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

affect his happiness, because mind and body

rest on the same basis. To the mind equally gross, dirt 383:15 gives 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 383:18 not 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.

 

Beliefs illusive

383:21 The tobacco-user, eating or smoking poison for half a

century, sometimes tells you that the weed preserves

his health, but does this make it so? Does his 383:24 assertion prove the use of tobacco to be a salu—

brious habit, and man to be the better for it? Such instances only prove the illusive physical effect of a false 383:27 belief, confirming the Scriptural conclusion concerning a

man, “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

 

The movement-cure - pinching and pounding the poor 383:30 body, 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 384:1 instead of on Mind. Can matter, or what is termed

matter, either feel or act without mind?

 

Corporeal penalties

384:3 We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought

that we have transgressed a material law and must of

necessity pay the penalty. Let us reassure 384:6 ourselves 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, 384:9 cold, 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 384:12 protest 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 384:15 grand verities of Christian Science.

 

Not matter, but Mind

 

If exposure to a draught of air while in a state of

perspiration is followed by chills, dry cough, influenza, 384:18 congestive symptoms in the lungs, or hints of

inflammatory rheumatism, your Mind-remedy

is safe and sure. If you are a Christian Scientist, such 384:21 symptoms 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 384:24 to 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 384:27 disease 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.

 

Benefit of philanthropy

384:30 Sickness, 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 385:1 human system will be acknowledged. It is proverbial

that Florence Nightingale and other philanthropists en-385:3 gaged in humane labors have been able to

undergo without sinking fatigues and exposures which ordinary people could not endure. The ex-385:6 planation lies in the support which they derived from

the divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual

demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and en-385:9 durance 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, 385:12 though it can never annul the law which makes sin its

own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but

those due for wrong-doing.

 

Honest toil has no penalty

385:15 Constant toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, if without sin, can be experienced without suffering. Whatever it is your duty to do, 385:18 you 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 385:21 flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed.

 

Our sleep and food

 

You say that you have not slept well or have overeaten.

You are a law unto yourself. Saying this and believing 385:24 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 385:27 mind 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 oppo-385:30 site belief would produce the opposite result.

 

Doubtful evidence

 

Any supposed information, coming from the body or

from inert matter as if either were intelligent, is an illu-386:1 sion of mortal mind, - one of its dreams. Realize that

the evidence of the senses is not to be accepted 386:3 in the case of sickness, any more than it is in

the case of sin.

 

Climate and belief

 

Expose the body to certain temperatures, and belief 386:6 says that you may catch cold and have catarrh; but no

such result occurs without mind to demand

it and produce it. So long as mortals declare 386:9 that certain states of the atmosphere produce catarrh,

fever, rheumatism, or consumption, those effects will

follow, - not because of the climate, but on account of 386:12 the 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, 386:15 not to know that this is so.

 

Erroneous despatch

 

A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the

death of a friend, occasions the same grief that the friend’s 386:18 real death would bring. You think that your

anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another

despatch, correcting the mistake, heals your grief, and 386:21 you 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 386:24 for grief, and divine wisdom will then be understood.

Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on earth.

 

Mourning causeless

 

If a Christian Scientist had said, while you were labor-386:27 ing under the influence of the belief of grief, “Your sorrow is without cause,” you would not have

understood him, although the correctness of 386:30 the 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 387:1 perceive this to be true when we grow into the understanding of Life, and know that there is no death.

 

Mind heals brain-disease

387:3 Because mortal mind is kept active, must it pay the

penalty in a softened brain? Who dares to say that actual

Mind can be overworked? When we reach 387:6 our limits of mental endurance, we conclude

that intellectual labor has been carried sufficiently far;

but when we realize that immortal Mind is ever active, 387:9 and 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 387:12 the assurances of immortality, opposed to mortality.

 

Right never punishable

 

Our thinkers do not die early because they faithfully

perform the natural functions of being. If printers and 387:15 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 387:18 society. 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 387:21 the 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 387:24 love, but grows stronger because of it. It is a law of so-called mortal mind, misnamed matter, which causes all

things discordant.

 

Christian history

387:27 The history of Christianity furnishes sublime proofs

of the supporting influence and protecting power bestowed

on man by his heavenly Father, omnipotent 387:30 Mind, who gives man faith and understanding

whereby to defend himself, not only from temptation, but

from bodily suffering.

388:1 The Christian martyrs were prophets of Christian

Science. Through the uplifting and consecrating power 388:3 of 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 388:6 less, 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 388:9 body. Idolaters, believing in more than one mind, had

“gods many,” and thought that they could kill the body

with matter, independently of mind.

 

Sustenance spiritual

388:12 Admit the common hypothesis that food is the nutriment of life, and the follows the necessity for another

admission in the opposite direction, - that 388:15 food 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 388:18 health-theories. They are self-contradictory and self-destructive, constituting a “kingdom divided against itself,”

which is “brought to desolation.” If food was prepared 388:21 by Jesus for his disciples, it cannot destroy life.

 

God sustains man

 

The fact is, food does not affect the absolute Life of

man, and this becomes self-evident, when we learn that 388:24 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 388:27 our 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 388:30 neither eat to live nor live to eat.

 

Diet and digestion

 

If mortals think that food disturbs the harmonious

functions of mind and body, either the food or this thought 389:1 must be dispensed with, for the penalty is coupled with

the belief. Which shall it be? If this decision be left 389:3 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 389:6 know 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. 389:9 Matter 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 oppo-389:12 site evidence.

 

Scripture rebukes

 

Our dietetic theories first admit that food sustains the

life of man, and then discuss the certainty that food can 389:15 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 di-389:18 vided 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 389:21 law that food shall be inimical to existence.

 

Ancient confusion

 

Materialists contradict their own statements. Their

belief in material laws and in penalties for their infrac-389:24 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 389:27 battle-axe of Science.

 

A case of convulsions, produced by indigestion, came

under my observation. In her belief the woman had 389:30 chronic liver-complaint, and was then suffering from a

complication of symptoms connected with this