Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1889)/02 Footsteps of Truth

by Mary Baker G. Eddy

CHAPTER II.

FOOTSTEPS OF TRUTH.

And thy best reason for aught is this, — thou, Lord, wouldst have it so. — Tupper.

THE best sermon ever preached is Truth's practice, healing sickness and destroying sin. Knowing that one affection will be supreme in us, and take the lead of our lives, the Master said, “Ye cannot serve two masters.”

Christian Science must be accepted, at this period, by induction. We admit the whole because a part is proven, and that part illustrates and proves the entire Principle. The Science should be taught by one morally advanced and spiritually endowed, for it is not superficial, nor is it seen from the standpoint of the human senses. Only by the illumination of the spiritual sense can the light of understanding be thrown upon this Science, that reverses the evidence before the material senses, and furnishes the right interpretation of God and man.

Although this volume contains the whole Science of Mind-healing, never think that you can gather its entire meaning by simply perusing my text-book. My personal instructions plant you more gently on its spiritual basis, and lift you more firmly above the perishing fossils of old beliefs, that you may grasp the far-off and unattained.

We must tear down before we can build; and demolishing, rather than building, belongs to the work of teaching new truths. I have endeavored to make this work the Æsculapius of Mind, that it may give hope to the sick, and heal them, although they know not how. This is the effect of Truth, even when not wholly understood.

Mental Science was a new revelation to myself when, teaching its grand truths, I had (along with them) to impart also the hue of spiritual ideas from my own spiritual condition, and do this through the meagre channel afforded by language. The Truth makes a new creation, whereby old things pass away and “all things become new.” Passions, selfishness, appetites, — all sensuality, — yield to spirituality, and the superabundance of being is on the side of God. Christian perfection is won on no other basis. The scientific unity which exists between God and man must be wrought out in life-practice, and God's will be universally done.

If they would bring to bear upon the study of the Science of Mind half the faith they have in the so-called pains and pleasures of material sense, men would not go on from immorality to immorality, until disciplined by the prison and the scaffold, but the whole human family would be redeemed by the merits of Christ. For this glorious result Jesus strove, that man might be blessed by Divine knowing.

Outside of this Science all is unstable error; but, when in accord with the Principle of his being, man neither sins nor suffers. The days of our earthly pilgrimage should multiply instead of diminish; this travelling should be towards life instead of death; and as we journey, we should develop more and more the infinite capacities of humanity, which endow it with the supreme control of the earth.

Grafting holiness upon unholiness, and opining that sin is forgiven when it is not destroyed, is as foolish as straining out gnats and swallowing camels. Our beliefs about a Supreme Being, and the practice growing out of them, are contradictory. We admit that God hath almighty power, is a “present help in time of trouble,” and yet we rely on a drug to heal disease, as if senseless matter had more power than sensible Spirit.

Common opinion admits that a man may take cold in the act of doing good, that evil can trespass on Love's domain. The Science of Christianity endows Spirit with omnipotence, assigns rewards to righteousness, and denies that matter can create or destroy.

Error abounds where truth should much more abound. If God were understood, instead of merely believed, this faith would establish health. The accusation of the rabbis, “He maketh himself as God,” was the justification of Christ, for to the Christian there is no other self than God. This thought incites the more exalted worship of self-abnegation. Spiritual perception brings out the possibilities of being, and destroys reliance on aught but God, so making man the image of his Maker in deed and in Truth.

We are prone to believe either in more than one Supreme Ruler, or in some power less than God. We imagine that Mind can be imprisoned in a sensuous body. We try to believe, when the body (in God's keeping) has gone to ruin, overmastered omnipotence, and destroyed itself, that then the deathless Principle or Soul may escape from it.

But God has no need to kill a man in order to draw him to Himself, for God Himself is the Life. He is at once the centre and circumference of being. The good we think and do, the virtue we call manhood, — these qualities are real, and reflect God. It is the evil we do and say, the opposite of Life and Love, which is unreal. The notion that God lives in matter is pantheistic. God is not the author of an evil mind. Indeed, evil is not Mind. We are to learn that evil is the awful deception and unreality of being. Without this lesson we equally lose sight of the perfect Father and of the Divine Principle governing man.

Befogged in error (the error of believing that matter can be intelligent for good or evil) we can catch unbiassed glimpses of God only as the mists disperse, or as they melt into such thinness that we can perceive the divine image in some word or deed that indicates the true idea — the supremacy and reality of good, the nothingness and unreality of evil. The Scriptures say: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man” (the word duty not being in the Hebrew). Well does Myers sing: —

Therefore, O Lord, I will not fail or falter.

⁠Nay, but I ask it, — nay, but I desire:

Lay on my lips Thine embers of the altar,

⁠Seal with the sting and furnish with the fire.

The phrase mortal man is really a solecism, for man is immortal, and Truth pierces the error of mortals as a sunbeam penetrates the cloud. The error that saith “Soul is in body, Mind is in matter, and Good is in evil,” must unsay it, and cease such utterances; else God will be hidden from it, and man will sin without a sense of sin, leaning on matter instead of Spirit, limping with lameness, drooping with dyspepsia, consuming with disease, — all because of the blindness of this false sense of God and man.

We should hesitate to say Jehovah sins or suffers; but if sin and suffering are realities of being, whence did they come? Mind signifies God, — Infinity, not finity. How far removed from infidelity is the belief that can combine such opposites as holiness and unholiness, calling both Spirit, at the same time admitting that Spirit is God; virtually saying “He is good in one instance, and evil in another”? There are evil beliefs, called evil spirits, but they are not Spirit, or they could not be evil. Error of statement leads to error in action.

There is no evil in Spirit, and proportionately as we advance spiritually, evil disappears. This is the evidence of our position, for every scientific statement in Christianity, about God or man, has its proof.

The understanding that the Ego is Mind, and that there is but one Mind or Intelligence, begins at once to destroy the errors of mortal sense, and to supply the Truth of immortal sense, It makes the body harmonious, governed by Spirit instead of matter. It makes the nerves, the bones, the brains, to be servants instead of masters. If the body is governed by the higher law of Mind, its members are in submission to Life and Truth.

If brains, nerves, stomach, are intelligent, — if they talk to us, tell us how they are conditioned, and report how they feel, — then Spirit and matter commingle, and so do sickness and health, good and evil, Life and death; and who shall say which is the greater?

If the decision were left to the personal senses, evil would appear to be the master of good, sickness to be the rule of existence; while health would seem the exception, death the inevitable, and Life the supposition. Paul asked (2 Cor. vi. 15) “What fellowship hath Christ with Belial?” Remember, — Truth is greater than error, and we cannot put the greater into the lesser. Soul is greater than body; but if it were in the body, it would be less, and therefore could not be Spirit.

Man, governed by his Maker, having no other God, may triumph over sin, sickness, and death, and plant himself on the apostolic statement that “all things were made by him [the Word of God], and without him was not anything made that was made.”

If God made sin, if Good produced evil, and Truth resulted in error, Science would be helpless; but because God is not the author of these human discords, we may accept the conclusion that they have only a fabulous existence, and are of human instead of divine origin.

To hold yourself superior to sin — because God made you superior to it, and governs man — is wisdom. To fear sin is to misunderstand the Divine Science of Being and man's relation to God, to doubt His government, and distrust His omnipotent care. To hold yourself superior to sickness and death is equally wise, and in accordance with Divine Science ; and to fear them is impossible, when you understand God, and know that they are no part of His creation.

If you fully understood the relation you hold to God you could have no other Mind but His, — no other Love, Wisdom, and Truth, no other sense of Life, and no consciousness of matter or error.

If thought is startled at the strong claim of Science for the supremacy of good, and doubts it, ought we not, contrariwise, to be astounded at the vigorous claims of evil, and doubt them, — no longer thinking it natural to sin, and unnatural to forsake it, no longer imagining evil to be the real, and good the unreal? Truth should not seem as surprising and unnatural as error, and error should not seem as real as Truth. There is no error in Science, and our lives must be governed by Science in order to be in harmony with God, the Principle of all being.

Sound is a mental impression, made on human belief; the ear hears not. In Science sound is communicated through spiritual understanding, through the senses of Soul. Before human knowledge educated mortal thought into a false sense of things, — into belief in material origins, and away from the One Mind and true source, — I have no doubt the impressions of Truth were as distinct as sound, and came thus to the senses of primitive Christians. They talked with God. The medium of hearing being spiritual, it is normal and indestructible.

If Enoch's perception had been confined to the evidence before his material senses, he could never have walked with God, and been guided into prophecy and demonstration by Divine Science.

Spiritual sense is a conscious capacity to understand God. It unfolds to human comprehension its faith by works, more than by words. Its words are expressed only in “new tongues.” This involves the translation of matter back to the spiritual and original text, where the Principle and proof of Christianity are set forth in Jesus' demonstration, healing the sick, casting out error, and destroying death, — “the last enemy to he overcome.”

The suicidal sinner regards death as a friend, as a stepping-stone to immortality and bliss. The Bible calls it an enemy; and Jesus overcame death, instead of yielding to it. To him, therefore, it was not the threshold over which he must pass to Life and glory.

Mortal mind has a modus of its own, undirected and unsustained by God. It brings a rose into contact with the olfactory nerves, that they may smell it. In common methods it handles the rose. In the uncommon methods, it employs legerdemain, or rises, in credulous frenzy, to the belief that spirits unseen handle the flower for mortals.

