Factors Involved in Healing

Chapter 9 of Christian Science, Its "Clear, Correct Teaching" by Herbert Eustace

Introduction

In order to present for analysis as many phases of human belief as possible and in order to indicate how the corrective power of Truth, through argument, can be applied, a number of cases of dis-ease may properly be analyzed.

You will find, however, that every case, in its final analysis, leads to the one conclusion, namely, that what appears to be the claim is really not the claim.

You will find, also, that no argument, in and of itself, destroys a claim.

The sole purpose of the argument is to establish the fact that the testimony or evidence of the material senses is not the basic difficulty.

Regardless of this, it is necessary, nevertheless, to "continue the mental argument in the practice of Christian healing until you can cure without it instantaneously, and through Spirit alone." (Mis. 359: 5)

Mrs. Eddy did not mean by this, however, that any argument, in and of itself, could accomplish the healing.

You could not be aware of anything that you cognize, whether good or bad, if it did not present itself as a state of mind or consciousness.

It must come as a mental argument, even though appearing in the language of things; for you cognize a thing only as an argument.

The argument presents itself, for example, that something is wrong; that you are sick; that you are sick for a reason, and so forth – a specific argument about a specific thing.

The erroneous argument, coming as the negation of the positive truth, is, like Truth, specific and must be met by the specific counterargument.

In mathematics, a mistake about two times two could not be corrected with the truth about three times three. The specific truth about two times two is requisite.

A specific lie is reversed only by the specific truth.

The argument is for that purpose; were it not employed, the lie would continue to masquerade as the truth, and would be accepted by you as true, and you could not see the actual claim.

No intelligence is displayed by employing an argument about something that error is not presenting as a specific mistake.

Hence the necessity for correct diagnosis, for recognizing the one Practitioner, infinite intelligence as the only Practitioner, the only M.D. "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." (Rud. 13: 18)

You meet the arguments of evil, appearing as wrong things, with the arguments of Truth, in order to convince yourself that what appears on the surface is a mental argument, in other words, a suggestion, rather than a thing having something wrong with it.

It is necessary to continue the mental argument until you are convinced of this fact, or you will not see that the claim is hypnotic suggestion. Unless you do see this, you will not be able to reverse it instantaneously by Spirit, which is pure realization.

As an illustration, let us suppose a case of a man under hypnotic influence, going through the motion of swimming on dry boards. He is making a strenuous effort to save himself from what he believes to be drowning. On his face is depicted desperate fear, and yet you know that he is only on dry boards and in no danger.

But suppose you were so situated, able only to see the terror on the man's face and to hear his cry, "I am drowning"; being unable to see that he was on dry boards, would not you also be convinced that he was in danger of perishing?

Your first impulse under such circumstances, would doubtless be to run to the man's aid.

But the moment you reached him and saw that he was not in water, you would have a tremendous reaction in thought.

You would immediately cease trying to save him from water, for you would recognize at once that he was acting under hypnotic influence and that his need was to be freed from the belief that there was a mind that could either hypnotize or be hypnotized.

"No person can accept another's belief, except it be with the consent of his own belief. If the error which knocks at the door of your own thought originated in another's mind, you are a free moral agent to reject or to accept this error; hence, you are the arbiter of your own fate, and sin is the author of sin." (Mis. 83: 12)

As a Christian Scientist, your remedy would be to realize immediately the omnipresence of the one Mind only, and in the degree that you were successful in this realization, the man would be free from hypnotic influence, and would arise, "clothed, and in his right mind." (Mark 5: 15)

If, on the other hand, you attempted to help him by any material means, as, for instance, lifting him to an upright position or forcing him to stop the motions of swimming, you would find him still persisting in his futile effort to swim, because he would still be hypnotized.

His swimming had nothing to do with water, but was the result of his acceptance of the hypnotic suggestion or belief that he was in water. Under hypnotic influence, he would interpret anything as water, and in order to save himself, would believe that he must continue to swim.

In a case of this kind, because the dis-ease is seen as a mental hallucination, it is readily acknowledged that material remedies would be useless.

This illustration will be used frequently to clarify the analyses of other cases, because each case reverts in principle to the man who believes himself to be swimming on dry boards.

No case can be correctly handled until it is seen as pure hypnotic suggestion.

If you can be tempted to believe in a dis-eased thing or condition, you are powerless to destroy it.

Only as every case is seen as hypnotism are you its master through Mind. Mind can only operate in the realm of consciousness; never in the so-called realm of matter.

