Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1889)/12 Recapitulation
CHAPTER XII.
RECAPITULATION.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, and keep
His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be
good, or whether it be evil. — Ecclesiastes.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
THIS chapter is from the first edition of my classbook,
copyrighted in 1870. It is a condensation
of my treatise, and important to learners. The theology
of Christian Science pervades its entire statement from
beginning to end, and supports the only true medical
practice. The Science of Healing, through Mind, is
built on no other basis than God, the unerring Mind.
Question. — What is God?
Answer. — God is Supreme Individual Being, Divine Principle, Eternal Mind.
Question. — What is Principle?
Answer. — Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Substance, and Intelligence.
Question. — Is there more than one Principle?
Answer. — There is not. There is but one Life, one Substance, one Truth; and this is God, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Omni is from the Latin omnus, — all. Hence God signifies all-power, all-science, all-presence. The varied manifestations of Science, under the different terms for it, have but one Principle.
Question. — What are spirits and souls?
Answer. — To human belief they are personalities of Mind and matter, Life and death, Good and evil, Truth and error; but all these are opposites, as Science reveals, — neither dwelling - together nor assimilating. Truth is immortal; error is mortal. The one is limitless; the other is limited. One is Intelligence; the other is nonintelligence. Moreover, one is real, and the other is unreal. This last statement contains the point you will most reluctantly admit, although it is the most important to understand, first and last.
The term souls, or spirits, is as improper as the term gods. Soul, or Spirit, signifies Deity, and nothing else. There is no finite soul or spirit. Those terms mean only one existence, and cannot be rendered in the plural. Heathen mythology and Jewish theology perpetuated the fallacy that Intelligence, Soul, or God could be in matter; and idolatry and ritualism are the outcome of this man-made belief.
The Science of Christianity comes with the fan in hand, that shall separate the chaff from the wheat. Science will declare God aright; and Christianity will demonstrate this declaration, and its Divine Principle, making mankind physically, morally, and spiritually better.
Question. — What is the Science of Soul?
Answer. — The first demand of this Science is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” This Me is Spirit. Therefore the command is, Thou shalt have no Intelligence, no Life, no Substance, no Truth, no Love, but that which is spiritual. The second is like unto it, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” It should be well understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love. Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this becomes apparent, and the true brotherhood of man will thus be established. Having no other gods, turning to no other Mind but the perfect to guide them, mortals will grow into the Substance of Spirit, and be pure and eternal, having that Mind which was also with Christ Jesus.
Recollect that Science reveals Spirit, Soul, as not in the body, and God as not in man, but as reflected by man. The greater cannot be in the lesser. Such a belief is an error that works ill. This is a leading point in the Science of Mind, that Principle is not in its idea. Spirit, Soul, is not confined, either in man or matter. God is not resident in His own idea, even the perfect and immortal man; much less can He be in mortals, constituted materially. We reason imperfectly from effect to cause, when we conclude that matter is the effect of Spirit; but a priori reasoning shows material existence to be enigmatical. Spirit gives the true mental idea. We cannot interpret Spirit through matter.
Reasoning from cause to effect, in the Science of Mind, we begin with Mind, which must be understood through the idea that expresses it, and cannot be learned from its opposite, matter. Thus we arrive at Truth, or Intelligence, which evolves its own unerring idea, and never can be coordinate with human illusions.
If Soul sinned it would be mortal; for sin is mortality's self, inasmuch as it kills itself. Error must be mortal (being the antipodes of Truth) if Truth is immortal. Because Soul is immortal, Soul cannot sin, for sin is not the eternal verity of Being.
Question. — What is the scientific statement of being?
Answer. — There is no Life, Substance, or Intelligence in matter. All is Mind. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness; hence, man is spiritual and not material.
Question. — What is Substance?
Answer. — That only which is eternal, and incapable of discord and decay. Truth, Life, and Love are Substance, as the Scriptures use this word, in such a text as “The Substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Spirit — the synonym of Mind, Soul, or God — is Substance; i. e. the only real Substance. The spiritual universe and man are compound and individual ideas which reflect the divine Substance of Spirit.
