Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1889)/01 Physiology
SCIENCE AND HEALTH.
CHAPTER I.
PHYSIOLOGY.
Here in the body pent,
Absent from Thee I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home. — Montgomery.
IN the year 1868 I discovered metaphysical healing,
and named it Christian Science. The Principle
thereof is divine and apodictical, governing all; and it
reveals the grand verity that one erring mind controlling
another (through whatever medium) is not Science
governed by God, the unerring Mind. When apparently
near the confines of mortal existence, standing already
within the shadow of the death-valley, I learned certain
truths: that all real being is the divine Mind and idea;
that the Science of Divine Mind demonstrates that Life,
Truth, and Love are all-powerful and ever-present; that
the opposite of Science and Truth, named Error, is the
false supposition of a false sense. This sense is, and
evolves, a belief in matter that shuts out the true sense
of Spirit. The great facts of omnipotence and
omnipresence, of Spirit possessing all power and filling all
space, — these facts contradicted forever, to my
understanding, the notion that matter can be actual. These
facts also revealed to me primeval existence, and the radiant realities of good; and there was present to
me, as never before, the awful unreality of evil. This
vision announced the equipollence of God, consecrated
my affections anew, and revealed the glorious possibilities
of the petition, “Thy kingdom come on earth as in
heaven.”
In following the leadings of this revelation, the Bible was my only text-book. The inspired volume seemed illumined, reconciling right reason with revelation, and establishing the truths of Christian Science. No human tongue or pen has suggested the contents of “Science and Health,” nor can tongue or pen ever overthrow it. My book may be distorted by shallow criticism or by inaccurate reporters, and its ideas forced temporarily into wrong channels; but its truths will remain for the Christ-inspired to discern and follow.
Jesus demonstrated the power of Divine Science to heal mortal minds and bodies; but this Science was lost sight of, and must again be spiritually discerned; and it must be demonstrated (according to Christ's command) with signs following, to as many as shall believe on Him.
No analogy exists between the vague hypotheses of Pantheism, Gnosticism, Spiritualism, or Infidelity, and the demonstrable truths of Christian Science; and I find the so-called power, will, or reason of the human mind, to be opposed to the Divine Mind, expressed through Science. In Truth, and its marvellous ability to reveal God, there is nothing supernatural, for this is its normal function.
A prize of £100 has been offered in Oxford University, England, for the best essay on Natural Science, — an essay calculated to offset the tendency of the age to attribute physical effects to physical causes, rather than to a final spiritual cause. This incident is one of many which show that Christian Science expresses a yearning of the human race.
Causation is the one question to be considered, as more than all others it relates to human progress. The age seems ready to approach this subject, to think briefly upon the supremacy of Spirit, to touch the hem of its garment, but nothing more. Mind's control over man is however no longer an open question, but demonstrable Science; and I have shown its principle and practice by healing sickness and sin, and so destroying the foundations of death.
After a careful examination of my discovery in 1866, that Mind governs all, not partially but supremely, I submitted my metaphysical system of treating disease to the broadest practical tests. Since then this system has gradually gained ground; and it has proved itself, whenever scientifically employed, to be the most effective curative agent in medical practice.
All science is natural, but all science is not physical. The Science of Soul is no more supernatural than the science of numbers; but departing from the realm of the physical, as it must, some may deny it the name of Science. But Metaphysical Science is more scientific than it would be if it were unchristian. Its Principle is God, or Good. Its practice is good, its rules are demonstrable. Its Metaphysics reverse the perversion named Physics, and the human sense of the hypothesis of Deity, even as the science of optics explains the inverted image. Human reason acts slowly in accepting spiritual facts, but calling on matter to remove what the human mind alone has occasioned is fatal.
The fundamental error is to suppose that man is a material outgrowth, and that bodily cognizance of good or evil constitutes his happiness or misery. Theorizing from mushrooms to monkeys, and from monkeys to men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, and very much in the wrong. If we classify mortals as mineral, vegetable, or animal, an egg is the author of the genus homo; but there is no reason why man should begin in the egg, rather than in the more primitive dust, like the figurative Adam.
Brains are within the craniums of animals. To say then that brain is man, is to furnish the pretext for saying that man was once a brute, an assertion which must be met with the reply. If once he was a brute, he will be again, according to natural perpetuation of identity.
What is man? Brains, heart, blood, the material structure? If he is but a material body, when you amputate a limb, you must take away a portion of the man; the surgeon can destroy manhood, and the 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 of it than the statuesque athlete, — teaching us, by his very deprivations, that “a man's a man, for a' that.”
Admitting that matter (heart, blood, brains, the so-called five personal senses) constitutes man, we fail to see how anatomy can distinguish between the brute and humanity, or determine when man is really man, and has progressed farther than his progenitors. If quadruped and biped possess the constituent parts of man, they must, to some extent, be human; and, by parallel reasoning, man must be a brute.
This materialism grades man from the dust upward; but how is the material species maintained when man passes the Rubicon of spirituality? Spirit forms no proper link in this chain of being, but reveals the eternal chain as uninterrupted; yet this is seen only as matter disappears.
If man was first matter, he has passed through all its forms to become man. If the material body is man, he is mere matter, or dust. But man is the image and likeness of Spirit; and the belief that there is Soul in sense, or Life in matter, belongs to the mortal mind that is to be put off, to which the apostle refers.
Anatomy makes man structural. Physiology continues this explanation, measuring human strength by bones and sinews, and human life by material law. Phrenology makes man thieving or honest, according to the development of the cranium; but anatomy, physiology, phrenology, do not define the image of God, or immortal man. To measure capacities by the size of the brain, and limit strength to the exercise of a muscle, would subjugate intelligence, and place Mind at the mercy of organization and non-intelligence.
Matter, taking divine power into its own hands, is like a fiction, in which debauchery is attuned to such fascination, that mankind are in danger of catching its moral contagion. The spiritual opposite of materiality will reopen, with the key of Science, the gates of Paradise, that human beliefs had wellnigh closed, and find man unfallen, upright, pure, and free, having no need to consult almanacs for the probabilities of Life, or to study brainology in order to learn how much of a man he is.
Mistaking his origin and nature, we make man both matter and Spirit, — Spirit being sifted through matter, carried on a nerve, exposed to ejection at the hands of matter. Think of it: the intellectual, the moral, the spiritual, — yea, Intelligence itself, — subjected to non-intelligence!
