OTHER PUBLISHED WRITINGS OF MARY BAKER EDDY

CHAPTER IV - ADDRESSES

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN TREMONT TEMPLE

FROM the platform of the Monday lectureship in

3 Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, as

will be seen by what follows, Reverend Mary Baker G.

Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed

6 ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-

demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full by

a shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribed

below.

Mrs. Eddy responding, said: -

As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient for

even a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-

self to questions and answers.

Am I a spiritualist?

15 I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi-

bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead and

living. There have always attended my life phenomena

18 of an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-

called mediumship; but I clearly understand that no

human agencies were employed, - that the divine Mind

reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. And

to such as are "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the re-

demption of our body," Christian Science reveals the in-

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1 finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from

sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbed

3 the grave of victory and death of its sting. I understand

that God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble, -

have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no

remedies in drugs, no material medicine.

Do I believe in a personal God?

I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know not

9 what the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,

or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that

of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father and

12 Mother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being to

diviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to the

apostle who declared it, "God is Love," - divine Prin-

ciple, - which I worship; and "after the manner of my

fathers, so worship I God."

Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?

18 I do; and this atonement becomes more to me since

it includes man's redemption from sickness as well as

from sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before.

21 It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who en-

tertain this understanding of the Science of God, a whole

salvation.

How is the healing done in Christian Science?

This answer includes too much to give you any con-

clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name some

means by which it is not done.

It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it is

not the transference of human images of thought to

other minds; it is not supported by the evidence before

the personal senses, - Science contradicts this evidence;

it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come

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1 to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error;

that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-

3 dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies of

Truth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-

mony, - the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal

thought transmitted to another's thought from the human

mind that holds within itself all evil.

Our Master said of one of his students, "He is a devil,"

9 and repudiated the idea of casting out devils through

Beelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de-

sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healing

12 I deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. All

human control is animal magnetism, more despicable

than all other methods of treating disease.

15 Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but

combines faith with understanding, through which we

may touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-

nipotence has all power. "I am the Lord, and there is

none else, there is no God beside me."

Is there a personal man?

21 The Scriptures inform us that man was made in the

image and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandic

translation: "He created man in the image and likeness

24 of Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind created

He him." To my sense, we have not seen all of man;

he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is the

27 image and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen a

perfect man in mind or body, - and such must be the

personality of him who is the true likeness: the lost

image is not this personality, and corporeal man is this

lost image; hence, it doth not appear what is the real

personality of man. The only cause for making this

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1 question of personality a point, or of any importance, is

that man's perfect model should be held in mind, whereby

to improve his present condition; that his contemplation

regarding himself should turn away from inharmony, sick-

ness, and sin, to that which is the image of his Maker.

SCIENCE AND THE SENSES

Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,

June 13, 1888

9 The National Christian Scientist Association has

brought us together to minister and to be ministered

unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways and

12 means for helping the whole human family; to quicken

and extend the interest already felt in a higher mode of

medicine; to watch with eager joy the individual growth

15 of Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common

Cause in Chicago, - the miracle of the Occident. We

come to strengthen and perpetuate our organizations

18 and institutions; and to find strength in union, - strength

to build up, through God's right hand, that pure and

undefiled religion whose Science demonstrates God and

21 the perfectibility of man. This purpose is immense,

and it must begin with individual growth, a "consum-

mation devoutly to be wished." The lives of all re-

24 formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and call

the world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly

is it written: -

"Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;

Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st

reach."

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1 Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in

its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright.

3 It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five material

senses, "Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not;

neither can you understand." To weave one thread of

6 Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself.

The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? This

awful price: the temporary loss of his self-respect. His

9 fear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictions

fell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of

tyrants.

12 Men and women of the nineteenth century, are you

called to voice a higher order of Science? Then obey

this call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaf-

15 fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many

are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to stand

a long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and be

in the battle every day?

In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth more

divine than in his faith in the immortality of his words.

21 He said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my

words shall not pass away;" and they have not. The

winds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they can

24 never bear into oblivion his words. They still live, and

to-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day

as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Make

27 straight God's paths; make way for health, holiness,

universal harmony, and come up hither." The gran-

deur of the word, the power of Truth, is again casting

out evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered, "This

is Science."

Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He

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1 spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull

disciples. His immortal words were articulated in a

3 decaying language, and then left to the providence of

God. Christian Science was to interpret them; and

woman, "last at the cross," was to awaken the dull senses,

intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite mean-

ing of those words.

Past, present, future, will show the word and might of

9 Truth - healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner -

so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to

deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. The

12 five personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning nor

the magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof;

but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good,

15 leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits

of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scope

of the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,

and teach the eternal.

Science speaks when the senses are silent, and then

the evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon-

21 itor understood is coincidence of the divine with the

human, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity,

friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to earth

a foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-

tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite.

The Christian Scientist loves man more because he

27 loves God most. He understands this Principle, - Love.

Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers that

patience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, are

the symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif-

ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-

trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips

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1 are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal-

ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind is

3 understood and demonstrated? He alone knows these

wonders who is departing from the thraldom of the

senses and accepting spiritual truth, - that which blesses

its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal of

sorrow.

Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is a

9 revolutionary struggle. We already have had two in

this nation; and they began and ended in a contest for

the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometh

a third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, and

the attainment of heaven.

The scientific sense of being which establishes har-

15 mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and

feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,

of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive

free, opening the doors for them that are bound.

He who turns to the body for evidence, bases his con-

clusions on mortality, on imperfection; but Science saith

to man, "God hath all-power."

The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but one

power, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,

but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-

cluding sin and disease.

If God is All, and God is good, it follows that all

27 must be good; and no other power, law, or intelligence

can exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion in

Science, and the facts that disprove the evidence of the

senses.

God is individual Mind. This one Mind and His

individuality comprise the elements of all forms and

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individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of

Christ, the ideal man.

3 A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographers

and scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,

an unlimited man, - a theory to me inconceivable. If

6 the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in a

limited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and the

infinite forever finite.

9 In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.

His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person-

ality. His being is individual, but not physical.

12 God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-

versal and primitive. His character admits of no degrees

of comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In His

individuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother

God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.

God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed in

18 modes above the human. His chastisements are the

manifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternal

Mind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots

out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Human

pity often brings pain.

Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-

24 stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-

rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the

subjective state of mortal and material thought.

27 Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-

tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with this

sense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmasters

it, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that "one

on God's side is a majority."

Science defines omnipresence as universality, that which

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1 precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes-

timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,

3 and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, is

substance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; for

one is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate

and predicate of being.

Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such as

sin, disease, and death, mortals virtually name substance;

9 but these are the substance of things not hoped for. For

lack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely:

"The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for who

12 knoweth the substance of good?" In Science, form and

individuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-

vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mind

15 as tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious.

Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,

the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not the

temporal.

Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortal

man, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker

21 of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derived

from the human, either as mind or body, hides the actual

power, presence, and individuality of God.

24 Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sense

could discern it, was like that of other men; but Science

exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divine

27 ideal, his spiritual individuality that reflected the Im-

manuel, or "God with us." This God was not outlined.

He was too mighty for that. He was eternal Life, infinite

Truth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind,

therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-

ture, "I am a God at hand, saith the Lord." Even while

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1 his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual

being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony.

3 His unseen individuality, so superior to that which was

seen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, to

laws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov-

6 erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substance

of Soul, the substance of Spirit, - yea, the substance of

God, the one inclusive good.

9 In Science all being is individual; for individuality is

endless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein

sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in the

12 nature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-

ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal, - not

miraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man's

15 individuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal.

His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeble

fight with his individuality, - his physical senses with

18 his spiritual senses. The latter move in God's grooves

of Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, and

must stand the friction of false selfhood until self-

destroyed.

In obedience to the divine nature, man's individuality

reflects the divine law and order of being. How shall

24 we reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-

ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents

Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,

in healing, to be God and the real man.

Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true

ideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I will

love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of

good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of

God wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the

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1 implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which

appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-

dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discords

of this material personality.

On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin,

6 sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthood

and the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundation

of Christian Science. His physical sufferings, which

9 came from the testimony of the senses, were over when

he resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing

us the way to escape from the material body.

12 Science would have no conflict with Life or common

sense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's real

life or existence is in harmony with Life and its glorious

15 phenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too

common sense of its opposites - death, disease, and sin.

Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-

ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must ever

follow this line of light and battle.

Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual

21 and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-

stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadow

cast by this error.

24 Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-

cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The

senses join issue with error, and pity what has no right

27 either to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist in

Science. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, and

you destroy their existence. "Whatsoever a man soweth,

that shall he also reap."

Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, all

is good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the

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1 universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and

death?

3 Christian Science and Christian Scientists will, must,

have a history; and if I could write the history in poor

parody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read

6 thus: -

Traitors to right of them,

M. D.'s to left of them,

9 Priestcraft in front of them,

Volleyed and thundered!

Into the jaws of hate,

Out through the door of Love,

On to the blest above,

Marched the one hundred.

EXTRACT FROM MY

FIRST ADDRESS IN THE MOTHER CHURCH,

MAY 26, 1895

Friends and Brethren: - Your Sunday Lesson, com-

18 posed of Scripture and its correlative in "Science and

Health with Key to the Scriptures," has fed you. In addi-

tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table of

Truth, and gather up the fragments.

It has long been a question of earnest import, How

shall mankind worship the most adorable, but most

24 unadored, - and where shall begin that praise that shall

never end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear

the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering, "So live, that

your lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise."

Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soul

affords the only strains that thrill the chords of feeling

and awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind,

your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many

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1 instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and

beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth's

3 accents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.

Art must not prevail over Science. Christianity is not

superfluous. Its redemptive power is seen in sore trials,

6 self-denials, and crucifixions of the flesh. But these come

to the rescue of mortals, to admonish them, and plant

the feet steadfastly in Christ. As we rise above the seem-

ing mists of sense, we behold more clearly that all the

heart's homage belongs to God.

More love is the great need of mankind. A pure af-

fection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs and

forestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.

Three cardinal points must be gained before poor

15 humanity is regenerated and Christian Science is dem-

onstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance;

(3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: it

18 never started with time, and it cannot keep pace with

eternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three states

and stages of human consciousness before yielding error.

21 The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity through

a knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a sense

of one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the in-

24 dividual may become morally blind, and this deplorable

mental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's

deformed mentality, and of repentance therefor, deep,

27 never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain mor-

bid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists.

Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severe

that it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian

Scientist.

Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.

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1 The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the

sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks too

little of sin.

To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in Christian

Scientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All.

6 Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from the

beginning, attested the absolute powerlessness - yea,

nothingness - of evil: since a lie, being without founda-

tion in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, it

is nothing.

Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in danger

12 of believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright,

then reducing its claim to its proper denominator, -

nobody and nothing. Sin should be conceived of only

15 as a delusion. This true conception would remove mortals'

ignorance and its consequences, and advance the second

stage of human consciousness, repentance. The first

18 state, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the proper

knowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evil

seems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which

21 is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconcep-

tion of what we need to know of evil, - or the concep-

tion of it at all as something real, - costs much. Sin

24 needs only to be known for what it is not; then we are

its master, not servant. Remember, and act on, Jesus'

definition of sin as a lie. This cognomen makes it less

27 dangerous; for most of us would not be seen believing

in, or adhering to, that which we know to be untrue.

What would be thought of a Christian Scientist who be-

lieved in the use of drugs, while declaring that they have

no intrinsic quality and that there is no matter? What

should be thought of an individual believing in that

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1 which is untrue, and at the same time declaring the unity

of Truth, and its allness? Beware of those who mis-

3 represent facts; or tacitly assent where they should dis-

sent; or who take me as authority for what I disapprove,

or mayhap never have thought of, and try to reverse, in-

vert, or controvert, Truth; for this is a sure pretext of

moral defilement.

Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sin

9 claims of you; and how much of this claim you admit

as valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that

brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortal

12 mentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mis-

take, in order to be corrected; how much more, then,

should one's sins be seen and repented of, before they

can be reduced to their native nothingness!

Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness;

for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blesses

18 mortals. Ignorance was the first condition of sin in the

allegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Their

mental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of

21 sin and its consequences, repentance, per se; but, ad-

mitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten through

the second to the third stage, - the knowledge of good;

24 for without this the valuable sequence of knowledge

would be lacking, - even the power to escape from the

false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discern

the nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew.

Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you, "Be

not afraid!" - fear not sin, lest thereby it master you;

but only fear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge;

since then, and thus, cometh repentance, - and your

superiority to a delusion is won.

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1 Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm

of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the value

of a single tear.

Beloved children, the world has need of you, - and

more as children than as men and women: it needs your

6 innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami-

nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that you

preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through

9 contact with the world. What grander ambition is there

than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to

know that your example, more than words, makes morals

for mankind !

ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI

OF THE MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE, 1895

15 My Beloved Students: - Weeks have passed into

months, and months into years, since last we met; but

time and space, when encompassed by divine presence,

18 do not separate us. Our hearts have kept time together,

and our hands have wrought steadfastly at the same

object-lesson, while leagues have lain between us.

21 We may well unite in thanksgiving for the continued

progress and unprecedented prosperity of our Cause. It

is already obvious that the world's acceptance and the

momentum of Christian Science, increase rapidly as

years glide on.

As Christian Scientists, you have dared the perilous de-

fense of Truth, and have succeeded. You have learned

how fleeting is that which men call great; and how per-

manent that which God calls good.

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1 You have proven that the greatest piety is scarcely

sufficient to demonstrate what you have adopted and

taught; that your work, well done, would dignify angels.

Faithfully, as meekly, you have toiled all night; and

at break of day caught much. At times, your net has

6 been so full that it broke: human pride, creeping into

its meshes, extended it beyond safe expansion; then,

losing hold of divine Love, you lost your fishes, and pos-

9 sibly blamed others more than yourself. But those whom

God makes "fishers of men" will not pull for the shore;

like Peter, they launch into the depths, cast their nets

12 on the right side, compensate loss, and gain a higher sense

of the true idea. Nothing is lost that God gives: had He

filled the net, it would not have broken.

15 Leaving the seed of Truth to its own vitality, it propa-

gates: the tares cannot hinder it. Our Master said,

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall

18 not pass away;" and Jesus' faith in Truth must not ex-

ceed that of Christian Scientists who prove its power to

be immortal.

21 The Christianity that is merely of sects, the pulpit, and

fashionable society, is brief; but the Word of God abideth.

Plato was a pagan; but no greater difference existed be-

24 tween his doctrines and those of Jesus, than to-day exists

between the Catholic and Protestant sects. I love the

orthodox church; and, in time, that church will love

27 Christian Science. Let me specially call the attention of

this Association to the following false beliefs inclining

mortal mind more deviously: -

The belief in anti-Christ: that somebody in the flesh

is the son of God, or is another Christ, or is a spiritually

adopted child, or is an incarnated babe, is the evil one-

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1 in other words, the one evil - disporting itself with the

subtleties of sin !

3 Even honest thinkers, not knowing whence they come,

may deem these delusions verities, before they know it,

or really look the illusions in the face. The ages are bur-

6 dened with material modes. Hypnotism, microbes, X-rays,

and ex-common sense, occupy time and thought; and

error, given new opportunities, will improve them. The

9 most just man can neither defend the innocent nor detect

the guilty, unless he knows how to be just; and this knowl-

edge demands our time and attention.

12 The mental stages of crime, which seem to belong to

the latter days, are strictly classified in metaphysics as

some of the many features and forms of what is properly

15 denominated, in extreme cases, moral idiocy. I visited

in his cell the assassin of President Garfield, and found

him in the mental state called moral idiocy. He had no

18 sense of his crime; but regarded his act as one of simple

justice, and himself as the victim. My few words touched

him; he sank back in his chair, limp and pale; his flip-

21 pancy had fled. The jailer thanked me, and said, "Other

visitors have brought to him bouquets, but you have

brought what will do him good."

24 This mental disease at first shows itself in extreme

sensitiveness; then, in a loss of self-knowledge and of

self-condemnation, - a shocking inability to see one's

27 own faults, but an exaggerating sense of other people's.

Unless this mental condition be overcome, it ends in a

total loss of moral, intellectual, and spiritual discernment,

and is characterized in this Scripture: "The fool hath

said in his heart, There is no God." This state of mind

is the exemplification of total depravity, and the result

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1 of sensuous mind in matter. Mind that is God is not in

matter; and God's presence gives spiritual light, wherein

is no darkness.

If, as is indisputably true, "God is Spirit," and Spirit

is our Father and Mother, and that which it includes is

6 all that is real and eternal, when evil seems to predomi-

nate and divine light to be obscured, free moral agency

is lost; and the Revelator's vision, that "no man might

buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the

beast, or the number of his name," is imminent.

Whoever is mentally manipulating human mind, and

12 is not gaining a higher sense of Truth by it, is losing in

the scale of moral and spiritual being, and may be car-

ried to the depths of perdition by his own consent. He

15 who refuses to be influenced by any but the divine Mind,

commits his way to God, and rises superior to sugges-

tions from an evil source. Christian Science shows that

18 there is a way of escape from the latter-day ultimatum

of evil, through scientific truth; so that all are without

excuse.

21 Already I clearly recognize that mental malpractice,

if persisted in, will end in insanity, dementia, or moral

idiocy. Thank God! this evil can be resisted by true

24 Christianity. Divine Love is our hope, strength, and

shield. We have nothing to fear when Love is at the

helm of thought, but everything to enjoy on earth and

in heaven.

The systematized centres of Christian Science are life-

giving fountains of truth. Our churches, The Christian

Science Journal, and the Christian Science Quarterly,

are prolific sources of spiritual power whose intellectual,

moral, and spiritual animus is felt throughout the land.

Page 114

1 Our Publishing Society, and our Sunday Lessons, are

of inestimable value to all seekers after Truth. The Com-

3 mittee on Sunday School Lessons cannot give too much

time and attention to their task, and should spare no

research in the preparation of the Quarterly as an educa-

tional branch.

The teachers of Christian Science need to watch inces-

santly the trend of their own thoughts; watch that these

9 be not secretly robbed, and themselves misguided, and

so made to misteach others. Teachers must conform

strictly to the rules of divine Science announced in the

12 Bible and their textbook, "Science and Health with Key

to the Scriptures." They must themselves practise, and

teach others to practise, the Hebrew Decalogue, the Ser-

mon on the Mount, and the understanding and enuncia-

tion of these according to Christ.

They must always have on armor, and resist the foe

18 within and without. They cannot arm too thoroughly

against original sin, appearing in its myriad forms: pas-

sion, appetites, hatred, revenge, and all the et cetera of

21 evil. Christian Scientists cannot watch too sedulously,

or bar their doors too closely, or pray to God too fer-

vently, for deliverance from the claims of evil. Thus

24 doing, Scientists will silence evil suggestions, uncover

their methods, and stop their hidden influence upon the

lives of mortals. Rest assured that God in His wisdom

27 will test all mankind on all questions; and then, if found

faithful, He will deliver us from temptation and show us

the powerlessness of evil, - even its utter nothingness.

The teacher in Christian Science who does not spe-

cially instruct his pupils how to guard against evil and

its silent modes, and to be able, through Christ, the liv-

Page 115

1 ing Truth, to protect themselves therefrom, is commit-

ting an offense against God and humanity. With Science

3 and Health for their textbook, I am astounded at the

apathy of some students on the subject of sin and mental

malpractice, and their culpable ignorance of the work-

6 ings of these - and even the teacher's own deficiency in

this department. I can account for this state of mind in

the teacher only as the result of sin; otherwise, his own

guilt as a mental malpractitioner, and fear of being found

out.

The helpless ignorance of the community on this sub-

12 ject is pitiable, and plain to be seen. May God enable

my students to take up the cross as I have done, and meet

the pressing need of a proper preparation of heart to prac-

15 tise, teach, and live Christian Science! Your means of

protection and defense from sin are, constant watchful-

ness and prayer that you enter not into temptation and

18 are delivered from every claim of evil, till you intelligently

know and demonstrate, in Science, that evil has neither

prestige, power, nor existence, since God, good, is All-

in-all.

The increasing necessity for relying on God to de-

fend us against the subtler forms of evil, turns us more

24 unreservedly to Him for help, and thus becomes a means

of grace. If one lives rightly, every effort to hurt one

will only help that one; for God will give the ability to

27 overcome whatever tends to impede progress. Know

this that you cannot overcome the baneful effects of

sin on yourself, if you in any way indulge in sin; for,

sooner or later, you will fall the victim of your own as

well as of others' sins. Using mental power in the right

direction only, doing to others as you would have them

Page 116

1 do to you, will overcome evil with good, and destroy

your own sensitiveness to the power of evil.

The God of all grace be with you, and save you from

"spiritual wickedness in high places."

PLEASANT VIEW, CONCORD, N. H.,

JUNE 3, 1895

ADDRESS BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST ASSOCIATION

OF THE MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE, IN 1893

SUBJECT:

"Obedience"

My Beloved Students: - This question, ever nearest

12 to my heart, is to-day uppermost: Are we filling the

measures of life's music aright, emphasizing its grand

strains, swelling the harmony of being with tones whence

15 come glad echoes? As crescendo and diminuendo accent

music, so the varied strains of human chords express

life's loss or gain, - loss of the pleasures and pains and

18 pride of life: gain of its sweet concord, the courage of

honest convictions, and final obedience to spiritual law.

