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

Mind-science, inquire when it will be safe to check a fever.

Know that in Science you cannot check a fever after ad-376:30 mitting that it must have its course. To fear and admit

the power of disease, is to paralyze mental and scientific

demonstration.

377:1 If your patient believes in taking cold, mentally convince him that matter cannot take cold, and that thought 377:3 governs this liability. If grief causes suffering, convince

the sufferer that affliction is often the source of joy, and

that he should rejoice always in ever-present Love.

 

Climate harmless

377:6 Invalids flee to tropical climates in order to save their

lives, but they come back no better than when they went

away. Then is the time to cure them through 377:9 Christian Science, and prove that they can

be healthy in all climates, when their fear of climate is

exterminated.

 

Mind governs body

377:12 Through different states of mind, the body becomes

suddenly weak or abnormally strong, showing mortal

mind to be the producer of strength or weak-377:15 ness. A sudden joy or grief has caused what

is termed instantaneous death. Because a belief originates unseen, the mental state should be continually 377:18 watched that it may not produce blindly its bad effects.

The author never knew a patient who did not recover

when the belief of the disease had gone. Remove the 377:21 leading error or governing fear of this lower so-called mind,

and you remove the cause of all disease as well as the morbid or excited action of any organ. You also remove in 377:24 this way what are termed organic diseases as readily as

functional difficulties.

 

The cause of all so-called disease is mental, a mortal 377:27 fear, a mistaken belief or conviction of the necessity and

power of ill-health; also a fear that Mind is helpless to

defend the life of man and incompetent to control it. With-377:30 out this ignorant human belief, any circumstance is of itself powerless to produce suffering. It is latent belief in

disease, as well as the fear of disease, which associates sick-378:1 ness with certain circumstances and causes the two to

appear conjoined, even as poetry and music are repro-378:3 duced in union by human memory. Disease has no intelligence. Unwittingly you sentence yourself to suffer.

The understanding of this will enable you to commute this 378:6 self-sentence, and meet every circumstance with truth.

Disease is less than mind, and Mind can control it.

 

Latent power

 

Without the so-called human mind, there can be no 378:9 inflammatory nor torpid action of the system. Remove

the error, and you destroy its effects. By

looking a tiger fearlessly in the eye, Sir Charles 378:12 Napier sent it cowering back into the jungle. An animal may infuriate another by looking it in the eye, and

both will fight for nothing. A man’s gaze, fastened 378:15 fearlessly on a ferocious beast, often causes the beast to

retreat in terror. This latter occurrence represents the

power of Truth over error, - the might of intelligence 378:18 exercised over mortal beliefs to destroy them; whereas

hypnotism and hygienic drilling and drugging, adopted

to cure matter, is represented by two material erroneous 378:21 bases.

 

Disease powerless

 

Disease is not an intelligence to dispute the empire of

Mind or to dethrone Mind and take the government into 378:24 its own hands. Sickness is not a God-given,

nor a self-constituted material power, which

copes astutely with Mind and finally conquers it. God 378:27 never endowed matter with power to disable Life or to

chill harmony with a long and cold night of discord.

Such a power, without the divine permission, is incon-378:30 ceivable; and if such a power could be divinely directed,

it would manifest less wisdom than we usually find displayed in human governments.

 

Jurisdiction of Mind

379:1 If disease can attack and control the body without

the consent of mortals, sin can do the same, for both 379:3 are errors, announced as partners in the beginning. The Christian Scientist finds only

effects, where the ordinary physician looks for causes. 379:6 The real jurisdiction of the world is in Mind, controlling

every effect and recognizing all causation as vested in

divine Mind.