It is well to remember, also, in order to prevent confusion of thought and needless fear, that no matter how high sounding and mysterious may be the name given to a disease by materia medica, the name designates only a simple anatomical or functional condition that is supposed to be wrong.

Any medical dictionary is full of terms of which you may never have heard, but which, when you understand the definitions, are merely names of diseases of familiar organs or functions of the body.

For instance, you are told that the patient has coronary thrombosis.

The name sounds formidable enough to frighten any layman, but it is merely the medical way of stating that there is a stoppage in the arteries of the crown of the heart.

Medical terms generally hide the simple name of some portion or function of the body.

The medical name is really of no moment whatever.

In your argument it is the name of the anatomical part involved that you do need to know and use for refutation.

Use the simple anatomical name until you are "thoroughly persuaded in your own mind" (S. & H. 412: 7) that no anatomy is involved, but that instead, hypnotic suggestion is masquerading as a belief of some thing wrong.

The phraseology of materia medica, as the activity of malicious mind has succeeded in its purpose, that of frightening the poor mortal by using terms that sound awesome and impressive.

If simple English were used instead, possibly he would not be frightened at all.

Imagine a mathematician with a particular term for two times two equals four, and a very involved term for a mistake about two times two! The layman user of numbers might well be confused and frightened.

That is just what materia medica, in all its phases, has developed. In order to lift its calling above the layman's comprehension, it uses long names, often Latin names, which confuse and terrify the patient.

Remember, fear is the substance of every case, and with the removal of fear, the disorder disappears.

Fear is the belief that God, good, is not all.

Fear is the negation or suppositional opposite of the confidence and assurance that good is, and is all that is.

As Science and Health says, "Always begin your treatment by allaying the fear of patients ... If you succeed in wholly removing the fear, your patient is healed." (S. & H. 411: 27) Then you would do this with every case, at the outset.

With infinite good as All-in-all, what is there to fear?

In using arguments, realize the facts already presented about place, time, substance and law. One place, here. One time, now. One substance, Spirit. One law, the law of God, perfection.

In every case analyzed, it will be taken for granted that you do this first; therefore, these points will not be brought out each time.

Science and Health declares, "To heal by argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical Conform the argument so as to destroy the evidence of disease." (S. & H. 412: 18) "You may vary the arguments to meet the peculiar or general symptoms of the case." (S. & H. 412: 5) "Whatever the belief is, if arguments are used to destroy it, the belief must be repudiated, and the negation must extend to the supposed disease and to whatever decides its type and symptoms." (S. & H. 418: 16)

Arguments have value only as they remind one of what the claim actually is, hypnotic suggestion, and as they bring thought into accord with the one Mind as All-in-all.

The following cases are presented solely to illustrate some of the arguments of evil that arise, and to present ways of rejecting them. Every person must work out his own method of argument. There can be no formula. Remember that argument is not realization but merely a step leading to the conviction of God's allness.

Blindness

To the average person, blindness means loss of sight; but the fact is, that it has nothing to do with sight.

The sight is not destroyed. It only seems to be gone because human belief has associated seeing with the eyes, even as it has associated hearing with the ears, thinking with the brain, feeling with the nerves, etc.

Sight, hearing, thinking and feeling have nothing to do with eyes, ears, brain, or nerves.

This is proven in the practice of hypnotism wherein the senses of the victim testify to whatever the hypnotist suggests, regardless of what the subject's own normal senses would declare.

Another example of this is the night dream, in which the senses, as such, are silent, though the dreamer supposes himself to be using all of them.

One could give innumerable instances, but these two are enough to prove that the senses are conditions of mind, not of matter, and that mind is never dependent upon matter.

We can dismiss then, all thought of any need to handle sight and can turn our attention to eyes, in other words, to that about which the specific lie is the lie.

It has been determined that infinite intelligence is the only Practitioner, and is, therefore, the Practitioner, the M.D. on every case. One cannot afford ever to lose sight of this.

What this Practitioner knows is the truth about everything.

Infinite intelligence, including all right-knowing, at once uncovers the specific lie. In this case, let us suppose the lie to be about the optic nerve.

Knowing all there is to know about optic nerve — its eternal action and perfection — the Practitioner instantly diagnoses the error as a claim of “dead optic nerve.”

Then comes the question, What is there to know about optic nerve?

First, where is it?

Since here is all the place there is, optic nerve is something right within one's own mental cognizance.