Is civilization but a higher stage of idolatry, that man, in the nineteenth century, should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels and baths, to diet, exercise, air? Nothing is able to do for man what he can do for himself with omnipotent aid.
The idols of civilization are far more fatal to health and longevity than the idols of older forms of heathenism. They call into action less faith than Buddhism, in a supreme governing Intelligence. Even the Esquimaux restore health by incantations, as effectually as civilized practitioners by their modus operandi.
Whatever teaches man to have other rulers before Jehovah is anti-Christian. The good matter is supposed to do is evil, for it would rob man of God, Omnipotent Mind. Truth is not the basis of Theogony. Modes of matter form neither a moral nor spiritual system. The inharmony that calls for them is the result of faith, already exercised, in matter rather than Spirit.
Did Jesus apprehend the economy of man to a less degree than Graham or Cutter? Christian ideas certainly embrace the Principle of man's harmony, which human theories do not. “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die,” contradicts not only the systems of man, but points to the self-sustaining and eternal.
The demands of Truth are spiritual, and reach the body through Mind. The best interpreter of man's needs said, “Take no thought for the body, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink.”
Putting on the full armor of physiology, and obeying to the letter the so-called laws of health (so the statistics show; have neither diminished sickness nor lengthened life. Diseases have multiplied and become more obstinate. Their chronic forms have become more frequent, the acute more fatal. There are more sudden deaths since our man-made theories have taken the place of primitive Truth.
The explication of man as purely physical, dependent wholly on organization, is the Pandora box, from which many evils escape. If there are material laws which will prevent disease, what then causes it? Not divine law, for Christ healed the sick and cast out error, but never in obedience to physics.
The so-called laws of matter are nothing but a false belief in the presence of Intelligence and Life where they are not. This is the procuring cause of all disease. The opposite Truth — that Intelligence and Life are spiritual, never material — is the cure of all disease. No more sympathy exists between the flesh and Spirit than between Christ and Belial.
Failing to recover health through adherence to Materia medica, physiology, and hygiene, the despairing invalid drops them, and turns in his extremity to God, as the last resort. His faith in Him is less than it was in drugs, air, 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; whereas, Spirit at last asserts its mastery, and then, and not until then, is man found to be forever harmonious and immortal.
Should we implore only a personal God to heal the sick, or should we understand the Divine Principle that 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 Science, only as we correct personal sense. Our relative admission of the claims of good or evil determines the harmony of our existence, — our health, our longevity, and our Christianity.
We cannot serve two masters, or reach Divine Science through material sense. The Source of all health and perfection is not matched by drugs and hygiene. If man is constituted both good and evil, he will end in evil. An error in the premises must appear in the conclusion. To avail yourself of the power of Spirit, you must depend upon no human reliance.
Christian Science understood would disabuse the human mind of the thousand and one material beliefs that war against spiritual Truth. You cannot add to the contents of a vessel already full. Laboring long to shake one's faith in matter, and convey a crumb of faith in God, — an inkling of the possibilities of Spirit to make the body harmonious, — I have remembered often our Master's love for little children, and understood how truly such as they belong to the heavenly kingdom.
You admit that Mind influences the body somewhat, but conclude that stomach, blood, nerves, bones, hold the preponderance of power. In accordance with this belief, you continue in the old routine. You lean on the inert and unintelligent, never discerning how this deprives you of the available superiority of Mind. The body is not controlled scientifically by a negative mind.
The “flesh warreth against the Spirit.” They can no more unite in action, than good can coincide with evil. It is wise not to take a halting and half-way position, or to expect to work equally with Truth and error. There is but one right way, namely, Divine Science, pointing to the spiritual way. To govern the body scientifically it must be reached through Mind. It is impossible to gain control over it by any other method. On this fundamental point timid conservatism is absolutely inadmissible. Radical reliance on the spiritual can alone accomplish the healing art.
When you manipulate patients, you are trusting in electricity and magnetism, more than in Truth; and so you employ matter more than Mind. You weaken your power, if you resort to any except spiritual means. It is useless to say that you manipulate patients, but you lay no stress on manipulation. If this is the case, why manipulate? Really you do it because you are ignorant of its baneful effects, or are not sufficiently spiritual to depend on Spirit. If this be so, improve your life work till you attain to Christian Science.
If, being too material to love the Science of Mind, you are satisfied with good words instead of deeds, adhering to error and 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 cured they are generally satisfied.
“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Having more faith in drugs than in Truth, this faith will incline you to the side of matter and error. Any mesmeric power you may exercise will diminish your ability to become a Scientist, and vice versa. The act of healing the sick through Mind alone, of casting out error with Truth, shows your position as a Christian.
How can the dishonest man rely on Truth to heal the sick? Being dishonest he cannot exercise this power in a right direction. Jesus cast out error and healed the sick without drugs, and he said, “The works that I do, ye shall do.”
You say that indigestion, fatigue, sleeplessness, cause distressed stomachs and aching heads. Then you consult your brains, in order to remember what has hurt you, when your remedy lies in forgetting the whole thing; for matter has no sensation, and the human mind is all that can produce pain.
To reduce inflammation, dissolve a tumor, or cure organic disease, I have found Mind more potent than all lower remedies. And why not, since Mind is the source and condition of all existence? Before deciding that stomach or head is disordered, one should consider, Who art thou that repliest to Spirit? Can matter speak for itself, or hold the issues of Life? Pain or pleasure has no partnership with what can neither suffer nor enjoy; but mortal belief has such a partnership.
“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 the conscious control over the body is lost.
If the scales are evenly adjusted, the removal of a single weight from either gives preponderance to the opposite. Whatever influence you cast on the side of matter, you take away from Mind, that can outweigh all else. Your belief militates against your health, when it ought to enlist on its side. When sick (according to belief) you rush after drugs, search the so-called laws of health, and depend on these to heal you, when you have really got yourself into the slough of disease through just this false dependence.
The human mind is inharmonious; hence the inharmony of the body. To ignore God, as of little use in sickness, is anomalous. If we thrust Him aside then, waiting for the hour of strength, we should learn that He can do more for us in sickness than in health.
Because man-made systems insist that man becomes sick and useless, suffers and dies, in consonance with the laws of God, are we to believe it? Despite God's spiritual law to the contrary, are we to believe an authority which Jesus has proved 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 spiritual law.