The ultimate of scientific research and attainment in

21 divine Science is not an argument: it is not merely say-

ing, but doing, the Word - demonstrating Truth - even

as the fruits of watchfulness, prayer, struggles, tears, and

triumph.

Obeying the divine Principle which you profess to un-

derstand and love, demonstrates Truth. Never absent

27 from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never

unready to work for God, - is obedience; being "faith-

ful over a few things." If in one instance obedience be

lacking, you lose the scientific rule and its reward: namely,

Page 117

1 to be made "ruler over many things." A progressive

life is the reality of Life that unfolds its immortal Prin-

ciple.

3 The student of Christian Science must first separate the

tares from the wheat; discern between the thought,

6 motive, and act superinduced by the wrong motive or

the true - the God-given intent and volition - arrest

the former, and obey the latter. This will place him on

9 the safe side of practice. We always know where to look

for the real Scientist, and always find him there. I agree

with Rev. Dr. Talmage, that "there are wit, humor, and

enduring vivacity among God's people."

Obedience is the offspring of Love; and Love is the

Principle of unity, the basis of all right thinking and

15 acting; it fulfils the law. We see eye to eye and know as we

are known, reciprocate kindness and work wisely, in

proportion as we love.

18 It is difficult for me to carry out a divine commission

while participating in the movements, or modus operandi,

of other folks. To point out every step to a student and

21 then watch that each step be taken, consumes time, -

and experiments ofttimes are costly. According to my

calendar, God's time and mortals' differ. The neo-

24 phyte is inclined to be too fast or too slow: he works

somewhat in the dark; and, sometimes out of season,

he would replenish his lamp at the midnight hour and

27 borrow oil of the more provident watcher. God is the

fountain of light, and He illumines one's way when one

is obedient. The disobedient make their moves before

God makes His, or make them too late to follow Him.

Be sure that God directs your way; then, hasten to follow

under every circumstance.

Page 118

1 Human will must be subjugated. We cannot obey

both God, good, and evil, - in other words, the ma-

3 terial senses, false suggestions, self-will, selfish motives,

and human policy. We shall have no faith in evil

when faith finds a resting-place and scientific under-

6 standing guides man. Honesty in every condition,

under every circumstance, is the indispensable rule of

obedience. To obey the principle of mathematics ninety-

9 nine times in one hundred and then allow one numeral

to make incorrect your entire problem, is neither Science

nor obedience.

12 However keenly the human affections yearn to for-

give a mistake, and pass a friend over it smoothly, one's

sympathy can neither atone for error, advance individual

15 growth, nor change this immutable decree of Love: "Keep

My commandments." The guerdon of meritorious

faith or trustworthiness rests on being willing to work

18 alone with God and for Him, - willing to suffer patiently

for error until all error is destroyed and His rod and His

staff comfort you.

21 Self-ignorance, self-will, self-righteousness, lust, covet-

ousness, envy, revenge, are foes to grace, peace, and

progress; they must be met manfully and overcome,

24 or they will uproot all happiness. Be of good cheer;

the warfare with one's self is grand; it gives one plenty

of employment, and the divine Principle worketh with

27 you, - and obedience crowns persistent effort with

everlasting victory. Every attempt of evil to harm good

is futile, and ends in the fiery punishment of the

evil-doer.

Jesus said, "Not that which goeth into the mouth

defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth,

Page 119

1 this defileth a man." If malicious suggestions whisper

evil through the mind's tympanum, this were no apology

3 for acting evilly. We are responsible for our thoughts and

acts; and instead of aiding other people's devices by

obeying them, - and then whining over misfortune, -

6 rise and overthrow both. If a criminal coax the unwary

man to commit a crime, our laws punish the dupe as ac-

cessory to the fact. Each individual is responsible for

himself.

Evil is impotent to turn the righteous man from his

uprightness. The nature of the individual, more stub-

12 born than the circumstance, will always be found argu-

ing for itself, - its habits, tastes, and indulgences. This

material nature strives to tip the beam against the spir-

15 itual nature; for the flesh strives against Spirit, - against

whatever or whoever opposes evil, - and weighs mightily

in the scale against man's high destiny. This conclusion

18 is not an argument either for pessimism or for optimism,

but is a plea for free moral agency, - full exemption

from all necessity to obey a power that should be and is

found powerless in Christian Science.

Insubordination to the law of Love even in the least,

or strict obedience thereto, tests and discriminates be-

24 tween the real and the unreal Scientist. Justice, a

prominent statute in the divine law, demands of all

trespassers upon the sparse individual rights which one

27 justly reserves to one's self, - Would you consent that

others should tear up your landmarks, manipulate your

students, nullify or reverse your rules, countermand

your orders, steal your possessions, and escape the

penalty therefor? No! "Therefore all things what-

soever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even

Page 120

1 so to them." The professors of Christian Science must

take off their shoes at our altars; they must unclasp

3 the material sense of things at the very threshold of

Christian Science: they must obey implicitly each and

every injunction of the divine Principle of life's long

6 problem, or repeat their work in tears. In the words

of St. Paul, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield your-

selves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye

obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto

righteousness?"

Beloved students, loyal laborers are ye that have wrought

12 valiantly, and achieved great guerdons in the vineyard

of our Lord; but a mighty victory is yet to be won, a

great freedom for the race; and Christian success is

15 under arms, - with armor on, not laid down. Let us

rejoice, however, that the clarion call of peace will at

length be heard above the din of battle, and come more

sweetly to our ear than sound of vintage bells to villagers

on the Rhine.

I recommend that this Association hereafter meet tri-

21 ennially: many of its members reside a long distance from

Massachusetts, and they are members of The Mother

Church who would love to be with you on Sunday, and

once in three years is perhaps as often as they can afford

to be away from their own fields of labor.

COMMUNION ADDRESS, JANUARY, 1896

27 Friends and Brethren: - The Biblical record of the

great Nazarene, whose character we to-day commemorate,

is scanty; but what is given, puts to flight every doubt as

to the immortality of his words and works. Though

Page 121

1 written in a decaying language, his words can never pass

away: they are inscribed upon the hearts of men: they

are engraved upon eternity's tablets.

Undoubtedly our Master partook of the Jews' feast

of the Passover, and drank from their festal wine-cup.

6 This, however, is not the cup to which I call your at-

tention, - even the cup of martyrdom: wherein Spirit

and matter, good and evil, seem to grapple, and the

9 human struggles against the divine, up to a point of

discovery; namely, the impotence of evil, and the om-

nipotence of good, as divinely attested. Anciently, the

12 blood of martyrs was believed to be the seed of the Church.

Stalled theocracy would make this fatal doctrine just

and sovereign, even a divine decree, a law of Love! That

15 the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, is inhuman. The

prophet declared, "Thou shalt put away the guilt of

innocent blood from Israel." This is plain: that what-

18 ever belittles, befogs, or belies the nature and essence of

Deity, is not divine. Who, then, shall father or favor

this sentence passed upon innocence? thereby giving the

21 signet of God to the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of His

beloved Son, the righteous Nazarene, - christened by

John the Baptist, "the Lamb of God."

24 Oh! shameless insult to divine royalty, that drew

from the great Master this answer to the questions of the

rabbinical rabble: "If I tell you, ye will not believe; and

if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go."

Infinitely greater than human pity, is divine Love, -

that cannot be unmerciful. Human tribunals, if just,

borrow their sense of justice from the divine Principle

thereof, which punishes the guilty, not the innocent. The

Teacher of both law and gospel construed the substitution

Page 122

1 of a good man to suffer for evil-doers - a crime! When

foretelling his own crucifixion, he said, "Woe unto the

3 world because of offenses! for it must needs be that

offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense

cometh!"

6 Would Jesus thus have spoken of what was indis-

pensable for the salvation of a world of sinners, or of the

individual instrument in this holy (?) alliance for accom-

9 plishing such a monstrous work? or have said of him

whom God foreordained and predestined to fulfil a divine

decree, "It were better for him that a millstone were

hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the

depth of the sea"?

The divine order is the acme of mercy: it is neither

15 questionable nor assailable: it is not evil producing good,

nor good ultimating in evil. Such an inference were

impious. Holy Writ denounces him that declares, "Let

us do evil, that good may come! whose damnation is

just."

Good is not educed from its opposite: and Love divine

21 spurned, lessens not the hater's hatred nor the criminal's

crime; nor reconciles justice to injustice; nor substitutes

the suffering of the Godlike for the suffering due to sin.

24 Neither spiritual bankruptcy nor a religious chancery can

win high heaven, or the "Well done, good and faithful

servant, . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

27 Divine Love knows no hate; for hate, or the hater, is

nothing: God never made it, and He made all that was

made. The hater's pleasures are unreal; his sufferings,

self-imposed; his existence is a parody, and he ends -

with suicide.

The murder of the just Nazarite was incited by the

Page 123

1 same spirit that in our time massacres our missionaries,

butchers the helpless Armenians, slaughters innocents.

3 Evil was, and is, the illusion of breaking the First Com-

mandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me:"

it is either idolizing something and somebody, or hating

them: it is the spirit of idolatry, envy, jealousy, covet-

ousness, superstition, lust, hypocrisy, witchcraft.

That man can break the forever-law of infinite Love,

9 was, and is, the serpent's biggest lie! and ultimates in

a religion of pagan priests bloated with crime; a religion

that demands human victims to be sacrificed to human

12 passions and human gods, or tortured to appease the

anger of a so-called god or a miscalled man or woman !

The Assyrian Merodach, or the god of sin, was the "lucky

15 god;" and the Babylonian Yawa, or Jehovah, was the

Jewish tribal deity. The Christian's God is neither, and

is too pure to behold iniquity.

18 Divine Science has rolled away the stone from the sepul-

chre of our Lord; and there has risen to the awakened

thought the majestic atonement of divine Love. The

21 at one ment with Christ has appeared - not through

vicarious suffering, whereby the just obtain a pardon for

the unjust, - but through the eternal law of justice;

24 wherein sinners suffer for their own sins, repent, forsake

sin, love God, and keep His commandments, thence to

receive the reward of righteousness: salvation from sin,

not through the death of a man, but through a divine Life,

which is our Redeemer.

Holy Writ declares that God is Love, is Spirit; hence

it follows that those who worship Him, must worship

Him spiritually, - far apart from physical sensation

such as attends eating and drinking corporeally. It is

Page 124

1 plain that aught unspiritual, intervening between God

and man, would tend to disturb the divine order, and

3 countermand the Scripture that those who worship the

Father must worship Him in spirit. It is also plain,

that we should not seek and cannot find God in mat-

6 ter, or through material methods; neither do we love

and obey Him by means of matter, or the flesh, - which

warreth against Spirit, and will not be reconciled

thereto.

We turn, with sickened sense, from a pagan Jew's

or Moslem's misconception of Deity, for peace; and find

12 rest in the spiritual ideal, or Christ. For "who is so

great a God as our God!" unchangeable, all-wise, all-

just, all-merciful; the ever-loving, ever-living Life, Truth,

15 Love: comforting such as mourn, opening the prison

doors to the captive, marking the unwinged bird, pitying

with more than a father's pity; healing the sick, cleansing

18 the leper, raising the dead, saving sinners. As we think

thereon, man's true sense is filled with peace, and power;

and we say, It is well that Christian Science has taken

21 expressive silence wherein to muse His praise, to kiss the

feet of Jesus, adore the white Christ, and stretch out our

arms to God.

24 The last act of the tragedy on Calvary rent the veil

of matter, and unveiled Love's great legacy to mortals:

Love forgiving its enemies. This grand act crowned

27 and still crowns Christianity: it manumits mortals; it

translates love; it gives to suffering, inspiration; to

patience, experience; to experience, hope; to hope, faith;

to faith, understanding; and to understanding, Love tri-

umphant!

In proportion to a man's spiritual progress, he will

Page 125

1 indeed drink of our Master's cup, and be baptized with

his baptism ! be purified as by fire, - the fires of suffering;

3 then hath he part in Love's atonement, for "whom the

Lord loveth He chasteneth." Then shall he also reign

with him: he shall rise to know that there is no sin,

6 that there is no suffering; since all that is real is right.

This knowledge enables him to overcome the world, the

flesh, and all evil, to have dominion over his own sinful

9 sense and self. Then shall he drink anew Christ's cup,

in the kingdom of God - the reign of righteousness -

within him; he shall sit down at the Father's right hand:

12 sit down; not stand waiting and weary; but rest on the

bosom of God; rest, in the understanding of divine Love

that passeth all understanding; rest, in that which "to

know aright is Life eternal," and whom, not having seen,

we love.

Then shall he press on to Life's long lesson, the eternal

lore of Love; and learn forever the infinite meanings of

these short sentences: "God is Love;" and, All that is

real is divine, for God is All-in-all.

MESSAGE TO THE ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE MOTHER CHURCH, BOSTON, 1896

Beloved Brethren, Children, and Grandchildren: -

24 Apart from the common walks of mankind, revolving

oft the hitherto untouched problems of being, and

oftener, perhaps, the controversies which baffle it,

27 Mother, thought-tired, turns to-day to you; turns to

her dear church, to tell the towers thereof the remarkable

achievements that have been ours within the past few

years: the rapid transit from halls to churches, from un-

Page 126

1 settled questions to permanence, from danger to escape,

from fragmentary discourses to one eternal sermon; yea,

from darkness to daylight, in physics and metaphysics.

Truly, I half wish for society again; for once, at least,

to hear the soft music of our Sabbath chimes saluting the

ear in tones that leap for joy, with love for God and

man.

Who hath not learned that when alone he has his

9 own thoughts to guard, and when struggling with man-

kind his temper, and in society his tongue? We also

have gained higher heights; have learned that trials lift

12 us to that dignity of Soul which sustains us, and finally

conquers them; and that the ordeal refines while it

chastens.

15 Perhaps our church is not yet quite sensible of what

we owe to the strength, meekness, honesty, and obedi-

ence of the Christian Science Board of Directors; to

the able editors of The Christian Science Journal, and

to our efficient Publishing Society.

No reproof is so potent as the silent lesson of a good

21 example. Works, more than words, should characterize

Christian Scientists. Most people condemn evil-doing,

evil-speaking; yet nothing circulates so rapidly: even gold

24 is less current. Christian Scientists have a strong race to

run, and foes in ambush; but bear in mind that, in the

long race, honesty always defeats dishonesty.

27 God hath indeed smiled on my church, - this

daughter of Zion: she sitteth in high places; and to de-

ride her is to incur the penalty of which the Hebrew

bard spake after this manner: "He that sitteth in the

heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in

derision."

Page 127

1 Hitherto, I have observed that in proportion as this

church has smiled on His "little ones," He has blessed

3 her. Throughout my entire connection with The Mother

Church, I have seen, that in the ratio of her love for

others, hath His love been bestowed upon her; watering

her waste places, and enlarging her borders.

One thing I have greatly desired, and again earnestly

request, namely, that Christian Scientists, here and

9 elsewhere, pray daily for themselves; not verbally, nor

on bended knee, but mentally, meekly, and importu-

nately. When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-

12 Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone, - but

more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble

and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the

15 bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to

a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow

into it the "river of His pleasure," the tributary of divine

Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow, -

even that joy which finds one's own in another's good.

To love, and to be loved, one must do good to others.

21 The inevitable condition whereby to become blessed, is to

bless others: but here, you must so know yourself, under

God's direction, that you will do His will even though

24 your pearls be downtrodden. Ofttimes the rod is His

means of grace; then it must be ours, - we cannot avoid

wielding it if we reflect Him.

27 Wise sayings and garrulous talk may fall to the ground,

rather than on the ear or heart of the hearer; but a tender

sentiment felt, or a kind word spoken, at the right moment,

is never wasted. Mortal mind presents phases of charac-

ter which need close attention and examination. The

human heart, like a feather bed, needs often to be stirred,

Page 128

1 sometimes roughly, and given a variety of turns, else it

grows hard and uncomfortable whereon to repose.

3 The lessons of this so-called life in matter are too vast

and varied to learn or to teach briefly; and especially

within the limits of a letter. Therefore I close here,

6 with the apostle's injunction: "Finally, brethren, what-

soever things are true, whatsoever things are honest,

whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,

9 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of

good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any

praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye

have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in

me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you."

With love, Mother,

MARY BAKER G. EDDY

Page 129

CHAPTER V - LETTERS

TO THE MOTHER CHURCH

MY BELOVED BRETHREN: - If a member of the church

3 is inclined to be uncharitable, or to condemn his

brother without cause, let him put his finger to his lips,

and forgive others as he would be forgiven. One's first

6 lesson is to learn one's self; having done this, one will

naturally, through grace from God, forgive his brother and

love his enemies. To avenge an imaginary or an actual

9 wrong, is suicidal. The law of our God and the rule of

our church is to tell thy brother his fault and thereby help

him. If this rule fails in effect, then take the next Scrip-

12 tural step: drop this member's name from the church, and

thereafter "let the dead bury their dead," - let silence

prevail over his remains.

15 If a man is jealous, envious, or revengeful, he will seek

occasion to balloon an atom of another man's indis-

cretion, inflate it, and send it into the atmosphere of mortal

18 mind - for other green eyes to gaze on: he will always

find somebody in his way, and try to push him aside;

will see somebody's faults to magnify under the lens that

he never turns on himself.

What have been your Leader's precepts and example!

Were they to save the sinner, and to spare his exposure

so long as a hope remained of thereby benefiting him?

Has her life exemplified long-suffering, meekness, charity,

purity?

She readily leaves the answer to those who know

her.

6 Do we yet understand how much better it is to be

wronged, than to commit wrong? What do we find in

the Bible, and in the Christian Science textbook, on this

9 subject? Does not the latter instruct you that looking

continually for a fault in somebody else, talking about it,

thinking it over, and how to meet it, - "rolling sin as a

12 sweet morsel under your tongue," - has the same power

to make you a sinner that acting thus regarding disease

has to make a man sick? Note the Scripture on this

subject: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the

Lord."

The Christian Science Board of Directors has borne

18 the burden in the heat of the day, and it ought not to

be expected that they could have accomplished, without

one single mistake, such Herculean tasks as they have

21 accomplished. He who judges others should know well

whereof he speaks. Where the motive to do right exists,

and the majority of one's acts are right, we should avoid

24 referring to past mistakes. The greatest sin that one can

commit against himself is to wrong one of God's "little

ones."

27 Know ye not that he who exercises the largest charity,

and waits on God, renews his strength, and is exalted?

Love is not puffed up; and the meek and loving, God

anoints and appoints to lead the line of mankind's tri-

umphal march out of the wilderness, out of darkness

into light.

Page 131

1 Whoever challenges the errors of others and cherishes

his own, can neither help himself nor others; he will be

3 called a moral nuisance, a fungus, a microbe, a mouse

gnawing at the vitals of humanity. The darkness in

one's self must first be cast out, in order rightly to discern

darkness or to reflect light.

If the man of more than average avoirdupois kneels on

a stool in church, let the leaner sort console this brother's

9 necessity by doing likewise. Christian Scientists preserve

unity, and so shadow forth the substance of our sublime

faith, and the evidence of its being built upon the rock of

divine oneness, - one faith, one God, one baptism.

If our Board of Directors is prepared to itemize a report

of the first financial year since the erection of the edifice of

15 The First Church of Christ, Scientist, let it do so; other-

wise, I recommend that you waive the church By-law

relating to finances this year of your firstfruits. This

18 Board did not act under that By-law; it was not in ex-

istence all of the year. It is but just to consider the great

struggles with perplexities and difficulties which the

21 Directors encountered in Anno Domini 1894, and which

they have overcome. May God give unto us all that lov-

ing sense of gratitude which delights in the opportunity to

24 cancel accounts. I, for one, would be pleased to have the

Christian Science Board of Directors itemize a bill of this

church's gifts to Mother; and then to have them let her

state the value thereof, if, indeed, it could be estimated.

After this financial year, when you call on the members

of the Christian Science Board of Directors to itemize or

audit their accounts, these will be found already itemized,

and last year's records immortalized, with perils past and

victories won.

Page 132

1 A motion was made, and a vote passed, at your last

meeting, on a subject the substance whereof you had al-

3 ready accepted as a By-law. But, I shall take this as a

favorable omen, a fair token that heavy lids are opening,

even wider than before, to the light of Love - and By-laws.

Affectionately yours,

MARY BAKER EDDY

TO - , ON PRAYER

MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE,

571 COLUMBUS AVENUE,

BOSTON, March 21, 1885

12 Dear Sir: - In your communication to Zion's Herald,

March 18, under the heading, "Prayer and Healing; sup-

plemental," you state that you would "like to hear from

Dr. Cullis; and, by the way, from Mrs. Eddy, also."

Because of the great demand upon my time, consisting

in part of dictating answers through my secretary, or an-

18 swering personally manifold letters and inquiries from all

quarters, - having charge of a church, editing a maga-

zine, teaching Christian Science, receiving calls, etc., - I

21 find it inconvenient to accept your invitation to answer

you through the medium of a newspaper; but, for infor-

mation as to what I believe and teach, would refer you to

the Holy Scriptures, to my various publications, and to my

Christian students.

It was with a thrill of pleasure that I read in your arti-

27 cle these words: "If we have in any way misrepresented

either Dr. Cullis or Mrs. Eddy, we are sorry." Even the

desire to be just is a vital spark of Christianity. And those

words inspire me with the hope that you wish to be just.

Page 133

1 If this is so, you will not delay corrections of the statement

you make at the close of your article, when referring to

me, "the pantheistic and prayerless Mrs. Eddy, of Boston."

