me for present purposes; it is an error to suppose that I am sick; I recognize the great truth that I myself, my individuality, my personality, my mind, cannot be sick, for it is immortal, made in the image of God; when I recognize the existence of that truth there is no room left for the existence of error; two things cannot occupy one and the same place; error cannot exist in the same place with truth, therefore error is not in existence; hence I am not sick."

Mrs. Grimké, author of "Personified Unthinkables," says:

Now, rheumatism or pneumonia, etc., are verbal expressions for unthinkables, just as 2 + 2 = 5 is a verbal expression for a lie. By means of the picturing faculty, both of the individual and of those about him, the outward manifestation of the unthinkable will express itself upon the body just as surely as the magic-lantern will reflect the picture inserted between the light