The demands of God appeal to Mind 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 is opposed to the other, and insists upon supremacy in the affections. It is impossible to work from two standpoints. If we attempt it, we shall presently “cleave to the one and despise the other.” Mind's control over the body must supersede the so-called laws of matter. Obedience to material law prevents full obedience to spiritual law, — the law that overcomes material conditions, and puts matter under the feet of Mind. Like a barrister who should try to strengthen his plea by commencing, “Woe unto you, lawyers,” mortals entreat God to restore the sick to health, and forthwith, by using material means, shut out the aid of Spirit, thus working against themselves and their prayers, and suffocating man's God-given ability to demonstrate the sacred power. The plea for medicine and the laws of health comes from mortal ignorance of Science and celestial power.
Error produces error. Sickness is error, — inharmony. What causes disease cannot cure it. To admit that sickness is a condition over which God has no control, presupposes that omnipotent power is, on some occasions, null and void. The law of Christ, or Truth, finds all things possible to Spirit; but the so-called laws of matter find Spirit generally of no avail, and demand obedience to materialistic codes, — thus departing from the basis of Divine Science. Discords have no support from divine law, however much is said to the contrary. Antagonistic mortal opinions are incorrect, as Jesus clearly showed, when he healed the sick and raised the dead.
Can the agriculturist produce a crop without sowing the seed, and awaiting its germination according to the laws of God? The Scriptures inform us that sin, or error, first caused the condemnation of man to till the ground. In this case, obedience to Truth will remove this necessity. Truth never made error necessary, or devised a law to perpetuate it. The supposed laws that produce discord are not His laws, for it is the legitimate action of Truth to produce harmony. Laws of nature are truly His laws; but you construe that as law which annuls the power of Spirit. Mind, of a right, 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 weakness and loss of power.
Physiology is one of the apples from the tree of knowledge. Error said that to eat thereof would open man's eyes, and make him as a god. Instead of this enlargement, it closes the eyes to man's God-given dominion over the earth.
Truth casts out all evils, and every materialistic method, with the higher spiritual law, — the law that gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, voice to the dumb, feet to the lame. If Christian Science dishonors belief, it honors understanding; and there is but One Mind entitled to honor.
The so-called laws of health are simply laws of mortal belief, the premises whereof are erroneous. Therefore the conclusions are wrong. Truth has made no laws to regulate sickness, sin, and death; for these are unknown to Truth. Belief produces the results of belief, and the penalty it affixes is as sure as the belief itself. The remedy lies in probing to the bottom, finding out the error of belief that produces a mortal disorder, and never honoring it with the title of law, or yielding obedience to it. Truth, Life, and Love are the only legitimate or eternal demands on man, and they are spiritual laws that enforce obedience.
We say, “My hand hath done it.” What is this my but mortal mind, the cause of all materialistic action? All voluntary — or miscalled involuntary — action of the mortal body is governed by this mind, not by matter.
Controlled by the Divine Intelligence, man becomes harmonious and eternal. That which is governed by human 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; and that not because a law of matter has been transgressed, but because a law of this mind has been disobeyed. I have demonstrated this as a rule of Divine Science, when I have seen destroyed the delusion of suffering as the effect of what is termed a broken law.
A lady, whom I cured of consumption, always breathed with great difficulty when the wind was 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 difficult breathing was gone. The wind had not produced it. My metaphysical treatment changed the action her belief had produced on the system, and she never suffered again from east winds.
Here is testimony on this subject: —
I take pleasure in giving to the public one instance, out of the many, of Mrs. Glover-Eddy's skill in metaphysical healing. At the birth of my youngest child, now eight years old, I thought my approaching confinement would be premature by several weeks, and sent her a message to that effect. Without seeing me, she returned answer that the proper time had come, and that she would be with me immediately. Slight labor-pains had commenced before she arrived. She stopped them at once, and requested me to call an accoucheur, but to keep him below stairs until after the birth. When the doctor arrived, and while he remained in a lower room, Mrs. Eddy came to my bedside. I asked her how I should lie. She answered, “It makes no difference how you lie,” and added, “Now let the child be born.” Immediately the birth took place, and without a pain. The doctor was then called into the room to receive the child, and he saw that I had no pain whatever. My sister, Dorcas B. Rawson, of Lynn, was present when my babe was born, and will testify to the facts as I have stated them. I confess my own astonishment. I did not expect so much, even from Mrs. Eddy, especially as I had suffered before very severely in childbirth. The physician covered me with extra bed-clothes, charged me to be very careful about taking cold and to keep quiet, and then went away. I think he was alarmed at my having no labor-pains, but before he went out I had an ague coming on. When the door closed behind him, Mrs. Eddy threw off the extra coverings and said, “It is nothing but the fear produced by the doctor that causes these chills.” They left me at once. She told me to sit up when I chose, and to eat whatever I wanted. My babe was born about two o'clock in the morning, and the following evening I sat up several hours. I ate whatever the family did. I had a boiled dinner of meat and vegetables the second day. I made no difference in my diet, except to drink gruel between meals, and never experienced the least inconvenience from this course. I dressed myself the second day, and the third day felt unwilling to lie down. In one week I was about the house and was well, running up and down stairs and attending to domestic duties. For several years I had been troubled with prolapsus uteri, which disappeared entirely after Mrs. Eddy's wonderful demonstration of Christian Science at the birth of my babe.}}
Miranda R. Rice.
Lynn, Mass., 1874.No system of hygiene but mine is purely mental. The falsehoods of disappointed fame-seekers relative to this established fact and the history of my discovery are insignificant and malicious. Evans's books were in circulation when my book was published, but they advocated the power of the earth's currents and animal magnetism to regulate life and health.
There has arisen among men another signally false witness, — a charity scholar, whom I found to be a depraved infidel, — one, too, vitally disappointed about “who shall be greatest;” unwilling that this solemn question, belonging alone to God, should rest with Him, after vehement public and epistolatory protestations of devotion to my system, preaching and praying in apparent good faith with it, he took the field against it, having learned that he must become an honest man before he could be a Christian Scientist. This quenched his entire zeal, and he returned to his vomit, Philosophical Realism. He has since become the special advocate of every villain who is defrauding the people by spurious claims to orthodox Mind-healing.
