Science & Health - Key to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddy

theory, the nauseous fiction. Novels, remarkable only for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity, fill our young readers with wrong tastes and sentiments. Our arrangements for thinking and writing are lowering the standards to accommodate the purse, and meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of instruction.

      The core of mortal mind is not readjusted, and its coverings are thickly inlaid with foreign devices. If modern knowledge is power, it is not wisdom. It is but a blind force, whose materiality loses in power what it gains in time.

      Eclectic religion and metaphysical healing would ameliorate sin, sickness, and death. Let our pulpits do justice to Christian Science. Let it have fair representation from the press. Give it the place in our institutions of learning now occupied by physiology, and Christian Science will eradicate sickness and sin in less time than they have taken to increase, under the old systems and stereotyped plans for subduing them. Incorrect teaching lowers the standard of Truth. Man hath sought out many inventions, but he has not yet found that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of knowledge.

      Many a hopeless case of disease is induced by a single post-mortem examination, — not from poison, or material virus, but from the fear of the disease, and from the image brought before the mind during an excited state of feeling, which is afterward outlined on the body.

      Books that would rule disease out of mortal mind, and would so efface the images and thoughts of disease, instead of impressing them with force of description and medical detail, — such books would abate sickness and ultimately destroy it.

      Physics would have you believe matter is diseased, independently of mortal mind, and despite its protest or co-operation. This view is as evidently erroneous to me now, and will be to others at some future day, as the rejected doctrine of the predestination of the saved and the lost. The shocking doctrine that man is governed physically all his days, and afterwards killed by the body, is too absurd to last another century.

      The press unwittingly sends forth many a plague-spot into the human family. It does this by giving names to diseases, and printing long descriptions that mirror images of disease distinctly in thought. A new name for an ailment affects people like a Parisian name for a novel garment. Every one hastens to get it. A minutely described disease has cost many a man all his earthly days of comfort. What a price for human knowledge! But the price does not exceed the original cost. God said, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die.” The doctor's mind reaches his patient's. His belief in disease — its reality and fatality to him — harms his patients more than his calomel and morphine; inasmuch as the higher stratum of mortal mind is more potent to injure than its lower substratum, called matter. A patient hears the doctor's verdict as a martyr hears his death-sentence. He may seem calm under it, but he is not. His fortitude may sustain him, but his fear has already developed the disease which is gaining the mastery.

      The power of mortal mind over its own body is little known. Its destructive action, if reversed, would restore health.

      Take away the penalty that must follow sin, and mortal mind could not destroy its own body. Sin alone brings death, for it is the only element of destruction. “Fear him who is able to destroy both Soul and body in hell,” said Jesus; and a careful study of this text shows that these words were a warning to beware, not of Rome, nor of Satan, nor of God, but of sin. Sickness, sin, and death are not concomitants of Life. No law supports them. They have no relation to God that can establish their power.

      The doctor is the artist who outlines disease, and fills his delineations with sketches from class-books. After disease is formed in mortal mind, it is sure to appear on the body, sooner or later. The thought of disease is sometimes formed before you see your doctor, and before he undertakes to dispel it by a counter fear, — perhaps by a blister, by the application of caustic, by croton oil, or by a surgical operation. Or, giving another direction to faith, he prescribes drugs, until the elasticity of mortal thought haply causes a vigorous reaction upon itself, and thus reproduces a picture of healthful and harmonious formations.

      The patient's belief is more or less moulded and formed by his doctor's belief in the case, even though the doctor says nothing to support his theory. His thoughts and his patient's commingle, and the stronger rule the weaker. Hence the importance that doctors be Christian Scientists.

      We respect the motives and philanthropy of the higher class of physicians. We know that if they understood the Science of Mental Healing they would abandon their systems of drugging. Even this one reform in medicine would ultimately deliver mankind from the oppressive bondage of sickness that false theories enforce.

      Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise did it, or that an arm less used must be fragile. If matter were the cause of action, and muscles, without the co-operation of mortal mind, could lift the hammer and smite the nail, it might be thought true that hammering enlarges the muscles. But the trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron? Because mortal mind is not producing that result in the hammer.

      Muscles are not self-acting. If mortal mind moves them not, they are motionless. Hence the fact that mortal mind enlarges and strengthens them through its mandate, through its own demand and supply of power. Not because of muscular exercise, but through the blacksmith's belief, comes the strength of his arm.

      Mortals develop their bodies just as they move them, through mind. To know whether this development is produced consciously or unconsciously, is of less importance than a knowledge of the fact. The feats of the gymnast prove that latent mental fears are quite unknown to him. Even mortal mind, fixed on some achievement, makes its accomplishment possible. Exceptions only confirm this rule, proving that failure is occasioned by a too feeble sense of evil desires or good.

      Had Blondin believed it impossible to walk a rope over Niagara's abyss of waters, he could never have done it. His belief that he could do it gave his muscles their flexibility and power, — which was attributed, perhaps, to a lubricating oil. His fear must disappear, and his power of putting resolve into action must appear.

      When Homer sang of the Grecian gods, Olympus was dark; but through his verse the gods became alive in a nation's belief. Pagan worship began with muscularity, but the Law of Sinai lifted thought into the song of David. Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Mind instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by Immortal Mind. The Psalmist said: “Thou madest man to have dominion over the works of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet.”

      CHAPTER II.

       FOOTSTEPS OF TRUTH.

       Table of Contents

      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,