Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures - Mary Baker Eddy (golden son ebook txt) 📗

you resort to any except spiritual means.

 

It is foolish to declare that you manipulate patients but 181:15 that you lay no stress on manipulation. If this be so, why

manipulate? In reality you manipulate because you are

ignorant of the baneful effects of magnetism, or are not 181:18 sufficiently spiritual to depend on Spirit. In either case

you must improve your mental condition till you finally

attain the understanding of Christian Science.

 

Not words but deeds

181:21 If you are too material to love the Science of Mind and

are satisfied with good words instead of effects, if you

adhere to error and are afraid to trust Truth, 181:24 the question then recurs, “Adam, where art

thou?” It is unnecessary to resort to aught besides

Mind in order to satisfy the sick that you are doing some-181:27 thing for them, for if they are cured, they generally know

it and are satisfied.

 

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” 181:30 If you have more faith in drugs than in Truth, this faith

will incline you to the side of matter and error. Any

hypnotic power you may exercise will diminish your 182:1 ability to become a Scientist, and vice versa. The act

of healing the sick through divine Mind alone, of casting 182:3 out error with Truth, shows your position as a Christian

Scientist.

 

Physiology or Spirit

 

The demands of God appeal to thought only; but the 182:6 claims of mortality, and what are termed laws of nature,

appertain to matter. Which, then, are we to

accept as legitimate and capable of producing 182:9 the highest human good? We cannot obey both physiology and Spirit, for one absolutely destroys the other,

and one or the other must be supreme in the affections. 182:12 It is impossible to work from two standpoints. If we

attempt it, we shall presently “hold to the one,

and despise the other.”

182:15 The hypotheses of mortals are antagonistic to Science

and cannot mix with it. This is clear to those, who heal

the sick on the basis of Science.

 

No material law

182:18 Mind’s government of the body must supersede the so-called laws of matter. Obedience to material law prevents full obedience to spiritual law, - the law 182:21 which overcomes material conditions and puts

matter under the feet of Mind. Mortals entreat the divine Mind to heal the sick, and forthwith shut out the aid 182:24 of Mind by using material means, thus working against

themselves and their prayers and denying man’s God-given ability to demonstrate Mind’s sacred power. Pleas 182:27 for drugs and laws of health come from some sad incident,

or else from ignorance of Christian Science and its transcendent power.

182:30 To admit that sickness is a condition over which God

has no control, is to presuppose that omnipotent power

is powerless on some occasions. The law of Christ, or 183:1 Truth, makes all things possible to Spirit; but the so-called laws of matter would render Spirit of no avail, and 183:3 demand obedience to materialistic codes, thus departing

from the basis of one God, one lawmaker. To suppose

that God constitutes laws of inharmony is a mistake; dis-183:6 cords have no support from nature or divine law, however

much is said to the contrary.

 

Can the agriculturist, according to belief, produce a 183:9 crop without sowing the seed and awaiting its germina—

tion according to the laws of nature? The answer is no,

and yet the Scriptures inform us that sin, or error, first 183:12 caused the condemnation of man to till the ground, and

indicate that obedience to God will remove this necessity.

Truth never made error necessary, nor devised a law to 183:15 perpetuate error.

 

Laws of nature spiritual

 

The supposed laws which result in weariness and disease are not His laws, for the legitimate and only possible 183:18 action of Truth is the production of harmony.

Laws of nature are laws of Spirit; but mortals

commonly recognize as law that which hides the power of 183:21 Spirit. Divine Mind rightly demands man’s entire obedience, affection, and strength. No reservation is made

for any lesser loyalty. Obedience to Truth gives man 183:24 power and strength. Submission to error superinduces

loss of power.

 

Belief and understanding

 

Truth casts out all evils and materialistic methods 183:27 with the actual spiritual law, - the law which gives

sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, voice

to the dumb, feet to the lame. If Christian 183:30 Science dishonors human belief, it honors spiritual understanding; and the one Mind only is entitled to

honor.

184:1 The so-called laws of health are simply laws of mortal

belief. The premises being erroneous, the conclusions 184:3 are wrong. Truth makes no laws to regulate sickness,

sin, and death, for these are unknown to Truth and should

not be recognized as reality.

184:6 Belief produces the results of belief, and the penalties it affixes last so long as the belief and are inseparable from it. The remedy consists in probing the trouble 184:9 to the bottom, in finding and casting out by denial the

error of belief which produces a mortal disorder, never

honoring erroneous belief with the title of law nor yield-184:12 ing obedience to it. Truth, Life, and Love are the only

legitimate and eternal demands on man, and they are

spiritual lawgivers, enforcing obedience through divine 184:15 statutes.