Because all the methods of Mind are not understood, we say the lips must move in order to convey thought, that the undulations of the air convey sound, and that any other method must involve a miracle. The realities of being, its normal action and the origin of all things, are unseen to mortal sense; whereas the unreal and imitative movements of finite belief (that reverse the infinite modus and action) are self-styled the real. Whoever contradicts that supposition is called a deceiver, or said to be deceived. “As a man thinketh, so is he” in error; but as a man understandeth, so is he in Truth.

The supposed sensations of the body must either be the sensations of mind or of matter. Which are they? Is it not self-evident that matter has no sensation; and is it not equally self-evident that matter exists in belief only, and not in the understanding of being?

The sensation exists only in belief. When a tear starts for another's sorrow, has not mortal mind produced the effect seen in the lachrymal gland? Was it grief that caused the tear, or the effect of one mortal mind upon another? We cite such a case to show the common notion of cause and effect, not as asserting that a belief in such an action of the mind, distressing others, is scientific. It should no longer be said in Israel that “the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.” Sympathy with error should disappear. One erring mind, transferring its thoughts to another, only serves to prolong the discord and illusion that ought to be short-lived.

The transmission of disease, or certain idiosyncrasies, would be impossible if this great fact of Life were learned: namely, that nothing inharmonious can enter it, for Life is God. Heredity is a prolific subject for belief to pin itself upon, but if nothing is real but the right, we can have no dangerous inheritances, and away go the ills of flesh.

John Young, of Edinburgh, writes, “God is the father of Mind, and of nothing else.” This is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” of human beliefs, and preparing the way of Science. Let us learn of the real and eternal, and prepare for the reign of Spirit, the kingdom of heaven, — the reign and rule of universal harmony, that cannot be lost, or remain forever unseen.

Already the shadow of His right hand rests upon the hour. Ye who can discern the face of the sky, — the sign material, — how much more should you discern the sign mental, compass the severance of sin and sickness from the thoughts that produce them, and understand the Truth that corrects and destroys them. To cut down all that beareth not good fruit was the mission of our Master, and his mission was to the very hearts that rejected him.

Judaism, enjoining the limited form of a national religion, was the antithesis of Christianity. It was merely a finite and material scheme, carried out in speculative theories regarding God, man, sanitary methods, and religious means. The Jewish recognition of God, as only a person and king, has not yet departed. Creeds and rituals have not quite washed their hands of rabbinical lore. To-day echoes the cry of bygone centuries, “Crucify him! Pursue Truth at every advancing footstep, with sword and spear!” “He maketh himself as God,” was the Jewish accusation against him who planted Christianity on the foundation of Spirit, and would know no other Life, Intelligence, or Substance except God.

All forms of error support the false conclusion that there is more than one Intelligence; that material history is as real and important as spiritual history; that mortal belief is as conclusively Mind as immortal Truth: that there are two separate antagonistic entities and beings, two powers, — namely, Spirit and matter, — resulting in a third person (mortal man), who carries out the delusions of sin, sickness, and death.

The first power is admitted to be good, an Intelligence named God. The second power, evil, is the opposite of good. It cannot be Intelligence, though thus named. The third, man, is a supposed mixture of the first and second powers, of Intelligence and non-intelligence, of Spirit and matter.

Such theories are self-evidently erroneous. They can never stand the test of Science. Judging them by their fruits, they are corrupt. When will the ages under stand the Ego, and see only one God?

This incoherent mass of self-assertion gave sinners the notion that they could create what God cannot, — namely, sinful mortality, — usurping the name without the nature of Mind. In Science it can never be said by any mortal, “I have a mind of my own, regardless of God.”

A distinguished clergyman writes, in his sermon on The Great Purpose of Christianity: “The highest existtence in the universe is Mind, for God is Mind; and the development of that Principle which assimilates us to God must be our supreme good. . . . He imparts, as it were, Himself. . . . We all possess within us what is of more worth than the external creation. For this outward system is the product of Mind.”

In the same vein, slightly changing its wording, is Bowring's stanza: —

We see Thy hand; it leads us, it supports us;

We hear Thy voice; it counsels and it courts us;

And then we turn away; and still Thy kindness

⁠Informs our blindness.

It has been said, and truly, that Christianity must be Science, and Science must be Christianity; else one or the other is false and useless; but neither of those is unimportant or untrue, and they are alike in demonstration. If God is within and without all things, what and where is matter, which does not express Spirit?

When you say “Man's body is matter,” I say with Paul, “Be willing rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord.” Yield your belief of Mind in matter, and have but one Mind, even God.

Medicine may inform you that Paul's Christianity, that regards Mind scientifically as separate from matter, indicates an unnatural state, or catalepsy; and it may further instruct you as to the dangerous nature of this disorder, telling you how it ends in death. But turn to the inspired writers and you read: “If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death;” “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh.”

We must destroy the belief that Life and Intelligence are in matter, and plant ourselves upon what is pure and perfect. Paul said, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Sooner or later we shall learn that the fetters of man's finite, capacity are forged by the illusion that he lives in body instead of Soul, in matter rather than Spirit.

The possession of but one God, one Mind, unfolds the divine law of loving thy neighbor as thyself. Selfishness hinders man's natural drift towards God, and conveys thought in selfish channels, where opposite and contending interests sway mankind. It tips the beam of being to the side of error, instead of Truth. This throws our weight into the scale of matter instead of Spirit.

In the scientific relation of God to man we find that one man's meat is not another's poison, but that what feeds one feeds all; as Jesus showed, with the loaves and fishes, when Spirit, not matter, was the source of supply.

How long it must be before we arrive at the demonstration of scientific being, no man knoweth, — not even the Son, but the Father; but one thing is certain, that sin, sickness, and death will continue their delusions until we reach that Utopian goal.

The footsteps of thought, as they pass higher from material standpoints, are slow, and portend a long night to the traveller; but the guardians of the gloom are the angels of His presence, the spiritual intuitions that tell us when the night is far spent and the dawn approacheth. Whoso opens the way in Science is a pilgrim and stranger, marking out the path for generations yet unborn.

The history of our country, like many other histories, illustrates the might of Mind, and shows human power to be proportionate to the embodiment of right motives. A few immortal sentences, stimulated by justice, have broken fetters, and abolished whipping-posts and slave-markets. Tyranny will go down in blood, and the breath of freedom come from the cannon's mouth.

To legally abolish slavery in the United States was good, but its abolition in the human mind is a more difficult task. The question of right, the Divine Mind must decide. He must destroy the human motive of slavery, lest it germinate in new forms of tyranny. We still have men and women of all races in bondage, ignorant how to obtain their freedom. The rights of man were vindicated in a single instance, when African slavery was abolished over a small portion of our globe; but that instance was only prophetic of further steps toward the banishment of slavery, in all forms and under all circumstances.

This book was written years before I read Dr. Channing on Spiritual Freedom: —

I call that mind free which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison with its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognizes its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness.

I call that mind free which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, parses beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which it everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlargement.

I call that mind free . . . which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions from abroad not to supersede but to quicken and exalt its own energies.

.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.

I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused.

.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.

I call that mind free which, through confidence in God and in the power of virtue, has cast off all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all else be lost.

I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, . . . which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions.

I call that mind free which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.

In fine, I call that mind free which, conscious of its affinity with God, and confiding in his promises by Jesus Christ, devotes itself faithfully to the unfolding of all its powers, which passes the bounds of time and. death, which hopes to advance forever, and which finds inexhaustible power . . . in the prospect of immortality.

How grand his conclusion, “Such is the spiritual freedom Christ came to give.”

The voice of God in behalf of the African slave still echoed in our land, when a new abolitionist swelled the keynote of universal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledgment of the rights of man as a son of God, — that the fetters, of matter be stricken from the human mind, and its freedom won, not with bayonet and blood, not through human warfare, but through Divine Science.

In 1866, higher than the platform of human rights, I built the next staging; and built it for diviner claims, made not through code or creed, but in demonstration of “peace on earth and good-will to man.” The yoke of human codes cramps the human faculties which need freedom. I would rend asunder the cankering fetters, and give man his birthright of allegiance to his Maker.

The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, I would save from the slavery of their own beliefs, and from the educational systems of the Pharaohs who hold the children of Israel in bondage.

I saw before me the Red Sea and the wilderness, but I pressed on, through faith in Truth, trusting this strong deliverer to guide into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall, and the rights of the Spirit-man's freedom are known and acknowledged. I saw the sick wearing out years of servitude to an unreal master, even the belief that the body governs, rather than Mind.

By universal consent mortal belief has constituted itself a law to bind mortals to sickness, sin, and death; but this custom of belief is misnamed material law, and the physician who upholds it is mistaken in his methods. The law of mortal mind, conjectural and speculative, should be void, should be trampled under foot by the higher law of immortal Mind, that created man for dominion instead of enslavement.

I saw that the law of mortal belief included all error, and must be exposed, denied, superseded; that the claims of illusion's slaves must be explained away, even as the oppressive State laws were disputed, and the slave taught his freedom.

The higher law of the Divine Mind must end human bondage, or mortals will go on as did the colored race, ignorant of their inalienable rights, and submitting to the most hopeless slavery; because their masters enforced ignorance as the accompaniment of servitude.

