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Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
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380:1Science, it may rest at length on some receptive thought, and become a fever case, which ends in a belief called 3death, which belief must be finally conquered by eternal Life. Truth is always the victor. Sickness and sin fall by their own weight. Truth is the rock of ages, the head6stone of the corner, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
Contending for the evidence or indulging the demands 9of sin, disease, or death, we virtually contend against
Misdirected
contention
the control of Mind over body, and deny the power of Mind to heal.
This false method 12is as though the defendant should argue for the plaintiff in favor of a decision which the defendant knows will be turned against himself.
15The physical effects of fear illustrate its illusion. Gazing at a chained lion, crouched for a spring, should not
Benefits of
metaphysics
terrify a man.
The body is affected only with 18the belief of disease produced by a so-called mind ignorant of the truth which chains disease. Nothing but the power of Truth can prevent the fear of 21error, and prove man’s dominion over error.
Many years ago the author made a spiritual discovery, the scientific evidence of which has accumulated to 24
A higher
discovery
prove that the divine Mind produces in man health, harmony, and immortality.
Gradually this evidence will gather momentum and clearness, 27until it reaches its culmination of scientific statement and proof. Nothing is more disheartening than to believe that there is a power opposite to God, or good, and that 30God endows this opposing power with strength to be used against Himself, against Life, health, harmony.
Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern 381:1man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God. Ignorant of our God-given rights, we submit to unjust 3
Ignorance
of our rights
decrees, and the bias of education enforces this slavery.
Be no more willing to suffer the illusion that you are sick or that some disease is develop6ing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temptation on the ground that sin has its necessities.
When infringing some supposed law, you say that 9there is danger. This fear is the danger and induces the
No laws
of matter
physical effects.
We cannot in reality suffer from breaking anything except a moral or 12spiritual law. The so-called laws of mortal belief are destroyed by the understanding that Soul is immortal, and that mortal mind cannot legislate the times, periods, 15and types of disease, with which mortals die. God is the lawmaker, but He is not the author of barbarous codes. In infinite Life and Love there is no sickness, sin, nor 18death, and the Scriptures declare that we live, move, and have our being in the infinite God.
Think less of the enactments of mortal mind, and you 21will sooner grasp man’s God-given dominion. You must
God-given
dominion
understand your way out of human theories relating to health, or you will never believe 24that you are quite free from some ailment.
The harmony and immortality of man will never be reached without the understanding that Mind is not in matter. 27Let us banish sickness as an outlaw, and abide by the rule of perpetual harmony, God’s law. It is man’s moral right to annul an unjust sentence, a sentence never 30inflicted by divine authority.
Christ Jesus overruled the error which would impose penalties for transgressions of the physical laws of 382:1health; he annulled supposed laws of matter, opposed
Begin
rightly
to the harmonies of Spirit, lacking divine au3thority and having only human approval for their sanction.
If half the attention given to hygiene were given to the 6study of Christian Science and to the spiritualization of
Hygiene
excessive
thought, this alone would usher in the millennium.
Constant bathing and rubbing to alter 9the secretions or to remove unhealthy exhalations from the cuticle receive a useful rebuke from Jesus’ precept, Take no thought . . . for the body. We must beware 12of making clean merely the outside of the platter.
He, who is ignorant of what is termed hygienic law, is more receptive of spiritual power and of faith in one 15
Blissful
ignorance
God, than is the devotee of supposed hygienic law, who comes to teach the so-called ignorant one.
Must we not then consider the so-called law 18of matter a canon more honored in the breach than the observance? A patient thoroughly booked in medical theories is more difficult to heal through Mind than 21one who is not. This verifies the saying of our Master: Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein.
24One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion, in which the senses had engulfed him, wrote to me: I should have died, but for the glorious Principle you teach, 27supporting the power of Mind over the body and showing me the nothingness of the so-called pleasures and pains of sense. The treatises I had read and the medicines I 30had taken only abandoned me to more hopeless suffering and despair. Adherence to hygiene was useless. Mortal mind needed to be set right. The ailment was not bodily, 383:1but mental, and I was cured when I learned my way in Christian Science.
3We need a clean body and a clean mind, a body rendered pure by Mind as well as washed by water.