It would be difficult to build a sentence of so few words

conveying ideas more opposite to the fact.

In refutation of your statement that I am a pantheist,

I request you to read my sermons and publications.

As to being "prayerless," I call your attention and

deep consideration to the following Scripture, that voices

my impressions of prayer: -

"When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites

12 are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and

in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.

. . . But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,

15 and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father

which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret

shall reward thee openly."

18 I hope I am not wrong in literally following the dictum

of Jesus; and, were it not because of my desire to set

you right on this question, I should feel a delicacy in mak-

ing the following statement: -

Three times a day, I retire to seek the divine blessing

on the sick and sorrowing, with my face toward the Jeru-

24 salem of Love and Truth, in silent prayer to the Father

which "seeth in secret," and with childlike confidence that

He will reward "openly." In the midst of depressing care

27 and labor I turn constantly to divine Love for guidance,

and find rest. It affords me great joy to be able to attest to

the truth of Jesus' words. Love makes all burdens light,

it giveth a peace that passeth understanding, and with

"signs following." As to the peace, it is unutterable; as

to "signs," behold the sick who are healed, the sorrowful

Page 134

1 who are made hopeful, and the sinful and ignorant who

have become "wise unto salvation"!

3 And now, dear sir, as you have expressed contrition for

an act which you have immediately repeated, you are

placed in this dilemma: To reiterate such words of

apology as characterize justice and Christianity.

Very truly,

MARY BAKER G. EDDY

TO THE NATIONAL CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST ASSOCIATION

Beloved Students: - Meet together and meet en masse,

in 1888, at the annual session of the National Christian

12 Scientist Association. Be "of one mind," "in one place,"

and God will pour you out a blessing such as you never

before received. He who dwelleth in eternal light is

bigger than the shadow, and will guard and guide His

own.

Let no consideration bend or outweigh your purpose

18 to be in Chicago on June 13. Firm in your allegiance to

the reign of universal harmony, go to its rescue. In God's

hour, the powers of earth and hell are proven powerless.

21 The reeling ranks of materia medica, with poisons, nos-

trums, and knives, are impotent when at war with the

omnipotent! Like Elisha, look up, and behold: "They

that be with us, are more than they that be with them."

Error is only fermenting, and its heat hissing at the

"still, small voice" of Truth; but it can neither silence

nor disarm God's voice. Spiritual wickedness is stand-

ing in high places; but, blind to its own fate, it will tumble

into the bottomless.

Page 135

1 Christians, and all true Scientists, marching under what-

soever ensign, come into the ranks ! Again I repeat, per-

3 son is not in the question of Christian Science. Principle,

instead of person, is next to our hearts, on our lips, and

in our lives. Our watchwords are Truth and Love; and

6 if we abide in these, they will abound in us, and we shall

be one in heart,-one in motive, purpose, pursuit. Abid-

ing in Love, not one of you can be separated from me; and

9 the sweet sense of journeying on together, doing unto

others as ye would they should do unto you, conquers all

opposition, surmounts all obstacles, and secures success.

If you falter, or fail to fulfil this Golden Rule, though you

should build to the heavens, you would build on sand.

Is it a cross to give one week's time and expense to the

15 jubilee of Spirit? Then take this cross, and the crown

with it. Sending forth currents of Truth, God's methods

and means of healing, and so spreading the gospel of

18 Love, is in itself an eternity of joy that outweighs an

hour. Add one more noble offering to the unity of good,

and so cement the bonds of Love.

With love,

MARY BAKER EDDY

Part Three Table of Contents

Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896

Mary Baker Eddy

Author of Science and Health with Key to the

Scriptures

Published by the Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy

Boston, U.S.A.

By Mary Baker G. Eddy

_______

Printed in the United States of America

LOYAL CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS

IN THIS AND EVERY LAND

I LOVINGLY DEDICATE THESE PRACTICAL TEACHINGS

INDISPENSABLE TO THE CULTURE AND ACHIEVEMENTS WHICH

CONSTITUTE THE SUCCESS OF A STUDENT

AND DEMONSTRATE THE ETHICS

OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

MARY BAKER EDDY

PRAY thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,

To read it well; that is, to understand.

BEN JONSON: Epigram I

WHEN I would know thee . . . my thought looks

Upon thy well made choice of friends and books;

Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends

In making thy friends books, and thy books friends.

BEN JONSON: Epigram 86

-----

IF worlds were formed by matter,

And mankind from the dust;

Till time shall end more timely,

There's nothing here to trust.

Thenceforth to evolution's

Geology, we say, -

Nothing have we gained therefrom,

And nothing have to pray:

MY world has sprung from Spirit,

In everlasting day;

Whereof, I've more to glory,

Wherefor, have much to pay.

MARY BAKER EDDY

Page ix

Preface

1 A CERTAIN apothegm of a Talmudical philosopher

suits my sense of doing good. It reads thus: "The

3 noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting

charity; and the best alms are to show and to enable a

man to dispense with alms."

6 In the early history of Christian Science, among my

thousands of students few were wealthy. Now, Christian

Scientists are not indigent; and their comfortable fortunes

9 are acquired by healing mankind morally, physically,

spiritually. The easel of time presents pictures - once

fragmentary and faint - now rejuvenated by the touch

12 of God's right hand. Where joy, sorrow, hope, disap-

pointment, sigh, and smile commingled, now hope sits

dove-like.

15 To preserve a long course of years still and uniform,

amid the uniform darkness of storm and cloud and

tempest, requires strength from above, - deep draughts

18 from the fount of divine Love. Truly may it be said:

There is an old age of the heart, and a youth that never

grows old; a Love that is a boy, and a Psyche who is

ever a girl. The fleeting freshness of youth, however,

is not the evergreen of Soul; the coloring glory of

Page x

1 perpetual bloom; the spiritual glow and grandeur of

a consecrated life wherein dwelleth peace, sacred and

sincere in trial or in triumph.

The opportunity has at length offered itself for me to

comply with an oft-repeated request; namely, to collect

6 my miscellaneous writings published in The Christian

Science Journal, since April, 1883, and republish them

in book form, - accessible as reference, and reliable as

9 old landmarks. Owing to the manifold demands on my

time in the early pioneer days, most of these articles

were originally written in haste, without due preparation.

12 To those heretofore in print, a few articles are herein

appended. To some articles are affixed data, where these

are most requisite, to serve as mile-stones measuring the

distance, - or the difference between then and now, -

in the opinions of men and the progress of our Cause.

My signature has been slightly changed from my

18 Christian name, Mary Morse Baker. Timidity in early

years caused me, as an author, to assume various noms

de plume. After my first marriage, to Colonel Glover

21 of Charleston, South Carolina, I dropped the name of

Morse to retain my maiden name, - thinking that other-

wise the name would be too long.

24 In 1894, I received from the Daughters of the American

Revolution a certificate of membership made out to Mary

Baker Eddy, and thereafter adopted that form of signa-

ture, except in connection with my published works.

Page xi

1 The first edition of Science and Health having been

copyrighted at the date of its issue, 1875, in my name

of Glover, caused me to retain the initial "G" on my

subsequent books.

These pages, although a reproduction of what has

6 been written, are still in advance of their time; and are

richly rewarded by what they have hitherto achieved for

the race. While no offering can liquidate one's debt of

gratitude to God, the fervent heart and willing hand are

not unknown to nor unrewarded by Him.

May this volume be to the reader a graphic guide-

12 book, pointing the path, dating the unseen, and enabling

him to walk the untrodden in the hitherto unexplored

fields of Science. At each recurring holiday the Christian

Scientist will find herein a "canny" crumb; and thus

may time's pastimes become footsteps to joys eternal.

Realism will at length be found to surpass imagination,

18 and to suit and savor all literature. The shuttlecock of

religious intolerance will fall to the ground, if there be

no battledores to fling it back and forth. It is reason for

21 rejoicing that the vox populi is inclined to grant us peace,

together with pardon for the preliminary battles that

purchased it.

With tender tread, thought sometimes walks in memory,

through the dim corridors of years, on to old battle-

grounds, there sadly to survey the fields of the slain and

the enemy's losses. In compiling this work, I have tried

Page xii

1 to remove the pioneer signs and ensigns of war, and to

retain at this date the privileged armaments of peace.

3 With armor on, I continue the march, command and

countermand; meantime interluding with loving thought

this afterpiece of battle. Supported, cheered, I take my

pen and pruning-hook, to "learn war no more," and with

strong wing to lift my readers above the smoke of conflict

into light and liberty. MARY BAKER EDDY

CONCORD, N. H.

January, 1897

Miscellaneous Writings

CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY

PROSPECTUS

THE ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olym-

3 piad. The Chaldee watched the appearing of a

star; to him, no higher destiny dawned on the dome

of being than that foreshadowed by signs in the heav-

6 ens. The meek Nazarene, the scoffed of all scoffers,

said, "Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye

not discern the signs of the times?" - for he forefelt

and foresaw the ordeal of a perfect Christianity, hated

by sinners.

To kindle all minds with a gleam of gratitude, the

12 new idea that comes welling up from infinite Truth needs

to be understood. The seer of this age should be a

sage.

15 Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition

of Deity. The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and

strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops

18 the world. Meekness heightens immortal attributes

only by removing the dust that dims them. Goodness

reveals another scene and another self seemingly rolled

up in shades, but brought to light by the evolutions of

Page 2

1 advancing thought, whereby we discern the power of

Truth and Love to heal the sick.

3 Pride is ignorance; those assume most who have the

least wisdom or experience; and they steal from their

neighbor, because they have so little of their own.

6 The signs of these times portend a long and strong

determination of mankind to cleave to the world, the

flesh, and evil, causing great obscuration of Spirit.

9 When we remember that God is just, and admit the

total depravity of mortals, alias mortal mind, - and that

this Adam legacy must first be seen, and then must be

12 subdued and recompensed by justice, the eternal attri-

bute of Truth, - the outlook demands labor, and the

laborers seem few. To-day we behold but the first

15 faint view of a more spiritual Christianity, that embraces

a deeper and broader philosophy and a more rational and

divine healing. The time approaches when divine Life,

18 Truth, and Love will be found alone the remedy for sin,

sickness, and death; when God, man's saving Principle,

and Christ, the spiritual idea of God, will be revealed.

21 Man's probation after death is the necessity of his

immortality; for good dies not and evil is self-destruc-

tive, therefore evil must be mortal and self-destroyed.

24 If man should not progress after death, but should re-

main in error, he would be inevitably self-annihilated.

Those upon whom "the second death hath no power"

27 are those who progress here and hereafter out of evil,

their mortal element, and into good that is immortal;

thus laying off the material beliefs that war against

Spirit, and putting on the spiritual elements in divine

Science.

While we entertain decided views as to the best method

Page 3

1 for elevating the race physically, morally, and spiritu-

ally, and shall express these views as duty demands, we

3 shall claim no especial gift from our divine origin, no

supernatural power. If we regard good as more natural

than evil, and spiritual understanding - the true knowl-

6 edge of God - as imparting the only power to heal the

sick and the sinner, we shall demonstrate in our lives the

power of Truth and Love.

9 The lessons we learn in divine Science are applica-

ble to all the needs of man. Jesus taught them for this

very purpose; and his demonstration hath taught us

12 that "through his stripes" - his life-experience - and

divine Science, brought to the understanding through

Christ, the Spirit-revelator, is man healed and saved.

15 No opinions of mortals nor human hypotheses enter this

line of thought or action. Drugs, inert matter, never are

needed to aid spiritual power. Hygiene, manipulation,

18 and mesmerism are not Mind's medicine. The Prin-

ciple of all cure is God, unerring and immortal Mind.

We have learned that the erring or mortal thought holds

21 in itself all sin, sickness, and death, and imparts these

states to the body; while the supreme and perfect Mind,

as seen in the truth of being, antidotes and destroys these

material elements of sin and death.

Because God is supreme and omnipotent, materia

medica, hygiene, and animal magnetism are impotent;

27 and their only supposed efficacy is in apparently delud-

ing reason, denying revelation, and dethroning Deity.

The tendency of mental healing is to uplift mankind; but

this method perverted, is "Satan let loose." Hence the

deep demand for the Science of psychology to meet sin,

and uncover it; thus to annihilate hallucination.

Page 4

1 Thought imbued with purity, Truth, and Love, in-

structed in the Science of metaphysical healing, is the

3 most potent and desirable remedial agent on the earth.

At this period there is a marked tendency of mortal

mind to plant mental healing on the basis of hypnotism,

6 calling this method "mental science." All Science is

Christian Science; the Science of the Mind that is God,

and of the universe as His idea, and their relation to each

other. Its only power to heal is its power to do good,

not evil.

A TIMELY ISSUE

12 At this date, 1883, a newspaper edited and published

by the Christian Scientists has become a necessity. Many

questions important to be disposed of come to the Col-

15 lege and to the practising students, yet but little time

has been devoted to their answer. Further enlight-

enment is necessary for the age, and a periodical de-

18 voted to this work seems alone adequate to meet the

requirement. Much interest is awakened and expressed

on the subject of metaphysical healing, but in many

21 minds it is confounded with isms, and even infidelity, so

that its religious specialty and the vastness of its worth

are not understood.

24 It is often said, "You must have a very strong will-

power to heal," or, "It must require a great deal of faith

to make your demonstrations." When it is answered

27 that there is no will-power required, and that something

more than faith is necessary, we meet with an expression

of incredulity. It is not alone the mission of Christian

Science to heal the sick, but to destroy sin in mortal

Page 5

1 thought. This work well done will elevate and purify

the race. It cannot fail to do this if we devote our best

energies to the work.

Science reveals man as spiritual, harmonious, and eter-

nal. This should be understood. Our College should

6 be crowded with students who are willing to consecrate

themselves to this Christian work. Mothers should be

able to produce perfect health and perfect morals in their

9 children - and ministers, to heal the sick - by study-

ing this scientific method of practising Christianity.

Many say, "I should like to study, but have not suffi-

12 cient faith that I have the power to heal." The healing

power is Truth and Love, and these do not fail in the

greatest emergencies.

15 Materia medica says, "I can do no more. I have

done all that can be done. There is nothing to build

upon. There is no longer any reason for hope." Then

18 metaphysics comes in, armed with the power of Spirit,

not matter, takes up the case hopefully and builds on

the stone that the builders have rejected, and is suc-

cessful.

Metaphysical therapeutics can seem a miracle and a

mystery to those only who do not understand the grand

24 reality that Mind controls the body. They acknowledge

an erring or mortal mind, but believe it to be brain mat-

ter. That man is the idea of infinite Mind, always perfect

27 in God, in Truth, Life, and Love, is something not easily

accepted, weighed down as is mortal thought with mate-

rial beliefs. That which never existed, can seem solid

substance to this thought. It is much easier for people

to believe that the body affects the mind, than that the

mind affects the body.

Page 6

1 We hear from the pulpits that sickness is sent as a

discipline to bring man nearer to God, - even though

3 sickness often leaves mortals but little time free from

complaints and fretfulness, and Jesus cast out disease as

evil.

6 The most of our Christian Science practitioners have

plenty to do, and many more are needed for the ad-

vancement of the age. At present the majority of the

9 acute cases are given to the M. D.'s, and only those

cases that are pronounced incurable are passed over to

the Scientist. The healing of such cases should cer-

12 tainly prove to all minds the power of metaphysics over

physics; and it surely does, to many thinkers, as the

rapid growth of the work shows. At no distant day,

15 Christian healing will rank far in advance of allopathy

and homoeopathy; for Truth must ultimately succeed

where error fails.

18 Mind governs all. That we exist in God, perfect,

there is no doubt, for the conceptions of Life, Truth, and

Love must be perfect; and with that basic truth we con-

21 quer sickness, sin, and death. Frequently it requires

time to overcome the patient's faith in drugs and mate-

rial hygiene; but when once convinced of the uselessness

of such material methods, the gain is rapid.

It is a noticeable fact, that in families where laws

of health are strictly enforced, great caution is observed

27 in regard to diet, and the conversation chiefly confined

to the ailments of the body, there is the most sickness.

Take a large family of children where the mother has

all that she can attend to in keeping them clothed and

fed, and health is generally the rule; whereas, in small

families of one or two children, sickness is by no means

Page 7

1 the exception. These children must not be allowed to

eat certain food, nor to breathe the cold air, because

3 there is danger in it; when they perspire, they must be

loaded down with coverings until their bodies become

dry, - and the mother of one child is often busier than

the mother of eight.

Great charity and humility is necessary in this work

of healing. The loving patience of Jesus, we must

9 strive to emulate. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as

thyself" has daily to be exemplified; and, although

skepticism and incredulity prevail in places where

12 one would least expect it, it harms not; for if serving

Christ, Truth, of what can mortal opinion avail? Cast

not your pearls before swine; but if you cannot bring

peace to all, you can to many, if faithful laborers in His

vineyard.

Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally

18 reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease

seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to

many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon

21 the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to

some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper,

at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able

24 to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.

A great work already has been done, and a greater work

yet remains to be done. Oftentimes we are denied the

27 results of our labors because people do not understand

the nature and power of metaphysics, and they think

that health and strength would have returned natu-

rally without any assistance. This is not so much from

a lack of justice, as it is that the mens populi is not suffi-

ciently enlightened on this great subject. More thought

Page 8

1 is given to material illusions than to spiritual facts. If

we can aid in abating suffering and diminishing sin,

3 we shall have accomplished much; but if we can bring

to the general thought this great fact that drugs do not,

cannot, produce health and harmony, since "in Him

[Mind] we live, and move, and have our being," we shall

have done more.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

Who is thine enemy that thou shouldst love him? Is

it a creature or a thing outside thine own creation?

Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this

12 enemy and then look upon the object of your own con-

ception? What is it that harms you? Can height, or

depth, or any other creature separate you from the

Love that is omnipresent good, - that blesses infinitely

one and all?

Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles,

18 defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should

reflect. Whatever purifies, sanctifies, and consecrates

human life, is not an enemy, however much we suffer in

21 the process. Shakespeare writes: "Sweet are the uses

of adversity." Jesus said: "Blessed are ye, when men

shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all

24 manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake; . . .

for so persecuted they the prophets which were before

you."

The Hebrew law with its "Thou shalt not," its de-

mand and sentence, can only be fulfilled through the

gospel's benediction. Then, "Blessed are ye," inso-

Page 9

1 much as the consciousness of good, grace, and peace,

comes through affliction rightly understood, as sanctified

3 by the purification it brings to the flesh, - to pride, self-

ignorance, self-will, self-love, self-justification. Sweet,

indeed, are these uses of His rod! Well is it that the

6 Shepherd of Israel passes all His flock under His rod

into His fold; thereby numbering them, and giving them

refuge at last from the elements of earth.

9 "Love thine enemies" is identical with "Thou hast

no enemies." Wherein is this conclusion relative to

those who have hated thee without a cause? Simply, in

12 that those unfortunate individuals are virtually thy best

friends. Primarily and ultimately, they are doing thee

good far beyond the present sense which thou canst enter-

tain of good.

Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life's cup and

to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup

18 to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in frag-

ments before our eyes. Perchance, having tasted its

tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethar-

21 gic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction; else, the con-

tents of this cup of selfish human enjoyment having lost

its flavor, we voluntarily set it aside as tasteless and

unworthy of human aims.

And wherefore our failure longer to relish this fleet-

ing sense, with its delicious forms of friendship,

27 wherewith mortals become educated to gratification in

personal pleasure and trained in treacherous peace?

Because it is the great and only danger in the path

that winds upward. A false sense of what consti-

tutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress

than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon

Page 10

1 the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements

wherewith to obstruct life's joys and enhance its sor-

rows.

We have no enemies. Whatever envy, hatred, revenge

- the most remorseless motives that govern mortal mind

- whatever these try to do, shall "work together for good

to them that love God."

Why?

9 Because He has called His own, armed them, equipped

them, and furnished them defenses impregnable. Their

God will not let them be lost; and if they fall they shall

12 rise again, stronger than before the stumble. The good

cannot lose their God, their help in times of trouble.

If they mistake the divine command, they will recover

15 it, countermand their order, retrace their steps, and

reinstate His orders, more assured to press on safely.

The best lesson of their lives is gained by crossing

18 swords with temptation, with fear and the besetments

of evil; insomuch as they thereby have tried their

strength and proven it; insomuch as they have found

their strength made perfect in weakness, and their fear

is self-immolated.

This destruction is a moral chemicalization, wherein

24 old things pass away and all things become new. The

worldly or material tendencies of human affections and

pursuits are thus annihilated; and this is the advent of

27 spiritualization. Heaven comes down to earth, and

mortals learn at last the lesson, "I have no enemies."

Even in belief you have but one (that, not in reality),

and this one enemy is yourself - your erroneous belief

that you have enemies; that evil is real; that aught but

good exists in Science. Soon or late, your enemy will

Page 11

1 wake from his delusion to suffer for his evil intent; to

find that, though thwarted, its punishment is tenfold.

3 Love is the fulfilling of the law: it is grace, mercy,

and justice. I used to think it sufficiently just to abide

by our State statutes; that if a man should aim a ball at

6 my heart, and I by firing first could kill him and save

my own life, that this was right. I thought, also, that

if I taught indigent students gratuitously, afterwards

9 assisting them pecuniarily, and did not cease teach-

ing the wayward ones at close of the class term, but

followed them with precept upon precept; that if my

instructions had healed them and shown them the sure way

of salvation, - I had done my whole duty to students.

Love metes not out human justice, but divine mercy.