Let history record it, that Massachusetts succored a fugitive slave in 1853, and put her foot on a tyrannical prohibitory law, regulating the practice of medicine, in 1880. Had her sister States followed this example, and sustained our Constitution and Bill of Rights, it would have saved them from a departure from that immortal sentiment of the Declaration, “Man is endowed by his Maker with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The oppressive State statutes touching medicine remind one of those words of Madame Roland, as she knelt to a Goddess of Liberty erected upon a guillotine, “O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”

Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to foresee the doom of all oppression. Slavery is not the legitimate state of man. God made him free. Paul said, “I was free born.” So should all men be. Justice and Truth make free; injustice and error lead into captivity.

Divine Science grasps the standard of liberty, and cries “Follow me; escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death.” Jesus marked out the way. Citizens of the world, accept the glorious import of “the liberty of the sons of God,” and be free! This is your divine right. Illusion, not law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, defaced the tablet of your mind with error, enfeebled your body.

Causation is Mind, not matter. The body but expresses mortal mind. You possess this body and you make it harmonious or discordant, according to the images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace the body in thought, and should delineate your thoughts in health, not in sickness. You should banish the thought of disease, the belief that matter holds you in mystery and slavery. As immortal, you have a perfect, indestructible form. It is belief in mortality that makes your body discordant, according to the ignorance, fear, and belief that govern it.

If God had constituted material laws to govern man, which, disobeyed, make him ill, Christ could not have disregarded those laws by healing in direct opposition to them, and in defiance of the material condition, instead of through consultation with it.

The enslavement of man is not legitimate. It will cease when the freedom and God-given dominion of man are appropriated. Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God. Then they will control their own bodies, apprehending Divine Science. Dropping their beliefs, they will behold harmony as the divine reality, and discord as the material unreality.

The evidence of the senses reverses the Science of Being, and establishes a reign of discord, — the power of sin, sickness, and death; but the great facts of Life, rightly understood, will defeat this trio of errors, with all their false witnesses, and reveal the kingdom of heaven, the reign of harmony to come on earth.

The earth's diurnal rotation is invisible to personal sense, and the sun seems moving from east to west. Until this false testimony of the senses is rebuked by study, it deludes the judgment and offers false evidence.

Science, reversing appearances, corrects them by the simple rule that the greater controls the lesser. The sun is the central stillness, and the earth, turning on its axis, revolves around it. Astronomical order, imitating the action of Principle and its reflection, is nearer the spiritual fact; and it is allied to Divine Science in its method of governing man and the universe.

Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing them all, is the central sun to its own systems of ideas, the Light and Life of all its own vast creation. Man is tributary to the Divine Mind. The mortal body is not the man, and is subject to the control of error.

The optical focus is proof of the illusion of material sense. On the eye's retina sky and tree-tops apparently join hands, clouds and ocean meet and mingle. Where the finite and material drop the view, the infinite and spiritual extend and enlarge it.

The barometer, that little prophet of storm and sunshine, — denying the testimony of the senses, — points to fair weather in the midst of murky clouds and drenching rain.

To material sense the severance of the jugular vein takes away Life; but to spiritual sense, and in Science, Life goes on unchanged, being eternal. Temporal life is a false sense of existence. Science takes all evidence out of the hands of matter, and supports the substance of Spirit and the spiritual fact.

Science destroyed Ptolemy's purblind theory, that the earth is the astronomic centre, and revealed the true plan of the harmony of the spheres. Material sense, reversing the Science of Soul, would make mortal mind tributary to mortal body, and appoint certain sections of matter, such as brain, and nerves, as seats of pain and pleasure, whence matter reports to this mind its status of happiness or misery.

Our theories make the same mistake regarding Soul and body that Ptolemy made as to the solar system. They insist that Soul is in body, and Mind therefore tributary to matter. Science has destroyed the false theory as to the relations of the celestial bodies; and Science also will destroy the greater error as to our terrestrial bodies. The true idea and Principle of man will then appear.

Copernicus mapped out the stellar system; but before he spake, astrography was chaotic, and the heavenly fields unexplored. The Chaldean wise men read in the stars the fate of empires and the fortunes of men. No higher revelation than the horoscope was to them displayed upon the empyrean, but earth and heaven were still bright, and bird and blossom were glad in the sunshine.

We have goodness and beauty to gladden the heart; but man, left to the hypotheses of material sense, unexplained by Science, would be as the wandering comet or desolate star, — “a weary searcher for a viewless home.”

The Ptolemaic blunder could not affect the harmony of being, as much as the error relating to Soul and body, — which reverses the order of Science, and assigns to matter the power and prerogative of Spirit, so that man becomes the most inharmonious body of the universe.

The senses of Spirit are without pain and forever at peace. Nothing can hide from them the beauty of all things, the might and permanence of Truth. What a transient support is mortal joy, when the power of light and lens may end with a wound on the retina! But mortals can never lose the sight or sense of what is real.

The Spirit's eye need not be subordinate to geometric altitudes. Whatever is governed by God is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of Intelligence and Life.

We should never inquire into bodily condition, structure, or economy, if we followed the command of our Master, “Take no thought for the body;” but we should be masters of the body, dictate terms to it, and form and control it with Truth.

The compounded minerals, or aggregate substances that compose the earth, the relations constituent masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolutions of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance when we remember they must all give place to the spiritual fact, by the translation of man and the universe from matter back to Spirit. Proportionately as this is done, will both man and the universe be found harmonious and eternal.

Material substances, geological calculations, all the paraphernalia of speculative theories (based on the hypothesis of Life and Intelligence located in matter) will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of Spirit.

There is but one way to heaven, — harmony, — and Jesus showed us this way. Know no other reality than God and His reflection, no other consciousness of Life's demands, and rise superior to sin, sickness, and death — the so-called pains or pleasures of matter.

The notion of getting to heaven through the death of the body that never had Life, is to fancy that a second error will remedy the first; and that the illusion that Life is in matter may be cancelled by another illusion, that death takes Life out of matter. Spirit evolves all that is real. Form, outline, and color are ideas that Mind has expressed, and they never leave their spiritual and immortal basis for one transient and material.

When Columbus gave freer breath to the globe, ignorance and superstition chained the honest limbs of the brave old navigator, and disgrace and starvation stared him in the face; but sterner still had been his fate, if that discovery had undermined the favorite inclinations of sensualism.

Neither age nor accident interferes with the senses of Soul, and there are no other real senses. It is self-evident that body has neither sense nor sensation of its own, that there is no oblivion of Soul or its faculties. Is Soul lost through sin? Then being and immortality are lost, with the faculties of seeing and hearing. But being cannot be lost while man exists.

Knowing that Soul and all its faculties are forever manifested through man, the Master healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the lame, bringing to light the action of the Eternal Mind on the erring mortal mind and body, to give a better understanding and harmony of being. He healed the sick and destroyed sin, by one and the same metaphysical process.

If it be true that nerves have sensation, that the eyes see and the ears hear, that matter has intelligence, then, when the body is dematerialized, those faculties must depart, and are not immortal as Mind; whereas the fact remains, that only through dematerialization can these faculties be immortal.

The material senses and Adam (represented in the Scriptures as formed from dust) are figurative and return to dust, to the nothingness of a belief disavowed. They go out as they came in, for they are still the error, and not the Truth of being. When the spiritual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions of Mind to mortals, then being will be understood, and found to be harmonious.

We bow down to matter, and entertain finite thoughts of God, even as does the pagan idolater. We fear and obey what we consider a material body, more than we do a spiritual God. Modern knowledge, like the original tree of knowledge, multiplies our pains. Our illusions would rob God and slay man; and then would spread their table with cannibal titbits, giving thanks meanwhile.

Scripture informs us that “with God all things are possible;” but common theories practically deny this, and make healing the sick possible only through matter. Our theories may be false, but the Scripture is true. Christianity is not dishonest, but other religions may be.

The attempts to conciliate society, and gain dominion over mankind, are weaknesses of the world. He that leaves all for Truth has left popularity and gained Christianity, but the material belief is slow to acknowledge what the spiritual fact includes.

The cross is the central emblem of history, and the loadstar to the demonstration of Christian healing, whereby sin and sickness are destroyed. History repeats itself; the sects that endured the lash of their predecessors, in their turn bestow it upon those who are in advance of themselves.

We worship spiritually only as we worship less materially. Spiritual worship is Christianity; material worship is idolatry. Judaism and ritualism are but types and shadows of true worship. “The true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth.”

The substance of all devotion is the demonstration of Love. Our Master said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” We cannot fill vessels already full. They must first be emptied. Let us empty ourselves of error. When the sun shines, let us not hug closely our tatters about us.

To empty mortal mind of error is to pour in Truth through the floodgates of Science. The Christianity that Jesus introduced was not a creed or an observance. nor a special gift from a personal Jehovah; but it was the demonstration of a Divine Principle, casting out error and healing the sick, not merely in the name of Christ, or Truth, but in demonstration thereof.

The uselessness of drugs, the emptiness of knowledge, the nothingness of matter and its imaginary laws, are apparent as we rise from the rubbish of belief to the acquisition and demonstration of spiritual understanding. In the silent sanctuary of Soul are voices of solemn import, but we heed them not. When the supposed pleasures and pains of sense pass away, that is a sign of the burial of error and the resurrection to spiritual understanding.

Anciently the followers of Christ, or Truth, measured Christianity by its power over sickness, sin, and death; but modern religions omit all but one of these claims, — the power over sin. We must seek the undivided garment, the whole of Christianity, as our first proof of Science, for that alone gives it. This limited volume can do but little justice to so mighty a theme, for systematic teaching, and the student's own experience in practice, are requisite for its comprehension. Some individuals assimilate Truth more rapidly than others; but I never graduated a single student (obedient to my directions) who did not heal the sick, and add continually to his store of understanding and success.