It is operating now because this instant is all the now, all the time, or moment there is.

There is no yesterday with a history; there is this instant only.

Because Spirit is the one is, the one substance, Spirit is the substance of optic nerve. In other words, Spirit is all there is to optic nerve; hence optic nerve is eternally spiritual and perfect.

How many optic nerves are there?

One, because there is one Spirit, one essence, one isness.

Bear in mind that entirely separate from the belief of the material concept called optic nerve is the divine reality, about which, metaphysically, you are always thinking.

If you fail to insist on this separation in your use of all words, you will make a farce of your understanding of Christian Science.

The human concept of any term has no relation whatever to the divine reality of that term, even as the boards upon which the hypnotized man is struggling have no relation to water.

Every Christian Scientist must know this.

The human concept is always the lie, the negation about the divine reality; and the negation must be reversed every time.

To see God as all there is to optic nerve, or to anything else, is scientific; but to reverse this, and attempt to see optic nerve, or anything else, as all there is to God, is fraught with the greatest danger.

This point must be specifically emphasized, because there is always difficulty, when using terms, in separating their spiritual meaning from the finite concept attached to them.

If you put the human concept first and say that that is all there is to God, you finitize your God, and so you have no God.

By seeing God always as first and as including within Himself all being, you lift all things to His level, and avoid the danger of unconsciously reducing your God to the level of human belief.

Therefore, insist upon finding God first, and His interpretation as idea to you, second.

Because God is omnipresent, infinitely perfect, the one law, optic nerve is everywhere present, harmonious, complete, whole, law-abiding and eternal.

Everything that God is must uphold optic nerve to the minutest detail.

God, as infinite Life is shown forth as infinitely living optic nerve, without the possibility of depletion, inflammation or congestion.

The law of God is the one law of depletion, inflammation, congestion, and strangulation to everything unlike Himself; hence, God is the very law of preservation to His own presence or idea; in this case, optic nerve.

All that God is, optic nerve has. "Son, all that I have is thine," (Luke 15: 31) is the eternal dictum of Mind to its own thought.

Definitely convinced of this fact, you can declare from your heart, "Our optic nerve which is in heaven, hallowed is thy name."

If you cannot do this, are you not deceiving yourself into believing that optic nerve is something apart from your God as All-in-all?

If in your heart you find God to be all the optic nerve there is, you know that right there in the place in which evil would say there is a "dead optic nerve," is the very presence of God, appearing as living, perfect optic nerve.

Daniel did this when he faced the lions. He saw the very presence of God as the only lion, hence harmless.

Jesus saw the presence of God as the only sea, and therefore as a peaceful sea.

The Hebrew captives saw the presence of God as the only fire, and it was their protection.

Mrs. Eddy told a friend that when she saw the face of God in the storm-cloud, the storm lifted.

Is not God omnipresent? He is.

Thus God is seen as all there is to optic nerve. Perfect optic nerve is right where the lie about it seems to be.

You have now reached the point you attained when you saw the man going through the motions of swimming on dry boards, and realized that he did not need to be saved from drowning, but that he needed to be saved from hypnotic suggestion.

With this settled, you realize that what appears as dead optic nerve has really nothing to do with the eyes or nerves, but is the claim that there is a malicious mind, in other words that malicious mind is, as the suppositional opposite of the one Mind the negation of Mind.

A lie, or negation, always operates as hypnotic suggestion, appearing in this instance as a belief of a dead optic nerve.

To return to the swimming illustration, hypnotism operates as a belief of water in which to drown.

God, as divine Mind, operates as the impartation of divine thought to man, just as the sun imparts heat and light to its ray; whereas the negation, malicious mind, operates first to dispossess man of his mind and then to control him.

The one is true operation, the other is impossible; for with one Mind only, how could there be any dispossessing of one mind by another?

The necessity for the destruction of the belief that there is malicious mind is what is referred to in the statement, "The axe is laid unto the root of the trees." (Luke 3: 9)

The root of the tree of evil is, as you have already established, always the erroneous belief that malicious mind is; that the negation, unreversed, is entity or positive fact, acting as mind, and so appearing as positive evil.

Lay the axe at the root of this falsity by the realization that there is one Mind only, and that one, infinite; one presence, power and intelligence; and that therefore there is no room for a malicious mind either to be, or to operate hypnotically, as presence, power, intelligence, or as any other lie.

This realization is the spontaneous healing of any claim.

