As I have given you only an epitome of the Principle, so I can give you here nothing but an outline of the practice. Be honest, be true to thyself, and true to others; then it follows thou wilt be strong in God, the eternal good. Heal through Truth and Love; there is no other healer.
In all moral revolutions, from a lower to a higher condition of thought and action, Truth is in the minority and error has the majority. It is not otherwise in the field of Mind-healing. The man who calls himself a Christian Scientist, yet is false to God and man, is also uttering falsehood about good. This falsity shuts against him the Truth and the Principle of Science, but opens a way whereby, through will-power, sense may say the unchristian practitioner can heal; but Science shows that he makes morally worse the invalid whom he is supposed to cure.
By this I mean that mortal mind should not be falsely impregnated. If by such lower means the health is seemingly restored, the restoration is not lasting, and the patient is liable to a relapse,--"The last state of that man is worse than the first."
The teacher of Mind-healing who is not a Christian, in the highest sense, is constantly sowing the seeds of discord and disease. Even the truth he speaks is more or less blended with error; and this error will spring up in the mind of his pupil. The pupil's imperfect knowledge will lead to weakness in practice, and he will be a poor practitioner, if not a malpractitioner.
The basis of malpractice is in erring human will, and this will is an outcome of what I call mortal mind, --a false and temporal sense of Truth, Life, and Love. To heal, in Christian Science, is to base your practice on immortal Mind, the divine Principle of man's being; and this requires a preparation of the heart and an answer of the lips from the Lord.
The Science of healing is the Truth of healing. If one is untruthful, his mental state weighs against his healing power; and similar effects come from pride, envy, lust, and all fleshly vices.
The spiritual power of a scientific, right thought, without a direct effort, an audible or even a mental argument, has oftentimes healed inveterate diseases.
The thoughts of the practitioner should be imbued with a clear conviction of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God; that He is All, and that there can be none beside Him; that God is good, and the producer only of good; and hence, that whatever militates against health, harmony, or holiness, is an unjust usurper of the throne of the controller of all mankind. Note this, that if you have power in error, you forfeit the power that Truth bestows, and its salutary influence on yourself and others.
You must feel and know that God alone governs man; that His government is harmonious; that He is too pure to behold iniquity, and divides His power with nothing evil or material; that material laws are only human beliefs, which govern mortals wrongfully. These beliefs arise from the subjective states of thought, producing the beliefs of a mortal material universe,--so-called, and of material disease and mortality. Mortal ills are but errors of thought,--diseases of mortal mind, and not of matter; for matter cannot feel, see, or report pain or disease.
Disease is a thing of thought manifested on the body; and fear is the procurator of the thought which causes sickness and suffering. Remove this fear by the true sense that God is Love,--and that Love punishes nothing but sin,--and the patient can then look up to the loving God, and know that He afflicteth not willingly the children of men, who are punished because of disobedience to His spiritual law. His law of Truth, when obeyed, removes every erroneous physical and mental state. The belief that matter can master Mind, and make you ill, is an error which Truth will destroy.
You must learn to acknowledge God in all His ways. It is only a lack of understanding of the allness of God, which leads you to believe in the existence of matter, or that matter can frame its own conditions, contrary to the law of Spirit.
Sickness is the schoolmaster, leading you to Christ; first to faith in Christ; next to belief in God as omnipotent; and finally to the understanding of God and man in Christian Science, whereby you learn that God is good, and in Science man is His likeness, the forever reflection of goodness. Therefore good is one and All.
This brings forward the next proposition in Christian Science,--namely, that there are no sickness, sin, and death in the divine Mind. What seem to be disease, vice, and mortality are illusions of the physical senses. These illusions are not real, but unreal. Health is the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else. In a moment you may awake from a night-dream; just so you can awake from the dream of sickness; but the demonstration of the Science of Mind-healing by no means rests on the strength of human belief. This demonstration is based on a true understanding of God and divine Science, which takes away every human belief, and, through the illumination of spiritual understanding, reveals the all-power and ever-presence of good, whence emanate health, harmony, and Life eternal.
The lecturer, teacher, or healer who is indeed a Christian Scientist, never introduces the subject of human anatomy; never depicts the muscular, vascular, or nervous operations of the human frame. He never talks about the structure of the material body. He never lays his hands on the patient, nor manipulates the parts of the body supposed to be ailing. Above all, he keeps unbroken the Ten Commandments, and practises Christ's Sermon on the Mount.
Wrong thoughts and methods strengthen the sense of disease, instead of cure it; or else quiet the fear of the sick on false grounds, encouraging them in the belief of error until they hold stronger than before the belief that they are first made sick by matter, and then restored through its agency. This fosters infidelity, and is mental quackery, that denies the Principle of Mind-healing. If the sick are aided in this mistaken fashion, their ailments will return, and be more stubborn because the relief is unchristian and unscientific.
Christian Science erases from the minds of invalids their mistaken belief that they live in or because of matter, or that a so-called material organism controls the health or existence of mankind, and induces rest in God, divine Love, as caring for all the conditions requisite for the well-being of man. As power divine is the healer, why should mortals concern themselves with the chemistry of food? Jesus said: "Take no thought what ye shall eat."
The practitioner should also endeavor to free the minds of the healthy from any sense of subordination to their bodies, and teach them that the divine Mind, not material law, maintains human health and life.
A Christian Scientist knows that, in Science, disease is unreal; that Mind is not in matter; that Life is God, good; hence Life is not functional, and is neither matter nor mortal mind; knows that pantheism and theosophy are not Science. Whatever saps, with human belief, this basis of Christian Science, renders it impossible to demonstrate the Principle of this Science, even in the smallest degree.
A mortal and material body is not the actual individuality of man made in the divine and spiritual image of God. The material body is not the likeness of Spirit; hence it is not the truth of being, but the likeness of error--the human belief which saith there is more than one God,--there is more than one Life and one Mind.
In Deuteronomy (iv. 35) we read: "The Lord, He is God; there is none else beside Him." In John (iv. 24) we may read: "God is Spirit." These propositions, understood in their Science, elucidate my meaning.
When treating a patient, it is not Science to treat every organ in the body. To aver that harmony is the real and discord is the unreal, and then give special attention to what according to their own belief is diseased, is scientific; and if the healer realizes the truth, it will free his patient. MBE