Part 26 (1/2)

Pulmonary misbeliefs

Damp atmosphere and freezing snow empurpled the 175:27 plump cheeks of our ancestors, but they never indulged in the refinement of inflamed bronchial tubes.

They were as innocent as Adam, before he ate 175:30 the fruit of false knowledge, of the existence of tubercles and troches, lungs and lozenges.

Our modern Eves

”Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,” says 176:1 the English poet, and there is truth in his sentiment. The action of mortal mind on the body was not so injurious 176:3 before inquisitive modern Eves took up the study of medical works and unmanly Adams attributed their own downfall and the fate of their off- 176:6 spring to the weakness of their wives.

The primitive custom of taking no thought about food left the stomach and bowels free to act in obedi- 176:9 ence to nature, and gave the gospel a chance to be seen in its glorious effects upon the body. A ghastly array of diseases was not paraded before the imagination. There 176:12 were fewer books on digestion and more ”sermons in stones, and good in everything.” When the mechanism of the human mind gives place to the divine Mind, self- 176:15 ishness and sin, disease and death, will lose their foothold.

Human fear of miasma would load with disease the 176:18 air of Eden, and weigh down mankind with superimposed and conjectural evils. Mortal mind is the worst foe of the body, while divine Mind is its best friend.

Diseases not to be cla.s.sified

176:21 Should all cases of organic disease be treated by a regular pract.i.tioner, and the Christian Scientist try truth only in cases of hysteria, hypochon- 176:24 dria, and hallucination? One disease is no more real than another. All disease is the result of education, and disease can carry its ill-effects 176:27 no farther than mortal mind maps out the way. The human mind, not matter, is supposed to feel, suffer, en- joy. Hence decided types of acute disease are quite as 176:30 ready to yield to Truth as the less distinct type and chronic form of disease. Truth handles the most malignant con- tagion with perfect a.s.surance.

One basis for all sickness

177:1 Human mind produces what is termed organic dis- ease as certainly as it produces hysteria, and it must re- 177:3 linquish all its errors, sicknesses, and sins.

I have demonstrated this beyond all cavil.

The evidence of divine Mind's healing power and abso- 177:6 lute control is to me as certain as the evidence of my own existence.

Mental and physical oneness

Mortal mind and body are one. Neither exists without 177:9 the other, and both must be destroyed by immortal Mind.

Matter, or body, is but a false concept of mor- tal mind. This so-called mind builds its own 177:12 superstructure, of which the material body is the grosser portion; but from first to last, the body is a sensuous, human concept.

The effect of names

177:15 In the Scriptural allegory of the material creation, Adam or error, which represents the erroneous theory of life and intelligence in matter, had the 177:18 naming of all that was material. These names indicated matter's properties, qualities, and forms. But a lie, the opposite of Truth, cannot name the qualities and 177:21 effects of what is termed matter, and create the so-called laws of the flesh, nor can a lie hold the preponderance of power in any direction against G.o.d, Spirit and 177:24 Truth.

Poison defined mentally

If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and the patient dies even though physician and 177:27 patient are expecting favorable results, does human belief, you ask, cause this death? Even so, and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally 177:30 taken.

In such cases a few persons believe the potion swal- lowed by the patient to be harmless, but the vast ma- 178:1 jority of mankind, though they know nothing of this par- ticular case and this special person, believe the a.r.s.enic, 178:3 the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to be poi- sonous, for it is set down as a poison by mortal mind.

Consequently, the result is controlled by the majority of 178:6 opinions, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick-chamber.

Heredity is not a law. The remote cause or belief 178:9 of disease is not dangerous because of its priority and the connection of past mortal thoughts with present.

The predisposing cause and the exciting cause are 178:12 mental.

Perhaps an adult has a deformity produced prior to his birth by the fright of his mother. When wrested from 178:15 human belief and based on Science or the divine Mind, to which all things are possible, that chronic case is not difficult to cure.

Animal magnetism destroyed

178:18 Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensation in matter, is animal magnetism; but this so-called mind, from which comes all evil, contradicts itself, 178:21 and must finally yield to the eternal Truth, or the divine Mind, expressed in Science. In pro- portion to our understanding of Christian Science, we are 178:24 freed from the belief of heredity, of mind in matter or ani- mal magnetism; and we disarm sin of its imaginary power in proportion to our spiritual understanding of the status 178:27 of immortal being.

Ignorant of the methods and the basis of metaphysical healing, you may attempt to unite with it hypnotism, 178:30 spiritualism, electricity; but none of these methods can be mingled with metaphysical healing.