Science reverses the testimony of the senses; and by this reversion mortals arrive at truth; then if these senses declare a man in good health, he is sick, is he? Health is not a condition of matter, and the material senses can bear no testimony. The Science of Mind-healing shows it is impossible for aught but Mind to testify, or to exhibit the real status of man; hence, Science, reversing the testimony of the senses, reveals man's habitual harmony, and overthrows the false evidence or syllogism. Science is Mind, not matter. Any conclusion predicated of sensation in matter, or matter conscious either of health or disease, — instead of reversing the testimony of the senses, confirms it as legitimate. Science rests on fixed Principle not relegated by a false sense.
Both the major and minor propositions of a syllogism may be true, and the conclusion false. Science affirms no discords. Reverse the testimony, pro or con, of the material senses, and you have the opposite spiritual fact in Science.
Not a blade of grass springs up, not a spray buddeth within the vale, not a leaf unfolds its fair outlines, not a flower starts from its cloistered cell, but Mind causes it. To suppose that God constitutes laws of discord, or institutes penalties without law, is a mistake.
Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven. If we concede the same reality to discord as to harmony, it has as lasting a claim upon us. If evil is as real as good, it is 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 fact of being.
The Mohammedan believes in a pilgrimage to Mecca. Another believes that drugs save life. The first is a religious delusion, the second is a medical delusion.
Disease is like the dream of sleep, wherein the suffering is wholly in mortal mind; yet the dreamer thinks he has a body, and the suffering is in that body.
The smile of the sleeper indicates the sensation produced physically by the pleasure of a dream. So pain and pleasure, sickness and care, are traced in unmistakable signs upon the face.
Sickness is a growth of error, springing from a seed of thought, — either your own thought or another's. The soil of disease is mortal mind, and you have a crop abundant or scanty, according to the seedlings in that soil, by whomsoever placed there.
Anatomy, physiology, treatises on health, — sustained by what is termed material law, — are the husbandmen of sickness and disease. It is proverbial that as long as you read medical works you will be sick. The sedulous matron — studying her Jahr, at hand with homœopathic pellet and powder, ready to put you into a sweat, to move the bowels, or to produce sleep — is sowing the seed of sickness day and night, and her household will erelong reap the reward of this error.
The descriptions of disease by clairvoyants and medical charlatans, quacks alike with mind and matter, are the prolific sources of sickness. They are the principal manufacturers of disease and death. They first help to form the image of illness in mortal minds, by telling patients that they have a disease; and then they go to work to destroy that disease. They unweave their own webs; while sufferers are satisfied to see their supposed curers busy, and to pay them for both making sickness and trying to heal it. This is “the seed within itself,” spoken of in the Bible, “bearing fruit after its kind.”
Doctors deport themselves generally as if there were no Mind, and they had taken the ground, contrary to metaphysics, that all is matter. Ignorant that the human mind governs the body through belief, they hesitate not to poison this fount of fear with more fear. They form disease in thought by declaring it a fixed fact, even before they go to work to eradicate it with the material faith which they inspire. They first poison the mortal thought with fear, and then would offset mind-poison with the poison of matter.
Delusion is all that ever enabled a drug to cure the ailments of a man. Anatomy admits that mind is somewhere in mortals, though out of sight. Then, if a man is sick, why doctor the body alone, and deal a dose of despair to mind? Why declare that the body is diseased, and picture the disease to the mind, holding it before the physician's and the patient's thought, rolling it under the tongue as a sweet morsel? We should understand that the cause of disease rests with the mortal human mind, and its cure with the immortal Divine Mind; and we should prevent the images of disease from taking form in thought, as well as efface the forms of disease already located in the human mind.
Because Science is at war with physics, even as Truth is at war with error, the old schools will oppose it. When there were fewer doctors, and less thought was given to sanitary subjects, there were better constitutions and less disease. In olden times, who ever heard of dyspepsia, cerebro-spinal meningitis, hay-fever, and rose-cold?
What an abuse of nature to say that a rose, the smile of God, can produce suffering. The joy of its presence, its beauty and modesty, should uplift the thought and destroy any possible fever. It is profane to fancy that the sweetness of clover and breath of new-mown hay may cause, like snuff, sneezing and nasal pangs.
If a random thought bad called itself dyspepsia, and appeared to our forefathers, it would have died at the hands of benevolence and industry. Then people had less time to be selfish, to confine thought to the body, to spend in sickly after-dinner talk. The exact amount of food the stomach could digest was not discussed à la Cutter, or considered a law of the human mind. A man's belief in those days was not so severe upon the gastric juices. Beaumont's Experiments did not govern the digestion.
The action of mind on the body was not so injurious before the curing and curious Eves embraced medical works, and the unmanly Adams charged their falls, and the fate of their offspring, upon the credulity of their wives.
The primitive privilege, to take 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 kept before the imagination. Fewer books on digestion, and more “sermons in stones and good in everything,” gave better health and greater longevity to our forefathers. When the mechanism of the human mind goes on undisturbed by fear, selfishness, or malice, disease cannot enter and gain a foothold.
Damp atmospheres and freezing snows may have empurpled the round cheeks of our ancestors, but they never reached the refinement of inflamed bronchial tubes; because they were as ignorant as Adam, before he was told by his wife that there were such things as tubes or troches, lungs or lozenges.
The Nineteenth Century would load with disease the air of Eden, and hunt mankind down with superimposed airs and conjectural evils. Mind is at once the best friend and the worst foe of the body, and Truth the universal healer.
Shall a regular practitioner treat all the cases of organic disease, and the Christian Scientist try his hand only on hysteria, hypochondria, or hallucination? One disease is no more unreal than another. All disease is the result of hallucination, and can carry its ill effects no further than mortal mind maps out. Facts are stubborn things. Christian Science finds the decided type of acute disease, however severe, quite as ready to yield as the less distinct type and chronic form of disease. It handles the most malignant contagion with perfect assurance.
Because guided by Divine Truth, and not guess-work, the Theologus (i. e. the student, or expounder, of the divine law) treats disease with more certain results than any other healer on the globe. The Scientist who understands and adheres strictly to the rules of my system, and rests his demonstration on its sure basis, is the only one safe to employ in difficult and dangerous cases.
Mind as far outstrips drugs in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is Mind Science in every case. Medicine is not a science, but a bundle of speculative human theories. The prescription that succeeds in one instance fails in another, owing to the different mental states of the patient. These states are not comprehended; and they are without a sign, except to the skilful Scientist. The rule, and its perfectness in my system, never vary. If you fail to succeed in any case, it is because you have not demonstrated the rule and proven the Principle.
