Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📖

a necessity for nerves to convey the man-160:15 date of mind to muscle and so cause action; but what does

anatomy say when the cords contract and become immovable? Has mortal mind ceased 160:18 speaking to them, or has it bidden them to be impotent?

Can muscles, bones, blood, and nerves rebel against mind

in one instance and not in another, and become cramped 160:21 despite the mental protest?

 

Unless muscles are self-acting at all times, they are

never so, - never capable of acting contrary to mental 160:24 direction. If muscles can cease to act and become rigid

of their own preference, - be deformed or symmetrical,

as they please or as disease directs, - they must be self-160:27 directing. Why then consult anatomy to learn how mortal mind governs muscle, if we are only to learn from

anatomy that muscle is not so governed?

 

Mind over matter

160:30 Is man a material fungus without Mind

to help him? Is a stiff joint or a contracted

muscle as much a result of law as the supple and 161:1 elastic condition of the healthy limb, and is God the

lawgiver?

161:3 You say, “I have burned my finger.” This is an

exact statement, more exact than you suppose; for mortal mind, and not matter, burns it. Holy inspiration 161:6 has created states of mind which have been able to nullify

the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three

young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; 161:9 while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous

combustion.

 

Restrictive regulations

 

In 1880, Massachusetts put her foot on a proposed 161:12 tyrannical law, restricting the practice of medicine. If

her sister States follow this example in harmony with our Constitution and Bill of Rights, 161:15 they will do less violence to that immortal sentiment of the

Declaration, “Man is endowed by his Maker with certain

inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the 161:18 pursuit of happiness.”

 

The oppressive state statutes touching medicine remind one of the words of the famous Madame Roland, 161:21 as she knelt before a statue of Liberty, erected near the

guillotine: “Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy

name!”

 

Metaphysics challenges physics

161:24 The ordinary practitioner, examining bodily symptoms,

telling the patient that he is sick, and treating the case according to his physical diagnosis, would natu-161:27 rally induce the very disease he is trying to cure,

even if it were not already determined by mortal mind. Such unconscious mistakes would not occur, if 161:30 this old class of philanthropists looked as deeply for cause

and effect into mind as into matter. The physician agrees

with his “adversary quickly,” but upon different terms 162:1 than does the metaphysician; for the matter-physician

agrees with the disease, while the metaphysician agrees 162:3 only with health and challenges disease.

 

Truth an alterative

 

Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of

Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science 162:6 acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with

Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores 162:9 carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is

to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it

may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind.

 

Practical success

162:12 Experiments have favored the fact that Mind governs

the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. The

indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without 162:15 the conditions of matter and also without the

false beliefs of a so-called material existence. Working

out the rules of Science in practice, the author has re-162:18 stored health in cases of both acute and chronic disease in

their severest forms. Secretions have been changed, the

structure has been renewed, shortened limbs have been 162:21 elongated, ankylosed joints have been made supple, and

carious bones have been restored to healthy conditions. I

have restored what is called the lost substance of lungs, and 162:24 healthy organizations have been established where disease

was organic. Christian Science heals organic disease as

surely as it heals what is called functional, for it requires 162:27 only a fuller understanding of the divine Principle of

Christian Science to demonstrate the higher rule.

 

Testimony of medical teachers

 

With due respect for the faculty, I kindly 162:30 quote from Dr. Benjamin Rush, the famous

Philadelphia teacher of medical practice. He

declared that “it is impossible to calculate the mischief 163:1 which Hippocrates has done, by first marking Nature

with his name, and afterward letting her loose upon sick 163:3 people.”

 

Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, Professor in Harvard University, declared himself “sick of learned quackery.”

163:6 Dr. James Johnson, Surgeon to William IV, King Of

England, said:

 

“I declare my conscientious opinion, founded on long 163:9 observation and reflection, that if there were not a single

physician, surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, chemist,

druggist, or drug on the face of the earth, there would be 163:12 less sickness and less mortality.”

 

Dr. Mason Good, a learned Professor in London,

said:

163:15 “The effects of medicine on the human system are in

the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that it has

already destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and 163:18 famine, all combined.”

 

Dr. Chapman, Professor of the Institutes and Practice

of Physic in the University of Pennsylvania, in a published 163:21 essay said:

 

“Consulting the records of our science, we cannot

help being disgusted with the multitude of hypotheses 163:24 obtruded upon us at different times. Nowhere is the

imagination displayed to a greater extent; and perhaps

so ample an exhibition of human invention might gratify 163:27 our vanity, if it were not more than compensated by the

humiliating view of so much absurdity, contradiction,

and falsehood. To harmonize the contrarieties of med-163:30 ical doctrines is indeed a task as impractible as to

arrange the fleeting vapors around us, or to reconcile the

fixed and repulsive antipathies of nature. Dark and 164:1 perplexed, our devious career resembles the groping of

Homer’s Cyclops around his cave.”

164:3 Sir John Forbes, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal

College of Physicians, London, said:

 

“No systematic or theoretical classification of diseases 164:6 or of therapeutic agents, ever yet promulgated, is true, or

anything like the truth, and none can be adopted as a safe

guidance in practice.”

164:9 It is just to say that generally the cultured class of medical practitioners are grand men and women, therefore

they are more scientific than are false claimants to Chris-164:12 tian Science. But all human systems based on material

premises are minus the unction of divine Science. Much

yet remains to be said and done before all mankind is 164:15 saved and all the mental microbes of sin and all diseased

thought-germs are exterminated.

 

If you or I should appear to die, we should not be 164:18 dead. The seeming decease, caused by a majority of

human beliefs that man must die, or produced by mental

assassins, does not in the least disprove Christian Science; 164:21 rather does it evidence the truth of its basic proposition

that mortal thoughts in belief rule the materiality miscalled life in the body or in matter. But the forever fact 164:24 remains paramount that Life, Truth, and Love save from

sin, disease, and death. “When this corruptible shall have

put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on 164:27 immortality [divine Science], then shall be brought to pass

the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in

victory” (St. Paul).