A clean mind
and body
One says: I take good care of my body. 6To do this, the pure and exalting influence of the divine Mind on the body is requisite, and the Christian Scientist takes the best care of his body when he leaves 9it most out of his thought, and, like the Apostle Paul, is willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
12A hint may be taken from the emigrant, whose filth does not affect his happiness, because mind and body rest on the same basis. To the mind equally gross, dirt 15gives no uneasiness. It is the native element of such a mind, which is symbolized, and not chafed, by its surroundings; but impurity and uncleanliness, which do 18not trouble the gross, could not be borne by the refined. This shows that the mind must be clean to keep the body in proper condition.
21The tobacco-user, eating or smoking poison for half a century, sometimes tells you that the weed preserves
Beliefs
illusive
his health, but does this make it so?
Does his 24assertion prove the use of tobacco to be a salubrious habit, and man to be the better for it? Such instances only prove the illusive physical effect of a false 27belief, confirming the Scriptural conclusion concerning a man, As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.
The movement-cure pinching and pounding the poor 30body, to make it sensibly well when it ought to be insensibly so is another medical mistake, resulting from the common notion that health depends on inert matter 384:1instead of on Mind. Can matter, or what is termed matter, either feel or act without mind?
3We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought that we have transgressed a material law and must of
Corporeal
penalties
necessity pay the penalty.
Let us reassure 6ourselves with the law of Love. God never punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for deeds of kindness, though they expose him to fatigue, 9cold, heat, contagion. If man seems to incur the penalty through matter, this is but a belief of mortal mind, not an enactment of wisdom, and man has only to enter his 12protest against this belief in order to annul it. Through this action of thought and its results upon the body, the student will prove to himself, by small beginnings, the 15grand verities of Christian Science.
If exposure to a draught of air while in a state of perspiration is followed by chills, dry cough, influenza, 18
Not matter,
but Mind
congestive symptoms in the lungs, or hints of inflammatory rheumatism, your Mind-remedy is safe and sure.
If you are a Christian Scientist, such 21symptoms are not apt to follow exposure; but if you believe in laws of matter and their fatal effects when transgressed, you are not fit to conduct your own case or 24to destroy the bad effects of your belief. When the fear subsides and the conviction abides that you have broken no law, neither rheumatism, consumption, nor any other 27disease will ever result from exposure to the weather. In Science this is an established fact which all the evidence before the senses can never overrule.
30Sickness, sin, and death must at length quail before the divine rights of intelligence, and then the power of Mind over the entire functions and organs of the 385:1human system will be acknowledged. It is proverbial that Florence Nightingale and other philanthropists en3
Benefit of
philanthropy
gaged in humane labors have been able to undergo without sinking fatigues and exposures which ordinary people could not endure.
The ex6planation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and en9durance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the penalty which our beliefs would attach to our best deeds. Let us remember that the eternal law of right, 12though it can never annul the law which makes sin its own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but those due for wrong-doing.
15Constant toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, if without sin, can be experienced with
Honest toil
has no
penalty
out suffering.
Whatever it is your duty to do, 18you can do without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the 21flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed.
You say that you have not slept well or have overeaten. You are a law unto yourself. Saying this and believing 24
Our sleep
and food
it, you will suffer in proportion to your belief and fear.
Your sufferings are not the penalty for having broken a law of matter, for it is a law of mortal 27mind which you have disobeyed. You say or think, because you have partaken of salt fish, that you must be thirsty, and you are thirsty accordingly, while the oppo30site belief would produce the opposite result.
Any supposed information, coming from the body or from inert matter as if either were intelligent, is an illu386:1sion of mortal mind, one of its dreams. Realize that
Doubtful
evidence
the evidence of the senses is not to be accepted 3in the case of sickness, any more than it is in the case of sin.
Expose the body to certain temperatures, and belief 6says that you may catch cold and have catarrh; but no
Climate
and belief
such result occurs without mind to demand it and produce it.
So long as mortals declare 9that certain states of the atmosphere produce catarrh, fever, rheumatism, or consumption, those effects will follow, not because of the climate, but on account of 12the belief. The author has in too many instances healed disease through the action of Truth on the minds of mortals, and the corresponding effects of Truth on the body, 15not to know that this is so.
A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a friend, occasions the same grief that the friend’s 18
Erroneous
despatch
real death would bring.
You think that your anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another despatch, correcting the mistake, heals your grief, and 21you learn that your suffering was merely the result of your belief. Thus it is with all sorrow, sickness, and death. You will learn at length that there is no cause 24for grief, and divine wisdom will then be understood. Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on earth.