Many of our best men and women have passed away, since this book was begun, who might have been saved by the Science of which it treats. The minor hosts of Æsculapius are flooding our land with diseases, because they are utterly ignorant of the unity of the human mind and body. They treat the sick as if there were but one factor in the case, and that one body, without mind.
There is an old riddle in natural history — Which was first, the egg or the bird? To match the ancient question, I propose this modern one: Which was first, Mind or medicine? If Mind was first, and self-existent, then Spirit, not matter, must have been the first medicine. It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, or obtain them for human use; else Jesus also would have recommended and employed them in his healing.
Mind being first, it made medicine; but the medicine was Mind. It could not have been that which departs from the nature of Mind. Truth is God's medicine for error of every sort. The human mind would use error as a medicine, and take the greater evil to cure the less. It would appease malice with revenge, and quiet pain with morphine. Of two evils, it chooses the greater. The Divine Mind never called matter medicine, or made it so; and matter required a material and human belief before it could be considered as medicine.
Omnipotent Mind could not possibly create a remedy beyond itself. Erring, finite, human mind needs something besides itself. So it believes in something else, and raises matter into a god; for the human mind was an idolater from the beginning, having other gods and more than the One Mind.
Here you see how sense makes its own idols, names them matter, worships them. With pagan pride it has attributed to a material god of medicine an ability beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and enslave it, and then impute this sad result to another personality of illusion, named Satan.
Follow out true cultivation;
Widen Education's plan;
From the Majesty of Nature
Teach the Majesty of Man!
In these lines Charles Swain points out the true duty of man.
A physician of the old school remarked with great gravity: “We know that mind affects the body somewhat, and advise our patients to be hopeful, cheerful, and take as little medicine as possible; but mind can never cure organic difficulties.”
The logic is lame and facts contradict it. I have cured what is termed organic disease as readily as purely functional disease, and with no other means except Mind. Few will deny that death has been occasioned by fright. This proves that every function of the body, its entire organism, is governed by the human mind; unless this mind yields to the Divine Mind, and is saved from itself. Fear has stopped the action of the blood, heart, lungs, and brain.
That mortal mind does govern every organ of the mortal body we have overwhelming proof. It is the autocrat of the mortal body, that yields to no power except by its own consent. It wields the sceptre of a monarch, until the immortal Divine Mind takes away its supposed realm.
If the human mind has the power to kill, it has utter control of what is termed the human mechanism. If the human mind can make a healthy organ cease to act, the Divine Mind can more readily make the action of being harmonious and eternal. Divine Mind does all that. The only difficulty is to see and acknowledge it, yield to this power, and fall at the feet of Truth.
Mortal mind produces what is termed organic disease as certainly as it produces hysteria, and must undo its own errors, sicknesses, and sins. I have demonstrated this beyond all cavil. The evidence of Mind's absolute control is to me as sure as the evidence of my existence.
Mortal mind and body are one. Neither exists without the other, and both must be changed by the immortal. Mortal matter is but a false conception of this mortal mind. It builds its own superstructures, of which the body is the grosser and more basal portion — a material and sensual belief first and last.
Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of good. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something; and it is error, because it presupposes the absence of Truth, when really Truth is omnipresent. That there is no power in evil, we all need to learn.
Error is self-assertive, saying, “I am an Ego, overmastering good.” This falsehood exposes its falsity, and should strip it of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It can never destroy an iota of good. Every attempt of evil to do that has been a failure, and only aids in the final destruction of error.
There is no involuntary action. Mind includes all action and volition. But the human mind tries to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary action. Take away this erring mind, and the body loses all appearance of life or action, and the human mind then calls it dead.
Still this human mind has a body, acting and appearing to itself to live, like the one that it had before death, and that we see. Mortals comprehend not even mortal existence. This proves their ignorance of the all-knowing Mind and His creation.
If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, the patient dies, while physician and patient are expecting favorable results. Did belief cause this death? Even so, and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken.
In the allegory of material creation, Adam, alias the belief of Life and Intelligence in matter, had the naming of all material animals. These names indicated their properties, qualities, and forms. Error, the opposite of Truth, names the qualities and effects of what it terms matter, and so rouses the law of belief that holds the preponderance of power in human opinions against Spirit and Truth.
The few who think a drug harmless, where a mistake has been made in the prescription, are unequal to the many who have named it poison, and so the majority opinion governs the result.
The remote cause, or belief, is stronger than the predisposing and exciting cause, because of its priority, and the connection of past mortal thoughts with present. The adult has a deformity, produced, thirty years ago, by the terror of his mother. That chronic error is more difficult of cure than an acute injury, unless we wrest it from mortal mind, and base the cure on Science, or Immortal Mind, to whom all things are possible.
What is termed disease is formed unconsciously, until fear awakes consciousness. The belief of sin, grown terrible in strength and control, was an unconscious error in the beginning, — an embryotic thought, without motive, — that afterwards governed the so-called man. Passion, appetite, dishonesty, envy, and malice ripen into action, to pass on from shame and woe to their next stage, self-destruction.
When darkness comes over the earth the senses have no evidence of a sun. The human mind knows not where the orb of day is, or if it exists. Astronomy, the interpreter of the solar system, decides that question. The human senses yield to this opposite evidence, willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of the sun and its influence on the earth. If the personal senses see no sun for a week, we still believe there is solar light and heat.
Science, so far, has beaten illusion out of its crude theory, and established its own theory. Mortals should no more deny the effect of mortal mind on the body, when the cause is not seen, — and when the belief producing the effect is unconscious of its effects, — than it should deny the sunlight when the orb disappears.
The valves of the heart, opening and closing on the blood, obey the mandate of mortal mind, as directly as does the hand moved by the will; though anatomy admits the mental cause of the latter action, but not of the former.
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be self-deceived. If it knew how to be better, it would be better. The inanimate, unconscious substratum of the human mind, that we call the body, is the seedling that starts thought, and sends it to the brain for consciousness.
We call the body matter, but it is as much mortal mind, according to its degree, as the brains that furnish the evolution of all mortal things, — which, strange to say, start from the lowest instead of the highest mortal thought. The reverse is the case with all the formations of the Divine, Immortal Mind. They proceed from the highest source, and constantly ascend the scale of infinite being.
In the lower, basal thought of mortals begin the formations of embryotic mind. Next we have brains, matter, the formation of beliefs. From belief comes the reproduction of the species — first inanimate, and then animate mind. But brain is ignorant of thought, ignorant of what it produces in its circle upon the body.