Question. — What is Life?
Answer. — Life is Divine Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, without beginning and without end. Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases when the other is recognized. One is finite, the other is infinite.
Life is no part of matter. What is termed matter is unknown to Spirit, which involves in itself all Substance, Life eternal, and is everlasting. Matter is a finite illusion. Life is Mind, or Infinite Understanding. It is not limited. Death and finiteness are unknown to Life. If Life ever had a beginning it would also have an ending.
Question. — What is Intelligence?
Answer. — Intelligence is omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. It is the Infinite Mind, the Triune Principle, — or Life, Truth, and Love, — called God.
Question. — Are doctrines and creeds a benefit to man?
Answer. — I subscribed to an Orthodox creed in early youth, and strictly adhered to it through many years; but when all earthly means had failed to restore my health, I caught the first gleam of what interprets God as higher than man-made creeds. This vision took me away from human beliefs, and gave the spiritual import of all things from the Divine Mind expressed through Science. This gave me a new sense of Life, of God, and healed me.
Ever since then my highest creed has been Divine Science, which, reduced to human apprehension, I have named Christian Science. This Sacred Science teaches man that God is his only Life, and that this Life is Truth and Love; that God is to be understood and demonstrated, instead of believed and feared; that divine understanding casts out human error and heals the sick.
The way that leads to Science is strait and narrow. God has set his signet to Science, making it coördinate with all that is real, with only that which is harmonious and eternal. Sickness, sin, and death, being inharmonious, originate not in God, nor belong to His government. His law, rightly understood, destroys them. Jesus furnished proofs of these statements.
Question. — What is error?
Answer. — Error is a supposition of pleasure and pain, of Intelligence, Substance, and Life as existent in matter. Again — error is neither Mind, nor one of its faculties. Mind is Truth. Error is its opposite, a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue, — that which seemeth to be, and is not.
Question. — Is there no sin?
Answer. — As I have before stated, all reality is in God and His idea, harmonious and eternal. That which he created was good, and “He made all that was made.” The only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not true, because He is Truth, and they are not of Him. We learn of Science that all inharmony of mortal mind or body is erroneous; and error is illusion, possessing neither reality nor identity, though seeming to be real, and identical with Truth.
If error were true, its truth would be error, and through this we should lose the standard of Truth. I find that the Science of Mind disposes of all evil. Truth, God, is not the father of error. Sin, sickness, and death are to be classified as effects of error. Christ came to save sinners. The God-principle is omnipresent and omnipotent. He is everywhere, and nothing else is present or has power. Christ is Truth, and this great Truth comes to heal sickness and sin, — first through the idea in Science, and then through a person. Jesus is the name of the man who presented, more than all other men, this idea of God, for he came healing the sick and the sinful, and destroying the power of death. Jesus is the man, and Christ is the Divine Principle of the man.
In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced the Principle and practice of Christianity, affording proof of its Truth and Love. But to reach his example, — and test its unerring Science according to his rule, by healing sickness, sin, and death, — a better understanding of God is required, as being the Divine Principle rather than the person of the man Jesus.
Jesus established what he said by demonstration, thus making his acts of higher importance than his words. He demonstrated what he taught. This is the divine scheme and the Science of Christianity. Jesus proved the Principle to be divine, that heals the sick and casts out error. Few however, except his students, understood in the least his teachings and their glorious proofs — namely, that Life, Truth, and Love (the Principle of his unacknowledged Science) destroy all error, sickness, sin, and death.
The reception accorded to Truth in the early Christian era, history now repeats. Whoever introduces the Science of Christianity will be scoffed at, and scourged with worse cords than those which cut the flesh. To the ignorant age in which it first appears Science seems a miracle. Hence the misinterpretation and consequent maltreatment which it receives. Christian marvels (and marvel is the simple meaning of the Greek word rendered miracle in the New Testament) will be misunderstood and misused by charlatans and the misjudging, until the underlying Principle of these marvels is gained.
