Watching Point 341

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341 — WATCH lest you doubt our Leader’s Science, when you read that at times she directed students to take up arguments similar to the following: “There is no one to administer arsenic poison. It cannot be administered behind an unsuspected lie of cold-taking, sewer gas, or any other lie to hide it. Arsenic cannot be concealed. Arsenic cannot kill. The law of divinity — declaration is demonstration — overcomes and destroys the laws of arsenical poisoning and its effects. There can be no fear of it. Arsenic poison cannot cause mental apathy.”

If all effects come from mortal mind, we learn that as mortal mind begins to be freed from its belief in matter, it claims to be able to produce mentally all effects that formerly it required the agency of matter to produce. Mrs. Eddy learned that mortal mind was claiming that it could inject the claim of arsenic where one had not taken arsenic as matter. When Dr. Eddy died, she stated publicly that ‚it was poison that killed him, — not material poison, but mesmeric poison.” She stated that it was ‚arsenical poison, mentally administered.”

Just as a mother can spank her boy with a ruler, or without it, so mortal mind, that has poisoned mortals with matter, has discovered that it can poison them mentally. Mrs. Eddy uncovered this phenomenon, not to frighten students, but to encourage them to apply the divine remedy. This remedy is the same, whether it is applied to a case where one has been poisoned materially or mentally. The knowledge that all poisoning comes through thought, even when it appears to come through matter, makes one the master of every case, whereas a doctor would be helpless to cope with a case of mental poisoning.

When Mrs. Eddy found a student working against flesh and blood, using the method of Christian Science to heal physical disease, she tried to correct such an effort by directing him to take up arsenic or some other form of poison. One might wonder what help that would be; but the effect would be to turn him from matter to mind in his work, since he would know that the patient had in no way taken arsenic as matter. The only deduction would be that he must handle mesmerism. In this way he would be put on the right track, namely, mental cause and effect.

Why did Mrs. Eddy say that arsenic might hide behind a common cold? This realization might help a student who was working against physical symptoms, to work wholly from a mental standpoint, which was what Mrs. Eddy wanted in all cases.

Today we should not need this form of help, since the mental nature of every case is understood by the student. He knows that every outward symptom is the expression of a state of mind, and if that mind is not God, then he is subject to mortal law in every form. Yet when one has a physical difficulty, he always finds a great temptation to believe that his particular error is something physical, and so to aim his work at effect instead of cause. Hence whatever helps one to apply himself wholly to thought correction, becomes of value.




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Love is the liberator.