If the student goes away to practise those teachings only in part, dividing his interests between God and Mammon, and substituting his own views for mine, he will reap what he has sown, and perhaps call me a hard master. Whoever would demonstrate the healing of Christian Science must abide by my rules; heed every statement, and advance from the rudiments laid down. There is nothing difficult or toilsome in this task, when the way is pointed out, but sincerity and earnestness alone win the prize.

Christian Science is not an exception to the general rule, that there is no excellence without labor in a direct line. One cannot scatter fire, and at the same time defeat the enemy. To pursue other vocations, and at the same time advance rapidly in the demonstration of this Science, is not possible.

You should practise what you know well; and you will then advance in proportion to your honesty and fidelity, — qualities which insure success in this Science as in all others; but it requires a higher understanding to teach this subject properly and correctly, than to heal the most difficult case.

Motive and act are not rightly valued until understood. It is well to wait until those whom you wish to benefit are ready for the blessing. Science is changing individual character, as well as the material universe.

Self-love is a materialism, more opaque than atomic solidity. Yielding patient obedience to a patient God, I labor to dissolve, with the universal solvent of Truth, the adamant of error in self-will, self-justification, and self-love; for these war against spirituality and are the law of sin and death.

It is a question to-day, whether the ancient inspired healers understood the Science of Christian healing, or whether they caught its sweet tones, like the natural musician, without being able to explain them. So divinely imbued were they with the Spirit, that the letter could not hinder them; and the letter, without the Spirit, would have made void their example. There is no question but what Jesus understood Christian Science, and taught its Divine Principle to his students. The basis of a right action is right thought. Both should be understood, or you may lose both.

The point, beyond faith, is to find the footsteps of Truth, the way in Science to health and holiness, — to reach the Horeb height where God is revealed. The corner-stone of this spiritual building is purity.

The baptism of Spirit washes the body of all the impurities of flesh, and signifies that such as see God are approaching spiritual Life and its demonstration, — healing the sick and destroying error.

It were “as easy for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,” as for a mortal to enter the kingdom of heaven, become immortalized, without spiritual baptism and regeneration. It is only a question of time “when all shall know this, from the least unto the greatest.” Denial of the claims of matter is a footstep towards the joys of Spirit, — man's freedom, and triumph over the body.

The sensualist's treasures are laid up “where moth and rust corrupt.” Mortality is their doom. Sin breaks in upon them, and robs their fleeting joys. The sensualist's affections are imaginary, whimsical, unreal, even as his pleasures are. Falsehood, envy, ambition, hypocrisy, malice, hate, steal away the treasures of earth. Stripped of its exteriors, what a mocking spectacle is error.

To unloose the sandals of Truth, error must grow meek. To ascertain our progress, we have to learn what is our God, where are our affections, whom do we acknowledge and obey. If we progress, God will be nearer, dearer, and more real to us. Matter will then yield its claims to Spirit. The objects we pursue, and the Spirit we manifest, reveal our standpoint, and what prizes we are winning.

Mind is the seat of motive. It forms character and produces every action of the body. If action proceeds from the unerring Divine Mind, it becomes harmonious. If it comes from erring mortal mind, it is discordant, producing sin, sickness, death. Those two opposite sources never mingle in fount or stream. The perfect Mind sends forth perfection, for its source is God. Imperfect mind sends forth its own resemblances, of which the wise man said, “All is vanity.”

Take away wealth, fame, and the organizations of society, — that weigh not one jot in the balance of God, — and we get clearer views of humanity. Break up clans, level wealth with honesty, let worth be decided by wisdom, and we get the better view.

The wicked man is not the master of his upright neighbor. Let it be understood that success in error is defeat in Truth. The watchword of Christian Science is, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.”

The voices of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount are pursuing and will overtake the ages, demolishing in their course all error, and establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth. Truth has been uttered. It only needs to be practised.

Peals that should startle the dream of error, and waken the slumbering thought, are measurably unheeded; but the last trump has not sounded, or this would not be so. Marvels, calamities, sin, will much more abound, as the understanding urges its resisted claims on mortals. But the aggravation of error foretells its doom, — foreshadows the nearness of Truth; and that Truth will overturn, until “He whose right it is shall reign.” Longevity is increasing and sin will diminish, for the world is feeling the alterative effect of Truth through every pore.

The question convulses the world: “What is Truth?” Many are willing to meet this inquiry with the assurance of understanding; but more are trying to “give it pause,” blinded by their old illusions. The blind lead the blind, and both fall into the ditch.

The efforts of error to answer this question by some ology are vain. Reason and free thought, the accompaniments of approaching Science, cannot be put down; they will purge humanity and supplant the doctor's pills.

In the march of generations the banner of progress is unfurled. The kingdoms of this world will fight, and command their sentinels not to let Truth pass the guard until it subscribes to their creeds and systems. Truth, heeding not the pointed bayonet, marches on; and there is a little tumult and some rallying to its standard. How true the poet's prophecy: —

Thou must walk on, however man upbraid thee,

⁠With him who trod the wine-press all alone;

Thou wilt not find one human hand to aid thee,

⁠One human heart to comprehend thine own.

You may know that Truth is leading, by the fewness and faithfulness of its followers. Their work is quiet, like the “little leaven which a woman hid in three measures of meal.”

A higher and practical Christianity, capable of meeting the want of mortals in sickness and in health, stands at the door of the age, knocking for admission. Will you open or close the door upon this angel visitant, who cometh as of old to the patriarch at eventide?

Truth hoists the standard of freedom. It bears the elements of liberty. On its banner is the motto, “Slavery is abolished.” No power can withstand Divine Wisdom. What is this supposed power that opposes itself to God? Whence cometh it? What is it that would bind man with iron shackles to sickness, sin, and death? The power of God bringeth deliverance to the captive. Whatsoever enslaveth man is opposed to the divine government.

There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence is all-powerful; and to acknowledge any other power is to dishonor God. The humble Nazarene rebelled against the supposition that sin, sickness, and death have power. He proved them powerless. It should have humbled the pride of the priests to behold the demonstration of Christianity so excel the influence of their ceremonies and dead faith.

If Mind is not the master of sin, sickness, and death, they are immortal; for it is proven already that matter has not destroyed them; that, on the contrary, it is their basis and support.

I hope, dear reader, I am leading you into the understanding of your divine rights and heaven-bestowed harmony; that, as you read, you see there can be no power (outside of erring mortal mind and your own belief) able to make you sick or a sinner, and that you are conquering this error. Knowing the falsity of material sense, you will assert your prerogative to overcome the belief that you are sick.

The body is inanimate, inert, mindless. If you are believing and doing wrong knowingly, you can at once change your course and do right. So if you believe yourself sick, you can in like manner alter this wrong belief and action. Be faithless as to any supposed necessity for sin, sickness, or death; knowing, as you ought to know, that God never made, or caused to be obeyed, a law of sin, of sickness, or of death. Each of those the law of God destroys, for it is the law of Life instead of death, of harmony instead of discord.

It is vain to plead ignorance of this Divine Science that destroys all human discord, when you can readily acquire its understanding and demonstration. It is foolish to say that you doubt if there is a Divine Science in perfect harmony with God, its Principle (a Science which, understood and demonstrated, would destroy all discord), when you admit that God is omnipotent; for from this premise it follows that good, and its sweet concords, have all power.

There is no place or opportunity in Science for error of any sort. Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs, rather than professions, of Christianity, for this is the part of progress; and progress is the law of God, and His law demands only what we can meet and fulfil.

Mind is perpetual motion. Its symbol is the sphere. The rotations and revolutions of mortal mind are now going on, though often unconsciously. Mortals move onward towards good or evil, as time glides on. If not progressing, the past must be repeated until its poor work is effaced and rectified. If at present satisfied with wrong-doing, we must become dissatisfied with it. If at present content with idleness, we must loathe this leisure.

In this undoing of the errors of sense, here or hereafter, one must pay the utmost farthing, in order to bring the body into subjection to Spirit. Unwinding one's snarls, learning from experience, dividing (through pangs unspeakable) between error and Truth — these are the divine methods of paying the wages of sin.

“Those whom He loveth He chasteneth.” He who knows the demands of Divine Science, and yet refuses obedience thereto, shall be beaten with many stripes.

Vegetarianism, homœopathy, and hydropathy have diminished drugging; but if drugs are an antidote to disease, why lessen the antidote? If drugs are good things, is it safe to say that the less you have of them the better? If drugs possess intrinsic curative qualities, those qualities must be mental. Who named them, and what made them good or bad, beneficial or injurious to mortals? Matter is not self-creative, being unintelligent; and mortal mind constitutes the only power a drug can possess.

Christian Science is sunlight to the body. It invigorates and purifies. It acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effects of this Science are to stir the human mind to a change of base, whereby it may yield to the Divine Mind.

Wrong and right will be at strife until victory rests on the side of immutable right. Mental chemicalization (to coin a word) follows the explanation of Truth, and a higher basis is won; but with some individuals the morbid moral and physical symptoms constantly reappear. I have never witnessed as decided effects from the use of material remedies as from the spiritual. There is a large class of thinkers whose bigotry and conceit twist every fact to suit themselves. Their central doctrine teaches belief in a mysterious and supernatural God, and in a supernatural all-powerful devil.

Another class of people, still more unfortunate, are so depraved that they appear to be pictures of innocence, uttering a falsehood while looking you blandly in the face, and never failing to stab benefactors in the back.