If sin, sickness, and death are as real as Goodness, Life, and Truth, then they must all be from the same source, God being their author. Now Jesus came to destroy sin, sickness, and death; yet he “came not to destroy but to fulfil.” Is it possible then to believe that the evils which he lived to destroy are the offspring of the Divine Will?
Despite the hallowing influence of Truth to destroy error, must it still be immortal? Truth spares all that is true. If evil is real, Truth must make it so; but error, not Truth, is the author of the unreal; for the unreal perishes, while all that is real is eternal. The apostle says that the mission of Christ was “to destroy the works of the devil.”
Truth came to destroy error, since light and darkness cannot dwell together. One inevitably extinguishes the other. When one appears, the other disappears. “God is too pure to behold iniquity.” To Truth there is no error; all is Truth. To Spirit there is no matter; all is Principle and idea.
Question. — What is man?
Answer. — Man is not matter, — brains, blood, bones, and the material rest. The Scriptures inform us that man was made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness. The reflection of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and because of this, he will be so understood in Science. Error, urged to its final limits, will be self-destroyed. It will cease to claim that Soul is in body, that Life and Intelligence are in matter, and that this matter is man. God is the Principle of man, and man is the idea of God. Hence man is not mortal or material. Mortals must disappear for immortals, as babes have disappeared at the age of adults.
All that is material is mortal. To the five personal senses, man appears to be matter and mind; but Science reveals him as the idea of God, and declares the material senses to be mortal and erring illusions.
Question. — What are body and Soul?
Answer. — Body is the reflection of Spirit, in multifarious embodiments of this living Principle. Soul is the Substance, Life, Intelligence of this idea, or reflection. God, or Principle, is not in the reflection. Hence Soul cannot be in body, or matter. Man is not a material habitation for Spirit; he is spiritual. Soul, being divine, can be reflected in nothing imperfect, or unlike the Infinite Self.
Man is the expression of Spirit. The Indians caught some glimpses of the underlying reality, as when they called a certain beautiful lake the Smile of the Great Spirit. Separated from man, who expresses it, Spirit would be a nonentity. Man, divorced from Spirit, would be equally a nonentity. But there is, there can be, no such division; for man is co-existent with God.
Divine Science shows it to be impossible that a material body, though interwoven with matter's highest stratum, mortal mind, should be man, indestructible and eternal. Were it otherwise man would be annihilated, for Soul would lose itself with the dissolution of body.
What evidence have you of Immortality within mortality? In Science man has never beheld Spirit, or Soul, leaving a body, or entering it. What evidence is there in support of such a theory of indwelling Spirit, except the evidence of belief? What would be thought of the declaration that a house was inhabited, and by a certain kind of folks, when no such people were ever seen to go out or come in, or had even been visible through the windows? Who can see Soul in the body?
Question. — Do not brains think and nerves feel, and is there not Intelligence in matter?
Answer. — No, not if God be true, and mortal man a liar. The assertion is erroneous that there can be pain or pleasure in matter. That body is most harmonious which is least noticeable in the discharge of its functions.
Man is not in matter, nor of it. He is the image and likeness, the idea, or reflection, of Spirit, and Spirit cannot be reflected by matter, mortality, or sin. “Mortal man” is really a self-contradictory phrase, for man is not mortal (“neither indeed can be”) but immortal.
How can Intelligence dwell in matter, when matter is non-intelligent, and brain-lobes cannot think? Such a notion is only a notion, and matter cannot perform the functions of Mind. Illusion says, “I am man;” but this belief is far from actuality. From beginning to end mortals are composed of human beliefs.
If a child is the offspring of physical sense, and not of Soul, it must have a material, not a spiritual origin. With what truth, then, could the Scriptural rejoicing be uttered by any mother, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” On the contrary, if a child comes from God, it cannot be mortal and material; it must be immortal and spiritual.
Nerves are a belief that there is sensation in matter, whereas matter is devoid of sensation. Sensation, as well as action, is governed by Mind, — is in Mind, the origin and governor of all that Science reveals. Sense has its realm apart from Science, in the unreal. Harmonious action proceeds from the Spirit, God. Inharmony has no Principle. Its action is erroneous, indicating man to be in matter, and making matter the cause, as well as the effect, of Intelligence, or Soul, thus attempting to separate Mind from God.