15 If one's life were attacked, and one could save it only

in accordance with common law, by taking another's,

would one sooner give up his own? We must love our

18 enemies in all the manifestations wherein and whereby

we love our friends; must even try not to expose their

faults, but to do them good whenever opportunity

21 occurs. To mete out human justice to those who per-

secute and despitefully use one, is not leaving all retribu-

tion to God and returning blessing for cursing. If special

24 opportunity for doing good to one's enemies occur not,

one can include them in his general effort to benefit the

race. Because I can do much general good to such as

27 hate me, I do it with earnest, special care-since they

permit me no other way, though with tears have I striven

for it. When smitten on one cheek, I have turned the

other: I have but two to present.

I would enjoy taking by the hand all who love me not,

and saying to them, "I love you, and would not know-

Page 12

1 ingly harm you." Because I thus feel, I say to others:

Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads

3 its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us;

brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, through-

out time and beyond the grave. If you have been badly

6 wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this

wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him

who has striven to injure you. Never return evil for evil;

and, above all, do not fancy that you have been wronged

when you have not been.

The present is ours; the future, big with events.

12 Every man and woman should be to-day a law to him-

self, herself, - a law of loyalty to Jesus' Sermon on the

Mount. The means for sinning unseen and unpunished

15 have so increased that, unless one be watchful and stead-

fast in Love, one's temptations to sin are increased a

hundredfold. Mortal mind at this period mutely works

18 in the interest of both good and evil in a manner least

understood; hence the need of watching, and the danger

of yielding to temptation from causes that at former

21 periods in human history were not existent. The action

and effects of this so-called human mind in its silent argu-

ments, are yet to be uncovered and summarily dealt with

by divine justice.

In Christian Science, the law of Love rejoices the heart;

and Love is Life and Truth. Whatever manifests aught

27 else in its effects upon mankind, demonstrably is not Love.

We should measure our love for God by our love for man;

and our sense of Science will be measured by our obedience

to God, - fulfilling the law of Love, doing good to all;

imparting, so far as we reflect them, Truth, Life, and Love

to all within the radius of our atmosphere of thought.

Page 13

1 The only justice of which I feel at present capable,

is mercy and charity toward every one, - just so far as

one and all permit me to exercise these sentiments toward

them, - taking special care to mind my own business.

The falsehood, ingratitude, misjudgment, and sharp

6 return of evil for good - yea, the real wrongs (if wrong

can be real) which I have long endured at the hands of

others - have most happily wrought out for me the law

9 of loving mine enemies. This law I now urge upon the

solemn consideration of all Christian Scientists. Jesus

said, "If ye love them which love you, what thank have

ye? for sinners also love those that love them."

CHRISTIAN THEISM

Scholastic theology elaborates the proposition that

15 evil is a factor of good, and that to believe in the reality

of evil is essential to a rounded sense of the existence of

good.

18 This frail hypothesis is founded upon the basis of mate-

rial and mortal evidence - only upon what the shifting

mortal senses confirm and frail human reason accepts.

The Science of Soul reverses this proposition, overturns

the testimony of the five erring senses, and reveals in

clearer divinity the existence of good only; that is, of

God and His idea.

This postulate of divine Science only needs to be con-

ceded, to afford opportunity for proof of its correctness

and the clearer discernment of good.

Seek the Anglo-Saxon term for God, and you will

find it to be good; then define good as God, and you

will find that good is omnipotence, has all power; it fills

Page 14

1 all space, being omnipresent; hence, there is neither place

nor power left for evil. Divest your thought, then, of

3 the mortal and material view which contradicts the ever-

presence and all-power of good; take in only the immor-

tal facts which include these, and where will you see or

feel evil, or find its existence necessary either to the origin

or ultimate of good?

It is urged that, from his original state of perfec-

9 tion, man has fallen into the imperfection that requires

evil through which to develop good. Were we to

admit this vague proposition, the Science of man could

12 never be learned; for in order to learn Science, we

begin with the correct statement, with harmony and

its Principle; and if man has lost his Principle and

15 its harmony, from evidences before him he is inca-

pable of knowing the facts of existence and its con-

comitants: therefore to him evil is as real and eternal

18 as good, God! This awful deception is evil's umpire

and empire, that good, God, understood, forcibly

destroys.

21 What appears to mortals from their standpoint to be

the necessity for evil, is proven by the law of opposites

to be without necessity. Good is the primitive Princi-

24 ple of man; and evil, good's opposite, has no Principle,

and is not, and cannot be, the derivative of good.

Thus evil is neither a primitive nor a derivative, but

is suppositional; in other words, a lie that is incapable

of proof - therefore, wholly problematical.

The Science of Truth annihilates error, deprives evil

of all power, and thereby destroys all error, sin, sickness,

disease, and death. But the sinner is not sheltered from

suffering from sin: he makes a great reality of evil, iden-

Page 15

1 tifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and

will reap what he sows; hence the sinner must endure

the effects of his delusion until he awakes from it.

THE NEW BIRTH

St. Paul speaks of the new birth as "waiting for the

6 adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." The

great Nazarene Prophet said, "Blessed are the pure in

heart: for they shall see God." Nothing aside from the

9 spiritualization - yea, the highest Christianization - of

thought and desire, can give the true perception of God

and divine Science, that results in health, happiness, and

holiness.

The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins

with moments, and goes on with years; moments of sur-

15 render to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption

of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration,

heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.

18 Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the

new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law

of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind

21 shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His

likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that

mortals can lay off the "old man," until man is found

to be the image of the infinite good that we name God,

and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.

In mortal and material man, goodness seems in em-

27 bryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out

of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is de-

veloped into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first

on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings

Page 16

1 of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish

the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immor-

3 tality, and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith:

In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down

to earth.

6 But, as one grows into the manhood or womanhood

of Christianity, one finds so much lacking, and so very

much requisite to become wholly Christlike, that one

9 saith: The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is

indeed God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite

claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human;

12 and man's ability to meet them is from God; for, being

His likeness and image, man must reflect the full

dominion of Spirit - even its supremacy over sin, sick-

ness, and death.

Here, then, is the awakening from the dream of life

in matter, to the great fact that God is the only Life;

18 that, therefore, we must entertain a higher sense of both

God and man. We must learn that God is infinitely

more than a person, or finite form, can contain; that

21 God is a divine Whole, and All, an all-pervading in-

telligence and Love, a divine, infinite Principle; and

that Christianity is a divine Science. This newly

24 awakened consciousness is wholly spiritual; it emanates

from Soul instead of body, and is the new birth begun

in Christian Science.

27 Now, dear reader, pause for a moment with me, earn-

estly to contemplate this new-born spiritual altitude; for

this statement demands demonstration.

Here you stand face to face with the laws of infinite

Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistible con-

flict between the flesh and Spirit. You stand before the

Page 17

1 awful detonations of Sinai. You hear and record the

thunderings of the spiritual law of Life, as opposed to

3 the material law of death; the spiritual law of Love, as

opposed to the material sense of love; the law of om-

nipotent harmony and good, as opposed to any supposi-

6 titious law of sin, sickness, or death. And, before the

flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like

the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes-lay aside

9 your material appendages, human opinions and doc-

trines, give up your more material religion with its rites

and ceremonies, put off your materia medica and hygiene

12 as worse than useless - to sit at the feet of Jesus. Then,

you meekly bow before the Christ, the spiritual idea

that our great Master gave of the power of God to heal

15 and to save. Then it is that you behold for the first

time the divine Principle that redeems man from under

the curse of materialism, - sin, disease, and death.

18 This spiritual birth opens to the enraptured understand-

ing a much higher and holier conception of the supremacy

of Spirit, and of man as His likeness, whereby man reflects

the divine power to heal the sick.

A material or human birth is the appearing of a mor-

tal, not the immortal man. This birth is more or less

24 prolonged and painful, according to the timely or un-

timely circumstances, the normal or abnormal material

conditions attending it.

27 With the spiritual birth, man's primitive, sinless,

spiritual existence dawns on human thought, - through

the travail of mortal mind, hope deferred, the perishing

pleasure and accumulating pains of sense, - by which

one loses himself as matter, and gains a truer sense of

Spirit and spiritual man.

Page 18

1 The purification or baptismals that come from Spirit,

develop, step by step, the original likeness of perfect man,

3 and efface the mark of the beast. "Whom the Lord

loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom

He receiveth;" therefore rejoice in tribulation, and wel-

come these spiritual signs of the new birth under the law

and gospel of Christ, Truth.

The prominent laws which forward birth in the divine

9 order of Science, are these: "Thou shalt have no other

gods before me;" "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

These commands of infinite wisdom, translated into

12 the new tongue, their spiritual meaning, signify: Thou

shalt love Spirit only, not its opposite, in every God-

quality, even in substance; thou shalt recognize thy-

15 self as God's spiritual child only, and the true man

and true woman, the all-harmonious "male and female,"

as of spiritual origin, God's reflection, - thus as chil-

18 dren of one common Parent, - wherein and whereby

Father, Mother, and child are the divine Principle and

divine idea, even the divine "Us" - one in good, and

good in One.

With this recognition man could never separate him-

self from good, God; and he would necessarily entertain

24 habitual love for his fellow-man. Only by admitting

evil as a reality, and entering into a state of evil

thoughts, can we in belief separate one man's interests

27 from those of the whole human family, or thus attempt

to separate Life from God. This is the mistake that

causes much that must be repented of and overcome.

Not to know what is blessing you, but to believe that

aught that God sends is unjust, - or that those whom

He commissions bring to you at His demand that which

Page 19

1 is unjust, - is wrong and cruel. Envy, evil thinking,

evil speaking, covetousness, lust, hatred, malice, are

3 always wrong, and will break the rule of Christian

Science and prevent its demonstration; but the rod of

God, and the obedience demanded of His servants in

carrying out what He teaches them, - these are never

unmerciful, never unwise.

The task of healing the sick is far lighter than that

9 of so teaching the divine Principle and rules of Chris-

tian Science as to lift the affections and motives of men

to adopt them and bring them out in human lives. He

12 who has named the name of Christ, who has virtually

accepted the divine claims of Truth and Love in divine

Science, is daily departing from evil; and all the wicked

15 endeavors of suppositional demons can never change the

current of that life from steadfastly flowing on to God,

its divine source.

18 But, taking the livery of heaven wherewith to cover

iniquity, is the most fearful sin that mortals can commit.

I should have more faith in an honest drugging-doctor,

21 one who abides by his statements and works upon as

high a basis as he understands, healing me, than I could

or would have in a smooth-tongued hypocrite or mental

malpractitioner.

Between the centripetal and centrifugal mental forces

of material and spiritual gravitations, we go into or we

27 go out of materialism or sin, and choose our course and

its results. Which, then, shall be our choice, - the sin-

ful, material, and perishable, or the spiritual, joy-giving,

and eternal?

The spiritual sense of Life and its grand pursuits is

of itself a bliss, health-giving and joy-inspiring. This

Page 20

1 sense of Life illumes our pathway with the radiance of

divine Love; heals man spontaneously, morally and

physically, - exhaling the aroma of Jesus' own words,

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,

and I will give you rest."

CHAPTER II

ONE CAUSE AND EFFECT

1 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE begins with the First Com-

mandment of the Hebrew Decalogue, "Thou

3 shalt have no other gods before me." It goes on in

perfect unity with Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and

in that age culminates in the Revelation of St. John,

6 who, while on earth and in the flesh, like ourselves,

beheld "a new heaven and a new earth," - the spiritual

universe, whereof Christian Science now bears testimony.

9 Our Master said, "The works that I do shall ye do

also," and, "The kingdom of God is within you." This

makes practical all his words and works. As the ages

12 advance in spirituality, Christian Science will be seen

to depart from the trend of other Christian denomina-

tions in no wise except by increase of spirituality.

15 My first plank in the platform of Christian Science

is as follows: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor

substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite

18 manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal

Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and

eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is

God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man

is not material; he is spiritual." (1)

(1) The order of this sentence has been conformed to the text of

the 1908 edition of Science and Health.

Page 22

1 I am strictly a theist - believe in one God, one Christ

or Messiah.

3 Science is neither a law of matter nor of man. It is

the unerring manifesto of Mind, the law of God, its

divine Principle. Who dare say that matter or

6 mortals can evolve Science? Whence, then, is it, if not

from the divine source, and what, but the contempo-

rary of Christianity, so far in advance of human knowl-

9 edge that mortals must work for the discovery of even a

portion of it? Christian Science translates Mind, God,

to mortals. It is the infinite calculus defining the line,

12 plane, space, and fourth dimension of Spirit. It abso-

lutely refutes the amalgamation, transmigration, absorp-

tion, or annihilation of individuality. It shows the

15 impossibility of transmitting human ills, or evil, from one

individual to another; that all true thoughts revolve

in God's orbits: they come from God and return to

18 Him, - and untruths belong not to His creation, there-

fore these are null and void. It hath no peer, no com-

petitor, for it dwelleth in Him besides whom "there is

none other."

That Christian Science is Christian, those who have

demonstrated it, according to the rules of its divine

24 Principle, - together with the sick, the lame, the deaf, and

the blind, healed by it, - have proven to a waiting world.

He who has not tested it, is incompetent to condemn it;

and he who is a willing sinner, cannot demonstrate it.

A falling apple suggested to Newton more than the

simple fact cognized by the senses, to which it seemed

to fall by reason of its own ponderosity; but the primal

cause, or Mind-force, invisible to material sense, lay

concealed in the treasure-troves of Science. True,

Page 23

1 Newton named it gravitation, having learned so much;

but Science, demanding more, pushes the question:

3 Whence or what is the power back of gravitation, - the

intelligence that manifests power? Is pantheism true?

Does mind "sleep in the mineral, or dream in the

6 animal, and wake in man"? Christianity answers this

question. The prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, demon-

strated a divine intelligence that subordinates so-called

9 material laws; and disease, death, winds, and waves,

obey this intelligence. Was it Mind or matter that spake

in creation, "and it was done"? The answer is self-

evident, and the command remains, "Thou shalt have

no other gods before me."

It is plain that the Me spoken of in the First Com-

15 mandment, must be Mind; for matter is not the Chris-

tian's God, and is not intelligent. Matter cannot even

talk; and the serpent, Satan, the first talker in its behalf,

18 lied. Reason and revelation declare that God is both

noumenon and phenomena, - the first and only cause.

The universe, including man, is not a result of atomic

21 action, material force or energy; it is not organized dust.

God, Spirit, Mind, are terms synonymous for the one

God, whose reflection is creation, and man is His image

24 and likeness. Few there are who comprehend what Chris-

tian Science means by the word reflection. God is seen

only in that which reflects good, Life, Truth, Love -

27 yea, which manifests all His attributes and power, even

as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror repeats

precisely the looks and actions of the object in front of it.

All must be Mind and Mind's ideas; since, according to

natural science, God, Spirit, could not change its species

and evolve matter.

Page 24

1 These facts enjoin the First Commandment; and

knowledge of them makes man spiritually minded. St.

3 Paul writes: "For to be carnally minded is death; but to

be spiritually minded is life and peace." This knowl-

edge came to me in an hour of great need; and I give it

6 to you as death-bed testimony to the daystar that dawned

on the night of material sense. This knowledge is

practical, for it wrought my immediate recovery from

9 an injury caused by an accident, and pronounced fatal

by the physicians. On the third day thereafter, I called

for my Bible, and opened it at Matthew ix. 2. As I

12 read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and

the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after

was in better health than I had before enjoyed. That

15 short experience included a glimpse of the great fact

that I have since tried to make plain to others, namely,

Life in and of Spirit; this Life being the sole reality of

18 existence. I learned that mortal thought evolves a sub-

ective state which it names matter, thereby shutting

out the true sense of Spirit. Per contra, Mind and man

21 are immortal; and knowledge gained from mortal sense

is illusion, error, the opposite of Truth; therefore it

cannot be true. A knowledge of both good and evil

24 (when good is God, and God is All) is impossible. Speak-

ing of the origin of evil, the Master said: "When he

speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar,

27 and the father of it." God warned man not to believe

the talking serpent, or rather the allegory describing

it. The Nazarene Prophet declared that his followers

should handle serpents; that is, put down all subtle falsi-

ties or illusions, and thus destroy any supposed effect

arising from false claims exercising their supposed power

Page 25

1 on the mind and body of man, against his holiness and

health.

3 That there is but one God or Life, one cause and

one effect, is the multum in parvo of Christian Science;

and to my understanding it is the heart of Christianity,

6 the religion that Jesus taught and demonstrated. In

divine Science it is found that matter is a phase of

error, and that neither one really exists, since God is

9 Truth, and All-in-all. Christ's Sermon on the Mount,

in its direct application to human needs, confirms this

conclusion.

12 Science, understood, translates matter into Mind,

rejects all other theories of causation, restores the spir-

itual and original meaning of the Scriptures, and ex-

15 plains the teachings and life of our Lord. It is religion's

"new tongue," with "signs following," spoken of by

St. Mark. It gives God's infinite meaning to mankind,

18 healing the sick, casting out evil, and raising the spirit-

ually dead. Christianity is Christlike only as it re-

iterates the word, repeats the works, and manifests the

spirit of Christ.

Jesus' only medicine was omnipotent and omniscient

Mind. As omni is from the Latin word meaning all,

24 this medicine is all-power; and omniscience means as

well, all-science. The sick are more deplorably situated

than the sinful, if the sick cannot trust God for help and

27 the sinful can. If God created drugs good, they cannot be

harmful; if He could create them otherwise, then they

are bad and unfit for man; and if He created drugs for

healing the sick, why did not Jesus employ them and

recommend them for that purpose?

No human hypotheses, whether in philosophy, medi-

Page 26

1 cine, or religion, can survive the wreck of time; but

whatever is of God, hath life abiding in it, and ulti-

3 mately will be known as self-evident truth, as demonstra-

ble as mathematics. Each successive period of progress

is a period more humane and spiritual. The only logical

6 conclusion is that all is Mind and its manifestation, from

the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a potato-

patch.

9 The agriculturist ponders the history of a seed, and

believes that his crops come from the seedling and the

loam; even while the Scripture declares He made "every

12 plant of the field before it was in the earth." The Scien-

tist asks, Whence came the first seed, and what made

the soil? Was it molecules, or material atoms ? Whence

15 came the infinitesimals, - from infinite Mind, or from

matter? If from matter, how did matter originate ? Was

it self-existent? Matter is not intelligent, and thus able

18 to evolve or create itself: it is the very opposite of Spirit,

intelligent, self-creative, and infinite Mind. The belief

of mind in matter is pantheism. Natural history shows

21 that neither a genus nor a species produces its opposite.

God is All, in all. What can be more than All? Noth-

ing: and this is just what I call matter, nothing. Spirit,

24 God, has no antecedent; and God's consequent is the

spiritual cosmos. The phrase, "express image," in the

common version of Hebrews i. 3, is, in the Greek Tes-

tament, character.

The Scriptures name God as good, and the Saxon

term for God is also good. From this premise comes

the logical conclusion that God is naturally and divinely

infinite good. How, then, can this conclusion change,

or be changed, to mean that good is evil, or the creator

Page 27

1 of evil? What can there be besides infinity? Nothing!

Therefore the Science of good calls evil nothing. In

3 divine Science the terms God and good, as Spirit, are

synonymous. That God, good, creates evil, or aught

that can result in evil, - or that Spirit creates its oppo-

6 site, named matter, - are conclusions that destroy their

premise and prove themselves invalid. Here is where

Christian Science sticks to its text, and other systems

9 of religion abandon their own logic. Here also is found

the pith of the basal statement, the cardinal point in

Christian Science, that matter and evil (including all

12 inharmony, sin, disease, death) are unreal. Mortals

accept natural science, wherein no species ever pro-

duces its opposite. Then why not accept divine Sci-

15 ence on this ground? since the Scriptures maintain

this fact by parable and proof, asking, "Do men

gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" "Doth a

fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and

bitter?"

According to reason and revelation, evil and matter

21 are negation: for evil signifies the absence of good, God,

though God is ever present; and matter claims some-

thing besides God, when God is really All. Creation,

24 evolution, or manifestation, - being in and of Spirit,

Mind, and all that really is, - must be spiritual and

mental. This is Science, and is susceptible of proof.

But, say you, is a stone spiritual?

To erring material sense, No! but to unerring spiritual

sense, it is a small manifestation of Mind, a type of spirit-

ual substance, "the substance of things hoped for."

Mortals can know a stone as substance, only by first ad-

mitting that it is substantial. Take away the mortal sense

Page 28

1 of substance, and the stone itself would disappear, only

to reappear in the spiritual sense thereof. Matter can

3 neither see, hear, feel, taste, nor smell; having no sen-

sation of its own. Perception by the five personal senses

is mental, and dependent on the beliefs that mortals

6 entertain. Destroy the belief that you can walk, and

volition ceases; for muscles cannot move without mind.

Matter takes no cognizance of matter. In dreams, things

9 are only what mortal mind makes them; and the phe-

nomena of mortal life are as dreams; and this so-called

life is a dream soon told. In proportion as mortals turn

12 from this mortal and material dream, to the true sense

of reality, everlasting Life will be found to be the only

Life. That death does not destroy the beliefs of the flesh,

15 our Master proved to his doubting disciple, Thomas. Also,

he demonstrated that divine Science alone can overbear

materiality and mortality; and this great truth was shown

by his ascension after death, whereby he arose above

the illusion of matter.

