Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddy

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,