Always accompanying such healing is the understanding that nothing has actually been healed; that there was nothing wrong to be healed; that what took place was enlightenment, communion with the one Mind as All-in-all.

By reversing the negation, the positive appeared as the fact.

Mrs. Eddy illustrates this in her statement in Unity of Good: "When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein.

"In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocated joints and raise the dying to instantaneous health." (Un. 7: 13)

Every argument ceases when a claim is seen for what it really is – hypnotic suggestion. Then the demand is no longer for argument, but for pure realization.

This is symbolized by the Holy of Holies of the ancient Jewish temple into which only the High Priest (the symbol of the pure realization of God's allness) could enter.

Into the Holy of Holies, which is pure realization, no argument enters. Realization is all that is present.

Realization is the healing in Christian Science.

Realization is the purity of being.

Realization is the spirit of Christian Science.

Indeed, it is Christian Science itself.

You will discover, as we go on, that every case is finally reduced to the one common denominator of evil hypnotic suggestion.

Hypnotic suggestion is, as Mrs. Eddy designates it, "The specific term for error, or mortal mind." (S. & H. 103: 19)

Whether appearing, therefore, under the guise of sin, sickness, death, limitation or any other phase of human belief, it is never a thing that is wrong, but always pure hypnotism that is deceiving.

Evil can be handled only by being so understood.

Remember, however, that the temptation is always to accept evil as a thing. But as a thing it would be indestructible.

You cannot destroy a thing, but you can destroy a false sense by replacing it with the true sense. It is the true, or Christ sense, that always destroys the hypnotic suggestion.

This is the basis of true Christian Science practice; and nothing is Christian Science practice that does not reduce evil to hypnotic suggestion, and destroy it as such.

Insanity

Insanity is the generic term used to designate the beliefs of a disordered or dis-eased brain. A common mistake is to think that insanity means a disordered mind. It does not.

It appears as a disordered mind because human belief has designated the brain as that whereby thinking is done.

The brain has no more to do with thinking than the heart with emotion.

Who, today, believes that the heart has emotions and that it feels?

The belief that the brain does the thinking, however, carries with it, in spite of its self-evident falsity, a second inevitable belief, namely, that if anything happens to the brain, thinking is impaired.

As an illustration of the falsity of the theory that the brain does the thinking, the following facts are illuminating.

A brilliant professor, in one of the largest American universities, willed his brain to the affiliated medical college. Up to the moment of his death, it was acknowledged that no deterioration in his mentality had taken place. No time was lost after his death in transferring his brain to specialists for examination. They naturally expected to find a perfect specimen of brain; but instead, they found what should have been, according to all their accepted theories, the brain of a "babbling idiot."

One example of this kind is enough to prove the absurdity of believing that any human concept, whether perfect or imperfect, has anything to do with Mind, or that it can usurp the prerogatives of Mind.

Psychologists, according to their own claim, are today restoring lost brain functions, and lost brain grooves, by the re-education of the individual on the lapsed points. They are doing this, they say, by using another portion of the brain, one that has not been affected by whatever cause the lapse.

Does this not prove that it is not the brain grooves that make the intelligence, but intelligence, called education, that makes the brain grooves.

Psychology acknowledges this when it says that it can change the function of thinking from one portion of the brain to another, and that the lapse will disappear.

Mind alone thinks, and no human concept, called brain, has anything to do with it.

But because brain is the specific point of attack in arguing against insanity, it is incumbent on the metaphysician to establish the truth about brain before proceeding further.

What do you know about brain?

Because God is All, He must and does include in His allness, all that there is to brain, all that brain means.

Therefore, all that God is, brain must be.

Brain shows forth the perfection and completeness of God, since God alone defines it.

This perfection and completeness precludes the possibility of a brain being inflamed, diseased or deranged, because the order, harmony and arrangement that is God is the order, harmony and arrangement of brain.

Because God is one, brain is one, and this one the only brain; hence, it is omnipresent.

The one right brain is just where the lie is saying there exists an imperfect brain, a diseased brain, a deranged brain.

Make your thinking so true that you never see the presence of God (whether interpreted as brain, or liver, or cloud, or sea, or whatsoever) as off in space, but see that it is with you, as your very communion with Truth, just as the multiplication table is everpresent as your consciousness.

Regardless of the name given to the appearance, acknowledge Mind alone as all the presence there is to it. Be ever mindful, however, that "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of" (S. & H. 14: 25) the human concept of anything is the divine reality.