 

Laws of human belief

 

Controlled by the divine intelligence, man is harmonious and eternal. Whatever is governed by a false belief 184:18 is discordant and mortal. We say man suffers

from the effects of cold, heat, fatigue. This

is human belief, not the truth of being, for matter cannot 184:21 suffer. Mortal mind alone suffers, - not because a law

of matter has been transgressed, but because a law of this

so-called mind has been disobeyed. I have demonstrated 184:24 this as a rule of divine Science by destroying the delusion

of suffering from what is termed a fatally broken physical

law.

184:27 A woman, whom I cured of consumption, always

breathed with great difficulty when the wind was from

the east. I sat silently by her side a few moments. Her 184:30 breath came gently. The inspirations were deep and natural. I then requested her to look at the weather-vane.

She looked and saw that it pointed due east. The wind 185:1 had not changed, but her thought of it had and so her difficulty in breathing had gone. The wind had not produced 185:3 the difficulty. My metaphysical treatment changed the

action of her belief on the lungs, and she never suffered

again from east winds, but was restored to health.

 

A so-called mind-cure

185:6 No system of hygiene but Christian Science is purely

mental. Before this book was published, other books

were in circulation, which discussed “mental 185:9 medicine” and “mind-cure,” operating through

the power of the earth’s magnetic currents to regulate life

and health. Such theories and such systems of so-called 185:12 mind-cure, which have sprung up, are as material as the

prevailing systems of medicine. They have their birth

in mortal mind, which puts forth a human conception 185:15 in the name of Science to match the divine Science of immortal Mind, even as the necromancers of Egypt strove

to emulate the wonders wrought by Moses. Such theories 185:18 have no relationship to Christian Science, which rests on

the conception of God as the only Life, substance, and

intelligence, and excludes the human mind as a spiritual 185:21 factor in the healing work.

 

Jesus and hypnotism

 

Jesus cast out evil and healed the sick, not only without drugs, but without hypnotism, which is 185:24 the reverse of ethical and pathological Truth-power.

 

Erroneous mental practice may seem for a time to bene-185:27 fit the sick, but the recovery is not permanent. This is

because erroneous methods act on and through the material stratum of the human mind, called brain, which is 185:30 but a mortal consolidation of material mentality and its

suppositional activities.

 

False stimulus

 

A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed 186:1 only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by

emptying his thought of the false stimulus 186:3 and reaction of will-power and filling it with

the divine energies of Truth.

 

Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the 186:6 understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work

determines health. Erring human mind-forces can work

only evil under whatever name or pretence they are em-186:9 ployed; for Spirit and matter, good and evil, light and

darkness, cannot mingle.

 

Evil negative and self-destructive

 

Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth. 186:12 It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It

is unreal, because it presupposes the absence

of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent. 186:15 Every mortal must learn that there is neither

power nor reality in evil.

 

Evil is self-assertive. It says: “I am a real entity, over-186:18 mastering good.” This falsehood should strip evil of all

pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It

can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil 186:21 to destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily

punishing the evil-doer. If we concede the same reality to

discord as to harmony, discord has as lasting a claim upon 186:24 us as has harmony. If evil is as real as good, evil is also as

immortal. If death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth.

If pain is as real as the absence of pain, both must be im-186:27 mortal; and if so, harmony cannot be the law of being.

 

Ignorant idolatry

 

Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be

self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it 186:30 would be better. Since it must believe in something besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity.

The human mind has been an idolater from the beginning, 187:1 having other gods and believing in more than the one

Mind.

187:3 As mortals do not comprehend even mortal existence,

how ignorant must they be of the all-knowing Mind and

of His creations.

187:6 Here you may see how so-called material sense creates

its own forms of thought, gives them material names, and

then worships and fears them. With pagan blindness, 187:9 it attributes to some material god or medicine an ability

beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and

enslave it, and then impute this result to another illusive 187:12 personification, named Satan.

 

Action of mortal mind

 

The valves of the heart, opening and closing for the passage of the blood, obey the mandate of mor-187:15 tal mind as directly as does the hand, admittedly moved by the will. Anatomy allows the mental

cause of the latter action, but not of the former.

187:18 We say, “My hand hath done it.” What is this my but

mortal mind, the cause of all materialistic action? All

voluntary, as well as miscalled involuntary, action of the 187:21 mortal body is governed by this so-called mind, not by

matter. There is no involuntary action. The divine Mind

includes all action and volition, and man in Science is gov-187:24 erned by this Mind. The human mind tries to classify

action as voluntary and involuntary, and suffers from the

attempt.

Death and the body

187:27 If you take away this erring mind, the mortal material

body loses all appearance of life or action, and this so-called mind then calls itself dead; but the hu-187:30 man mind still holds in belief a body, through

which it acts and which appears to the human mind to

live, - a body like the one it had before death. This body 188:1 is put off only as the mortal, erring mind yields to God,

immortal