Watching Point 285

285 — WATCH lest you strive to destroy nerves, instead of the serpent in nerves. When Mrs. Eddy was preparing Dr. Alfred Baker to teach the course in obstetrics in the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, she gave him the following statement, as the beautiful keynote of the class, “Latest news from God: handle the serpent in nerve.” At the same time she sent a telegram to Augusta Stetson, “Electricity cannot convey poison to nerve centers.”

In one of her classes Mrs. Eddy taught as follows: “A nerve is the talking serpent that was a lie from the beginning. Error is the talking serpent that talks to you against Mother and Jesus and yourself and your brethren, and cannot talk at all. Truth is. Let God talk all the time; there is nothing else. Serpent is mere belief — explained by the words, A belief of personal sense that is governed by the Truth is a harmonious belief. A harmonious belief governed by the Truth is spiritual sense — understanding.

“God told Moses to handle the serpent, but Moses tried to run away from it. God told him to go back and handle it. Moses said, ‘Where is the serpent? God did not make one.’ God said, ‘Handle the serpent,’ and he did, and it became a rod. The rod of Moses was malicious mesmerism, and when he handled it, it was a power, for he had power over lords many and gods many, and it was a staff to lean upon.

“The rod that Moses threw down, became through God, the power of good. The rod Moses had, God did not give him, but God commanded him to throw it down, and it became a serpent, his enemy.

“Then God spoke to Moses (who fled in fear) and commanded him to pick up the serpent (demonstrate the nothingness) and it became a rod.

“He could not expect to throw away the rod power at once, but must take it up as a staff, — let it become the power of God, — see it (sickness, error) work in us unto salvation.”

The great unfoldment, or latest news from God, that Mrs. Eddy sent to Dr. Baker’s class was that we should no more condemn nerves, than we would condemn our radio, because it was tuned into a program that we did not like. It is through the belief of nerves that all our suffering seems to come; but that is no reason for working to destroy them, since mortal mind never created them! Hence what appears to be nerves is a human distortion of God’s means and methods of communicating spiritual ideas; they are the spiritual antenna over which are transmitted the precious messages of good. Spiritually considered they are God-given means by which man becomes conscious of God, man and the universe.

The serpent in nerves would stand for a reversal of this spiritual usage, or the claim that nerves are intelligent of themselves, can talk and make mortals conscious of the presence and existence of that which is unreal, namely, the opposite of good, or evil. Through the suggestion of the serpent comes the belief that nerves can be the medium through which mortal man becomes conscious of matter, pain, suffering, disease and death. It is as if an enemy should connect your cold water faucet with the hot water. You would not condemn the pipe if it gave forth hot water, when you wanted a cold drink.

The talking serpent suggests that nerves are the medium through which that which is unpleasant comes to mortal man, but this is the lie that must be handled. In so doing one does not strive to get rid of nerves, but to eliminate the material sense of them. When Mrs. Eddy found students trying to put food aside, instead of a material sense of food, she said, “Don’t say there is no intelligence in food. The earth brings forth food for man’s use and we must reflect the divine intelligence that enables us to use that food; adhere to the statement that divine intelligence directs man and governed by it, man eats, sleeps, walks and talks harmoniously. Depict the real Christ; the man-made is not the image.”

The world of mortal belief malpractices on food just as it does on nerves. This malpractice is the talking serpent that must be handled. Jesus encouraged the eating of food, showing that at our present stage of experience, it is not food that we must eliminate, but the belief that it is material, that it can affect man adversely either through quality or quantity, or that it can be the medium for mortal mind. If God is not absent from the blessings He bestows, then we must never consider that His goodness and love are absent from the food He supplies to His children.

When Jesus met with his disciples at supper, the eating of food became a channel for a spiritual uplift. When food is seen as a channel for inspiration and blessing, man’s spiritual nature is fed, at the same time his temporary material needs are taken care of.

Food and nerves are never the cause or the source of man’s discords. It is the serpent, or mortal belief, that claims to use matter as a medium through which to enslave mortals. When this mortal belief is extracted from food, it might be likened to dehydrated vegetables, out of which all water has been taken. One might say that this is what the prodigal son did. When he had taken all life, truth, substance and intelligence out of matter, nothing but husks remained, that which no longer had any weight to hold his thought on a mortal level. Then he rose spontaneously into the consciousness of Mind as the only true substance; the husks became the channel for Mind’s blessing and were no longer seen as matter.

Would you destroy a ventriloquist’s dummy because of what it appeared to be saying? Silence the ventriloquist, and the dummy stops its deceptive talking. The serpent in nerve is the ventriloquist, mortal mind, which appears to talk through nerves, food, etc. For this reason Mrs. Eddy says on page 493 of Science and Health, “Disease is an experience of so-called mortal mind.”