Since this one perfect brain is the only brain, hence, omnipresent, can the claim have anything to do with brain? It cannot.

The belief that there is a mind apart from God, the one Mind, and that this mind operates as hypnotic suggestion and appears as a belief of imperfect brain, is all there is to the claim.

But because God is the one and only Mind, there is no suppositional opposite to appear as the negation of Mind; there is no malicious mind.

The realization of this is the healing.

Cancer of the Liver

Cancer is said to be caused by the incorrect locating and grouping of cells, and not by a diseased condition of the cells, in the sense in which the word "disease" is usually employed.

Cancer cells, so medical authorities will tell you, are perfectly healthy cells, but their location and grouping are wrong. Being out of place and improperly grouped, they interfere with one another and break down the tissues of the body.

This belief is based, of course, upon the old atomic theory that each atom is a separate entity, and therefore, if displaced, causes havoc to other atoms.

What does Christian Science answer to this? Just exactly what it says to every lie. In Jesus' words, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." (Jno. 8: 44)

Nor does Christian Science stop there. It goes on to show the truth about the lie.

It shows that Principle is all there is to any cell. Hence no cell is ever out of place, or wrongly grouped with any other.

The location and grouping of cells is as eternally right as God Himself is right.

There is no power to misplace anything, for God is the one power.

In the same way, you see the truth about liver. Is liver something apart from God?

For you to have cognizance of it, must it not be embraced in that which is consciousness, which is God, to you, and of which you are the conscious acknowledgment?

God, embracing within Himself all, includes all that liver is.

Then liver is as perfect as the Mind who thinks it, is perfect; it is as indestructible and eternal as Mind.

Liver is the very spirit of God, for God is Spirit.

Because God is Life, that which expresses life is the liver.

Because there is one God, there is one liver. Both liver and cells show forth all the good that God is. They are the omnipresent activity of Mind, declaring, to the minutest detail, all the perfection of Mind.

This one liver, being all the liver, and this one cell, being all the cell there is, they are everywhere present. Therefore, they are present right where the lie declares imperfect liver and imperfect cell to be.

Then you find that the claim has really nothing to do with cell or liver, but is purely hypnotic suggestion again, it is a case of the man swimming on dry boards.

So the claim is not cancer of the liver. That is merely the suggestion, the belief, the lie, or negation, that deceives and confuses.

As a metaphysician, you are not deceived. You lay the axe at the root of the tree, the lie that asserts that there is malicious mind.

The Holy of Holies is your refuge, the secret place of the most High, the realization that God is the one and only Mind and that there is none beside Him.

Therefore, there is no malicious mind to operate hypnotically and appear as a belief of cancer of the liver or cancer of anything.

Knowing this, you know that you know it, for you know and realize that Truth is the one and only Mind.

INFECTION: WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT OPERATES

Today every sort of ache or pain is attributed to some focal point of infection, operating as poison in the system.

The source of infection, whether called teeth, tonsils, intestines or some other part of the body, claims an individual history. It defines itself as a point of morbid chemical action, from which go forth disturbing influences.

Upon this hang all the arguments of related disease.

Do you accept or reject this theory?

You know that all that ever comes to you comes as consciousness, and is purely mental; hence you know that "so-called disease is a sensation of mind, not of matter." (My. 228: 4)

Your analysis of being turns you to Mind,

God, in order to clear up the situation. You know that all that comes to you as consciousness must be Mind interpreting itself to you. There is no other source of conscious being.

Mind, being infinite, leaves no place where Mind is not, no place where morbid infection could arise, no place where it could be feared.

The truth is that by which the lie locates itself. The lie always claims to be where the fact is, but Truth is ever a law of annihilation to the lie; it always precludes the negation.

Mind is eternal; so there never is a moment when a specific evil could begin to be true.

Substance implies actuality, indestructibility, reality, identity, truth.

Matter, appearing as morbid infection, declares itself destructive in action. But it is only the negation of substance, lacking in every quality of actuality, appearance or truth.

Having no matter substance, the claim has nothing whereby to identify itself as morbid infection; and, having no existence, it cannot be feared.

The so-called history of this disease-picture is simply a repetition of negatives, derived, by the law of opposites, from the infinity of Truth.

There is, in this sequence of misstatements, no inherent connection, continuity or intelligence; there is nothing in one statement which leads to the next.

It is utterly devoid of any law under which to operate as morbid infection.