Thought fills the man with beliefs of pain or pleasure, of life and death, arranging matter into five so-called senses, that presently judge a man by the size of his brain and the bulk of matter gathered about him.
The birth, growth, maturity, and decay of mortals are as the grasses that spring from the dark and dirty soil to become beautiful green blades, — then to wither and return to their native nothingness.
The Hebrew bard swept his lyre with saddening strains about mortal 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 his heart, and he grasped
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.
Brains can give no idea of God's man. They can take
no cognizance of Mind. They are not the organ of the
Infinite. As mortals give up their delusion that there
is more than one Mind, they will gain the likeness of
God, the eternal good, and include in it no other mental
element.
As a material life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man will dawn upon human thought, and lead to “where the young child lies,” even to the spiritual idea of Life and what it includes.
The human mind must escape from its own barriers. It should no longer ask of the head, heart, or lungs, What is man's prospect for life? Mind is not helpless. Intelligence is not mute before non-intelligence.
Whatsoever is incompetent to explain Soul, had better not undertake the explanation of body. Life is, was, and ever will be independent of matter; for Life is God, and man is the idea of God, that dust can neither make nor unmake.
Mortality causes sickness, and then, to cure it, recommends a double dose. It is like a physical irritation, which we falsely attribute to the quantity, rather than the quality, of some drug which has been taken. The Science of Being reveals man and immortality as based on Spirit. Personal sense defines mortal man as based on matter; and thence infers the mortality of the body.
Every method of medicine has its advocates. The preference of mortal mind for any method creates a demand for it, and the body seems to require it. 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 his instincts, sniffs the wind with delight. Epizoötic is an evolved ailment, that a natural horse never has.
I have discerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, many weeks before the so-called disease made its appearance in the body. Disease being a belief, — a latent creation of mind, before it appears as matter, — I am never mistaken in my scientific diagnosis of disease.
Whenever an aggravation of symptoms has occurred, from mental chemicalization, I have seen the mental signs, assuring me that danger was over, before the patient felt the change, and have said to the patient, “You are healed,” — sometimes to his discomposure, when he was incredulous. But it always proved as I foretold.
I name these facts to show that disease has a mental 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 it, and by dosing the body in order to avoid it. The faith reposed in these things should find a higher home. Understanding the control of Mind over body, we should put no faith in material means.
Science reveals the origin of all disease as wholly mental. It declares that all disease is cured by Mind, however much we trust the drug, or any other medium to which faith is directed. It is Mind, not matter, that heals the sick. You should heal the sick by means of divine power. The action of Truth restores harmony. Metaphysical healing enables one to heal the absent as well as the present. The spiritual capacity to apprehend thought is gained only when man is found not wearing his own righteousness, but reflecting the divine nature.
Science enables one to read the human mind, but not as a clairvoyant. It enables one to heal through Mind, but not as a mesmerist. When man is governed by Spirit, God, who understands all things, he knows that to Spirit all things are possible. The only approach to this affluence of Truth, that heals the sick, is found in Divine Science.
We walk in the footsteps of Truth and Love by following the example of our Master, and having the understanding of metaphysics. Christianity is its basis; and all error, that pins our trust to matter instead of God, is directly opposed to it.
Ignorant of the footsteps and the basis of metaphysical healing, you may attempt to unite with it mesmerism, mediumship, electricity; but not one of these can mingle with metaphysical healing, or demonstrate it. Whosoever reaches the understanding of this Science, in its higher significations, will perform the sudden cures of which it is capable; but this can be done only by taking up the cross and following Christ, Truth.
We are Christian Scientists only as we quit our hold upon material things, and grasp the spiritual, — until we have left all for Christ. Mortal beliefs are not spiritual. They come from the hearing of the ear, from person instead of from Principle, and from the mortal instead of the immortal.
Spirit never believes in God. It is God. Human power is a material belief, a blind 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 storm, together with all that is selfish, dishonest, and impure. Moral and spiritual might belong to Spirit, who holds the “winds in His fist,” in accord with Science and harmony.
Will-power is not Science. It belongs to the senses, and is objectionable. Willing the sick to recover is not metaphysics, but sheer animal magnetism. Will may infringe upon the rights of man. It produces evil continually, and is far from the Science of Being. Truth, and not Will, is the healer, that says to disease, “Peace, be still.”
The personal senses may cherish affinities with their opposites. In Christian Science Truth never mingles with error. Mind has no affinity for matter; 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, the mimicry of Mind.
The theory that Spirit is distinct from matter, but must pass through it, or into it, to be individualized, would reduce Truth to the dependency of error, and require Something to be made manifest through Nothing. Better the suffering that awakens mortal mind from its dream, than the false pleasures that tend to perpetuate it.
Scientists can heal the sick who are absent from them, since space is no obstacle to Mind. Immortal Mind heals what eye hath not seen. The whole world is made better by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error.
Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensuous belief in matter, is animal magnetism; but when mortal mind, contradicting the evidence of the senses, yields to the government of God, it can go forth on errands of love. In proportion as you understand Christian Science, you lose animal magnetism; and you disarm sin of its imaginary power, as you gain spiritual understanding.
You can have no power opposed to God in Science, and the senses must give up their false testimony. Your influence for good is the weight you throw into the right scale. The good you do, and the good you embody, give you the only power obtainable. Evil is not power. It is a mockery of strength, that ere long betrays its weakness, and falls, never to rise again. Bowring's verse expresses my thought on this subject: —
The chain of being is complete in me;
In me is matter's last gradation lost,
And the next step is Spirit — Deity!
The following testimonials are appended, simply to
elucidate my topic: —
I was suffering from pulmonary difficulties, pains in the chest, a hard and unremitting cough, hectic fever; and all those fearful symptoms made my case alarming. When I first saw Mrs. Glover (afterwards Mrs. Eddy) I was reduced so as to be unable to walk any distance, and could sit up but a portion of the day. Walking up stairs gave me great suffering in breathing.
I had no appetite, and seemed surely going to the grave, the victim of consumption. I had received her attention but a short time when my bad symptoms disappeared, and I regained health. During this time I rode out in storms to visit her, and found the damp weather had no unpleasant effect on me. From my personal experience, I am led to believe that the Science by which she not only heals sickness, but explains the way to keep well, is deserving the earnest attention of the community. Her cures are not the result of medicine, mediumship, or mesmerism, but the application of a Principle that she understands.