The First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other

21 gods before me," suggests the inquiry, What meaneth

this Me, - Spirit, or matter? It certainly does not

signify a graven idol, and must mean Spirit. Then

24 the commandment means, Thou shalt recognize no

intelligence nor life in matter; and find neither pleasure

nor pain therein. The Master's practical knowledge

27 of this grand verity, together with his divine Love,

healed the sick and raised the dead. He literally

annulled the claims of physique and of physical law,

by the superiority of the higher law; hence his decla-

ration, "These signs shall follow them that believe; . . .

if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;

Page 29

1 they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall re-

cover."

3 Do you believe his words? I do, and that his prom-

ise is perpetual. Had it been applicable only to his

immediate disciples, the pronoun would be you, not them.

6 The purpose of his life-work touches universal human-

ity. At another time he prayed, not for the twelve

only, but "for them also which shall believe on me through

their word."

The Christ-healing was practised even before the Chris-

tian era; "the Word was with God, and the Word was

12 God." There is, however, no analogy between Christian

Science and spiritualism, or between it and any specu-

lative theory.

15 In 1867, I taught the first student in Christian Science.

Since that date I have known of but fourteen deaths

in the ranks of my about five thousand students. The

18 census since 1875 (the date of the first publication of

my work, "Science and Health with Key to the Scrip-

tures") shows that longevity has increased. Daily letters

21 inform me that a perusal of my volume is healing the

writers of chronic and acute diseases that had defied medi-

cal skill.

24 Surely the people of the Occident know that esoteric

magic and Oriental barbarisms will neither flavor Chris-

tianity nor advance health and length of days.

27 Miracles are no infraction of God's laws; on the

contrary, they fulfil His laws; for they are the signs fol-

lowing Christianity, whereby matter is proven power-

less and subordinate to Mind. Christians, like students

in mathematics, should be working up to those higher

rules of Life which Jesus taught and proved. Do we

Page 30

1 really understand the divine Principle of Christianity

before we prove it, in at least some feeble demonstra-

3 tion thereof, according to Jesus' example in healing the

sick? Should we adopt the "simple addition" in Chris-

tian Science and doubt its higher rules, or despair of

ultimately reaching them, even though failing at first to

demonstrate all the possibilities of Christianity?

St. John spiritually discerned and revealed the sum

9 total of transcendentalism. He saw the real earth and

heaven. They were spiritual, not material; and they

were without pain, sin, or death. Death was not the

12 door to this heaven. The gates thereof he declared were

inlaid with pearl, - likening them to the priceless under-

standing of man's real existence, to be recognized here

and now.

The great Way-shower illustrated Life unconfined, un-

contaminated, untrammelled, by matter. He proved the

18 superiority of Mind over the flesh, opened the door to

the captive, and enabled man to demonstrate the law of

Life, which St. Paul declares "hath made me free from

the law of sin and death."

The stale saying that Christian Science "is neither

Christian nor science!" is to-day the fossil of wisdom-

less wit, weakness, and superstition. "The fool hath

said in his heart, There is no God."

Take courage, dear reader, for any seeming mysti-

cism surrounding realism is explained in the Scripture,

"There went up a mist from the earth [matter];" and

the mist of materialism will vanish as we approach spirit-

30 uality, the realm of reality; cleanse our lives in Christ's

righteousness; bathe in the baptism of Spirit, and awake

in His likeness.

Page 31

CHAPTER III

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

What do you consider to be mental malpractice?

MENTAL malpractice is a bland denial of Truth,

3 and is the antipode of Christian Science. To

mentally argue in a manner that can disastrously

affect the happiness of a fellow-being - harm him

6 morally, physically, or spiritually - breaks the Golden

Rule and subverts the scientific laws of being. This,

therefore, is not the use but the abuse of mental treat-

9 ment, and is mental malpractice. It is needless to

say that such a subversion of right is not scientific. Its

claim to power is in proportion to the faith in evil, and

12 consequently to the lack of faith in good. Such false

faith finds no place in, and receives no aid from, the

Principle or the rules of Christian Science; for it denies

the grand verity of this Science, namely, that God, good,

has all power.

This leaves the individual no alternative but to re-

18 linquish his faith in evil, or to argue against his own

convictions of good and so destroy his power to be or

to do good, because he has no faith in the omnipotence

of God, good. He parts with his understanding of good,

in order to retain his faith in evil and so succeed with his

Page 32

1 wrong argument, - if indeed he desires success in this

broad road to destruction.

3 How shall we demean ourselves towards the students

of disloyal students? And what about that clergyman's

remarks on "Christ and Christmas"?

6 From this question, I infer that some of my students

seem not to know in what manner they should act towards

the students of false teachers, or such as have strayed

9 from the rules and divine Principle of Christian Science.

The query is abnormal, when "precept upon precept;

line upon line" are to be found in the Scriptures, and in

my books, on this very subject.

In Mark, ninth chapter, commencing at the thirty-

third verse, you will find my views on this subject; love

15 alone is admissible towards friend and foe. My sym-

pathies extend to the above-named class of students more

than to many others. If I had the time to talk with all

18 students of Christian Science, and correspond with them,

I would gladly do my best towards helping those un-

fortunate seekers after Truth whose teacher is straying

21 from the straight and narrow path. But I have not mo-

ments enough in which to give to my own flock all the

time and attention that they need, - and charity must

begin at home.

Distinct denominational and social organizations and

societies are at present necessary for the individual,

27 and for our Cause. But all people can and should be

just, merciful; they should never envy, elbow, slander,

hate, or try to injure, but always should try to bless their

fellow-mortals.

To the query in regard to some clergyman's com-

Page 33

1 ments on my illustrated poem, I will say: It is the righteous

prayer that avails with God. Whatever is wrong will

3 receive its own reward. The high priests of old caused

the crucifixion of even the great Master; and thereby

they lost, and he won, heaven. I love all ministers and

ministries of Christ, Truth.

All clergymen may not understand the illustrations

in "Christ and Christmas;" or that these refer not to

9 personality, but present the type and shadow of Truth's

appearing in the womanhood as well as in the manhood

of God, our divine Father and Mother.

Must I have faith in Christian Science in order to be

healed by it?

This is a question that is being asked every day. It

15 has not proved impossible to heal those who, when they

began treatment, had no faith whatever in the Science,

- other than to place themselves under my care, and

18 follow the directions given. Patients naturally gain con-

fidence in Christian Science as they recognize the help

they derive therefrom.

What are the advantages of your system of healing, over

the ordinary methods of healing disease?

Healing by Christian Science has the following ad-

vantages: -

First: It does away with all material medicines, and

recognizes the fact that, as mortal mind is the cause of

27 all "the ills that flesh is heir to," the antidote for sickness,

as well as for sin, may and must be found in mortal mind's

opposite, - the divine Mind.

Second: It is more effectual than drugs; curing where

Page 34

1 these fail, and leaving none of the harmful "after effects"

of these in the system; thus proving that metaphysics

is above physics.

Third: One who has been healed by Christian Sci-

ence is not only healed of the disease, but is improved

6 morally. The body is governed by mind; and mortal

mind must be improved, before the body is renewed

and harmonious, - since the physique is simply thought

made manifest.

Is spiritualism or mesmerism included in Christian

Science?

12 They are wholly apart from it. Christian Science is

based on divine Principle; whereas spiritualism, so far

as I understand it, is a mere speculative opinion and

15 human belief. If the departed were to communicate

with us, we should see them as they were before death,

and have them with us; after death, they can no more

18 come to those they have left, than we, in our present state

of existence, can go to the departed or the adult can re-

turn to his boyhood. We may pass on to their state

21 of existence, but they cannot return to ours. Man is

im-mortal, and there is not a moment when he ceases to

exist. All that are called "communications from spirits,"

24 lie within the realm of mortal thought on this present plane

of existence, and are the antipodes of Christian Science;

the immortal and mortal are as direct opposites as light

and darkness.

Who is the Founder of mental healing?

The author of "Science and Health with Key to the

Scriptures," who discovered the Science of healing em-

Page 35

1 bodied in her works. Years of practical proof, through

homoeopathy, revealed to her the fact that Mind, in-

3 stead of matter, is the Principle of pathology; and

subsequently her recovery, through the supremacy of

Mind over matter, from a severe casualty pronounced

6 by the physicians incurable, sealed that proof with the

signet of Christian Science. In 1883, a million of peo-

ple acknowledge and attest the blessings of this mental

9 system of treating disease. Perhaps the following

words of her husband, the late Dr. Asa G. Eddy,

afford the most concise, yet complete, summary of the

matter: -

"Mrs. Eddy's works are the outgrowths of her life.

I never knew so unselfish an individual."

15 Will the book Science and Health, that you offer for sale

at three dollars, teach its readers to heal the sick, - or is

one obliged to become a student under your personal in-

struction? And if one is obliged to study under you, of

what benefit is your book?

Why do we read the Bible, and then go to church to

21 hear it expounded? Only because both are important.

Why do we read moral science, and then study it at

college?

24 You are benefited by reading Science and Health, but

it is greatly to your advantage to be taught its Science

by the author of that work, who explains it in detail.

What is immortal Mind?

In reply, we refer you to "Science and Health with

Key to the Scriptures,"(1) Vol. I. page 14: "That which

(1) See the sixth edition.

Page 36

1 is erring, sinful, sick, and dying, termed material or

mortal man, is neither God's man nor Mind; but to be

3 understood, we shall classify evil and error as mortal

mind, in contradistinction to good and Truth, or the

Mind which is immortal."

Do animals and beasts have a mind?

Beasts, as well as men, express Mind as their origin;

but they manifest less of Mind. The first and only

9 cause is the eternal Mind, which is God, and there is

but one God. The ferocious mind seen in the beast is

mortal mind, which is harmful and proceeds not from

12 God; for His beast is the lion that lieth down with

the lamb. Appetites, passions, anger, revenge, subtlety,

are the animal qualities of sinning mortals; and the

15 beasts that have these propensities express the lower

qualities of the so-called animal man; in other words,

the nature and quality of mortal mind, - not immortal

Mind.

What is the distinction between mortal mind and im-

mortal Mind?

21 Mortal mind includes all evil, disease, and death;

also, all beliefs relative to the so-called material laws,

and all material objects, and the law of sin and death.

24 The Scripture says, "The carnal mind [in other words,

mortal mind] is enmity against God; for it is not sub-

ject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Mortal

27 mind is an illusion; as much in our waking moments

as in the dreams of sleep. The belief that intelligence,

Truth, and Love, are in matter and separate from God,

is an error; for there is no intelligent evil, and no power

Page 37

1 besides God, good. God would not be omnipotent if

there were in reality another mind creating or governing

man or the universe.

Immortal Mind is God; and this Mind is made

manifest in all thoughts and desires that draw man-

kind toward purity, health, holiness, and the spiritual

facts of being.

Jesus recognized this relation so clearly that he said,

9 "I and my Father are one." In proportion as we oppose

the belief in material sense, in sickness, sin, and death,

and recognize ourselves under the control of God,

12 spiritual and immortal Mind, shall we go on to leave the

animal for the spiritual, and learn the meaning of those

words of Jesus, "Go ye into all the world . . . heal the

sick."

Can your Science cure intemperance?

Christian Science lays the axe at the root of the tree.

18 Its antidote for all ills is God, the perfect Mind, which

corrects mortal thought, whence cometh all evil. God

can and does destroy the thought that leads to moral

21 or physical death. Intemperance, impurity, sin of every

sort, is destroyed by Truth. The appetite for alcohol

yields to Science as directly and surely as do sickness

and sin.

Does Mrs. Eddy take patients?

She now does not. Her time is wholly devoted to in-

struction, leaving to her students the work of healing;

which, at this hour, is in reality the least difficult of the

labor that Christian Science demands.

Page 38

1 Why do you charge for teaching Christian Science, when

all the good we can do must be done freely?

3 When teaching imparts the ability to gain and main-

tain health, to heal and elevate man in every line of

life, - as this teaching certainly does, - is it un-

6 reasonable to expect in return something to support

one's self and a Cause? If so, our whole system

of education, secular and religious, is at fault, and the

9 instructors and philanthropists in our land should ex-

pect no compensation. "If we have sown unto you

spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your

carnal things ?"

How happened you to establish a college to instruct in

metaphysics, when other institutions find little interest in

such a dry and abstract subject?

Metaphysics, as taught by me at the Massachusetts

Metaphysical College, is far from dry and abstract. It

18 is a Science that has the animus of Truth. Its practical

application to benefit the race, heal the sick, enlighten

and reform the sinner, makes divine metaphysics need-

21 ful, indispensable. Teaching metaphysics at other col-

leges means, mainly, elaborating a man-made theory,

or some speculative view too vapory and hypothetical

for questions of practical import.

Is it necessary to study your Science in order to be healed

by it and keep well?

It is not necessary to make each patient a student

in order to cure his present disease, if this is what

you mean. Were it so, the Science would be of less

Page 39

1 practical value. Many who apply for help are not

prepared to take a course of instruction in Christian

Science.

To avoid being subject to disease, would require the

understanding of how you are healed. In 1885, this

6 knowledge can be obtained in its genuineness at the

Massachusetts Metaphysical College. There are abroad

at this early date some grossly incorrect and false

9 teachers of what they term Christian Science; of such

beware. They have risen up in a day to make this claim;

whereas the Founder of genuine Christian Science has

been all her years in giving it birth. .

Can you take care of yourself ?

God giveth to every one this puissance; and I have

15 faith in His promise, "Lo, I am with you alway" -

all the way. Unlike the M. D.'s, Christian Scientists

are not afraid to take their own medicine, for this

18 medicine is divine Mind; and from this saving, ex-

haustless source they intend to fill the human mind with

enough of the leaven of Truth to leaven the whole lump.

21 There may be exceptional cases, where one Christian

Scientist who has more to meet than others needs support

at times; then, it is right to bear "one another's burdens,

and so fulfil the law of Christ."

In what way is a Christian Scientist an instrument by

which God reaches others to heal them, and what most

obstructs the way?

A Christian, or a Christian Scientist, assumes no more

when claiming to work with God in healing the sick,

than in converting the sinner. Divine help is as neces-

Page 40

1 sary in the one case as in the other. The scientific Prin-

ciple of healing demands such cooperation; but this

3 unison and its power would be arrested if one were to

mix material methods with the spiritual, - were to min-

gle hygienic rules, drugs, and prayers in the same pro-

6 cess, - and thus serve "other gods." Truth is as

effectual in destroying sickness as in the destruction

of sin.

9 It is often asked, "If Christian Science is the same

method of healing that Jesus and the apostles used,

why do not its students perform as instantaneous cures

as did those in the first century of the Christian era?"

In some instances the students of Christian Science

equal the ancient prophets as healers. All true healing

15 is governed by, and demonstrated on, the same Princi-

ple as theirs; namely, the action of the divine Spirit,

through the power of Truth to destroy error, discord

18 of whatever sort. The reason that the same results fol-

low not in every case, is that the student does not in

every case possess sufficiently the Christ-spirit and its

21 power to cast out the disease. The Founder of Chris-

tian Science teaches her students that they must possess

the spirit of Truth and Love, must gain the power

over sin in themselves, or they cannot be instantaneous

healers.

In this Christian warfare the student or practitioner

27 has to master those elements of evil too common to other

minds. If it is hate that is holding the purpose to kill

his patient by mental means, it requires more divine

understanding to conquer this sin than to nullify either

the disease itself or the ignorance by which one unin-

tentionally harms himself or another. An element of

Page 41

1 brute-force that only the cruel and evil can send forth, is

given vent in the diabolical practice of one who, having

3 learned the power of liberated thought to do good, per-

verts it, and uses it to accomplish an evil purpose. This

mental malpractice would disgrace Mind-healing, were it

6 not that God overrules it, and causes "the wrath of man"

to praise Him. It deprives those who practise it of the

power to heal, and destroys their own possibility of

progressing.

The honest student of Christian Science is purged

through Christ, Truth, and thus is ready for victory in

12 the ennobling strife. The good fight must be fought by

those who keep the faith and finish their course. Mental

purgation must go on: it promotes spiritual growth,

scales the mountain of human endeavor, and gains the

summit in Science that otherwise could not be reached,

- where the struggle with sin is forever done.

18 Can all classes of disease be healed by your method?

We answer, Yes. Mind is the architect that builds

its own idea, and produces all harmony that appears.

21 There is no other healer in the case. If mortal mind,

through the action of fear, manifests inflammation and a

belief of chronic or acute disease, by removing the cause

24 in that so-called mind the effect or disease will disappear

and health will be restored; for health, alias harmony,

is the normal manifestation of man in Science. The

27 divine Principle which governs the universe, including

man, if demonstrated, is sufficient for all emergencies.

But the practitioner may not always prove equal to

bringing out the result of the Principle that he knows to

be true.

Page 42

1 After the change called death takes place, do we meet

those gone before? - or does life continue in thought only

as in a dream?

Man is not annihilated, nor does he lose his identity,

by passing through the belief called death. After the

6 momentary belief of dying passes from mortal mind, this

mind is still in a conscious state of existence; and the in-

dividual has but passed through a moment of extreme

9 mortal fear, to awaken with thoughts, and being, as

material as before. Science and Health clearly states

that spiritualization of thought is not attained by the death

12 of the body, but by a conscious union with God. When

we shall have passed the ordeal called death, or destroyed

this last enemy, and shall have come upon the same plane

of conscious existence with those gone before, then we

shall be able to communicate with and to recognize them.

If, before the change whereby we meet the dear de-

18 parted, our life-work proves to have been well done, we

shall not have to repeat it; but our joys and means of ad-

vancing will be proportionately increased.

21 The difference between a belief of material existence

and the spiritual fact of Life is, that the former is a dream

and unreal, while the latter is real and eternal. Only

24 as we understand God, and learn that good, not evil,

lives and is immortal, that immortality exists only in

spiritual perfection, shall we drop our false sense of Life

in sin or sense material, and recognize a better state of

existence.

Can I be treated without being present during treatment?

Mind is not confined to limits; and nothing but our

own false admissions prevent us from demonstrating this

Page 43

1 great fact. Christian Science, recognizing the capabili-

ties of Mind to act of itself, and independent of matter,

3 enables one to heal cases without even having seen the

individual, - or simply after having been made ac-

quainted with the mental condition of the patient.

Do all who at present claim to be teaching Christian

Science, teach it correctly?

By no means: Christian Science is not sufficiently un-

9 derstood for that. The student of this Science who under-

stands it best, is the one least likely to pour into other

minds a trifling sense of it as being adequate to make safe

12 and successful practitioners. The simple sense one gains

of this Science through careful, unbiased, contemplative

reading of my books, is far more advantageous to the

15 sick and to the learner than is or can be the spurious

teaching of those who are spiritually unqualified. The

sad fact at this early writing is, that the letter is gained

18 sooner than the spirit of Christian Science: time is re-

quired thoroughly to qualify students for the great ordeal

of this century.

21 If one student tries to undermine another, such sinister

rivalry does a vast amount of injury to the Cause. To

fill one's pocket at the expense of his conscience, or to

24 build on the downfall of others, incapacitates one to

practise or teach Christian Science. The occasional tem-

porary success of such an one is owing, in part, to the im-

27 possibility for those unacquainted with the mighty Truth

of Christian Science to recognize, as such, the barefaced

errors that are taught - and the damaging effects these

leave on the practice of the learner, on the Cause, and

on the health of the community.

Page 44

1 Honest students speak the truth "according to the

pattern showed to thee in the mount," and live it: these

3 are not working for emoluments, and may profitably

teach people, who are ready to investigate this subject,

the rudiments of Christian Science.

Can Christian Science cure acute cases where there is

necessity for immediate relief, as in membranous croup?

The remedial power of Christian Science is positive,

9 and its application direct. It cannot fail to heal in

every case of disease, when conducted by one who un-

derstands this Science sufficiently to demonstrate its

highest possibilities.

If I have the toothache, and nothing stops it until I

have the tooth extracted, and then the pain ceases, has

the mind, or extracting, or both, caused the pain to

cease?

What you thought was pain in the bone or nerve, could

18 only have been a belief of pain in matter; for matter

has no sensation. It was a state of mortal thought made

manifest in the flesh. You call this body matter, when

21 awake, or when asleep in a dream. That matter can re-

port pain, or that mind is in matter, reporting sensa-

tions, is but a dream at all times. You believed that if

24 the tooth were extracted, the pain would cease: this de-

mand of mortal thought once met, your belief assumed

a new form, and said, There is no more pain. When

your belief in pain ceases, the pain stops; for matter

has no intelligence of its own. By applying this men-

tal remedy or antidote directly to your belief, you scien-

Page 45

1 tifically prove the fact that Mind is supreme. This is not

done by will-power, for that is not Science but mesmerism.

3 The full understanding that God is Mind, and that mat-

ter is but a belief, enables you to control pain. Chris-

tian Science, by means of its Principle of metaphysical

6 healing, is able to do more than to heal a toothache;

although its power to allay fear, prevent inflammation,

and destroy the necessity for ether - thereby avoiding

9 the fatal results that frequently follow the use of that

drug - render this Science invaluable in the practice

of dentistry.

Can an atheist or a profane man be cured by metaphysics,

or Christian Science?

The moral status of the man demands the remedy of

15 Truth more in this than in most cases; therefore, under

the deific law that supply invariably meets demand, this

Science is effectual in treating moral ailments. Sin is

18 not the master of divine Science, but vice versa; and

when Science in a single instance decides the conflict,

the patient is better both morally and physically.

If God made all that was made, and it was good, where

did evil originate?