Man is not God, and God is not man. Again, God, or Goodness, could never make men capable of sin. It is the opposite of Good — that is, evil — which seems to make men capable of wrong. Now evil is but an illusion, and error has no real basis; it is a false belief. God is not the author of evil. The supposititious parent of evil is matter.
The Bible declares, “All things were made by Him [the Divine Word], and without Him was not anything made that was made.” This is the eternal verity of Divine Science. If sin, sickness, and death were understood as nothingness, they would disappear. As vapor that melts before the sun, evil should vanish before the reality of good. One must hide the other. How important, then, to choose good as the reality. Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else. God's being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss.
Material sense never helped mortals to understand Spirit, God. Through spiritual sense only, man comprehends and loves Deity. The various contradictions of the Science of Mind, by the material senses, do not change the unseen Truth, forever intact. The forbidden fruit of knowledge, against which Wisdom warned man, is the testimony of matter, declaring Life, alias God, to be at the mercy of death, and good and evil capable of commingling. This is the significance of the Scripture concerning this Tree of Knowledge, this growth of material belief, — “In the day when thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” Human hypotheses first assume the reality of sickness, sin, and death; and then assume the necessity of these evils, because of their admitted actuality.
These human verdicts are the procurers of all discord. If Soul sins it must be mortal. Sin has the elements of self-destruction. It cannot sustain itself. If sin is supported, God must uphold it; and this is impossible, since Truth cannot support error. Soul is the Divine Principle of man, and never sins. Hence the immortality of Soul. It is sense, not Soul, that sins, and it will at length be found that it is the sense of sin which is lost, and not a sinful soul.
Question. — Is it important to understand these explanations, in order to heal the sick?
Answer. — It is; since Christ is the Way. Christ also is Truth, and Truth alone casts out error. Sickness is part of the error that Truth casts out. Error will not expel error. Christian Science is the law of Truth, that heals the sick on the basis of the One Mind, or God. It can heal in no other way, since the human, mortal mind is not a healer, but makes disease.
Here comes in the question, How do drugs, hygiene, and animal magnetism, heal? I venture to affirm that they do not heal; they only relieve, and exchange one disease for another. I classify disease as error, that nothing but Truth, or Mind, can heal, and this Mind must be divine, not human. Mind transcends all other power, and will ultimately supersede all other means in healing.
What is herein written embraces the important points of Christian Science. In order to heal by Science you must not be ignorant of its theology, nor resist it. Moral ignorance, or sin, affects your demonstration, and hinders its approach to the standard of Science.
After I discovered Christian Science, in 1866, I affixed the name Science to Christianity, the name error to personal sense, and the name Substance to Mind. No person had uttered this Science then, but I called the world to battle over these issues.
Because this Science of Spirit seems to bring into dishonor the scientific schools, — wrestling with material observations, — I have met with opposition; but if my system honors God, I ought to encounter aid, not obstacles, from all thinking people. And this Science does honor God, as no other theory honors Him; and it does this in the way of His appointing, by doing many wonderful works.
I must fulfil my mission without timidity or dissimulation, since to be well done the work must be done unselfishly. Christianity will never be based on a Divine Principle, and so found to be unerring, until its Science is reached. When this is accomplished, neither pride, prejudice, bigotry, nor envy can wash away its foundation, for it is built upon the rock, Christ.
Question. — Does Christian Science, or Metaphysical Healing, include medication, hygiene, mesmerism, or mediumship?
Answer. — Not one of them is included in it. The supposed laws of matter yield to the law of Mind in Divine Science. What are termed Natural Science and Material Law are laws of mortal mind. The physical universe expresses the conscious and unconscious thoughts of mortals. Physical force and mortal mind are one. Drugs and hygiene oppose the supremacy of the Divine Mind, and act against it. Drugs and inert matter are unconscious. Certain results, supposed to proceed from them, are really caused by that faith in them which human consciousness is educated to feel.