A third class of thinkers build with solid masonry, are generous, lofty, and open to the approach and recognition of Truth. To teach Christian Science to such as these is no task. They are not inclined longingly to error, or prone to whine over the demands of Truth.

Society is a silly juror, listening only to one side of the case. Honesty often comes too late to a verdict. People with work to do have no time to gossip with law or testimony. To reconstruct timid justice, and place the fact above the falsehood, is the work of time.

To talk rightly and live wrongly is foolish deceit, doing one's self the most harm. The best detective of individual character is the first impression made on a mind that is attracted or repelled according to personal merit or demerit.

The impure are at peace with the impure. Only virtue is a rebuke to vice. A Christian Scientist dealing with the sick or the sinful, and not improving the health of the one or the morals of the other, is at fault, — a Scientist only in name.

Some people yield more slowly than others to the touch of Truth. They seldom yield without a struggle, and often are reluctant to acknowledge that they have yielded; but unless this is done, the evil will boast itself above the good.

Certain minds meet only to separate through simultaneous combustion. They are enemies without the preliminary offence.

Walking in the light, we are accustomed to it and require it; we cannot see in darkness; but eyes accustomed to darkness are pained by the light.

The floral apostles are hieroglyphics of Deity. Flowers and stars teach grand lessons. The stars make darkness beautiful, and the leaflet turns naturally towards the light.

Outgrowing the old, fear not to put on the new. Your course may provoke envy, but will attract admiration also. When error confronts you, withhold not the rebuke or explanation that destroys it. Never breathe an immoral atmosphere, unless in the attempt to purify it.

Right is radical. We soil our garments with conservatism, and have to scrub them clean. When the spiritual sense of being unfolds its harmonies to you, take no risks in the policies of error. Better is a frugal meal with contentment and virtue, than luxury with vice.

Each individual has some influence. Let that weight be thrown into the right scale. The baneful effect of evil associates is less seen than felt. The inoculation of evil human thoughts ought to be understood and guarded against.

The teachers of our private and public schools should be selected with as direct reference to their morals as to their learning. Nurseries of character should be strongly garrisoned with virtue and truth. School examinations are one-sided. Not so much a classical education, as a moral and spiritual, lifts one higher. The pure and uplifting thoughts of the teacher, constantly imparted to her pupils, reach higher than the heavens of astronomy; while the debased and unscrupulous mind, though set with gems of scholarly attainment, imparts no lustre, but degrades the characters it should inform and elevate.

Physicians, whom in their helplessness the sick employ, should be guardians of virtue. They should be also wise spiritual guides, when material things fail to give ease or hope. To the tremblers on the brink of death, who understand not the Truth that could heal them, such physicians should be able to teach it; that when the mind is willing and the flesh weak, they may become able to plant their feet upon the rock Christ Jesus, even the basis of spiritual power.

Clergymen, standing on the watch-towers of the world, should uplift the standard of Truth fearlessly. They should so raise their hearers spiritually, that those hearers shall love to grapple with a new idea and unshackle their own thoughts. Christianity, rather than popularity, should stimulate labor and progress. Life should emanate from the pulpit, and never be strangled there. A special privilege is vested in the ministry. How shall it be used? Sacredly, — in the interests of the individual, not of sect.

Children should obey their parents. Insubordination is a growing evil that blights the buddings of self-government. Parents should teach their children at the earliest possible period the truth of health and holiness. They are more tractable than adults, and will learn to love the simple verities that make them happy and good. Says Charles Swain: —

Men are agents for the future;

⁠As they work, so ages win —

Either harvests of advancement,

⁠Or the products of their sin.

The power of will should be exercised only by the higher faculties, and curbed by the sentiments, or it will hold the reins, misguide the judgment, and let loose the lower propensities. To guard and govern thought is the province of the higher faculties, acting upon the body beneficially.

Will-power is capable of all evil. It can never heal the sick, for it is the prayer of the unrighteous; while the exercise of the higher sentiments — hope, faith, joy — is the prayer of the righteous. This prayer, governed by Science instead of sense, heals the sick.

Mozart and Beethoven experienced more than they expressed. The rapture of their grandest symphonies was never heard. They were musicians before the world knew it. Mental melodies, and strains of sweetest music, precede notes, or conscious sound.

Music is the rhythm of head and heart. Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing either harmony or discord, as the hand that sweeps over it is human or divine.

Whatsoever inspires with Wisdom, Truth, or Love — be it song, sermon, or Science — blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort that fall from the Master's table, feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty. Spiritual draughts are healing, while material lotions interfere with Truth, even as ritualism and creed hamper the Spirit. If we trust one we distrust the other.

Physics act against metaphysics, and vice versa. When mortals leave the lower for the higher basis of action, medicine loses its power to heal. It has no innate power. Unsupported by the faith of illusion, it becomes powerless.

Mortal mind conceives of the liquid or the solid, and then classifies its thoughts materially. Their immortal and spiritual facts exist above and beyond this mortal and material belief. Good is self-existent and self-expressed, though indefinable as a whole, and every step towards goodness is a departure from the material basis and a tendency toward Spirit. Material theories, creeds, and codes partially paralyze this attraction toward Spirit — the infinite, harmonious, and eternal — by an opposite attraction towards the personal, finite, temporary, and discordant.

Footsteps of progress and spiritualization greet us on every hand. Systems of drugging are losing their hold on matter, and so letting in the higher stratum of mortal mind. Homœopathy, a step in advance of allopathy, is doing this. Matter is going out of medicine, and mortal mind — of a higher attenuation than the drug — comes into the pellets.

Metaphysics, as in Christian Science, is the next stately step beyond homœopathy. There matter disappears from the remedy, and Mind takes its rightful place. Homœopathy takes mental symptoms largely into consideration in the diagnosis of disease. Science deals wholly with the mental cause, in judging and destroying disease. It succeeds where homœopathy fails, solely because the principle of healing is Mind, and the whole force of the mental element is employed in the Science of Mind, never sharing its rights with weaker matter.

The human mind acts the more powerfully to offset the discords of matter (the ills of flesh) in proportion as it puts less weight into the material scale and against Spirit, — against its own interests. Homœopathy diminishes the drug. Its potency increases as the drug disappears.

Metaphysics, as in Christian Science, exterminates the drug, and employs Mind alone as the curative Principle, — this Divine Mind having all power. The pharmacy of homœopathy mentalizes a drug with such high attenuation of belief that it becomes more like mortal mind than its substratum, matter, and its power to heal is proportionately increased.

As the crude footprints of the past lose themselves in the dissolving paths of the present, we should understand the Science that governs these results, and plant our footsteps on firmer ground. Every so-called pleasure of sense gains a higher or lower definition, with the lapse of time. This unfolding should be painless progress, attended by love and peace, instead of envy and pride.

We should unclasp our beliefs gently, become more familiar with health than sickness, and never admit a thought of discord. We should dismiss those unpleasant guests — sin, sickness, and death — from mortal mind, in order to guard the body from them as watchfully as we bar our doors against the approach of thieves and murderers.

If proper ward were kept over the human mind, the lazar-house, the dismal cell, and the slaughter-house of infamy would be emptied. We must begin with mortal mind, and empty that of crime, or crime will never cease. Criminal codes are inadequate to educate the moral thought.

A mother is the strongest educator, either for or against crime. Her thoughts form the embryo of another mortal mind, and make it perchance after a model unknown to herself, “according to the pattern shown in the mount;” or perhaps diviner influences raise it higher. Hence the importance of Christian Science, wherefrom we learn the One Mind, the availability of good, and the remedy for every woe.

The world would collapse without the Intelligence that holds the winds in His grasp. Neither philosophy nor scepticism can efface the Science that reveals Mind through its wondrous works. The immortal sense of His power enhances it. Nearness, not distance, lends enchantment to this view.

That instinct is better than misguided reason, even inanimate nature declares. The violet lifts her blue eye to greet the early spring. The leaves clap their hands as Nature's untired worshippers. The snowbird sings and soars amid the blasts, has no catarrh from wetting his feet, procures his summer residence with more ease than a nabob.

The atmosphere of earth, more kind, leaves catarrh to the atmosphere of mortal mind. Nothing but mortal belief gives colds and coughs, or circulates contagion. Mortal mind produces its own phenomena, and then charges them to something else; like a kitten glancing into the mirror at herself, and thinking she sees there another kitten.

Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure. We suffer or enjoy in our dreams, but this pain or pleasure is not communicated through a nerve. A tooth extracted sometimes aches again in belief, and the pain seems in its old position. A limb amputated has continued in belief to pain the owner. If the sensation of pain in the limb can return, and be prolonged, why could not the limb reappear?

Why need pain come sooner than pleasure to this mortal sense? Because the memory of it is more vivid. I have seen an unwitting attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut off for months. When the nerve is gone that we say occasioned pain, and yet the pain remains, it proves sensation to be in the human mind, not in matter. Reverse the case, take away this mind instead of a piece of the flesh, and then nerves have no sensation.

When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, that heals, and according to this faith will the effect be. Take away the individual confidence in the drug, and you have not yet divorced it from the general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the druggist, the doctor, the nurse, equip the medicine with their faith, and the majority of beliefs do rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate drug as doing this or that, individual dissent or faith is but a minority belief, governed by the majority.

The quotient, proving that numbers have been divided by a fixed rule, is not more unquestionable than the scientific tests I have made of the effects of Truth upon the sick. The counter-fact, relative to any disease, is required to cure it. The counteracting argument of Truth is designed to rebuke and destroy sin. Why should Truth not be equally efficient in sickness, which is a result of sin?