Truth alone holds within itself the capacity, authority and right to act.

Truth, then, is the only law, and this law is always consciously operating – reassuring and comforting.

There is no morbid chemical action, for the one chemistry is Mind, transforming itself, and so being revealed as its own infinity of variety, its illimitable beauty of idea.

The activity of infinite Mind is the only chemistry. It precludes the possibility of the untrue, the negative, called morbid chemical action.

Infection is Mind imparting itself to its idea, imparting its very name and nature, infecting its own expression with life, purity and perfection.

This is the one and only infection, and it is in perfect agreement with the accepted definition of the word: "sympathetic communication of like qualities."

Where morbid infection claims to be, there is the very presence of Mind imparting the infection of spirituality "the beauty of holiness." (Ps. 29: 2)

Then the claim is not actually morbid infection, but rather a belief of morbid infection, which supposes that there is a malicious mind that can hypnotically suggest such a lying belief.

There is no such mind, for God is the only Mind.

This realization is the dispelling of the illusion.

Diabetes

Examination of the claim of diabetes, shows it to be simply the belief of imperfect action of the pancreatic gland, resulting in improper distribution of sugar to the so-called bodily system.

Is pancreatic action something apart from Mind?

For you to be conscious of it at all, must it not come to you through your conscious communion with Mind?

Must it not then be Mind showing forth its nature in perpetual harmony and perfection? It must.

Then is it gland action, or Mind with its infinite resources?

God determines all quality and quantity, and His word is law, unchangeable, ever-present, and always prevailing.

Mind cannot withhold its blessings, and if its right action appears as the distribution of sugar, then does it not accomplish this perfectly, harmoniously and in exactly the right amounts?

It does.

Knowing this, you know also that the pancreatic gland, being the presence of infinite and intelligent good, ever about its Father's business, is declaring His business and power here and everywhere.

Is there a mind apart from the one and only Mind, able hypnotically to suggest a belief of imperfect pancreas?

No, there is not.

Then, resting in the conscious assurance of the one Mind as all, you find that the hypnotic belief, diabetes, vanishes.

Bright's Disease

Bright's disease is the belief that kidneys can degenerate and cease to function.

What do you know about kidneys?

Are they apart from and outside consciousness? You would be unconscious of them if they were.

Have you not proved that the one infinite Mind is the one consciousness your consciousness; and that through your communion with

Mind, all that Life means is revealed in a practical and understandable way?

"For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth." (Jkno. 5: 20)

Then Truth alone outlines the anatomy or structure of kidneys, and it is as mental as the multiplication table and as exact.

The wisdom of Mind is the directing, controlling and functioning of what appears as kidneys.

Since Mind is omnipresent, this perfect anatomy, this perfect functioning, is omnipresent, and is right where "diseased kidneys" appear to be.

What does it mean "to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord"? (2 Cor. 5: 8)

It means that we understand that body, kidneys, heart or whatever term one may be using, is and does nothing of itself, but is the thought of Mind made manifest Mind interpreting itself to its own idea as perfect, indestructible kidneys and so forth.

Can kidneys, then, degenerate and vanish? All that can degenerate and vanish is the hypnotic suggestion of a belief of imperfect kidneys.

Since there is no malicious mind for God alone is Mind there can be no such belief.

This realization, this Holy of Holies, is Immanuel or God with you "And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth ... or maketh a lie." (Rev. 21: 27)

Goiter

Goiter is the name given to describe a morbid enlargement of the thyroid gland.

The first step in correct thinking is to start right, to start with what you know, with that of which you are sure.

"All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God, an infinite, and not a finite consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individual consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind." (Un. 24: 12)

Since the source of your being is Mind, your conscious recognition of whatever comes to you must be your communion with Mind.

In working this out, do not look at any preconceived mind-picture, but follow your reasoning through to its goal.

You see that thyroid gland comes to you as thought, not as matter; for you could know nothing about it, if you did not find it as thought.

Then you find it in the realm of consciousness in your communion with Mind; and it can express only the qualities Mind gives it. It is Mind defining itself to you.

Since Spirit is the only substance, there is no morbid substance. There is only right substance, the substance of good.

God controls man and man's action directly.

It is immaterial how this control appears.

All glandular action is Mind-action perfect action.

This includes all that is implied by thyroid, pancreas, adrenal, pituitary, or other gland.

The growing medical assumption that glands control practically every condition of man, both physical and mental, must be met and overcome by this true understanding.