Mesmerism is the right hand of Humbug, and is either delusion or fraud. When first teaching Mental Science I permitted students to manipulate the head, ignorant that this could harm or hinder the spiritual direction of thought. A student's mental malpractice called my attention to this question for the first time, and placed it in a new moral and physical aspect. By thorough examination I learned that manipulation hinders, instead of helps, mental healing. It establishes a mesmeric connection between patient and practitioner that is fatal to health, and far from the Science of Being. It gives personal sense preponderance and additional power to harm. It acts as error instead of Truth. Mesmerism injures the sick, and must always prevent a scientific result. This is true of mediumship also.
Studying and observing human error more thoroughly, I have learned that mesmeric influence is not confined to manipulation, but is employed variously, and becomes the subtle agent of the worst crimes that mortals can commit. It is far safer to live unprotected from the contamination of physical plagues, than to inhabit the realm of mortal thought, and be unprotected by Christian Science against this pestilential mental action.
Animal magnetism is the voluntary or involuntary action of error in all its forms, and is the human antipodes of Divine Science. Before discovering, in 1872, the action of this mischievous agent, I supposed that the consent of the victim was essential to its operation. Knowing that it was impossible for my system of mental practice to produce bad effects, I gave no thought to the counteraction of this mental influence, until I was roused to investigate it for the protection of the human race.
Science must triumph over sense, and Truth over error, so determining the facts involved in these theories and practices, and in all others affecting the welfare of mankind.
Question. — Is not materiality the concomitant of spirituality, and is not material sense a necessary preliminary to the expression of Spirit, and its understanding?
Answer. — If error is necessary to define or reveal Truth, I answer, Yes; but not otherwise. “Material sense” is an absurd phrase, for matter has no sensation. Science says that Mind sees, hears, feels, speaks, and not matter. Whatever contradicts this statement is the false sense that betrays mortals into sickness, sin, and death.
If the unimportant and evil appear, only to soon disappear, because of their uselessness or because of their iniquity, then these ephemeral views of error ought to be obliterated by Truth. Why oppose the Science that instructs mortals how to make sin, sickness, and death appear more and more unreal?
Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not to thwart the spiritual ultimate of all things, but come naturally into Spirit, through better health and morals, and as the result of spiritual understanding. The supposition that death, and a certain amount of sin and pardon, are necessary to perfection, is but a mortal and human belief, which Divine Science can and will overcome, since Jesus has taught the way.
Not death, but the understanding of Life, makes man immortal. The belief that Life can be in matter, or Soul in body, and that man springs from dust or from an egg, is the brief record of the mortal error that Christ, or Truth, destroys, by fulfilling the mental law of being; and thus rendering the body as perfect as the Mind it manifests. If thought yields its dominion to other powers, it cannot outline in the body its own beautiful images, but effaces them, and delineates a foreign agent, called disease.
The heathen gods of mythology were unreal, as error is, and they controlled war and agriculture as much as our nerves control sensation, or our muscles measure strength. To say that strength can be in matter is like saying the power can be in the lever. The notion of any Life or Intelligence in matter is without foundation in fact, and you can have no faith in falsehood when you have learned its true nature.
Supposing one accident happens to the eye, another to the ear, and so on, until every personal sense is quenched. What is man's remedy? To die, and so get his senses back again? Even then he must gain the Science of sense, in order to retain immortal consciousness. Earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost. Really man never dies. The belief that he dies will not establish his scientific harmony. Death is not the result of Truth, but of error, and one error will not correct another.
Jesus proved, by the prints of the nails, that his body was the same immediately after death as before. If death restores sight, sound, and strength to man, then death is surely a better friend than Life. Alas for the blindness of belief, that makes harmony conditional upon death and matter, yet supposes Mind unable to produce harmony! So long as this error of belief remains, mortals will continue mortal in belief, exposed to the mercy of chance and change.