Perfection in the midst of imperfection is seen and acknowledged only by degrees; the ages must slowly work up to it. The universal belief in physics weighs against the mighty truths of metaphysics. The general belief, that sustains medicine, and produces all its results, works against Christian Science; and the percentage of power on the side of this Science must mightily outweigh that of physic, in order to heal a single case of disease.

The Divine Principle that made harmless the poisonous viper — delivered from the boiling oil, the fiery furnace, the jaws of the lion — can heal the sick, and triumph over sin and death. It crowned the demonstrations of Jesus with unsurpassed power and Truth. But “the same Spirit which was in Christ Jesus” must always accompany the letter of Science, in order to confirm and repeat the ancient demonstrations of prophet and apostle. If those wonders are not repeated to-day, it is not so much from lack of desire as from lack of spiritual understanding.

A clergyman adopted a diet of bread and water to increase his spirituality. Finding his health failing he gave up his abstinence, and recommended others never to try dietetics for growth in grace.

I knew a woman who, when quite a child, adopted the Graham system to cure dyspepsia. She ate bread and vegetables only, and drank nothing but water for many years. Her dyspepsia increasing, she decided that her diet should be more rigid, and thereafter she partook of but one meal in twenty-four hours, this meal consisting of only a thin slice of bread, without water. Her physician recommended, with this ample meal, that she should not wet her parched throat within three hours subsequent to eating. After passing many weary years in hunger, in weakness, almost in starvation, she made up her mind to eat freely and die, having exhausted the skill of the medicine-men, who kindly informed her that death was indeed the only alternative. At this point Christian Science saved her, and she is now in perfect health, without a vestige of the old complaint.

She learned that suffering and disease are the self-imposed beliefs of mortals, and not the facts of being — that God never made disease, or a law that ordains fasting as a means of health. Hence semi-starvation is not acceptable to wisdom; and it is equally far from Science, in which Soul governs sense. These truths, opening this woman's eyes, relieved also her stomach, and she ate without suffering, giving God thanks. But she never again enjoyed her food as she had expected to when she was the slave of matter — thinking of the flesh-pots of Egypt, feeling the hunger of childhood, and undisciplined by self-denial.

The new-born understanding — that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of mortal mind, could make her suffer — brought with it another lesson, namely, that gustatory pleasure is a sensuous illusion, an illusion that diminishes as we understand our spiritual being and ascend the ladder of Life.

This woman learned that food neither strengthens nor weakens the body, — that mind alone does this. True, mortal mind has its material methods of doing it; one of which is to say that proper food supplies nutriment and strength to the human system. She learned also that mortal mind makes a mortal and sickly body, because it governs it with mortal opinions.

Food had less power to help or to hurt her, when availing herself of the fact that Mind governs man, and she had less faith in the so-called pleasures or pains of matter. Taking less thought about what she should eat or drink — consulting the stomach less, and God more, about the economy of living — she recovered strength and flesh rapidly. For many years she had lived, as was believed, only by the strictest adherence to hygiene and the use of drugs, continuing ill all the time. Now she dropped drugs and rules, and was well.

She learned that a dyspeptic was very far from the image and likeness of God, — having “dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field,” — when eating a bit of animal flesh could overpower her. She finally concluded that God never made a dyspeptic, while vegetarianism, hygiene, and physiology had made her one, contrary to His commands.

The cure, alike for dyspepsia and sin, is to consult matter less and God more, and to eat what is set before you, “asking no questions for conscience' sake.”

The belief that fasting or feasting makes man better morally, or physically, is one of the fruits of the “tree of knowledge,” of which God said, “Eat not of them, lest ye die.” Mortal mind forms all conditions of the mortal body, and controls the stomach, bones, lungs, heart, and blood, as directly as the volition of will moves the hand.

We hear it said: “I exercise daily in the open air. I take cold baths, — perhaps to overcome a predisposition to take cold, — and yet I have continual colds, catarrh, and cough.” Such admissions ought to open people's eyes to the inefficacy of hygiene, and induce them to look in other directions for cause and cure.

Some invalids are unwilling to know the facts of their case, or hear about the fallacy of matter and its supposed laws. They would devote themselves a little longer to their material gods, clinging to their belief of life and intelligence in matter, and expecting this error to do for them more than they are willing to admit the only living and true God can do. Impatient with your explanation, unwilling to investigate the Science of Mind that would rid them of their complaints, they hug false beliefs and their delusive consequences.

Does God send sickness, giving the mother her child for the brief space of a few years, and then taking it away by death? Is God creating anew what He has already created? The Scriptures are definite on this point — that His work was finished and was good.

Omnipotent and Infinite Mind made all and comprehends all. This Mind is not always making mistakes, and subsequently correcting them. God is not causing the mother to weep over the loss of her child, and giving the little one no space for experience.

When will the error of Life in matter — and of sin, sickness, and death as creations of God — be unmasked? When will it be understood that matter has no intelligence, life, or sensation, and that the opposite belief is the prolific source of all suffering? God created all through Mind, and made all perfect and eternal. Where then is the necessity for recreation or procreation?

Is there any birth or death for man who is the perfect image and likeness of Spirit? Instead of God's sending sickness or death He destroys them, and brings to light immortality.

Christianity will at length demonstrate that great fact, as once it did in Jesus, by healing the sick and triumphing over death. He never taught or illustrated (by his method of healing) that drugs, food, air, and exercise either make a man healthy, or can destroy his life. He placed the condition of man's harmony in Mind, not in matter, and never tried to make of none effect the sentence of God that sealed His condemnation of sin, sickness, and death.

Is it not the professional reputation and emolument, rather than the dignity of God's laws, that many leaders regard? Do not inferior motives induce their infuriated attack on all who reiterate Christ's teachings, in support of his example of healing?

The Bible teaches transformation of the body by the renewal of Spirit. Take away the spiritual signification of Scripture, and that compilation can do no more for mortals than moonbeams to melt a river of ice. The error of the age is preaching without practice.

The finger-posts of Divine Science point the way our Master trod, and require of Christianity the proof (rather than the profession) that he required. We may hide spiritual ignorance from the world, but can never gain the Science of spiritual Life, and its demonstration, through ignorance or hypocrisy.

Sin is thought before it is acted. You must master it in the first instance, or it will master you in the second. Jesus declared, that to look with desire on forbidden objects is to break a moral precept. He laid great stress on the action of the human mind, unseen to the senses.

Evil thoughts and aims reach farther and do greater harm than visible crimes. Evil thoughts, lusts, and malicious purposes, going forth, like wandering pollen, from one human mind to another, find inadvertent lodgment, unless virtue and Truth build a strong defence. Better suffer a doctor infected with small-pox to attend you, than be treated mentally by one who obeys not the Christian requirements of Science.

Fettered by sin yourself, it is difficult to free another from the fetters of disease. With your own wrists manacled, it is hard to break another's chains. But a little leaven ferments the whole mass. A grain of Christian Science does wonders for the sick, so omnipotent is Truth; but more of Science is needed.

If the student adheres strictly to my teachings, and does not venture to break the rules of Christian Science, he cannot fail of success in healing. It is Science to do right, and nothing short of right-doing has any claim to the name.

The spiritual and material are at variance, from the very necessity of their oppositeness. In this world mortals are unacquainted with the reality of existence, because matter and mortality are not its realities.

We are sometimes taught that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be but the absence of light, wherein it loses all reality. Thus it is that sickness, sin, and death (the acme of moral and physical darkness) are unreal, because they reflect no light, no God.

Science reverses the entire evidence of the senses with divine proof. Every quality and condition of mortality is lost, swallowed up in Immortality. Immortal man is the antipodes of mortal man, in origin, existence, and his relation to God.

Socrates, understanding the superiority and immortality of good, feared not the hemlock poison. Even the faith of his philosophy spurned timidity for the mortal body. Having sought his spiritual estate, he recognized the immortality and supremacy of Spirit, and the nothingness of matter. The ignorance and malice of the age would have killed the venerable philosopher, for his faith in Soul and his indifference to the body.

Who shall say that man is alive to-day, but is to-morrow dead? What has touched Life, God, to such strange issues? Here theories cease, and Science rolls back the mystery and solves the problem of man. Error bites the heel of Truth, but cannot kill it. Truth bruises the head of error, and crushes it. Spirituality lays open siege to materialism. On which side are we fighting?

The wrong done another reacts most heavily against one's self. Right adjusts the balance sooner or later. Sooner think to make evil good, than to benefit yourself by injuring others. Man's moral mercury, rising or falling, registers his healing ability.

To “come out from the world and be separate,” as the Scriptures command, is to incur society's frown; but, more than its flatteries, society's scorn enables one to be Christian. Losing her crucifix, the Catholic girl said, “I have nothing left but Christ.” “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

To fall away from Truth in times of persecution shows that we never understood Truth. From the bridal-chamber of Wisdom there will come the warning, “Ye cannot enter now.” Unimproved opportunities must rebuke us when we would claim suddenly the benefits of an experience that is not ours, attempting to reap the harvest we have not sown, and to enter unlawfully into the labors of others. Truth often remains unsought until, suffering severely from error, we seek this remedy for human woe.

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.

The immortal Divine Mind is the only lawgiver. Human mind arouses mortal and discordant beliefs. The scientific and permanent remedy for fatigue is to learn the power of Mind over any illusion of weariness in matter, in which there is really no sensation, and so destroy this illusion.