East Stoughton, Mass.
Miss Ellen C. Pillsbury, of Tilton, N. H., was suffering from
what her physicians called enteritis, of the severest form, following
typhoid fever. Her case was given up by her regular
physician, and she was lying at the point of death, when Mrs.
Glover (afterwards Mrs. Eddy) visited her. In a few moments
after Mrs. Glover entered the room and stood by the bedside,
Miss Pillsbury recognized her aunt, and said, “I am glad to
see you, aunty.” In about ten minutes more Mrs. Glover told
her to rise from her bed and walk. Miss Pillsbury rose and
walked seven times across her room, then sat down in a chair.
For two weeks before this we had not entered her room without
feeling obliged to step lightly. Her bowels were so tender
that she felt the jar, and it increased her sufferings. She could
only be moved on a sheet from bed to bed. When she walked
across the room, at Mrs. Glover's bidding, Mrs. Glover told
Miss Pillsbury to stamp her foot strongly upon the floor, and
she did so without suffering from it. The next day she was
dressed, and went down to the table; and on the fourth day
made a journey of about a hundred miles in the cars.
The following is a case of heart-disease, which I cured without having seen the patient: —
Please find inclosed a check for five hundred dollars, in reward for your services, that can never be repaid. The day you received my husband's letter I became conscious, for the first time in forty-eight hours. My servant brought my wrapper, and I arose from bed and sat up. The attack of heart-disease lasted two days, and we all think I could not have survived, but for the wonderful help received from you. The enlargement of my left side is all gone, and the doctors pronounce me rid of heart-disease. I had been afflicted with it from infancy. It became organic enlargement of the heart and dropsy of the chest. I was only waiting, and almost longing, to die, but you have healed me. How wonderful to think of it, when you and I have never seen each other. We return to Europe next week. I feel perfectly well.
Mr. R. O. Badgely, of Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote: “My painful and swelled foot was restored at once on your receipt of my letter, and that very day I put on my boot and walked several miles.” He had previously written me: “A stick of timber fell from a building on my foot, crushing the bones. Cannot you help me? I am sitting in great pain, with my foot in a bath.”
I never believed in taking certificates or presenting testimonials of cures; and usually, when healing, have said to the individual, “Go, tell no man.” I have never made a specialty of healing, but labored, in every way that God directed, to introduce metaphysical treatment. I offer a few testimonials, simply to support my statements about Christian Science.
My little son, a year and a half old, had ulcerations of the bowels, and was a great sufferer. He was reduced almost to a skeleton, and growing worse daily. He could take nothing but gruel, or some very simple nourishment. At that time the physicians had given him up, saying they could do no more for him, and he was taking laudanum. Mrs. Eddy came in, took him up from the cradle, held him a few minutes, kissed him, laid him down again, and went out. In less than an hour he was taken up, had his playthings, and was well. All his symptoms changed at once. For months previously blood and mucous had passed his bowels, but that day the evacuation was natural, and he has not suffered from his complaint since. He is now well and hearty. After she saw him he ate all he wanted. He even ate a quantity of cabbage just before going to bed.
I was called to visit Mr. Clark, in Lynn, 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 he was dying. He had just probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious for several inches. He even showed me the probe, that had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The doctor passed out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and sightless; the dew of death was upon 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, 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, and that pieces of wood were discharged from the sore as it healed. These pieces had remained there ever since the injury received in his boyhood.
Since his recovery I have been informed that his physician claims to have cured him; and that his mother has been threatened with an insane asylum for having said, “It was none other than God and that woman who healed him.” I cannot attest to 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. For three years I sought day and night the solution of this problem of Mind-healing. I searched the Scriptures, and read nothing else, not even a newspaper. I kept aloof from society, and devoted my time and energies to discovering a positive rule. I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced, according to primitive Christian healing, by a holy, uplifting faith; but I must know its Science, and I won my way through divine discovery, reason, and human experiment.
I had no human aid. The revelation of Truth to the understanding came, as to all, through divine power; when “unto us a child is born,” a new idea has birth, and “his name is Wonderful.” This is the origin of Christian Science in this century.
That Life is God, that the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its strength with material drugs, have been demonstrated to me. Reviewing this brief experience, I cannot fail to discern the coincidence of the human with the divine.
My medical researches and experiments had prepared the way for metaphysics. Every material dependence had failed, and I can now understand why; for I see the means by which mortals are divinely driven to a spiritual source for health, happiness, and Life. My experiments in homœopathy had made me sceptical as to material curative methods.
Jahr, from Aconitum to Zincum oxydatum, enumerates the general symptoms, the characteristic signs, that demand the different remedies. But the drug is attenuated to such a degree that not a vestige of it remains; and from this I learn that it is not the drug that cures the disease, or changes one of the symptoms.
I have attenuated Natrum muriaticum (common table-salt) until there was not a single saline property left. The salt had “lost its savor;” and yet with one drop of that attenuation in a goblet of water, and a teaspoonful of the water administered at intervals of three hours, I have cured a patient sinking in the last stage of typhoid fever.
The highest attenuation of homœopathy, and the most potent, steps out of matter into Mind; and thus it should be seen that Mind is the healer, or metaphysics, and that there is no efficacy in the drug.
A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and the patient looked like a barrel as she lay in the bed. I prescribed the fourth attenuation of Argenitum nitricum, with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, I began to fear a crisis, or aggravation of symptoms from the prolonged use of these remedies, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine, when she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets for a while, and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain as before. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the effects. After trying this she informed me that she could get along two days without globules; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets, with occasional visits from me, — employing no other means, — and was cured.
When I learned of a verity that Mind, and not matter, effects the cure, I had such qualms of conscience over attributing the cure to matter that I gave up a respectable profession, and heard the soft impeachment that I had lost my wits, or become a Spiritualist — which seems to me much the same thing.
My experiments have proved the fact that Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. A change of belief changes all the physical symptoms, and determines a case for better or worse. Nerves carry a changed report according to the changed belief. The indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the necessities of matter, or the false beliefs of a so-called material existence.
Destruction of the auditory nerve, and paralysis of the optic, are not needed 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) makes man, who is immortal in understanding, mortal in belief.
What is termed matter manifests nothing but mortality. Not a glimpse or manifestation of Spirit is obtained through matter. Spirit is positive; and for positive Spirit to pass through negatives would be its destruction.