Sight, hearing, all the senses of man, are eternal. They cannot be lost. Their reality and immortality are in Spirit and understanding, not in matter. Hence their permanence. If this were not so, man would be speedily annihilated.
If five material senses are the medium through which to understand God, then palsy, blindness, and deafness would place man in a terrible situation, where he would be “without hope and without God in the world.” But, as a matter of fact, these calamities often drive mortals to seek a higher sense of happiness and existence.
Life is deathless. It is the origin and ultimate of man, never attainable through death, but gained by walking in the footsteps of Truth, both before and after so-called death. There is more Christianity in seeing and hearing spiritually than materially. There is more Science in the perpetual exercise of the Mind-faculties than in their loss. Lost they cannot be, while Mind remains. The apprehension of this gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf centuries ago, and will repeat the wonder.
Question. — You speak of belief. Who is it that believes?
Answer. — Spirit understands, and thus precludes the need of believing. Matter cannot believe, but Mind understands. No mere body believes. The only believer is the belief, mortal mind.
Christian evidence is founded on Divine Science, or demonstrable Truth, flowing from Immortal Mind; and there is really no such thing as mortal mind. Mere belief is blindness, without Principle whereby to explain the reason of its hope. The belief is erroneous that Life is sentient and intelligent matter.
The Apostle James said, “Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.” The understanding that Life is God lengthens our days; and it strengthens our trust in Him, the deathless reality of Life, its almightiness and immortality.
This faith relies upon an understood Principle. This Principle makes whole the diseased, and brings out the enduring and harmonious phases of things. The result of my teachings is their sufficient confirmation. When, on the strength of these instructions, you are able to banish a severe malady, the cure shows that you understand my teaching, and get the benefit of its blessing.
The Hebrew and Greek words, often translated belief, differ somewhat in meaning from that conveyed by the English verb to believe, and its derivatives, having more the significance of understanding, trust, constancy, firmness. Hence the Scriptures often appear, in our common version, to approve and endorse belief, when they mean to enforce the necessity of understanding.
Question. — Do the five personal senses constitute man?
Answer. — Science sustains with immortal proof the impossibility of any material sense, and defines these so-called senses as Human Beliefs, whose testimony cannot be true of man or his Maker, — of whose reality, or immortality, the senses can take no cognizance. Nerves have no more sensation, apart from what belief bestows upon them, than the fibres of a plant. Mind alone feels, sees, tastes, smells, and hears; therefore these faculties continue when organization is destroyed. Otherwise the very worms could unfashion man. If it were possible for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could reproduce them in all their perfection; but they cannot be disturbed, since they exist in Soul.
The less Mind there is manifested in matter, the better. When the unthinking lobster loses his claw it grows again. If the Science of Life were understood, it would be found that the senses of Mind are never lost; and that there are, properly speaking, no material senses. Any hypothesis, which supposes Life to be in matter, is an educated belief. In infancy this belief is not equal to guiding the hand to the mouth, and in old age it fades into utter extinction.
Personal sense defrauds, lies, cheats, will break all the commands of the Mosaic Decalogue, to meet its own demands. How then can this sense be the channel of blessings or of understanding to man? How can man, reflecting God, be dependent on such material senses for knowing, hearing, seeing? Who dare say that the senses of man can be at one time the medium for serving sin, and at another for communion with God?
An affirmative reply would contradict the Scripture, for “the same fountain sendeth not forth sweet and bitter waters.”
The so-called senses of matter are the only source of evil or error. Science shows them to be false; since matter has no sensation, and no organic construction can give it hearing and sight, or make it the medium of Mind.
Outside of the material sense of things, all is harmony. A wrong sense — of God, man, and creation — is nonsense, or want of sense. Belief would have the material senses sometimes good and sometimes bad.
Belief is erring. It assures mortals that there is real pleasure in sin, — that you can find it in drunkenness, stealing, lying, fraud, defamation. The grand truths of Science dispute this error.
Will-power is but an illusion of belief, and this illusion commits depredations on harmony. Human will is an animal propensity, not a faculty of Soul. Hence it cannot govern man aright. Science reveals Truth and Love as the motive-powers of man. Will — blind, stubborn and headlong — co-operates with appetite and passion. Thence arises its evil. Thence also comes its powerlessness, since power belongs to good, not to evil.