 

Power of imagination

379:9 A felon, on whom certain English students experimented, fancied himself bleeding to death, and died because of that belief, when only a stream of 379:12 warm water was trickling over his arm. Had

he known his sense of bleeding was an illusion, he would

have risen above the false belief. Let the despairing in-379:15 valid, inspecting the hue of her blood on a cambric hand—

kerchief, think of the experiment of those Oxford boys,

who caused the death of a man, when not a drop of his 379:18 blood was shed. Then let her learn the opposite statement of life as taught in Christian Science, and she will

understand that she is not dying on account of the state of 379:21 her blood, but is suffering from her belief that blood is

destroying her life. The so-called vital current does not

affect the invalid’s health, but her belief produces the 379:24 very results she dreads.

 

Fevers the effect of fear

 

Fevers are errors of various types. The quickened

pulse, coated tongue, febrile heat, dry skin, pain in the 379:27 head and limbs, are pictures drawn on the

body by a mortal mind. The images, held in

this disturbed mind, frighten conscious thought. Unless 379:30 the fever-picture, drawn by millions of mortals and imaged on the body through the belief that mind is in matter

and discord is as real as harmony, is destroyed through 380:1 Science, it may rest at length on some receptive thought,

and become a fever case, which ends in a belief called 380:3 death, 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 head-380:6 stone of the corner, “but on whomsoever it shall fall, it

will grind him to powder.”

 

Misdirected contention

 

Contending for the evidence or indulging the demands 380:9 of sin, disease, or death, we virtually contend against

the control of Mind over body, and deny the

power of Mind to heal. This false method 380:12 is as though the defendant should argue for the plaintiff

in favor of a decision which the defendant knows will

be turned against himself.

 

Benefits of metaphysics

380:15 The physical effects of fear illustrate its illusion. Gaz—

ing at a chained lion, crouched for a spring, should not

terrify a man. The body is affected only with 380:18 the 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 380:21 error, and prove man’s dominion over error.

 

A higher discovery

 

Many years ago the author made a spiritual discovery, the scientific evidence of which has accumulated to 380:24 prove that the divine Mind produces in man

health, harmony, and immortality. Gradually this evidence will gather momentum and clearness, 380:27 until 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 380:30 God endows this opposing power with strength to be used

against Himself, against Life, health, harmony.

 

Ignorance of our rights

 

Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern 381:1 man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God.

Ignorant of our God-given rights, we submit to unjust 381:3 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 develop-381:6 ing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temptation on the ground that sin has its necessities.

 

No laws of matter

 

When infringing some supposed law, you say that 381:9 there is danger. This fear is the danger and induces the

physical effects. We cannot in reality suffer

from breaking anything except a moral or 381:12 spiritual 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, 381:15 and 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 381:18 death, and the Scriptures declare that we live, move, and

have our being in the infinite God.

 

God-given dominion

 

Think less of the enactments of mortal mind, and you 381:21 will sooner grasp man’s God-given dominion. You must

understand your way out of human theories

relating to health, or you will never believe 381:24 that 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. 381:27 Let 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 381:30 inflicted by divine authority.

 

Begin rightly

 

Christ Jesus overruled the error which would impose

penalties for transgressions of the physical laws of 382:1 health; he annulled supposed laws of matter, opposed

to the harmonies of Spirit, lacking divine au-382:3 thority and having only human approval for

their sanction.

 

Hygiene excessive

 

If half the attention given to hygiene were given to the 382:6 study of Christian Science and to the spiritualization of

thought, this alone would usher in the millen—

inium. Constant bathing and rubbing to alter 382:9 the 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 382:12 of making clean merely the outside of the platter.

 

Blissful ignorance

 

He, who is ignorant of what is termed hygienic law, is

more receptive of spiritual power and of faith in one 382:15 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 382:18 of 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 382:21 one 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.”

382:24 One 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, 382:27 - supporting 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 382:30 had 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, 383:1 but mental, and I was cured when I learned my way in

Christian Science.”

 

A clean mind and body

383:3 We need a clean body and a clean mind, - a body

rendered pure by Mind as well as washed by water.

One says: “I take good care of my body.” 383:6 To 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 383:9 it 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.”

383:12 A hint may be taken from the emigrant, whose filth

does not