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 to cause. The point for others to decide is, whether mortal mind is causative, or the Immortal Mind. We should forsake the basis of material belief, for the facts of Science and their Principle.
The authentic history of Caspar Hauser is a useful hint as to the fraility and inadequacy of mortal mind. It proves, beyond a doubt, that education constitutes this so-called mind; and that, in turn, mortal mind avenges itself on 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 Caspar was still a mental infant, crying and chatteriug 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 that affords us
joy gave him a belief of intense pain. Fear suffused his eyes. They were inflamed by the light, since, to his
belief, it gave suffering instead of joy. After the babbling
boy was taught to speak a few words, he asked to be
taken back to his dungeon, and said that he should never
be happy anywhere else. 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 in those very senses,
trained in an opposite direction.
All this is evidence of the correctness of Christian Science. Alexander Pope was right in his account of Man: —
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, —
A being darkly wise and rudely great,
With too much knowledge for the sceptic's side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, —
He hangs between: in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err,
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, —
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
The less there is said of physical structure or law, and
the more there is said about moral and spiritual law, the
higher the standard of mortals will be, and the further
removed from imbecility of mind and body.
We are told that the simple food our forefathers ate assisted 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. The effeminate constitutions of our time will never grow robust until individual opinions improve, and mortal belief loses some portion of its error.
We must release pharmaceutics, and take up ontology. We must look into the Science, instead of accepting the sense of things. We should master fear, instead of cultivating it. It was the ignorance of our forefathers, concerning the knowledge that to-day walks to and fro in the earth, that made them more hardy than our trained physiologists, more honest than our sleek politicians.
Learning is useful if it is of the right sort. History, observation, invention, philosophic research, and original thought are requisite for the expansion of mortal mind, are essential to its growth out of itself, error.
The tangled barbarisms of learning 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. Our arrangements for thinking and writing are lowering the standards to accommodate the purse, and meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of instruction.
The core of mortal mind is not readjusted, and its coverings are thickly inlaid with foreign devices. If modern knowledge is power, it is not wisdom. It is but a blind force, whose materiality loses in power what it gains in time.
Eclectic religion and metaphysical healing would ameliorate sin, sickness, and death. Let our pulpits do justice to Christian Science. Let it have fair representation from the press. Give it the place in our institutions of learning now occupied by physiology, and Christian Science will eradicate sickness and sin in less time than they have taken to increase, under the old systems and stereotyped plans for subduing them. Incorrect teaching lowers the standard of Truth. Man hath sought out many inventions, but he has not yet found that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of knowledge.
Many a hopeless case of disease is induced by a single post-mortem examination, — not from poison, or material virus, but from the fear of the disease, and from the image brought before the mind during an excited state of feeling, which is afterward outlined on the body.
Books that would rule disease out of mortal mind, and would so efface the images and thoughts of disease, instead of impressing them with force of description and medical detail, — such books would abate sickness and ultimately destroy it.
Physics would have you believe matter is diseased, independently of mortal mind, and despite its protest or co-operation. This view is as evidently erroneous to me now, and will be to others at some future day, as the rejected doctrine of the predestination of the saved and the lost. The shocking doctrine that man is governed physically all his days, and afterwards killed by the body, is too absurd to last another century.
The press unwittingly sends forth many a plague-spot into the human family. It does this by giving names to diseases, and printing long descriptions that 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 has cost many a man all his earthly days of comfort. What a price for human knowledge! But the price does not exceed the original cost. God said, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die.” The doctor's mind reaches his patient's. His belief in disease — its reality and fatality to him — harms his patients more than his calomel and morphine; inasmuch as the higher stratum of mortal mind is more potent to injure than its lower substratum, called matter. A patient hears the doctor's verdict as a martyr hears his death-sentence. He may seem calm under it, but he is not. His fortitude may sustain him, but his fear has already developed the disease which is gaining the mastery.
The power of mortal mind over its own body is little known. Its destructive action, if reversed, would restore health.
Take away the penalty that must follow sin, and mortal mind could not destroy its own body. Sin alone brings death, for it is the only element of destruction. “Fear him who is able to destroy both Soul and body in hell,” said Jesus; and a careful study of this text shows that these words were a warning to beware, not of Rome, nor of Satan, nor of God, but of sin. Sickness, sin, and death are not concomitants of Life. No law supports them. They have no relation to God that can establish their power.
The doctor is the artist who outlines disease, and fills his delineations with sketches from class-books. After disease is formed in mortal mind, it is sure to appear on the body, sooner or later. The thought of disease is sometimes formed before you see your doctor, and before he undertakes to dispel it by a counter fear, — perhaps by a blister, by the application of caustic, by croton oil, or by a surgical operation. Or, giving another direction to faith, he prescribes drugs, until the elasticity of mortal thought haply causes a vigorous reaction upon itself, and thus reproduces a picture of healthful and harmonious formations.
The 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 rule the weaker. Hence the importance that doctors be Christian Scientists.
We respect the motives and philanthropy of the higher class of physicians. We know that if they understood the Science of Mental Healing they would abandon their systems of drugging. Even this one reform in medicine would ultimately deliver mankind from the oppressive bondage of sickness that false theories enforce.
Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise did it, or that an arm less used must be fragile. If matter were the cause of action, and muscles, without the co-operation of mortal mind, could lift the hammer and smite the nail, it might be thought true that hammering enlarges the muscles. But the trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron? Because mortal mind is not producing that result in the hammer.
Muscles are not self-acting. If mortal mind moves them not, they are motionless. Hence the fact that mortal mind enlarges and strengthens them through its mandate, through its own demand and supply of power. Not because of muscular exercise, but through the blacksmith's belief, comes the strength of his arm.
Mortals develop their bodies just as they move them, through 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 quite unknown to him. Even mortal mind, fixed on some achievement, makes its accomplishment possible. Exceptions only confirm this rule, proving that failure is occasioned by a too feeble sense of evil desires or good.
Had Blondin believed it impossible to walk a rope over Niagara's abyss of waters, he could never have done it. His belief that he could do it gave his muscles their flexibility and power, — which was attributed, perhaps, to a lubricating oil. His fear must disappear, and his power of putting resolve into action must appear.
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 Mind instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by Immortal Mind. The Psalmist said: “Thou madest man to have dominion over the works of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet.”