Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/309

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OBTRUSIVE MENTAL HEALING
283

and unannounced mental practice where there is no necessity for it, or the motive is mercenary, or one can to advantage speak the truth audibly; then the ease is not exceptional. As a rule, one has no more right to enter the mind of a person, stir, upset, and adjust his thoughts without his knowledge or consent, than one has to enter a house, unlock the desk, displace the furniture, and suit one's self in the arrangement and management of another man's property.

It would be right to break into a burning building and rouse the slumbering inmates, but wrong to burst open doors and break through windows if no emergency demanded this. Any exception to the old wholesome rule, “Mind your own business,” is rare. For a student of mine to treat another student without his knowledge, is a breach of good manners and morals; it is nothing less than a mistaken kindness, a culpable ignorance, or a conscious trespass on the rights of mortals.

I insist on the etiquette of Christian Science, as well as its morals and Christianity. The Scriptural rule of this Science may momentarily be forgotten; but this is seldom the case with loyal students, or done without incriminating the person who did it.

Each student should, must, work out his own problem of being; conscious, meanwhile, that God worketh with him, and that he needs no personal aid. It is the genius of Christian Science to demonstrate good, not evil, — harmony, not discord; for Science is the mandate of Truth which destroys all error.

Whoever is honestly laboring to learn the principle of music and practise it, seldom calls on his teacher or musician to practise for him. The only personal help re-