Treat a belief of sickness as you would sin, with sudden dismissal. Resist the temptation to believe in matter as superior to Spirit. The Scriptures admonish us to “run and not be weary, walk and not faint.” The meaning of that passage is not perverted in its application to moments of fatigue, for the moral and physical are one in their results. When we wake to the Truth of being, all error, pain, weakness, weariness, sorrow, sin, and death, will be unknown, and the dream be forgotten. My method of treating fatigue applies to all bodily ailments, since Mind should be, and is, supreme.

That scientific methods are above all others is seen in their effects. When you once conquer a condition of the body through Mind, that condition recurs less frequently, and its ills diminish until they finally disappear. When the Mind once gives rest to the body, the next toil will fatigue you less, for you are working out your problem in Science; and in proportion as you understand the control Mind has over the body, will you demonstrate it.

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.

We hear a sweet melody and misunderstand the science that governs it. The sick who are healed through Metaphysical Science — not comprehending the Principle of the cure — may misunderstand it, and impute their recovery to change of air or diet, not rendering to God the honor that is due. Entire immunity from suffering cannot be expected at this period of time, only some abatement of suffering and sin; but these beginnings are in the right direction.

In mathematics we do not multiply where we should subtract, and then say the product is correct. No more can we say, in Science, that muscles give strength, that nerves give pain or pleasure, or that matter governs, and then expect that the result will be harmony. Not muscles, nerves, or bones, — but Mind determines the condition of the body.

When this is understood we shall never affirm of the body what we do not wish to be true of it. We shall not call the body weak if we would have it strong, when we know that the belief in feebleness must obtain in the human mind before it can be made manifest on the body, and that the destruction of the illusion will be the removal of its effect. Science includes no rule of discord, but governs harmoniously the universe and man.

Arctic regions, the sunny tropics, the everlasting hills, the winged winds, mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers, and glorious heavens, — all declare the mighty supremacy of Mind. In the order of Science, wherein the Principle is not in matter which it governs, all is one grand concord. Change this statement, — suppose Mind to be in matter, or Soul in body, — and you lose the keynote of being, and there will be discord continually.

The head is supposed to say, “I am pained;” the stomach, “I am nauseated;” the liver, “I am morbid;” and the body, “I am ill.” The physical reports of sickness may combine with the physical reports of sin, and say, “I am malice, lust, appetite, envy, hate;” and what renders both cures difficult is, that the human mind is the sinner, disinclined to correct his own faults, and believing that the body can be sick independent of this mind, and that the Divine Mind has no jurisdiction over it.

Why pray for the recovery of the sick, if you are without faith in God's willingness and ability to heal? Believing in that, why substitute drugs for Almighty power, or employ a doctor to go contrary to His will?

The Scripture says, “In Him we live, move, and have our being.” What then is this implied power, independent of God, that causes disease and cures it, — what is it but an error of belief, and a law of mortal mind, wrong in every sense, embracing all sin, sickness, and death. It is the very antipodes of Immortal Mind and spiritual law. It is unlike the character of God, good, to make man sick, and then leave him to heal himself, — for Spirit to produce disease, and leave the remedy with matter.

God can no more produce sickness than good can end in evil, or health occasion disease. Good never made sin for an experiment, or caused a result by first constituting that which produced it, and then punishing the sin it made possible. Evil is not supreme, good is not helpless; nor is a law of matter primary, and a law of Spirit secondary.

Body is not first, and Soul last, nor is evil mightier than good. The Science of Being repudiates self-evident impossibilities, or the amalgamation of Truth and error in cause or effect. It separates the tares and wheat in time of harvest.

The clay cannot reply to the potter. The head, heart, lungs, and limbs do not inform us that they are dizzy, diseased, consumptive, or lame. If this information is given, mortal mind has given it. Neither immortal and unerring Mind, nor so-called matter, — the inanimate substratum of mortal mind, — can carry on such telegraphy; for God is too pure to behold iniquity.

Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hate, and Life no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to aught unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.

Sickness, sin, death, are not the true and good; they are the false and erroneous, that Truth never created. Perfection is not the life of imperfection. Because God is good, and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity. Therefore it was not produced in Truth, but is illusion, the mirage of error. Divine Science reveals this grand fact. On its basis Jesus demonstrated Life, by overcoming sin, sickness, and death, never yielding them obedience.

There is but one primal Cause; therefore there can be no effect from any other cause; and there can be no actual reality in anything which proceeds not from this great and only Cause. Sin, sickness, and death are not the Science of Being. They are the fruits of error, and show the absence of the real.

The scientific fact is the spiritual fact of all things. The spiritual fact, duplicated in the action of man as well as the universe, presents harmony, the ideal of Truth. If scientific fact be inverted, the opposite discord appears, which bears no resemblance to reality. The only evidence of this appearing is obtained from the material senses, that afford no evidence of God, Spirit, or spiritual creation. They define all things materially, and have only a finite and personal sense of Deity.

This so-called mind acts against itself, and is self-destructive, in obedience to the immutable law of Spirit. Hence those words of our Master, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” Error “soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind.”

What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say, “I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well.” It is mortal mind that speaks thus, and which appears to fulfil its own statement. To mortal sense, sin and suffering continue unto the end; but immortal sense includes no evil or pestilence. Because it has no error of sense, and no sense of error, it is immortal.

If God makes man sick, sickness must be good; and its opposite, health, must be evil; for all that He makes is good, and will stand forever. The transgression of a law of mortal mind brings the belief of sickness. The remedy is Truth, not matter. If the transgression of God's law produces sickness, it is right to be sick; and we cannot if we would, and should not if we could, annul the decrees of Wisdom.

If sickness is real, it belongs to Truth and Immortality. If true, it is a part of Truth; and would you attempt, with drugs or without them, to destroy a quality or condition of Truth? But if sickness or sin is illusion, — and waking from this mortal dream will bring to light health, holiness, and immortality, — then this awakening is Christ, or Truth, casting out error, and healing the sick. This is the salvation that cometh through the Divine Principle demonstrated by Jesus.

The sculptor turns from the marble to his model, to perfect his conceptions. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiselling our thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have we not accepted the material model? and are we not reproducing it, aided in our work by vicious sculptors of hideous forms? Do we not hear, from all mankind, of the imperfect model? Is the world not holding it before our gaze continually? The result is, that we follow those lower patterns, limit our life-work, and adopt, into our own experience, the angular outline and deformity of mortal models.

To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk there. We must form perfect models in thought, and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let harmony, health, unselfishness, goodness, mercy, and justice form the mind-pictures, and sin, sickness, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.

Does Wisdom make blunders to be afterwards rectified by man? Does a law of God produce sickness, and man put that law under his feet by healing that sickness? To my understanding, the sick are never really healed by drugs, hygiene, or any material method. These merely evade the question. They are soothing syrups to put children to sleep, satisfy mortal belief, and lull its fears.

We think we are healed when a disease disappears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never thoroughly healed until this liability is removed. Mortal mind, being the remote and exciting cause of all suffering, the cause must be renovated through Science, or sense will get the victory.

Unless every ill is met aright, and fairly overcome by Truth, it is never conquered. If God destroys not sin, sickness, and death, they are not destroyed to mortal mind, but are immortal. What God cannot do, man need not attempt. If God heals not the sick, it is because He cannot or will not. In either case lesser attempts would be hopeless, for no power equals the Infinite.

Upon this stage of existence goes on the dance of belief. Mortal thoughts chase each other like snowflakes drifting to the ground. Science has revealed that Life is not at the mercy of death, nor happiness the sport of circumstance. Error becomes more imperative as it hastens towards self-destruction. This action of mortal mind on the body is illustrated when an abscess grows more painful before it bursts and ends with suppuration, or a fever becomes more severe before it abates.

The fright is so great, at certain stages of mortal belief, as to destroy that belief. In the illusion of death mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: that they are not dead; and that they have but passed the portals of a new belief that reaches this discovery. Truth works out the nothingness of error in just these ways. Sickness, as well as sin, is a suicide, — an error that culminates in self-destruction.

Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While age is halting between two opinions, or battling with a belief, youth makes easy and rapid strides toward Truth.

A little girl who had occasionally listened to my explanations, wounded her finger badly. She seemed not to notice it. On being questioned about it she answered ingenuously, “There is no sensation in matter.” Bounding off, with laughing eyes, she added, “Mamma, my finger is not a bit sore.”

It might have been months or years before her parents would have laid aside their drugs, or reached the mental height their little daughter so naturally accepted. The more stubborn beliefs of parents often choke the good seed in the minds of themselves and their offspring. Ignorance, like “the fowls of the air,” snatches away the good seed before it has sprouted.

Loss of identity, through the understanding of Science, is like the loss of the tones of music in their Principle. The great mistake of mortals is to suppose that man is both mortal and immortal, both good and evil.

The vesture of Life is Truth. According to the Bible, the facts of being are commonly misconstrued, for it is written, “They parted my garments among them, and for my vesture did they cast lots.” The Divine Science of man is woven into one web of consistency, without seam or rent; but it has been torn, and lots have been cast for its fragments. Mere speculation has appropriated no part of the vesture; but inspiration restores every part to the divine fabric and robe of righteousness.

Man gives neither shape nor comeliness to beauty. Beauty possesses those qualities even before they are perceived by man. Beauty is a thing of Life, that has dwelt forever in the Eternal Mind. Nature reflects the charms of His goodness in form, outline, coloring. Love paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with heaven's gems, and covers the earth with bright and living characters.