Does the thyroid gland distribute iodine; the pancreas, sugar; the pituitary, salt? And does each of them control the destiny of man in some particular way? Is man at the mercy of matter, or has he the dominion vouchsafed him as the idea of immortal Mind?

We must answer the question by determining whether man is spiritual or material; whether his destiny is God-crowned or whether "the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered." (Job 24: 20)

The claim is again found to be not a wrong thing or a faulty action, but a hypnotized belief about thing and action.

Because the one Mind is and alone is, there is no mind to hypnotize or be hypnotized, and this realization appears as the understanding of right thyroid action right distribution of iodine and the disappearance of goiter.

Hernia

Hernia means a rupture, a breaking through of walls or linings. Since we recognize that everything is a state of consciousness, we ask: What is the argument involved in this so-called action of breaking? Is it not that the law of adhesion and cohesion, which unites and holds the tissues, is broken?

What is this law which claims to be broken?

Is this law a law of matter or of Mind?

The rock upon which we stand is the scientific fact that there is nothing but Mind and its idea; consciousness and its conscious acknowledgment.

Being yourself the one idea, it follows that you are dealing with Mind and with nothing else.

What then is the law of adhesion and cohesion?

It is Mind interpreting itself to you. Whatever Mind is, that is what must be declared to be true of this law.

Mind must be explained and shown forth as walls, tissue and so forth. Mind is enduring, immutable, perfect.

Then, are not all of these "the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency is Truth, whose attraction is Love, whose adhesion and cohesion are Life, perpetuating the eternal facts of being"? (S. & H. 293: 14)

They are; and any suggestion which contradicts this immutable truth to you, must be the hypnotic belief of a mind apart from the one omniscient divine Mind, a spurious mind that knows nothing, is nothing but the oblivion of unreality.

Automobile Troubles

If the brakes of an automobile failed to work and you lost control, what would you do?

You would turn to Principle, to Christian Science, as your Mind and there find the truth about what was being presented to you the truth about inoperative brakes.

Infinite intelligence controls the universe. It is the only control. This control is all that could appear as brakes; and so Mind is the one brake, the only brake.

There is no time when this control could cease to operate and to appear perfectly. There is no place where it is not operating. It alone operates. It is the one law.

There is no matter, substance or fact out of which to make a brake which does not work. All that can appear as brake is the one Mind thinking, controlling, governing, and appearing in whatever way is best understood.

Then brakes can no more get out of order than can Principle.

God being omnipresent, this one control, this one brake of Mind is omnipresent. It is the brake of my car.

Then it is not a question of brakes after all. "Brakes" is merely the truth upon which the lie is built, that lie whereby malicious suggestion operates to induce an acceptance of a belief of imperfect brakes.

In using the word brakes, you see clearly that "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of" (S. & H. 14: 25) the human concept called brakes, is the divine reality, "revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over" (Matt. 12: 13) all brakes.

It is imperative to understand what Christian Science means by its use of terms.

When Jesus said, "Stretch forth thine hand," 2 he was not thinking of a human concept called hand.

He saw the omnipresence of God always appearing usefully and intelligently in this case, as perfect hand.

He could, therefore, safely and scientifically use the word which would be familiar to the human mind and call it hand.

It is not the words you use that cause you trouble, but the limitations you attach to them.

Mrs. Eddy says, "I call disease by its name and have cured it thus; so there is nothing new on this score." (My. 228: 1)

Mrs. Eddy could not have healed understandingly if she had entertained a human concept of what was to be healed, for the human concept, by its very nature, is finite, limited and therefore diseased.

When you use the word brake and declare that Mind is all that brake means and is, you are not thinking of any human concept called brake.

Yet right where imperfect brake seems to be, there is the divine reality operating perfectly, entirely separate from the human concept, which is merely the negation.

You do not leave this brake of God theoretically off in space, but you "take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle, Deity." (Ret. 24: 24) You prove the omnipresence and oneness of Principle and idea.

In other words, you see that Truth is omnipresent, filling the very place where the lie seems to be.

"Stretch forth thine hand," (Matt. 12: 13) did not mean to Jesus some abstract hand off in space, but the hand of Mind that is the only hand, ever-present, and, therefore, the hand of the man who thought his hand withered.

In like manner, the brake of Mind is the brake of all, even as the one "two-times-two," that is the "two-times-two" of the principle of numbers, is the "two-times-two" of all.