It never originated or existed as an entity. It is but a

24 false belief; even the belief that God is not what the

Scriptures imply Him to be, All-in-all, but that there

is an opposite intelligence or mind termed evil. This

error of belief is idolatry, having "other gods before me."

In John i. 3 we read, "All things were made by Him;

and without Him was not anything made that was made. "

Page 46

1 The admission of the reality of evil perpetuates the belief

or faith in evil. The Scriptures declare, "To whom ye

3 yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are."

The leading self-evident proposition of Christian Science

is: good being real, evil, good's opposite, is unreal. This

6 truism needs only to be tested scientifically to be found

true, and adapted to destroy the appearance of evil to an

extent beyond the power of any doctrine previously

entertained.

Do you teach that you are equal with God?

A reader of my writings would not present this ques-

12 tion. There are no such indications in the premises or

conclusions of Christian Science, and such a misconcep-

tion of Truth is not scientific. Man is not equal with

15 his Maker; that which is formed is not cause, but effect,

and has no power underived from its creator. It is pos-

sible, and it is man's duty, so to throw the weight of his

18 thoughts and acts on the side of Truth, that he be ever

found in the scale with his creator; not weighing

equally with Him, but comprehending at every point, in

21 divine Science, the full significance of what the apostle

meant by the declaration, "The Spirit itself beareth wit-

ness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and

24 if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with

Christ." In Science, man represents his divine Prin-

ciple, - the Life and Love that are God, - even as the

27 idea of sound, in tones, represents harmony; but thought

has not yet wholly attained unto the Science of being,

wherein man is perfect even as the Father, his divine

Principle, is perfect.

Page 47

1 How can I believe that there is no such thing as matter,

when I weigh over two hundred pounds and carry about

this weight daily?

By learning that matter is but manifest mortal mind.

You entertain an adipose belief of your self as substance;

6 whereas, substance means more than matter: it is the

glory and permanence of Spirit: it is that which is

hoped for but unseen, that which the material senses

9 cannot take in. Have you never been so preoccupied in

thought when moving your body, that you did this with-

out consciousness of its weight? If never in your waking

12 hours, you have been in your night-dreams; and these

tend to elucidate your day-dream, or the mythical nature

of matter, and the possibilities of mind when let loose

15 from its own beliefs. In sleep, a sense of the body ac-

companies thought with less impediment than when

awake, which is the truer sense of being. In Science,

18 body is the servant of Mind, not its master: Mind is

supreme. Science reverses the evidence of material

sense with the spiritual sense that God, Spirit, is the only

21 substance; and that man, His image and likeness, is

spiritual, not material. This great Truth does not de-

stroy but substantiates man's identity, - together with

24 his immortality and preexistence, or his spiritual co-

existence with his Maker. That which has a beginning

must have an ending.

What should one conclude as to Professor Carpenter's

exhibitions of mesmerism?

That largely depends upon what one accepts as either

useful or true. I have no knowledge of mesmerism,

Page 48

1 practically or theoretically, save as I measure its demon-

strations as a false belief, and avoid all that works ill. If

3 mesmerism has the power attributed to it by the gentle-

man referred to, it should neither be taught nor practised,

but should be conscientiously condemned. One thing

6 is quite apparent; namely, that its so-called power is

despotic, and Mr. Carpenter deserves praise for his public

exposure of it. If such be its power, I am opposed to it,

9 as to every form of error, - whether of ignorance or

fanaticism, prompted by money-making or malice. It

is enough for me to know that animal magnetism is neither

of God nor Science.

It is alleged that at one of his recent lectures in Bos-

ton Mr. Carpenter made a man drunk on water, and

15 then informed his audience that he could produce the

effect of alcohol, or of any drug, on the human system,

through the action of mind alone. This honest declara-

18 tion as to the animus of animal magnetism and the pos-

sible purpose to which it can be devoted, has, we trust,

been made in season to open the eyes of the people to the

hidden nature of some tragic events and sudden deaths

at this period.

Was ever a person made insane by studying meta-

physics?

Such an occurrence would be impossible, for the

proper study of Mind-healing would cure the insane.

27 That persons have gone away from the Massachusetts

Metaphysical College "made insane by Mrs. Eddy's

teachings," like a hundred other stories, is a baseless

fabrication offered solely to injure her or her school.

The enemy is trying to make capital out of the follow-

Page 49

1 ing case. A young lady entered the College class who,

I quickly saw, had a tendency to monomania, and re-

3 quested her to withdraw before its close. We are cred-

ibly informed that, before entering the College, this

young lady had manifested some mental unsoundness,

6 and have no doubt she could have been restored by

Christian Science treatment. Her friends employed a

homoeopathist, who had the skill and honor to state, as his

9 opinion given to her friends, that "Mrs. Eddy's teach-

ings had not produced insanity." This is the only case

that could be distorted into the claim of insanity ever

12 having occurred in a class of Mrs. Eddy's; while ac-

knowledged and notable cases of insanity have been

cured in her class.

15 If all that is mortal is a dream or error, is not

our capacity for formulating a dream, real; is it not

God-made; and if God-made, can it be wrong, sinful, or

an error?

The spirit of Truth leads into all truth, and enables

man to discern between the real and the unreal. Enter-

21 taining the common belief in the opposite of goodness,

and that evil is as real as good, opposes the leadings of

the divine Spirit that are helping man Godward: it pre-

24 vents a recognition of the nothingness of the dream, or

belief, that Mind is in matter, intelligence in non-intel-

ligence, sin, and death. This belief presupposes not

27 only a power opposed to God, and that God is not All-

in-all, as the Scriptures imply Him to be, but that the

capacity to err proceeds from God.

That God is Truth, the Scriptures aver; that Truth

never created error, or such a capacity, is self-evident;

Page 50

1 that God made all that was made, is again Scriptural;

therefore your answer is, that error is an illusion of

mortals; that God is not its author, and it cannot be

real.

Does "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"

6 explain the entire method of metaphysical healing, or is

there a secret back of what is contained in that book, as

some say?

9 "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"

is a complete textbook of Christian Science; and its

metaphysical method of healing is as lucid in presenta-

12 tion as can be possible, under the necessity to express

the metaphysical in physical terms. There is absolutely

no additional secret outside of its teachings, or that gives

16 one the power to heal; but it is essential that the student

gain the spiritual understanding of the contents of this

book, in order to heal.

Do you believe in change of heart?

We do believe, and understand - which is more -

that there must be a change from human affections, de-

21 sires, and aims, to the divine standard, "Be ye therefore

perfect;" also, that there must be a change from the be-

lief that the heart is matter and sustains life, to the

24 understanding that God is our Life, that we exist in

Mind, live thereby, and have being. This change of

heart would deliver man from heart-disease, and ad-

27 vance Christianity a hundredfold. The human affections

need to be changed from self to benevolence and love

for God and man; changed to having but one God and

loving Him supremely, and helping our brother man.

Page 51

1 This change of heart is essential to Christianity, and

will have its effect physically as well as spiritually,

healing disease. Burnt offerings and drugs, God does

not require.

Is a belief of nervousness, accompanied by great mental

depression, mesmerism?

All mesmerism is of one of three kinds; namely, the

ignorant, the fraudulent, or the malicious workings of

9 error or mortal mind. We have not the particulars of

the case to which you may refer, and for this reason can-

not answer your question professionally.

How can I govern a child metaphysically? Doesn't the

use of the rod teach him life in matter?

The use of the rod is virtually a declaration to the

15 child's mind that sensation belongs to matter. Motives

govern acts, and Mind governs man. If you make clear

to the child's thought the right motives for action, and

18 cause him to love them, they will lead him aright: if you

educate him to love God, good, and obey the Golden

Rule, he will love and obey you without your having to

resort to corporeal punishment.

"When from the lips of Truth one mighty breath

Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze

24 The whole dark pile of human mockeries;

Then shall the reign of Mind commence on earth,

And starting fresh, as from a second birth,

Man in the sunshine of the world's new spring,

Shall walk transparent like some holy thing."

Are both prayer and drugs necessary to heal?

The apostle James said, "Ye ask, and receive not,

because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your

Page 52

1 lusts." This text may refer to such as seek the material

to aid the spiritual, and take drugs to support God's

3 power to heal them. It is difficult to say how much

one can do for himself, whose faith is divided be-

tween catnip and Christ; but not so difficult to know

6 that if he were to serve one master, he could do vastly

more. Whosoever understands the power of Spirit, has

no doubt of God's power, - even the might of Truth, -

to heal, through divine Science, beyond all human means

and methods.

What do you think of marriage?

12 That it is often convenient, sometimes pleasant, and

occasionally a love affair. Marriage is susceptible of

many definitions. It sometimes presents the most

15 wretched condition of human existence. To be normal,

it must be a union of the affections that tends to lift

mortals higher.

18 If this life is a dream not dispelled, but only changed,

by death, - if one gets tired of it, why not commit

suicide?

21 Man's existence is a problem to be wrought in divine

Science. What progress would a student of science

make, if, when tired of mathematics or failing to dem-

24 onstrate one rule readily, he should attempt to work

out a rule farther on and more difficult - and this,

because the first rule was not easily demonstrated? In

27 that case he would be obliged to turn back and work

out the previous example, before solving the advanced

problem. Mortals have the sum of being to work out,

and up, to its spiritual standpoint. They must work

Page 53

1 out of this dream or false claim of sensation and life

in matter, and up to the spiritual realities of existence,

3 before this false claim can be wholly dispelled. Com-

mitting suicide to dodge the question is not working

it out. The error of supposed life and intelligence in

6 matter, is dissolved only as we master error with Truth.

Not through sin or suicide, but by overcoming tempta-

tion and sin, shall we escape the weariness and wicked-

ness of mortal existence, and gain heaven, the harmony

of being.

Do you sometimes find it advisable to use medicine to

assist in producing a cure, when it is difficult to start the

patient's recovery?

You only weaken your power to heal through Mind,

15 by any compromise with matter; which is virtually ac-

knowledging that under difficulties the former is not equal

to the latter. He that resorts to physics, seeks what is

18 below instead of above the standard of metaphysics;

showing his ignorance of the meaning of the term and

of Christian Science.

If Christian Science is the same as Jesus taught, why is

it not more simple, so that all can readily understand it?

The teachings of Jesus were simple; and yet he found

24 it difficult to make the rulers understand, because of

their great lack of spirituality. Christian Science is

simple, and readily understood by the children; only

27 the thought educated away from it finds it abstract or

difficult to perceive. Its seeming abstraction is the

mystery of godliness; and godliness is simple to the

godly; but to the unspiritual, the ungodly, it is dark

Page 54

1 and difficult. The carnal mind cannot discern spiritual

things.

Has Mrs. Eddy lost her power to heal?

Has the sun forgotten to shine, and the planets to

revolve around it? Who is it that discovered, dem-

6 onstrated, and teaches Christian Science? That one,

whoever it be, does understand something of what can-

not be lost. Thousands in the field of metaphysical

9 healing, whose lives are worthy testimonials, are her

students, and they bear witness to this fact. Instead

of losing her power to heal, she is demonstrating the

12 power of Christian Science over all obstacles that envy

and malice would fling in her path. The reading of her

book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,"

is curing hundreds at this very time; and the sick, un-

asked, are testifying thereto.

Must I study your Science in order to keep well all my

life? I was healed of a chronic trouble after one month's

treatment by one of your students.

When once you are healed by Science, there is no rea-

21 son why you should be liable to a return of the disease

that you were healed of. But not to be subject again to

any disease whatsoever, would require an understanding

of the Science by which you were healed.

Because none of your students have been able to perform

as great miracles in healing as Jesus and his disciples did,

does it not suggest the possibility that they do not heal on

the same basis?

You would not ask the pupil in simple equations to

solve a problem involving logarithms; and then, because

Page 55

1 he failed to get the right answer, condemn the pupil

and the science of numbers. The simplest problem

3 in Christian Science is healing the sick, and the least

understanding and demonstration thereof prove all its

possibilities. The ability to demonstrate to the extent

6 that Jesus did, will come when the student possesses as

much of the divine Spirit as he shared, and utilizes its

power to overcome sin.

9 Opposite to good, is the universal claim of evil that

seeks the proportions of good. There may be those

who, having learned the power of the unspoken thought,

12 use it to harm rather than to heal, and who are using

that power against Christian Scientists. This giant sin

is the sin against the Holy Ghost spoken of in Matt.

xii. 31, 32.

Is Christian Science based on the facts of both Spirit

and matter?

18 Christian Science is based on the facts of Spirit and

its forms and representations, but these facts are the

direct antipodes of the so-called facts of matter; and

21 the eternal verities of Spirit assert themselves over their

opposite, or matter, in the final destruction of all that

is unlike Spirit.

24 Man knows that he can have one God only, when

he regards God as the only Mind, Life, and substance.

If God is Spirit, as the Scriptures declare, and All-in-

all, matter is mythology, and its laws are mortal

beliefs.

If Mind is in matter and beneath a skull bone, it is

in something unlike Him; hence it is either a godless and

material Mind, or it is God in matter, - which are theo-

Page 56

1 ries of agnosticism and pantheism, the very antipodes

of Christian Science.

What is organic life?

Life is inorganic, infinite Spirit; if Life, or Spirit,

were organic, disorganization would destroy Spirit and

annihilate man.

If Mind is not substance, form, and tangibility, God

is substanceless; for the substance of Spirit is divine

Mind. Life is God, the only creator, and Life is im-

mortal Mind, not matter.

Every indication of matter's constituting life is mortal,

12 the direct opposite of immortal Life, and infringes the

rights of Spirit. Then, to conclude that Spirit consti-

tutes or ever has constituted laws to that effect, is a mor-

15 tal error, a human conception opposed to the divine

government. Mind and matter mingling in perpetual

warfare is a kingdom divided against itself, that shall be

18 brought to desolation. The final destruction of this

false belief in matter will appear at the full revelation

of Spirit, - one God, and the brotherhood of man.

21 Organic life is an error of statement that Truth destroys.

The Science of Life needs only to be understood; its dem-

onstration proves the correctness of my statements, and

brings blessings infinite.

Why did God command, "Be fruitful, and multiply,

and replenish the earth," if all minds (men) have existed

from the beginning, and have had successive stages of

existence to the present time?

Your question implies that Spirit, which first spirit-

ually created the universe, including man, created man

Page 57

1 over again materially; and, by the aid of mankind, all

was later made which He had made. If the first record

3 is true, what evidence have you - apart from the evi-

dence of that which you admit cannot discern spiritual

things - of any other creation? The creative "Us"

6 made all, and Mind was the creator. Man originated

not from dust, materially, but from Spirit, spiritually.

This work had been done; the true creation was finished,

and its spiritual Science is alluded to in the first chapter

of Genesis.

Jesus said of error, "That thou doest, do quickly."

12 By the law of opposites, after the truth of man had been

demonstrated, the postulate of error must appear. That

this addendum was untrue, is seen when Truth, God,

15 denounced it, and said: "I will greatly multiply thy

sorrow." "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt

surely die." The opposite error said, "I am true," and

18 declared, "God doth know . . . that your eyes shall be

opened, and ye shall be as gods," creators. This was false;

and the Lord God never said it. This history of a falsity

21 must be told in the name of Truth, or it would have no

seeming. The Science of creation is the universe with man

created spiritually. The false sense and error of creation

is the sense of man and the universe created materially.

Why does the record make man a creation of the sixth

and last day, if he was coexistent with God?

27 In its genesis, the Science of creation is stated in mathe-

matical order, beginning with the lowest form and ascend-

ing the scale of being up to man. But all that really is,

always was and forever is; for it existed in and of the Mind

that is God, wherein man is foremost.

Page 58

1 If one has died of consumption, and he has no remem-

brence of that disease or dream, does that disease have any

more power over him?

Waking from a dream, one learns its unreality; then

it has no power over one. Waking from the dream of

6 death, proves to him who thought he died that it was a

dream, and that he did not die; then he learns that con-

sumption did not kill him. When the belief in the power

of disease is destroyed, disease cannot return.

How does Mrs. Eddy know that she has read and studied

correctly, if one must deny the evidences of the senses?

She had to use her eyes to read.

Jesus said, "Having eyes, see ye not?" I read the in-

spired page through a higher than mortal sense. As

15 matter, the eye cannot see; and as mortal mind, it is a

belief that sees. I may read the Scriptures through a

belief of eyesight; but I must spiritually understand

them to interpret their Science.

Does the theology of Christien Science aid its heal-

ing?

21 Without its theology there is no mental science, no

order that proceeds from God. All Science is divine,

not human, in origin and demonstration. If God does

24 not govern the action of man, it is inharmonious: if He

does govern it, the action is Science. Take away the

theology of mental healing and you take away its science,

leaving it a human "mind-cure," nothing more nor less,

- even one human mind governing another; by which,

if you agree that God is Mind, you admit that there is

Page 59

1 more than one government and God. Having no true

sense of the healing theology of Mind, you can neither

3 understand nor demonstrate its Science, and will prac-

tise your belief of it in the name of Truth. This is the

mortal "mind-cure" that produces the effect of mes-

6 merism. It is using the power of human will, instead

of the divine power understood, as in Christian Science;

and without this Science there had better be no "mind-

cure," - in which the last state of patients is worse than

the first.

Is it wrong to pray for the recovery of the sick?

12 Not if we pray Scripturally, with the understanding

that God has given all things to those who love Him;

but pleading with infinite Love to love us, or to restore

15 health and harmony, and then to admit that it has been

lost under His government, is the prayer of doubt and

mortal belief that is unavailing in divine Science.

Is not all argument mind over mind?

The Scriptures refer to God as saying, "Come now, and

let us reason together." There is but one right Mind, and

21 that one should and does govern man. Any copartnership

with that Mind is impossible; and the only benefit in

speaking often one to another, arises from the success that

24 one individual has with another in leading his thoughts

away from the human mind or body, and guiding them

with Truth. That individual is the best healer who as-

serts himself the least, and thus becomes a transparency

for the divine Mind, who is the only physician; the divine

Mind is the scientific healer.

Page 60

1 How can you believe there is no sin, and that God does

not recognize any, when He sent His Son to save from

3 sin, and the Bible is addressed to sinners? How can you

believe there is no sickness, when Jesus came healing the

sick?

6 To regard sin, disease, and death with less deference,

and only as the woeful unrealities of being, is the only

way to destroy them; Christian Science is proving this by

9 healing cases of disease and sin after all other means have

failed. The Nazarene Prophet could make the unreality

of both apparent in a moment.

12 Does it not limit the power of Mind to deny the possi-

bility of communion with departed friends - dead only in

belief ?

15 Does it limit the power of Mind to say that addition

is not subtraction in mathematics ? The Science of Mind

reveals the impossibility of two individual sleepers, in

18 different phases of thought, communicating, even if touch-

ing each other corporeally; or for one who sleeps to

communicate with another who is awake. Mind's possi-

bilities are not lessened by being confined and conformed

to the Science of being.

If mortal mind and body are myths, what is the con-

nection between them and real identity, and why are there

as many identities as mortal bodies?

Evil in the beginning claimed the power, wisdom, and

27 utility of good; and every creation or idea of Spirit has

its counterfeit in some matter belief. Every material be-

lief hints the existence of spiritual reality; and if mortals

are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that ma-

Page 61

1 terial belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be

found the type and representative of verities priceless,

eternal, and just at hand.

The education of the future will be instruction, in spir-

itual Science, against the material symbolic counterfeit

6 sciences. All the knowledge and vain strivings of mortal

mind, that lead to death, - even when aping the wisdom

and magnitude of immortal Mind, - will be swallowed

up by the reality and omnipotence of Truth over error,

and of Life over death.

"Dear Mrs. Eddy: - In the October Journal I read

12 the following: 'But the real man, who was created in the

image of God, does not commit sin.' What then does sin?

What commits theft? Or who does murder? For instance,

15 the man is held responsible for the crime; for I went once

to a place where a man was said to be 'hanged for mur-

der' - and certainly I saw him, or his effigy, dangling

at the end of a rope. This 'man' was held responsible

for the 'sin.' "

What sins?

21 According to the Word, man is the image and likeness

of God. Does God's essential likeness sin, or dangle at

the end of a rope? If not, what does? A culprit, a sinner,

- anything but a man! Then, what is a sinner? A

mortal; but man is immortal.

Again: mortals are the embodiments (or bodies, if

27 you please) of error, not of Truth; of sickness, sin, and

death. Naming these His embodiment, can neither make

them so nor overthrow the logic that man is God's like-

ness. Mortals seem very material; man in the likeness

Page 62

1 of Spirit is spiritual. Holding the right idea of man in my

mind, I can improve my own, and other people's individ-

3 uality, health, and morals; whereas, the opposite image

of man, a sinner, kept constantly in mind, can no more

improve health or morals, than holding in thought the

form of a boa-constrictor can aid an artist in painting a

landscape.

Man is seen only in the true likeness of his Maker.

9 Believing a lie veils the truth from our vision; even as

in mathematics, in summing up positive and negative

quantities, the negative quantity offsets an equal positive

quantity, making the aggregate positive, or true quantity,

by that much, less available.

Why do Christian Scientists hold that their theology is

essential to heal the sick, when the mind-cure claims to heal

without it?

The theology of Christian Science is Truth; opposed

to which is the error of sickness, sin, and death, that

Truth destroys.

A "mind-cure" is a matter-cure. An adherent to this

21 method honestly acknowledges this fact in her work

entitled "Mind-cure on a Material Basis." In that

work the author grapples with Christian Science, attempts

24 to solve its divine Principle by the rule of human mind,

fails, and ends in a parody on this Science which is amus-

ing to astute readers, - especially when she tells them

that she is practising this Science.