Beauty, as well as Truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief. Custom, education, and fashion form the transient standard of mortal beauty. Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a beauty of its own, belonging to Spirit. Immortal man and woman are the models of spiritual sense, pictures of the Mind that is perfect, reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness that exceed all material sense of loveliness.

To have less illusion and more Soul, is the recipe for beauty. To retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body, into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of impersonal bliss, is not to lose one's identity. The embellishments of the person are poor substitutes for the beauty of Spirit, shining resplendent and eternal over age and decay.

The measurement of Life, by solar years, robs youth and gives ugliness to age. The rising sun of virtue and Truth marks the morning of being. Its manhood is the eternal noon, undimmed by a declining sun. When a personal and material sense of beauty fades, the radiance of Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with brighter glories.

Love never loses sight of beauty. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful. Man and woman, of riper years and larger lessons, are growing in beauty and immortality, in stead of lapsing into age and ugliness. Mind constantly feeds the body with supernal freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images of thought, and destroying the errors of sense that each day brings to a nearer tomb.

Man is not a pendulum swinging betwixt evil and good, joy and sorrow, sickness and health, life and death. Life and its faculties are unmeasured by calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal likeness of their Maker. Man is by no means a material germ, rising from the imperfect, and endeavoring to reach above his origin to Spirit. The stream rises no higher than its source.

Man is neither young nor old; he has neither birth nor death. He is not an animal, vegetable, or migrating mind, — passing from the mortal to the immortal, from evil to good, or from good to evil. Such admissions leap headlong into darkness and dogma. Shakespeare's poetry pictures infancy and age as helpless and non-intelligent, instead of assigning to them the grandeur and immortality of Mind.

If we derive all our conceptions of man from what is seen between the cradle and the grave, happiness and goodness can have no abiding-place in him, and the worms will rob him of all. Paul writes, “For the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”

The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the benefits of destroying that illusion, are illustrated in a sketch from the history of an English lady, published in The London Lancet.

Disappointed in love, in early years, she became insane. She lost all calculation of time. Believing that she still lived in the same hour that parted her from her lover, she took no note of years, but daily stood before the window, watching for his coming. In this mental state she remained young. Having no appearance of age, she literally grew no older. Some American travellers saw her when she was seventy-four, and supposed her a young lady. Not a wrinkle or gray hair appeared, but youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to judge of her age, and being unacquainted with her history, each visitor conjectured that she must be under twenty.

This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful hint that a Franklin might work upon, with more certainty than when he coaxed the enamored lightning from the clouds. Years had not made her old, simply because she had taken no cognizance of those years, nor said, “I am growing old.” Her belief that she was young proved the results of such a belief on the body. She could not age while believing herself young, for the mental state governed the physical.

Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four; and the Principle of that proof makes it plain that decrepitude is not a necessity of nature or law, but an illusion that can be avoided.

Never record ages. Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood. But for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, we could enjoy more than threescore years and ten, and yet maintain our vigor, freshness, and promise. We should continue beautiful and grand, if Mind should so decree. Each succeeding year should make us wiser and better, in looks and action.

Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the demonstration thereof. Beauty and goodness are immortal. Let us then shape our views of Life into loveliness, freshness, and continuity, instead of into age and ugliness. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Acute and chronic beliefs reproduce their own types in the lingering or less stubborn forms of old age, sickness, and sin. The acute belief of age comes on at a remote period, and does not last as long as the chronic belief.

I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost, sight and teeth. A lady of eighty-five, whom I knew, had a return of sight. Another lady, at ninety, had new teeth, — incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and one molar. A gentleman, at sixty, had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth, without a decaying cavity.

Man, having birth, maturity, and decay, is like an animal or vegetable, — the animal unfit to live, and the vegetable subject to laws of decadence. If man were dust in his earliest stage of existence, we might admit the hypothesis that he returns eventually to his primitive condition; but he was never more nor less than man. Rightly says Longfellow's Psalm of Life,

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

⁠Was not spoken of the Soul.

If man flickers out in death, or springs from nothingness into being, there must be an instant, sometime, when Jehovah is without completeness, when there is no reflection of Mind or Soul.

Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive forms; and so let us have but one God, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing its own models of excellence. Let the male and female of His creating appear. Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of Life, and recognizing no mortal or material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to “the powers that be.” Such is the true Science of Being. Any material theory of Life, or God, is delusive mythology.

In a higher sense than Heine dreamed, his words are true: —

For Love transcends the bounds of time and space;

⁠Its essence is impalpable as light;

And all created things in its embrace

⁠Do lie, the while it spinneth, day and night,

⁠The warp and woof of Being. Oh, its might

Is universal. Round it too doth turn,

⁠As round some central sun, the order bright

Of all Intelligence; like planets yearn,

All good thoughts, to their light, fit homage to return.

There are no antagonistic powers or laws, either spiritual or material, creating and governing man in perpetual warfare. Minute chronological data are no part of the great forever.

Mind is not the author of matter, and the Creator of ideas is not the creator of illusions. Either there is no omnipotence, or omnipotence is all-in-all. The Infinite never began or ended. Mind and its formations can never be extinguished.

Life, like Christ, is “the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” Organization and time have nothing to do with Life. We say, “I dreamed last night.” What a mistake is that! Soul never slumbered, or wandered into delusion.

The Ego is Soul, the direct opposite of sense, and there is but one Ego. The singular of Soul becomes plural as sense, wherein Mind seems to be multiplied into minds, error to be Mind, Mind to be matter, matter to be a lawgiver, unintelligence to act like Intelligence, and mortality to be the matrix of immortality. The hymn is right: —

This life's a dream, an empty show;

But the bright world, to which we go,

Hath joys substantial and sincere.

When shall I wake and find me there?

Mortal existence is a dream without a dreamer. It is the dream, that saith “It is I.” The Ego never dreams, but understands all things. It never slumbers, is ever conscious. It never believes, but knows. It was never born and never dies.

Sleep is a phase of the dream that Life, Substance, and Intelligence are material. The dream — not the sleep of this mortal existence — is nearer the fact of being than the waking thoughts. The dream has less matter as its accompaniment. It throws off some of our material fetters. It falls short of the upper skies, but makes its mundane flights quite ethereal.

The mortal body and mind arc one. This body is weary or pained, enjoys or suffers, according to the dream it entertains in sleep. When that dream vanishes, the man finds himself experiencing none of those dream-sensations. The body lies on the bed, in the mind's absence, undisturbed and sensationless.

Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking dream than in this sleeping dream? There cannot be, since there is no mortality, either of mind or body, and whatever appears to material sense is a mortal dream; for as man, matter has no more sense (aside from his belief) than it has as a tree. Truly says Bowring: —

⁠. . . What am I then? Naught:

But I live, and on hope's pinions fly

⁠Eager towards Thy presence; for in Thee

I live and breathe and dwell, aspiring high,

⁠Even to the throne of Thy divinity.

I am, O God, and surely Thou must be.

⁠Thou art; directing, guiding all, Thou art!

Direct my understanding then to Thee;

⁠Control my reason, guide my wandering heart.

If one would not quarrel with his fellow-man for waking him from the cataleptic nightmare, he should not resist the Truth that destroys the so-called evidences of matter with the higher testimony of Spirit.

Many theories, relative to God and man, neither make man harmonious nor God lovable. The fancies we entertain about happiness and life afford no evidence of either, scathless and permanent. That which secures the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found in Divine Science.

Children should be taught the Christ-cure among their first lessons, and kept from discussing or entertaining theories or thoughts of sickness. To forestall for them the experience of error and its sufferings, take care to keep out of the mind of your children sinful or diseased thoughts. The latter should be excluded on the same principle as the former. This is Christian Science. Remember that, either by suffering or by Science, mankind must sooner or later be convinced of the error that needs to be overcome.

Learn how the human mind governs the body — whether through faith in what it terms matter as law, through drugs, or through faith in itself; whether mind governs the body through a belief in the necessity of sin and sickness, death and pardon, or from the higher understanding that the Divine Mind makes perfect, and moves upon the human mind through Truth, and leads it to relinquish error. This process improves the mortal mind until error disappears, and nothing is left that deserves to perish or be punished.

Ignorance, like intentional wrong, is not Science. Ignorance must be seen and corrected before we can attain harmony. The beliefs that rob Mind, calling it matter, and deify their own notions, imprison themselves in what they create. They are at war with Science, and have established, as our Master said, “a kingdom divided against itself,” that cannot stand.

The human triumphs, achieved over the body, elevate and consecrate both mind and body, so that they present better the true ideal of man, until the creature finally disappears, and the eternal man, created by and of Spirit, is seen in the true likeness of his Maker.

Human ignorance of Mind, and of the recuperative energies of Truth, occasions the only scepticism regarding the pathology and theology of Christian Science.

The metaphysics of Christian Science, like mathematics, prove the rule by reversion. For example: there is no pain in Truth, and no Truth in pain. There is no matter in Mind, and no Mind in matter; no nerve in Intelligence, and no Intelligence in a nerve; no sorrow in Truth, and no Truth in sorrow; no matter in Life, and no Life in matter; no matter in Good, and no Good in matter.

If you venture upon the quiet surface of error, what disturbs the waters? What is there to strip off error's disguise?

On the contrary, if you launch your bark upon the ever-agitated but healthful waters of Truth, you will encounter storms. Your good will be evil spoken of. This is the cross. Take it up, and bear it, for it wins and wears the crown. Pilgrim on earth, thy home is heaven. A stranger, thou art the guest of God.