Part 59 (1/2)

It were better to be exposed to every plague on earth than to endure the c.u.mulative effects of a guilty con- 405:24 science. The abiding consciousness of wrong- doing tends to destroy the ability to do right.

If sin is not regretted and is not lessening, then it is 405:27 hastening on to physical and moral doom. You are con- quered by the moral penalties you incur and the ills they bring. The pains of sinful sense are less harmful than its 405:30 pleasures. Belief in material suffering causes mortals to retreat from their error, to flee from body to Spirit, and to appeal to divine sources outside of themselves.

The leaves of healing

406:1 The Bible contains the recipe for all healing. ”The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

406:3 Sin and sickness are both healed by the same Principle. The tree is typical of man's divine Principle, which is equal to every emergency, offering 406:6 full salvation from sin, sickness, and death. Sin will submit to Christian Science when, in place of modes and forms, the power of G.o.d is understood and demonstrated 406:9 in the healing of mortals, both mind and body. ”Per- fect Love casteth out fear.”

Sickness will abate

The Science of being unveils the errors of sense, and 406:12 spiritual perception, aided by Science, reaches Truth.

Then error disappears. Sin and sickness will abate and seem less real as we approach the 406:15 scientific period, in which mortal sense is subdued and all that is unlike the true likeness disappears. The moral man has no fear that he will commit a murder, and he 406:18 should be as fearless on the question of disease.

Resist to the end

Resist evil - error of every sort - and it will flee from you. Error is opposed to Life. We can, and ultimately 406:21 shall, so rise as to avail ourselves in every direc- tion of the supremacy of Truth over error, Life over death, and good over evil, and this growth will go 406:24 on until we arrive at the fulness of G.o.d's idea, and no more fear that we shall be sick and die. Inharmony of any kind involves weakness and suffering, - a loss of 406:27 control over the body.

Morbid cravings

The depraved appet.i.te for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, is destroyed only by Mind's mastery 406:30 of the body. This normal control is gained through divine strength and understanding.

There is no enjoyment in getting drunk, in becoming a 407:1 fool or an object of loathing; but there is a very sharp remembrance of it, a suffering inconceivably terrible to 407:3 man's self-respect. Puffing the obnoxious fumes of to- bacco, or chewing a leaf naturally attractive to no crea- ture except a loathsome worm, is at least disgusting.

Universal panacea

407:6 Man's enslavement to the most relentless masters - pa.s.sion, selfishness, envy, hatred, and revenge - is con- quered only by a mighty struggle. Every 407:9 hour of delay makes the struggle more severe.

If man is not victorious over the pa.s.sions, they crush out happiness, health, and manhood. Here Christian 407:12 Science is the sovereign panacea, giving strength to the weakness of mortal mind, - strength from the immortal and omnipotent Mind, - and lifting humanity above 407:15 itself into purer desires, even into spiritual power and good-will to man.

Let the slave of wrong desire learn the lessons of Chris- 407:18 tian Science, and he will get the better of that desire and ascend a degree in the scale of health, happiness, and existence.

Immortal memory

407:21 If delusion says, ”I have lost my memory,” contra- dict it. No faculty of Mind is lost. In Science, all being is eternal, spiritual, perfect, harmoni- 407:24 ous in every action. Let the perfect model be present in your thoughts instead of its demoralized op- posite. This spiritualization of thought lets in the light, 407:27 and brings the divine Mind, Life not death, into your consciousness.

Sin a form of insanity

There are many species of insanity. All sin is insan- 407:30 ity in different degrees. Sin is spared from this cla.s.sification, only because its method of madness is in consonance with common mortal belief.

408:1 Every sort of sickness is error, - that is, sickness is loss of harmony. This view is not altered by the fact 408:3 that sin is worse than sickness, and sickness is not ac- knowledged nor discovered to be error by many who are sick.

408:6 There is a universal insanity of so-called health, which mistakes fable for fact throughout the entire round of the material senses, but this general craze cannot, in a scien- 408:9 tific diagnosis, s.h.i.+eld the individual case from the special name of insanity. Those unfortunate people who are committed to insane asylums are only so many distinctly 408:12 defined instances of the baneful effects of illusion on mor- tal minds and bodies.

Drugs and brain-lobes

The supposition that we can correct insanity by the use 408:15 of purgatives and narcotics is in itself a mild species of insanity. Can drugs go of their own accord to the brain and destroy the so-called inflam- 408:18 mation of disordered functions, thus reaching mortal mind through matter? Drugs do not affect a corpse, and Truth does not distribute drugs through the blood, and 408:21 from them derive a supposed effect on intelligence and sen- timent. A dislocation of the tarsal joint would produce insanity as perceptibly as would congestion of the brain, 408:24 were it not that mortal mind thinks that the tarsal joint is less intimately connected with the mind than is the brain.

Reverse the belief, and the results would be perceptibly 408:27 different.

Matter and animate error

The unconscious thought in the corporeal substra- tum of brain produces no effect, and that condition of 408:30 the body which we call sensation in matter is unreal. Mortal mind is ignorant of it- self, - ignorant of the errors it includes and of their 409:1 effects. Intelligent matter is an impossibility. You may say: ”But if disease obtains in matter, why do 409:3 you insist that disease is formed by mortal mind and not by matter?” _Mortal mind _and body combine as one, and the nearer matter approaches its final state- 409:6 ment, - animate error called nerves, brain, mind, - the more prolific it is likely to become in sin and disease- beliefs.

Dictation of error