The Science of Mind needs to be understood. Until it is understood, mortals are more or less deprived of Truth. Human theories are helpless to make man harmonious or immortal, since he is so already, according to Science. Our only need is to find this out, and reduce to practice the Principle of perfect manhood.
“Quench not the Spirit, despise not prophecy.” Human belief — or knowledge gained from the so-called material senses — would, by fair logic, annihilate man, along with the dissolving elements of clay. The scientific explanations of the nature and origin of man destroy all material sense with immortal testimony. This gives place to the spiritual sense of man, which can be obtained from no other source.
Sleep and mesmerism explain the mythical nature of material sense. Sleep reveals material sense as either oblivion or nothingness, as illusion or dream.
Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and swimming when he is on dry land. Needle-thrusts will not hurt him; a delicious perfume will seem intolerable.
Animal magnetism thus uncovers material sense, and shows it to be a belief without actual foundation. Change the belief, and the sensation changes. Destroy a belief, and the sensation disappears.
Material man is made up of involuntary and voluntary error, of a negative right and a positive wrong, — calling itself right.
Spiritual man is never wrong. He is the likeness of his Maker. Matter cannot connect mortals with the true origin and facts of being, in which all must end. It is only by acknowledging the supremacy of Spirit, which annuls the claims of matter, that mortals can lay off mortality, and find the indissoluble spiritual link that establishes man forever in the divine likeness, inseparable from his Creator.
The belief that matter and Mind are one, that matter is awake at one time and asleep at another, — sometimes presenting no appearance of Mind, — this belief culminates in another belief, namely, that man dies.
Science reveals material man as a dream at all times, and as never the real being. The dream or belief goes on, while our eyes are closed or open. In sleep memory and consciousness are lost from one body, whence they wander whither they will, with their own embodiment.
Awake, we dream of the pains and pleasures of matter. Who will say, even though not understanding Christian Science, that this dream — rather than a dreamer — is not mortal man? Who can rationally say otherwise, when the dream leaves mortal man intact in body and mind, and the so-called dreamer lies unconscious on the pillow? For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the mind, namely, spiritual existence. Really there is no other existence, since Life cannot be united to its opposite, — mortality.
Being is holiness, harmony, immortality. The knowledge of this, even in small degree, will uplift the physical and moral standard of mortals, will increase longevity, will purify and elevate character. We know that the statement which can he proved must be correct.
New thoughts are constantly obtaining the floor. The two opposite theories — that all is matter, or else that all is Mind — will dispute the ground, until one is acknowledged. Discussing his campaign, a great general said, “I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.” Science says, All is Mind and Mind's idea. You must fight it out on this line. Matter can afford you no aid.
The notion that Mind and matter commingle, in the human illusion as to sin, sickness, and death, must eventually submit to the Science of Mind, which denies this proposition.
God is Mind, and God is ALL; hence all is Mind. On this statement I stand. I hold myself ready to meet any profound thinker on this subject, for this statement is scientific, and its Principle demonstrates harmony and immortality.
The conservative theory, so long believed, is that there are two factors, matter and Mind, uniting on some impossible basis. This theory would keep Truth and error always at war. Victory would perch on neither banner. On the other hand, Christian Science would speedily give the triumph to Truth's soaring eagles.
To personal sense the sun appears to rise and set, and the earth to stand still; but Science contradicts this, and explains the solar system as working on a different plan. All the evidence of physical sense, or of the knowledge obtained thereby, must yield to Science, the immortal sense of things.
Question. — Will you explain sickness, and show how it is to be healed?
Answer. — Like a surgeon bandaging the limb and arranging plasters, before proceeding to amputation, I have been preparing to answer this question. The answer involves my first discovery, the discovery that enabled me to give a demonstration of Christian Science, or healing through Mind, the method whereof is described in the chapter on Healing and Teaching.