The theology of Christian Science is based on the action

of the divine Mind over the human mind and body;

whereas, "mind-cure" rests on the notion that the human

mind can cure its own disease, or that which it causes,

Page 63

1 and the sickness of matter, - which is infidel in the one

case, and anomalous in the other. It was said of old by

3 Truth-traducers, that Jesus healed through Beelzebub;

but the claim that one erring mind cures another one was

at first gotten up to hinder his benign influence and to hide

his divine power.

Our Master understood that Life, Truth, Love are the

triune Principle of all pure theology; also, that this divine

trinity is one infinite remedy for the opposite triad, sick-

ness, sin, and death.

If there is no sin, why did Jesus come to save sinners?

12 If there is no reality in sickness, why does a Chris-

tian Scientist go to the bedside and address himself to

the healing of disease, on the basis of its unreality?

15 Jesus came to seek and to save such as believe in the

reality of the unreal; to save them from this false belief;

that they might lay hold of eternal Life, the great reality

18 that concerns man, and understand the final fact, - that

God is omnipotent and omnipresent; yea, "that the Lord

He is God; there is none else beside Him," as the Scrip-

tures declare.

If Christ was God, why did Jesus cry out, "My God,

why hast Thou forsaken me?"

24 Even as the struggling heart, reaching toward a higher

goal, appeals to its hope and faith, Why failest thou

me? Jesus as the son of man was human: Christ as

27 the Son of God was divine. This divinity was reaching

humanity through the crucifixion of the human, - that

momentous demonstration of God, in which Spirit proved

its supremacy over matter. Jesus assumed for mortals the

Page 64

1 weakness of flesh, that Spirit might be found "All-in-all."

Hence, the human cry which voiced that struggle;

3 thence, the way he made for mortals' escape. Our

Master bore the cross to show his power over death;

then relinquished his earth-task of teaching and dem-

6 onstrating the nothingness of sickness, sin, and death,

and rose to his native estate, man's indestructible eternal

life in God.

9 What can prospective students of the College take for

preliminary studies? Do you regard the study of litera-

ture and languages as objectionable?

12 Persons contemplating a course at the Massachusetts

Metaphysical College, can prepare for it through no

books except the Bible, and "Science and Health with

15 Key to the Scriptures." Man-made theories are nar-

row, else extravagant, and are always materialistic.

The ethics which guide thought spiritually must bene-

18 fit every one; for the only philosophy and religion that

afford instruction are those which deal with facts and

resist speculative opinions and fables.

21 Works on science are profitable; for science is not

human. It is spiritual, and not material. Literature

and languages, to a limited extent, are aids to a student

of the Bible and of Christian Science.

Is it possible to know why we are put into this condition

of mortality?

27 It is quite as possible to know wherefore man is thus

conditioned, as to be certain that he is in a state of

mortality. The only evidence of the existence of a mor-

tal man, or of a material state and universe, is gathered

Page 65

1 from the five personal senses. This delusive evidence,

Science has dethroned by repeated proofs of its falsity.

3 We have no more proof of human discord, - sin,

sickness, disease, or death, - than we have that the

earth's surface is flat, and her motions imaginary. If

6 man's ipse dixit as to the stellar system is correct, this

is because Science is true, and the evidence of the senses

is false. Then why not submit to the affirmations of

9 Science concerning the greater subject of human weal

and woe? Every question between Truth and error,

Science must and will decide. Left to the decision of

12 Science, your query concerns a negative which the posi-

tive Truth destroys; for God's universe and man are

immortal. We must not consider the false side of exist-

ence in order to gain the true solution of Life and its

great realities.

Have you changed your instructions as to the right way

of treating disease?

I have not; and this important fact must be, and al-

ready is, apprehended by those who understand my in-

21 structions on this question. Christian Science demands

both law and gospel, in order to demonstrate healing,

and I have taught them both in its demonstration, and

24 with signs following. They are a unit in restoring the

equipoise of mind and body, and balancing man's ac-

count with his Maker. The sequence proves that strict

27 adherence to one is inadequate to compensate for the

absence of the other, since both constitute the divine law

of healing.

The Jewish religion demands that "whoso sheddeth

man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." But this

Page 66

1 law is not infallible in wisdom; and obedience thereto

may be found faulty, since false testimony or mistaken

3 evidence may cause the innocent to suffer for the guilty.

Hence the gospel that fulfils the law in righteousness,

the genius whereof is displayed in the surprising wisdom

6 of these words of the New Testament: "Whatsoever

a man soweth, that shall he also reap." No possible

injustice lurks in this mandate, and no human mis-

9 judgment can pervert it; for the offender alone suffers,

and always according to divine decree. This sacred,

solid precept is verified in all directions in Mind-

healing, and is supported in the Scripture by parallel

proof.

The law and gospel of Truth and Love teach, through

15 divine Science, that sin is identical with suffering, and

that suffering is the lighter affliction. To reach the sum-

mit of Science, whence to discern God's perfect ways

18 and means, the material sense must be controlled by

the higher spiritual sense, and Truth be enthroned,

while "we look not at the things which are seen, but at

the things which are not seen."

Cynical critics misjudge my meaning as to the sci-

entific treatment of the sick. Disease that is superin-

24 duced by sin is not healed like the more physical

ailment. The beginner in sin-healing must know this, or

he never can reach the Science of Mind-healing, and

27 so "overcome evil with good." Error in premise is met

with error in practice; yea, it is "the blind leading the

blind." Ignorance of the cause of disease can neither

remove that cause nor its effect.

I endeavor to accommodate my instructions to the

present capability of the learner, and to support the

Page 67

1 liberated thought until its altitude reaches beyond the

mere alphabet of Mind-healing. Above physical wants,

lie the higher claims of the law and gospel of healing.

First is the law, which saith: -

"Thou shalt not commit adultery;" in other words,

6 thou shalt not adulterate Life, Truth, or Love, - men-

tally, morally, or physically. "Thou shalt not steal;"

that is, thou shalt not rob man of money, which is but

9 trash, compared with his rights of mind and character.

"Thou shalt not kill;" that is, thou shalt not strike at the

eternal sense of Life with a malicious aim, but shalt

12 know that by doing thus thine own sense of Life shall be

forfeited. "Thou shalt not bear false witness;" that is,

thou shalt not utter a lie, either mentally or audibly, nor

15 cause it to be thought. Obedience to these command-

ments is indispensable to health, happiness, and length

of days.

18 The gospel of healing demonstrates the law of Love.

Justice uncovers sin of every sort; and mercy demands

that if you see the danger menacing others, you shall,

21 Deo volente, inform them thereof. Only thus is the right

practice of Mind-healing achieved, and the wrong prac-

tice discerned, disarmed, and destroyed.

Do you believe in translation?

If your question refers to language, whereby one ex-

presses the sense of words in one language by equiva-

27 lent words in another, I do. If you refer to the removal

of a person to heaven, without his subjection to death,

I modify my affirmative answer. I believe in this

removal being possible after all the footsteps requisite

have been taken up to the very throne, up to the

Page 68

1 spiritual sense and fact of divine substance, intelligence,

Life, and Love. This translation is not the work of mo-

3 ments; it requires both time and eternity. It means more

than mere disappearance to the human sense; it must

include also man's changed appearance and diviner form

visible to those beholding him here.

The Rev. - said in a sermon: A true Christian

would protest against metaphysical healing being called

9 Christian Science. He also maintained that pain and

disease are not illusions but realities; and that it is not

Christian to believe they are illusions. Is this so?

12 It is unchristian to believe that pain and sickness are

anything but illusions. My proof of this is, that the

penalty for believing in their reality is the very pain and

15 disease. Jesus cast out a devil, and the dumb spake;

hence it is right to know that the works of Satan are the

illusion and error which Truth casts out.

18 Does the gentleman above mentioned know the

meaning of divine metaphysics, or of metaphysical

theology?

21 According to Webster, metaphysics is defined thus:

"The science of the conceptions and relations which are

necessary to thought and knowledge; science of the

24 mind." Worcester defines it as "the philosophy of mind,

as distinguished from that of matter; a science of which

the object is to explain the principles and causes of

27 all things existing." Brande calls metaphysics "the

science which regards the ultimate grounds of being, as

distinguished from its phenomenal modifications." "A

speculative science, which soars beyond the bounds of

experience," is a further definition.

Page 69

1 Divine metaphysics is that which treats of the exist-

ence of God, His essence, relations, and attributes. A

sneer at metaphysics is a scoff at Deity; at His goodness,

mercy, and might.

Christian Science is the unfolding of true metaphysics;

6 that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes. Science rests

on Principle and demonstration. The Principle of Chris-

tian Science is divine. Its rule is, that man shall utilize

the divine power.

In Genesis i. 26, we read: "Let us make man in

our image, after our likeness: and let them have

dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of

the air."

I was once called to visit a sick man to whom the

15 regular physicians had given three doses of Croton

oil, and then had left him to die. Upon my arrival I

found him barely alive, and in terrible agony. In one

18 hour he was well, and the next day he attended to his

business. I removed the stoppage, healed him of en-

teritis, and neutralized the bad effects of the poison-

21 ous oil. His physicians had failed even to move his

bowels, - though the wonder was, with the means

used in their effort to accomplish this result, that

24 they had not quite killed him. According to their

diagnosis, the exciting cause of the inflammation and

stoppage was - eating smoked herring. The man is

27 living yet; and I will send his address to any one

who may wish to apply to him for information about

his case.

Now comes the question: Had that sick man dominion

over the fish in his stomach?

His want of control over "the fish of the sea" must

Page 70

1 have been an illusion, or else the Scriptures misstate

man's power. That the Bible is true I believe, not

3 only, but I demonstrated its truth when I exercised

my power over the fish, cast out the sick man's illu-

sion, and healed him. Thus it was shown that the

6 healing action of Mind upon the body has its only ex-

planation in divine metaphysics. As a man "thinketh

in his heart, so is he." When the mortal thought, or be-

9 lief, was removed, the man was well.

What did Jesus mean when he said to the dying thief,

"To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise"?

12 Paradisaical rest from physical agony would come to

the criminal, if the dream of dying should startle him

from the dream of suffering. The paradise of Spirit

15 would come to Jesus, in a spiritual sense of Life and

power. Christ Jesus lived and reappeared. He was too

good to die; for goodness is immortal. The thief was

18 not equal to the demands of the hour; but sin was de-

stroying itself, and had already begun to die, - as

the poor thief's prayer for help indicated. The dy-

21 ing malefactor and our Lord were inevitably sepa-

rated through Mind. The thief's body, as matter,

must dissolve into its native nothingness; whereas the

24 body of the holy Spirit of Jesus was eternal. That

day the thief would be with Jesus only in a finite

and material sense of relief; while our Lord would

27 soon be rising to the supremacy of Spirit, working

out, even in the silent tomb, those wonderful demon-

strations of divine power, in which none could equal his

glory.

Page 71

1 Is it right for me to treat others, when I am not entirely

well myself ?

3 The late John B. Gough is said to have suffered from

an appetite for alcoholic drink until his death; yet he

saved many a drunkard from this fatal appetite. Paul

6 had a thorn in the flesh: one writer thinks that he was

troubled with rheumatism, and another that he had sore

eyes; but this is certain, that he healed others who were

9 sick. It is unquestionably right to do right; and heal-

ing the sick is a very right thing to do.

Does Christian Science set aside the law of transmission,

12 prenatal desires, and good or bad influences on the unborn

child?

Science never averts law, but supports it. All actual

15 causation must interpret omnipotence, the all-knowing

Mind. Law brings out Truth, not error; unfolds divine

Principle, - but neither human hypothesis nor matter.

18 Errors are based on a mortal or material formation; they

are suppositional modes, not the factors of divine presence

and power.

21 Whatever is humanly conceived is a departure from

divine law; hence its mythical origin and certain end.

According to the Scriptures, - St. Paul declares astutely,

24 "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all

things," - man is incapable of originating: nothing can

be formed apart from God, good, the all-knowing Mind.

27 What seems to be of human origin is the counterfeit

of the divine, - even human concepts, mortal shadows

flitting across the dial of time.

Whatever is real is right and eternal; hence the im-

mutable and just law of Science, that God is good only,

Page 72

1 and can transmit to man and the universe nothing evil,

or unlike Himself. For the innocent babe to be born a

3 lifelong sufferer because of his parents' mistakes or sins,

were sore injustice. Science sets aside man as a creator,

and unfolds the eternal harmonies of the only living and

true origin, God.

According to the beliefs of the flesh, both good and

bad traits of the parents are transmitted to their help-

9 less offspring, and God is supposed to impart to man

this fatal power. It is cause for rejoicing that this belief

is as false as it is remorseless. The immutable Word

12 saith, through the prophet Ezekiel, "What mean ye, that

ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying,

The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's

15 teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God,

ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb

in Israel."

18 Are material things real when they are harmonious, and

do they disappear only to the natural sense? Does this

Scripture, "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have

need of all these things," imply that Spirit takes note of

matter?

The Science of Mind, as well as the material uni-

24 verse, shows that nothing which is material is in

perpetual harmony. Matter is manifest mortal mind,

and it exists only to material sense. Real sensation

27 is not material; it is, and must be, mental: and Mind

is not mortal, it is immortal. Being is God, infinite

Spirit; therefore it cannot cognize aught material, or

outside of infinity.

The Scriptural passage quoted affords no evidence of

Page 73

1 the reality of matter, or that God is conscious of it.

The so-called material body is said to suffer, but this

3 supposition is proven erroneous when Mind casts out

the suffering. The Scripture saith, "Whom the Lord

loveth He chasteneth;" and again, "He doth not

6 afflict willingly." Interpreted materially, these pas-

sages conflict; they mingle the testimony of immor-

tal Science with mortal sense; but once discern their

9 spiritual meaning, and it separates the false sense from

the true, and establishes the reality of what is spiritual,

and the unreality of materiality.

12 Law is never material: it is always mental and moral,

and a commandment to the wise. The foolish disobey

moral law, and are punished. Human wisdom therefore

15 an get no farther than to say, He knoweth that we have

need of experience. Belief fulfils the conditions of a be-

lief, and these conditions destroy the belief. Hence the

18 verdict of experience: We have need of these things; we

have need to know that the so-called pleasures and pains

of matter - yea, that all subjective states of false sensa-

tion - are unreal.

"And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you,

That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when

24 the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory,

ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the

twelve tribes of Israel." (Matt. xix. 28.) What is meant

by regeneration?

It is the appearing of divine law to human under-

standing; the spiritualization that comes from spiritual

sense in contradistinction to the testimony of the so-

called material senses. The phenomena of Spirit in

Page 74

1 Christian Science, and the divine correspondence of

noumenon and phenomenon understood, are here signi-

3 fied. This new-born sense subdues not only the false

sense of generation, but the human will, and the un-

natural enmity of mortal man toward God. It quickly

6 imparts a new apprehension of the true basis of being,

and the spiritual foundation for the affections which en-

throne the Son of man in the glory of his Father; and

judges, through the stern mandate of Science, all human

systems of etiology and teleology.

If God does not recognize matter, how did Jesus, who was

"the way, the truth, and the life," cognize it?

Christ Jesus' sense of matter was the opposite of that

which mortals entertain: his nativity was a spiritual and

15 immortal sense of the ideal world. His earthly mission

was to translate substance into its original meaning,

Mind. He walked upon the waves; he turned the water

18 into wine; he healed the sick and the sinner; he raised

the dead, and rolled away the stone from the door of his

own tomb. His demonstration of Spirit virtually van-

21 quished matter and its supposed laws. Walking the

wave, he proved the fallacy of the theory that matter is

substance; healing through Mind, he removed any sup-

24 position that matter is intelligent, or can recognize or

express pain and pleasure. His triumph over the grave

was an everlasting victory for Life; it demonstrated the

27 lifelessness of matter, and the power and permanence

of Spirit. He met and conquered the resistance of the

world.

If you will admit, with me, that matter is neither

substance, intelligence, nor Life, you may have all that

Page 75

1 is left of it; and you will have touched the hem of the

garment of Jesus' idea of matter. Christ was "the way; "

3 since Life and Truth were the way that gave us, through

a human person, a spiritual revelation of man's possible

earthly development.

Why do you insist that there is but one Soul, and that

Soul is not in the body?

First: I urge this fundamental fact and grand verity

9 of Christian Science, because it includes a rule that must

be understood, or it is impossible to demonstrate the Sci-

ence. Soul is a synonym of Spirit, and God is Spirit.

12 There is but one God, and the infinite is not within the

finite; hence Soul is one, and is God; and God is not in

matter or the mortal body.

15 Second: Because Soul is a term for Deity, and this

term should seldom be employed except where the word

God can be used and make complete sense. The word

18 Soul may sometimes be used metaphorically; but if this

term is warped to signify human quality, a substitution

of sense for soul clears the meaning, and assists one to

21 understand Christian Science. Mary's exclamation,

"My soul doth magnify the Lord," is rendered in Sci-

ence, "My spiritual sense doth magnify the Lord;"

24 for the name of Deity used in that place does not bring

out the meaning of the passage. It was evidently an

illuminated sense through which she discovered the

27 spiritual origin of man. "The soul that sinneth, it shall

die," means, that mortal man (alias material sense) that

sinneth, shall die; and the commonly accepted view is

that soul is deathless. Soul is the divine Mind, - for

Soul cannot be formed or brought forth by human

Page 76

1 thought, - and must proceed from God; hence it must

be sinless, and destitute of self-created or derived capacity

to sin.

Third: Jesus said, "If a man keep my saying, he

shall never see death." This statement of our Master

6 is true, and remains to be demonstrated; for it is the

ultimatum of Christian Science; but this immortal saying

can never be tested or proven true upon a false premise,

9 such as the mortal belief that soul is in body, and life

and intelligence are in matter. That doctrine is not

theism, but pantheism. According to human belief the

12 bodies of mortals are mortal, but they contain immortal

souls! hence these bodies must die for these souls to

escape and be immortal. The theory that death must

15 occur, to set a human soul free from its environments,

is rendered void by Jesus' divine declaration, who spake

as never man spake, - and no man can rationally reject

his authority on this subject and accept it on other topics

less important.

Now, exchange the term soul for sense whenever this

21 word means the so-called soul in the body, and you will

find the right meaning indicated. The misnamed human

soul is material sense, which sinneth and shall die; for

24 it is an error or false sense of mentality in matter, and

matter has no sense. You will admit that Soul is the

Life of man. Now if Soul sinned, it would die; for "the

27 wages of sin is death." The Scripture saith, "When

Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also

appear with him in glory." The Science of Soul, Spirit,

involves this appearing, and is essential to the fulfilment

of this glorious prophecy of the master Metaphysician,

who overcame the last enemy, death.

Page 77

1 Did the salvation of the eunuch depend merely on his

believing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God?

3 It did; but this believing was more than faith in the

fact that Jesus was the Messiah. Here the verb believe

took its original meaning, namely, to be firm, - yea, to

6 understand those great truths asserted of the Messiah:

it meant to discern and consent to that infinite demand

made upon the eunuch in those few words of the apostle.

9 Philip's requirement was, that he should not only ac-

knowledge the incarnation, - God made manifest through

man, - but even the eternal unity of man and God, as

12 the divine Principle and spiritual idea; which is the in-

dissoluble bond of union, the power and presence, in

divine Science, of Life, Truth, and Love, to support their

15 ideal man. This is the Father's great Love that He

hath bestowed upon us, and it holds man in endless

Life and one eternal round of harmonious being. It

18 guides him by Truth that knows no error, and with

supersensual, impartial, and unquenchable Love. To

believe is to be firm. In adopting all this vast idea of

21 Christ Jesus, the eunuch was to know in whom he be-

lieved. To believe thus was to enter the spiritual sanctuary

of Truth, and there learn, in divine Science, somewhat

24 of the All-Father-Mother God. It was to understand

God and man: it was sternly to rebuke the mortal

belief that man has fallen away from his first estate; that

27 man, made in God's own likeness, and reflecting Truth,

could fall into mortal error; or, that man is the father

of man. It was to enter unshod the Holy of Holies, where

the miracle of grace appears, and where the miracles of

Jesus had their birth, - healing the sick, casting out

evils, and resurrecting the human sense to the belief

Page 78

1 that Life, God, is not buried in matter. This is the spirit-

ual dawn of the Messiah, and the overture of the

3 angels. This is when God is made manifest in the

flesh, and thus it destroys all sense of sin, sickness, and

death, - when the brightness of His glory encompasseth

all being.

Can Christian Science Mind-healing be taught to those

who are absent?

9 The Science of Mind-healing can no more be taught

thus, than can science in any other direction. I know

not how to teach either Euclid or the Science of Mind

12 silently; and never dreamed that either of these partook

of the nature of occultism, magic, alchemy, or necro-

mancy. These "ways that are vain" are the inventions

15 of animal magnetism, which would deceive, if possible,

the very elect. We will charitably hope, however, that

some people employ the et cetera of ignorance and self-

18 conceit unconsciously, in their witless ventilation of false

statements and claims. Misguiding the public mind and

taking its money in exchange for this abuse, has become

21 too common: we will hope it is the froth of error passing

off; and that Christian Science will some time appear all

the clearer for the purification of the public thought con-

cerning it.

Has man fallen from a state of perfection?

