Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures Part 27

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 pre- vents full obedience to spiritual law, - the law 182:21 which overcomes material conditions and puts matter under the feet of Mind. Mortals entreat the di- vine 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 G.o.d- 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 tran- scendent power.

182:30 To admit that sickness is a condition over which G.o.d 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 G.o.d, one lawmaker. To suppose that G.o.d const.i.tutes 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 G.o.d 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 dis- ease 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 obe- dience, 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 spir- itual understanding; and the one Mind only is ent.i.tled 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 penal- ties it affixes last so long as the belief and are insepara- ble 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 t.i.tle 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 harmoni- ous 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 nat- ural. 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 diffi- culty 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 im- mortal Mind, even as the necromancers of Egypt strove to emulate the wonders wrought by Moses. Such theories 185:18 have no relations.h.i.+p to Christian Science, which rests on the conception of G.o.d 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 with- out 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 ma- terial 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 G.o.d, the omnipotent and omnipresent.

186:15 Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil.

Evil is self-a.s.sertive. It says: "I am a real ent.i.ty, 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 punis.h.i.+ng 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 some- thing besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity.

The human mind has been an idolater from the beginning, 187:1 having other G.o.ds 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 wors.h.i.+ps and fears them. With pagan blindness, 187:9 it attributes to some material G.o.d 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 pas- sage of the blood, obey the mandate of mor- 187:15 tal mind as directly as does the hand, ad- mittedly 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 cla.s.sify 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 G.o.d, immortal Mind, and man is found in His image.

Embryonic sinful thoughts

188:3 What is termed disease does not exist. It is neither mind nor matter. The belief of sin, which has grown terrible in strength and influence, is an uncon- 188:6 scious error in the beginning, - an embryonic thought without motive; but afterwards it governs the so-called man. Pa.s.sion, depraved appet.i.tes, 188:9 dishonesty, envy, hatred, revenge ripen into action, only to pa.s.s from shame and woe to their final punishment.

Disease a dream

Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in 188:12 matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the dream we have in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of 188:15 mind. In both the waking, and the sleeping dream, the dreamer thinks that his body is material and the suffering is in that body.

188:18 The smile of the sleeper indicates the sensation pro- duced physically by the pleasure of a dream. In the same way pain and pleasure, sickness and care, are 188:21 traced upon mortals by unmistakable signs.

Sickness is a growth of error, springing from mortal ignorance or fear. Error rehea.r.s.es error. What causes 188:24 disease cannot cure it. The soil of disease is mortal mind, and you have an abundant or scanty crop of disease, according to the seedlings of fear. Sin and the fear of 188:27 disease must be uprooted and cast out.

Sense yields to understanding

When darkness comes over the earth, the physical senses have no immediate evidence of a sun.

188:30 The human eye knows not where the orb of day is, nor if it exists. Astronomy gives the desired information regarding the sun. The human or 189:1 material senses yield to the authority of this science, and they are willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of 189:3 the sun's influence over the earth. If the eyes see no sun for a week, we still believe that there is solar light and heat. Science (in this instance named natural) raises 189:6 the human thought above the cruder theories of the human mind, and casts out a fear.

In like manner mortals should no more deny the power 189:9 of Christian Science to establish harmony and to explain the effect of mortal mind on the body, though the cause be unseen, than they should deny the existence of the sun- 189:12 light when the orb of day disappears, or doubt that the sun will reappear. The sins of others should not make good men suffer.

Ascending the scale

189:15 We call the body material; but it is as truly mortal mind, according to its degree, as is the material brain which is supposed to furnish the evidence 189:18 of all mortal thought or things. The human mortal mind, by an inevitable perversion, makes all things start from the lowest instead of from the highest 189:21 mortal thought. The reverse is the case with all the formations of the immortal divine Mind. They proceed from the divine source; and so, in tracing them, we con- 189:24 stantly ascend in infinite being.

Human reproduction