Mind must be found superior to all the beliefs of the five personal senses, and able to destroy all the ills “that flesh is heir to.”
I learned that sickness is an illusion, to be annihilated by Science; that disease is a suffering of mortal mind. Disease is fear made manifest on the body, whether this fear take the form of cancer, consumption, small-pox, or an injured limb.
The fear of dissevered bodily members, or a belief in such a possibility, is reflected on the body, — in the shape of headache, fractured bones, dislocated joints, and so on, — as directly as shame is seen in the blush rising to the cheek. This human error, about physical wounds and colics, is part and parcel of the delusion that matter can feel and see, having sensation and substance.
Divine Truth takes away this physical sense of error, just as it removes a sense of moral or mental error. That the body is matter, and that matter should suffer, — these propositions seem perfectly real and natural in dreams. Every sense of Life, or Mind, in matter is but a dream, and not the reality of being. If Christ could waken Lazarus from the dream of death, this proves that Christ can restore every lost sense. Who shall dare to doubt this consummate test of the power and willingness of Divine Mind to hold man forever intact, in a perfect form, and to govern his entire action? Jesus said, “Destroy this temple [body] and I [Mind] will build it again;” and so he did, for tired humanity's reassurance.
I deem it infidelity to believe that so great a work as Christ's was done for himself, — or for God, who needed no help from Christ's example, to preserve the eternal harmony; but mortals did need this help, and Divine Love always has met, and always will meet, every human need.
It is infidelity also to imagine that Jesus demonstrated the divine power to heal only for a select number, or a definite period of time; since to all mankind, and in every hour, Deity can supply all necessary aid to humanity, physically, morally, and spiritually.
The miracle of divine grace is the only miracle of healing. Jesus demonstrated the inability of matter, as well as the infinite ability of Spirit, thus helping feeble human sense to flee from its own convictions, and seek safety in Divine Science.
Reason, rightly directed, serves to correct the errors of sense; but while the spell of belief remains unbroken, sin, sickness, and death will seem real (even as the experiences of the sleeping dream seem real) until the Science of man's eternal harmony breaks this illusion with its own unbroken reality.
Which of these two testimonies concerning man are you ready to accept? One is the mortal evidence, unreal, changing, and dying. The other is the eternal and real testimony, bearing Truth's signet, its lap piled high with immortal fruits.
Our Master cast out devils and healed the sick. It should be said of his followers, that they cast evil out of themselves and others, and heal the sick. God will heal the sick through man, whenever man is governed by God. Truth casts out error now, as surely as it did eighteen centuries ago. All of Truth is not understood; hence its healing power is not fully demonstrated.
If sickness is Truth, or the idea of Truth, you cannot destroy it, and it would be absurd to attempt it. Then let us classify sickness and error as our Master did, when he said to the woman, “Satan hath bound thee.” Let us find a sovereign antidote for error in the inspiration of Truth, a power that opens the prison doors to such as are bound, and sets the captive free.
Cling steadfastly to God and His idea, if the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you. Let none but His likeness abide in you. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of being — as it eternally is — can destroy any painful sense, or belief, of that which being is not. Let Science, instead of personal sense, support your theory of man, and your theory will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and remedy discord with harmony.
Question. — How can I progress most rapidly in the understanding of Christian Science?
Answer. — After studying the letter, imbibe the Spirit. Adhere to its Divine Principle, and follow its behests, abiding steadfastly in Wisdom, Truth, and Love.
In the Science of Mind you will soon ascertain that error cannot destroy error. You will also learn that the transfer of mental pictures, from one mortal mind to another, tends to a speedy inoculation with the virus of error. You will learn that in Christian Science the first duty is to obey one God, to have one Mind, and to love the neighbor.
That Life is God we all must learn. Ask yourself: Am I living the life that approaches goodness? Am I demonstrating the healing power of Truth and Love? If so, then the way will grow “brighter unto the perfect day.” Good works will prove what the understanding of God brings to man.
My students can demonstrate, with scientific certainty, the rule of Christian Healing, upon the Principle that underlies, overlies, and encompasses all true being.