If a Christian Scientist had said, while you were labor27ing under the influence of the belief of grief, Your sor
Mourning
causeless
row is without cause,you would not have understood him, although the correctness of 30the assertion might afterwards be proved to you.
So, when our friends pass from our sight and we lament, that lamentation is needless and causeless. We shall 387:1perceive this to be true when we grow into the understanding of Life, and know that there is no death.
3Because mortal mind is kept active, must it pay the penalty in a softened brain? Who dares to say that actual
Mind heals
brain-disease
Mind can be overworked?
When we reach 6our limits of mental endurance, we conclude that intellectual labor has been carried sufficiently far; but when we realize that immortal Mind is ever active, 9and that spiritual energies can neither wear out nor can so-called material law trespass upon God-given powers and resources, we are able to rest in Truth, refreshed by 12the assurances of immortality, opposed to mortality.
Our thinkers do not die early because they faithfully perform the natural functions of being. If printers and 15
Right never
punishable
authors have the shortest span of earthly existence, it is not because they occupy the most important posts and perform the most vital functions in 18society.
That man does not pay the severest penalty who does the most good. By adhering to the realities of eternal existence, instead of reading disquisitions on 21the inconsistent supposition that death comes in obedience to the law of life, and that God punishes man for doing good, one cannot suffer as the result of any labor of 24love, but grows stronger because of it. It is a law of so-called mortal mind, misnamed matter, which causes all things discordant.
27The history of Christianity furnishes sublime proofs of the supporting influence and protecting power bestowed
Christian
history
on man by his heavenly Father, omnipotent 30Mind, who gives man faith and understanding whereby to defend himself, not only from temptation, but from bodily suffering.
388:1The Christian martyrs were prophets of Christian Science. Through the uplifting and consecrating power 3of divine Truth, they obtained a victory over the corporeal senses, a victory which Science alone can explain. Stolidity, which is a resisting state of mortal mind, suffers 6less, only because it knows less of material law.
The Apostle John testified to the divine basis of Christian Science, when dire inflictions failed to destroy his 9body. Idolaters, believing in more than one mind, had gods many,and thought that they could kill the body with matter, independently of mind.
12Admit the common hypothesis that food is the nutriment of life, and there follows the necessity for another
Sustenance
spiritual
admission in the opposite direction, that 15food has power to destroy Life, God, through a deficiency or an excess, a quality or a quantity.
This is a specimen of the ambiguous nature of all material 18health-theories. They are self-contradictory and self-destructive, constituting a kingdom divided against itself,which is brought to desolation. If food was prepared 21by Jesus for his disciples, it cannot destroy life.
The fact is, food does not affect the absolute Life of man, and this becomes self-evident, when we learn that 24
God
sustains man
God is our Life.
Because sin and sickness are not qualities of Soul, or Life, we have hope in immortality; but it would be foolish to venture beyond 27our present understanding, foolish to stop eating until we gain perfection and a clear comprehension of the living Spirit. In that perfect day of understanding, we shall 30neither eat to live nor live to eat.
If mortals think that food disturbs the harmonious functions of mind and body, either the food or this thought 389:1must be dispensed with, for the penalty is coupled with the belief. Which shall it be? If this decision be left 3
Diet and
digestion
to Christian Science, it will be given in behalf of the control of Mind over this belief and every erroneous belief, or material condition.
The less we 6know or think about hygiene, the less we are predisposed to sickness. Recollect that it is not the nerves, not matter, but mortal mind, which reports food as undigested. 9Matter does not inform you of bodily derangements; it is supposed to do so. This pseudo-mental testimony can be destroyed only by the better results of Mind’s oppo12site evidence.
Our dietetic theories first admit that food sustains the life of man, and then discuss the certainty that food can 15
Scripture
rebukes
kill man.
This false reasoning is rebuked in Scripture by the metaphors about the fount and stream, the tree and its fruit, and the kingdom di18vided against itself. If God has, as prevalent theories maintain, instituted laws that food shall support human life, He cannot annul these regulations by an opposite 21law that food shall be inimical to existence.
Materialists contradict their own statements. Their belief in material laws and in penalties for their infrac24
Ancient
confusion
tion is the ancient error that there is fraternity between pain and pleasure, good and evil, God and Satan.
This belief totters to its falling before the 27battle-axe of Science.
A case of convulsions, produced by indigestion, came under my observation. In her belief the woman had 30chronic liver-complaint, and was then suffering from a complication of symptoms connected with this belief. I cured her in a few minutes. One instant she spoke de

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