If God is the Principle of man (and He is), man is the

27 idea of God; and this idea cannot fail to express the ex-

act nature of its Principle, - any more than goodness,

to present the quality of good. Human hypotheses are

always human vagaries, formulated views antagonistic

Page 79

1 to the divine order and the nature of Deity. All these

mortal beliefs will be purged and dissolved in the cru-

3 cible of Truth, and the places once knowing them will

know them no more forever, having been swept clean

by the winds of history. The grand verities of Science

6 will sift the chaff from the wheat, until it is clear to hu-

man comprehension that man was, and is, God's perfect

likeness, that reflects all whereby we can know God. In

9 Him we live, move, and have being. Man's origin and

existence being in Him, man is the ultimatum of per-

fection, and by no means the medium of imperfection.

12 Immortal man is the eternal idea of Truth, that cannot

lapse into a mortal belief or error concerning himself

and his origin: he cannot get out of the focal distance of

15 infinity. If God is upright and eternal, man as His like-

ness is erect in goodness and perpetual in Life, Truth,

and Love. If the great cause is perfect, its effect is per-

18 fect also; and cause and effect in Science are immutable

and immortal. A mortal who is sinning, sick, and dying,

is not immortal man; and never was, and never can be,

21 God's image and likeness, the true ideal of immortal

man's divine Principle. The spiritual man is that per-

fect and unfallen likeness, coexistent and coeternal with

God. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be

made alive."

What course should Christian Scientists take in regard

to aiding persons brought before the courts for violation of

medical statutes?

Beware of joining any medical league which in any

way obligates you to assist - because they chance to be

under arrest - vendors of patent pills, mesmerists,

Page 80

1 occultists, sellers of impure literature, and authors of

spurious works on mental healing. By rendering error

3 such a service, you lose much more than can be gained

by mere unity on the single issue of opposition to unjust

medical laws.

6 A league which obligates its members to give money

and influence in support and defense of medical char-

latans in general, and possibly to aid individual rights

9 in a wrong direction - which Christian Science eschews

- should be avoided. Anybody and everybody, who

will fight the medical faculty, can join this league. It is

12 better to be friendly with cultured and conscientious

medical men, who leave Christian Science to rise or fall

on its own merit or demerit, than to affiliate with a wrong

class of people.

Unconstitutional and unjust coercive legislation and

laws, infringing individual rights, must be "of few days,

18 and full of trouble." The vox populi, through the provi-

dence of God, promotes and impels all true reform; and,

at the best time, will redress wrongs and rectify injus-

21 tice. Tyranny can thrive but feebly under our Govern-

ment. God reigns, and will "turn and overturn" until

right is found supreme.

24 In a certain sense, we should commiserate the lot of

regular doctors, who, in successive generations for cen-

turies, have planted and sown and reaped in the fields

27 of what they deem pathology, hygiene, and therapeutics,

but are now elbowed by a new school of practitioners,

outdoing the healing of the old. The old will not patronize

the new school, at least not until it shall come to under-

stand the medical system of the new.

Christian Science Mind-healing rests demonstrably on

Page 81

1 the broad and sure foundation of Science; and this is

not the basis of materia medica, as some of the most skil-

ful and scholarly physicians openly admit.

To prevent all unpleasant and unchristian action - as

we drift, by right of God's dear love, into more spiritual

6 lines of life - let each society of practitioners, the matter-

physicians and the metaphysicians, agree to disagree, and

then patiently wait on God to decide, as surely He will,

which is the true system of medicine.

Do we not see in the commonly accepted teachings of the

day, the Christ-idea mingled with the teachings of John

12 the Baptist? or, rather, Are not the last eighteen centuries

but the footsteps of Truth being baptized of John, and com-

ing up straightway out of the ceremonial (or ritualistic)

15 waters to receive the benediction of an honored Father, and

afterwards to go up into the wilderness, in order to over-

come mortal sense, before it shall go forth into all the cities

18 and towns of Judea, or see many of the people from beyond

Jordan? Now, if all this be a fair or correct view of this

question, why does not John hear this voice, or see the

dove, - or has not Truth yet reached the shore?

Every individual character, like the individual John

the Baptist, at some date must cry in the desert of

24 earthly joy; and his voice be heard divinely and

humanly. In the desolation of human understanding,

divine Love hears and answers the human call for help;

27 and the voice of Truth utters the divine verities of being

which deliver mortals out of the depths of ignorance

and vice. This is the Father's benediction. It gives

lessons to human life, guides the understanding, peoples

Page 82

1 the mind with spiritual ideas, reconstructs the Judean

religion, and reveals God and man as the Principle and

idea of all good.

Understanding this fact in Christian Science, brings

the peace symbolized by a dove; and this peace floweth

6 as a river into a shoreless eternity. He who knew the

foretelling Truth, beheld the forthcoming Truth, as it

came up out of the baptism of Spirit, to enlighten and

9 redeem mortals. Such Christians as John cognize the

symbols of God, reach the sure foundations of time, stand

upon the shore of eternity, and grasp and gather - in all

glory - what eye hath not seen.

Is there infinite progression with man after the destruc-

tion of mortal mind?

15 Man is the offspring and idea of the Supreme Being,

whose law is perfect and infinite. In obedience to this

law, man is forever unfolding the endless beatitudes of

Being; for he is the image and likeness of infinite Life,

Truth, and Love.

Infinite progression is concrete being, which finite

21 mortals see and comprehend only as abstract glory. As

mortal mind, or the material sense of life, is put off,

the spiritual sense and Science of being is brought to

light.

Mortal mind is a myth; the one Mind is immortal.

A mythical or mortal sense of existence is consumed

27 as a moth, in the treacherous glare of its own flame -

the errors which devour it. Immortal Mind is God,

immortal good; in whom the Scripture saith "we live,

and move, and have our being." This Mind, then, is not

subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine

Page 83

1 intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding

man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss,

as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible

good.

In your book, Science and Health,(1) page 181, you

6 say: "Every sin is the author of itself, and every

invalid the cause of his own suferings." On page

182 you say: "Sickness is a growth of illusion, spring-

9 ing from a seed of thought, - either your own thought

or another's." Will you please explain this seeming

contradiction?

12 No person can accept another's belief, except it be

with the consent of his own belief. If the error which

knocks at the door of your own thought originated in

15 another's mind, you are a free moral agent to reject or

to accept this error; hence, you are the arbiter of your

own fate, and sin is the author of sin. In the words

of our Master, you are "a liar, and the father of it

[the lie]."

Why did Jesus call himself "the Son of man"?

21 In the life of our Lord, meekness was as conspicuous

as might. In John xvii. he declared his sonship with

God: "These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his

24 eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come;

glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee."

The hour had come for the avowal of this great truth,

and for the proof of his eternal Life and sonship. Jesus'

(1) Quoted from the sixteenth edition.

Page 84

1 wisdom ofttimes was shown by his forbearing to speak,

as well as by speaking, the whole truth. Haply he waited

3 for a preparation of the human heart to receive start-

ling announcements. This wisdom, which character-

ized his sayings, did not prophesy his death, and thereby

hasten or permit it.

The disciples and prophets thrust disputed points on

minds unprepared for them. This cost them their lives,

9 and the world's temporary esteem; but the prophecies

were fulfilled, and their motives were rewarded by

growth and more spiritual understanding, which dawns

12 by degrees on mortals. The spiritual Christ was infal-

lible; Jesus, as material manhood, was not Christ. The

"man of sorrows" knew that the man of joys, his spiritual

15 self, or Christ, was the Son of God; and that the mor-

tal mind, not the immortal Mind, suffered. The human

manifestation of the Son of God was called the Son of

man, or Mary's son.

Please explain Paul's meaning in the text, "For to me

to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

21 The Science of Life, overshadowing Paul's sense of

life in matter, so far extinguished the latter as forever

to quench his love for it. The discipline of the flesh is

24 designed to turn one, like a weary traveller, to the home

of Love. To lose error thus, is to live in Christ, Truth.

A true sense of the falsity of material joys and sorrows,

27 pleasures and pains, takes them away, and teaches Life's

lessons aright. The transition from our lower sense of

Life to a new and higher sense thereof, even though it be

through the door named death, yields a clearer and

nearer sense of Life to those who have utilized the present,

Page 85

1 and are ripe for the harvest-home. To the battle-

worn and weary Christian hero, Life eternal brings

blessings.

Is a Christian Scientist ever sick, and has he who is

sick been regenerated?

6 The Christian Scientist learns spiritually all that he

knows of Life, and demonstrates what he understands.

God is recognized as the divine Principle of his being,

9 and of every thought and act leading to good. His pur-

pose must be right, though his power is temporarily lim-

ited. Perfection, the goal of existence, is not won in a

12 moment; and regeneration leading thereto is gradual,

for it culminates in the fulfilment of this divine rule in

Science: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father

which is in heaven is perfect."

The last degree of regeneration rises into the rest of

perpetual, spiritual, individual existence. The first

18 feeble flutterings of mortals Christward are infantile

and more or less imperfect. The new-born Christian

Scientist must mature, and work out his own salvation.

21 Spirit and flesh antagonize. Temptation, that mist of

mortal mind which seems to be matter and the environ-

ment of mortals, suggests pleasure and pain in matter;

24 and, so long as this temptation lasts, the warfare is not

ended and the mortal is not regenerated. The pleas-

ures - more than the pains - of sense, retard regenera-

27 tion; for pain compels human consciousness to escape

from sense into the immortality and harmony of Soul.

Disease in error, more than ease in it, tends to destroy

error: the sick often are thereby led to Christ, Truth,

and to learn their way out of both sickness and sin.

Page 86

1 The material and physical are imperfect. The in-

dividual and spiritual are perfect; these have no fleshly

3 nature. This final degree of regeneration is saving, and

the Christian will, must, attain it; but it doth not yet

appear. Until this be attained, the Christian Scientist

6 must continue to strive with sickness, sin, and death -

though in lessening degrees - and manifest growth at

every experience.

Is it correct to say of material objects, that they are noth-

ing and exist only in imagination?

Nothing and something are words which need correct

12 definition. They either mean formations of indefinite

and vague human opinions, or scientific classifications

of the unreal and the real. My sense of the beauty of

15 the universe is, that beauty typifies holiness, and is some-

thing to be desired. Earth is more spiritually beautiful

to my gaze now than when it was more earthly to the

18 eyes of Eve. The pleasant sensations of human belief,

of form and color, must be spiritualized, until we gain the

glorified sense of substance as in the new heaven and

earth, the harmony of body and Mind.

Even the human conception of beauty, grandeur, and

utility is something that defies a sneer. It is more than

24 imagination. It is next to divine beauty and the gran-

deur of Spirit. It lives with our earth-life, and is

the subjective state of high thoughts. The atmos-

27 phere of mortal mind constitutes our mortal envi-

ronment. What mortals hear, see, feel, taste, smell,

constitutes their present earth and heaven: but we must

grow out of even this pleasing thraldom, and find wings

to reach the glory of supersensible Life; then we shall

Page 87

1 soar above, as the bird in the clear ether of the blue tem-

poral sky.

3 To take all earth's beauty into one gulp of vacuity

and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature

God's creation, which is unjust to human sense and

6 to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spirit-

ual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous

universe: "I love your promise; and shall know, some

9 time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light,

and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and

knowing this, I shall be satisfied. Matter is a frail con-

12 ception of mortal mind; and mortal mind is a poorer

representative of the beauty, grandeur, and glory of the

immortal Mind."

15 Please inform us, through your Journal, if you sent

Mrs. - to - . She said that you sent her there to look

after the students; and also, that no one there was working

in Science, - which is certainly a mistake.

I never commission any one to teach students of mine.

After class teaching, he does best in the investigation of

21 Christian Science who is most reliant on himself and

God. My students are taught the divine Principle and

rules of the Science of Mind-healing. What they need

24 hereafter is to study thoroughly the Scriptures and

"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." To

watch and pray, to be honest, earnest, loving, and truth-

ful, is indispensable to the demonstration of the truth

they have been taught.

If they are haunted by obsequious helpers, who, un-

called for, imagine they can help anybody and steady

God's altar - this interference prolongs the struggle

Page 88

1 and tends to blight the fruits of my students. A faith-

ful student may even sometimes feel the need of

3 physical help, and occasionally receive it from others;

but the less this is required, the better it is for that

student.

6 Please give us, through your Journal, the name of

the author of that genuine critique in the September

number, "What Quibus Thinks."

9 I am pleased to inform this inquirer, that the author

of the article in question is a Boston gentleman whose

thought is appreciated by many liberals. Patience, ob-

12 servation, intellectual culture, reading, writing, exten-

sive travel, and twenty years in the pulpit, have equipped

him as a critic who knows whereof he speaks. His allu-

15 sion to Christian Science in the following paragraph,

glows in the shadow of darkling criticism like a mid-

night sun. Its manly honesty follows like a benediction

after prayer, and closes the task of talking to deaf ears

and dull debaters.

"We have always insisted that this Science is natural,

21 spiritually natural; that Jesus was the highest type of

real nature; that Christian healing is supernatural, or

extra-natural, only to those who do not enter into its

24 sublimity or understand its modes - as imported ice

was miraculous to the equatorial African, who had never

seen water freeze."

Is it right for a Scientist to treat with a doctor?

This depends upon what kind of a doctor it is. Mind-

healing, and healing with drugs, are opposite modes of

medicine. As a rule, drop one of these doctors when you

Page 89

1 employ the other. The Scripture saith, "No man can

serve two masters;" and, "Every kingdom divided

against itself is brought to desolation."

If Scientists are called upon to care for a member of

the family, or a friend in sickness, who is employing a

6 regular physician, would it be right to treat this patient

at all; and ought the patient to follow the doctor's

directions?

9 When patients are under material medical treatment,

it is advisable in most cases that Scientists do not treat

them, or interfere with materia medica. If the patient

12 is in peril, and you save him or alleviate his sufferings,

although the medical attendant and friends have no

faith in your method, it is humane, and not unchristian,

15 to do him all the good you can; but your good will gen-

erally "be evil spoken of." The hazard of casting "pearls

before swine" caused our Master to refuse help to some

who sought his aid; and he left this precaution for

others.

If mortal man is unreal, how can he be saved, and why

does he need to be saved? I ask for information, not for

controversy, for I am a seeker after Truth.

You will find the proper answer to this question in

24 my published works. Man is immortal. Mortal man

is a false concept that is not spared or prolonged by being

saved from itself, from whatever is false. This salva-

27 tion means: saved from error, or error overcome. Im-

mortal man, in God's likeness, is safe in divine Science.

Mortal man is saved on this divine Principle, if he will

only avail himself of the efficacy of Truth, and recog-

Page 90

1 nize his Saviour. He must know that God is omnipo-

tent; hence, that sin is impotent. He must know that

3 the power of sin is the pleasure in sin. Take away this

pleasure, and you remove all reality from its power. Jesus

demonstrated sin and death to be powerless. This

practical Truth saves from sin, and will save all who

understand it.

Is it wrong for a wife to have a husband treated for

sin, when she knows he is sinning, or for drinking and

smoking?

It is always right to act rightly; but sometimes, under

12 circumstances exceptional, it is inexpedient to attack

evil. This rule is forever golden: "As ye would that

men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Do you

15 desire to be freed from sin? Then help others to be free;

but in your measures, obey the Scriptures, "Be ye wise

as serpents." Break the yoke of bondage in every wise

18 way. First, be sure that your means for doing good

are equal to your motives; then judge them by their

fruits.

21 If not ordained, shall the pastor of the Church of

Christ, Scientist, administer the communion, - and

shall members of a church not organized receive the

communion?

Our great Master administered to his disciples the

Passover, or last supper, without this prerogative being

27 conferred by a visible organization and ordained priest-

hood. His spiritually prepared breakfast, after his

resurrection, and after his disciples had left their nets

to follow him, is the spiritual communion which Chris-

Page 91

1 tian Scientists celebrate in commemoration of the Christ.

This ordinance is significant as a type of the true worship,

and it should be observed at present in our churches.

It is not indispensable to organize materially Christ's

church. It is not absolutely necessary to ordain pas-

6 tors and to dedicate churches; but if this be done,

let it be in concession to the period, and not as a per-

petual or indispensable ceremonial of the church. If

9 our church is organized, it is to meet the demand,

"Suffer it to be so now." The real Christian compact

is love for one another. This bond is wholly spiritual

and inviolate.

It is imperative, at all times and under every cir-

cumstance, to perpetuate no ceremonials except as

15 types of these mental conditions, - remembrance and

love; a real affection for Jesus' character and example.

Be it remembered, that all types employed in the ser-

18 vice of Christian Science should represent the most spir-

itual forms of thought and worship that can be made

visible.

21 Should not the teacher of Christian Science have our

textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,"

in his schoolroom and teach from it?

24 I never dreamed, until informed thereof, that a loyal

student did not take his textbook with him into the class-

room, ask questions from it, answer them according to

27 it, and, as occasion required, read from the book as au-

thority for what he taught. I supposed that students

had followed my example, and that of other teachers,

sufficiently to do this, and also to require their pupils to

study the lessons before recitations.

Page 92

1 To omit these important points is anomalous, con-

sidering the necessity for understanding Science, and

3 the present liability of deviating from Christian Science.

Centuries will intervene before the statement of the inex-

haustible topics of that book become sufficiently under-

6 stood to be absolutely demonstrated. The teacher of

Christian Science needs continually to study this textbook.

His work is to replenish thought, and to spiritualize human

life, from this open fount of Truth and Love.

He who sees most clearly and enlightens other minds

most readily, keeps his own lamp trimmed and burning.

12 He will take the textbook of Christian Science into his

class, repeat the questions in the chapter on Recapitula-

tion, and his students will answer them from the same

15 source. Throughout his entire explanations, the teacher

should strictly adhere to the questions and answers con-

tained in that chapter of "Science and Health with Key

18 to the Scriptures." It is important to point out the

lesson to the class, and to require the students thor-

oughly to study it before the recitations; for this spirit-

21 ualizes their thoughts. When closing his class, the

teacher should require each member to own a copy of

the above-named book and to continue the study of this

textbook.

The opinions of men cannot be substituted for God's

revelation. It must not be forgotten that in times past,

27 arrogant ignorance and pride, in attempting to steady

the ark of Truth, have dimmed the power and glory of

the Scriptures, to which this Christian Science textbook

is the Key.

That teacher does most for his students who most

divests himself of pride and self, spiritualizes his own

Page 93

1 thought, and by reason thereof is able to empty his stu-

dents' minds, that they may be filled with Truth.

3 Beloved students, so teach that posterity shall call

you blessed, and the heart of history shall be made

glad!

Can fear or sin bring back old beliefs of disease that have

been healed by Christian Science?

The Scriptures plainly declare the allness and oneness

9 of God to be the premises of Truth, and that God is

good: in Him dwelleth no evil. Christian Science au-

thorizes the logical conclusion drawn from the Scriptures,

12 that there is in reality none besides the eternal, infinite

God, good. Evil is temporal: it is the illusion of time

and mortality.

15 This being true, sin has no power; and fear, its coeval,

is without divine authority. Science sanctions only what

is supported by the unerring Principle of being. Sin can

18 do nothing: all cause and effect are in God. Fear is a

belief of sensation in matter: this belief is neither main-

tained by Science nor supported by facts, and exists only

21 as fable. Your answer is, that neither fear nor sin can

bring on disease or bring back disease, since there is in

reality no disease.

24 Bear in mind, however, that human consciousness does

not test sin and the fact of its nothingness, by believing

that sin is pardoned without repentance and reforma-

27 tion. Sin punishes itself, because it cannot go unpun-

ished either here or hereafter. Nothing is more fatal than

to indulge a sinning sense or consciousness for even one

moment. Knowing this, obey Christ's Sermon on the

Mount, even if you suffer for it in the first instance, -

Page 94

1 are misjudged and maligned; in the second, you will

reign with him.

3 I never knew a person who knowingly indulged evil,

to be grateful; to understand me, or himself. He must

first see himself and the hallucination of sin; then he

6 must repent, and love good in order to understand God.

The sinner and the sin are the twain that are one flesh, -

but which God hath not joined together.

Part Two Table of Contents

Mary Baker Eddy

Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science

and Author of Science and Health with

Key to the Scriptures

James A. Neal

Edward A. Merritt

William R. Rathvon

Mrs. Annie M. Knott

George Wendell Adams

Josiah E. Fernald

Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

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Mary Baker Eddy

Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science

and Author of Science and Health with

Key to the Scriptures

James A. Neal

Edward A. Merritt

William R. Rathvon

Mrs. Annie M. Knott

George Wendell Adams

Josiah E. Fernald

Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy

Printed in the United States of America

We apologize, but ever since our site was hacked, the below links do not work.

Table of Contents

For help with downloading the Word documents, press here

Miscellaneous Writings*	Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six	Word Document
Retrospection and Introspection	HTML	Word Document
Unity of Good	HTML	Word Document
Pulpit and Press	HTML	Word Document
Rudimental Divine Science	HTML	Word Document
No And Yes	HTML	Word Document
Christian Science versus Pantheism	HTML	Word Document
Message to The Mother Church, June, 1900	HTML	Word Document
Message to The Mother Church, June, 1901	HTML	Word Document
Message to The First Church of Christ, Scientist or The Mother Church, June 15, 1902	HTML	Word Document
Christian Healing	HTML	Word Document
The People's Idea of God	HTML	Word Document
The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany*	Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four	Word Document
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OTHER PUBLISHED WRITINGS OF MARY BAKER EDDY (2)

OTHER PUBLISHED WRITINGS OF MARY BAKER EDDY