Truth is always practical and usable, whether numbers or brakes are involved. Use Truth then, by having it as your brakes, the brakes of your car.

This lays the axe at the root of the tree, at the real error or lie, the belief that there is a mind apart from the one Mind, which, operating as hypnotic suggestion, appears as a belief of imperfect brakes.

It is not imperfect brakes, but the hypnotic suggestion of a belief of imperfect brakes, that is the trouble.

This belief is destroyed through the realization that God is the one and only Mind, and that there is therefore no malicious mind to operate hypnotically and appear as a belief of anything.

This pure aloneness with God as the only Mind, is demonstration.

It does not demonstrate some thing, but is, itself, demonstration.

Every lie, whether called a disease or an imperfect brake, must be reduced to the one common denominator, the belief that malicious mind is.

Malicious mind must be recognized as the root of all evil. Then it can be destroyed.

Again, suppose you found yourself stalled in the desert, apparently without gasoline.

Must you necessarily wait until someone brings you gasoline or tows you to the nearest filling station? Suppose no one comes along?

Do you think that Christian Science would leave you helpless?

If it could do so, what right had Jesus to say, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world"? (Matt. 28: 20)

Jesus meant that no untoward condition could arise which was not the lie about the truth already present, and therefore available for immediate use. Mrs. Eddy puts it, "Thou canst be brought into no condition, be is ever so severe, where Love has not been before thee and where its tender lesson is not awaiting thee." (My. 149: 31)

What is the truth about gasoline?

Is it something material, hence finite and limited?

Or, in order to be, at all, must it not inevitably be a state of Mind or consciousness, or, as material scientists term it, a "mathematical formula," thus a Mind-presence?

You cannot be conscious of that which is not.

Granting that there may seem to be a false consciousness of everything and anything that truly is, there could, nevertheless, be no consciousness whatever of that which is not.

It is because that which is, is, that you are really always conscious of that isness or truth, even if it comes to you upside down, or negatively.

When "two times two equals five" comes to you, it is really the truth of it that is knocking at the door of your thought; otherwise, there would be nothing of which to be conscious.

Mind, being the one and only consciousness, must be the source of your consciousness of gasoline; then, there could be no possible lack of gasoline where it was rightfully needed, any more than in the economy of numbers, you could lack the immediate presence of "four times six" or whatever was required to fulfil the purpose of intelligence.

Gasoline is as omnipresent as Mind. There is no place where it is not available.

Did not Elisha show this in the case of the oil for the widow?

What was true about the widow's oil is just as true about your gasoline.

The question is, are you finding gasoline as a state of Mind, or of matter?

What you are accepting will determine your abundance of gasoline, or the seeming lack of it.

In arguing the claim of a shortage of gasoline, you find gasoline omnipresent. The claim, then, is not that the gasoline has run out, but that malicious mind is accepted as consciousness, which

228 “CLEAR, CORRECT TEACHING” leads further to the acceptance of the hypnotic suggestion of a belief of lack of gasoline.

Again the lie is brought back to its origin and destroyed through the realization of God as the one and only Mind. The conviction follows that there is no malicious mind to operate hypnotically and appear as a belief of something lacking.

House on Fire

If the power of the flames was proved by "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego" (Dan. 3: 20) to be harmless to hurt their bodies because of their confidence in God as All-in-all, cannot fire be proved powerless to destroy a house?

In this case, there are two points that instantly arrest attention; fire and house.

Fire, to be cognizable, must come as a sense of consciousness to you.

Therefore all that you know about consciousness includes all that can be known about fire.

Knowing that consciousness is Mind, God, you can know only good about fire, and the only fire you can know is the fire of God.

Fire, then, is omnipresent, and is the law of consumption to everything unlike good.

It consumes only that which is contrary to good and leaves intact everything that pertains to good.

Fire is a state of Mind, not of matter. This is what the three Hebrew men prove.

What is house?

Again consciousness embraces all that is meant by house.

It follows, then, that because consciousness is one, there is but one house, and that house is the house of God.

All that God is, house is, for God can express only Himself.

The indestructibility of house is assured, for God is indestructible.

This one house, being all the house there is, is the house that is right where there seems to be the one on fire.

Is there any difference between one negation and another, between a house on fire and twotimes-two as five?

The truth about the house and the fire will do to the lie about house and fire just what the truth about any lie does to the lie.

The truth destroys the lie and leaves the fact or truth as the reality and presence. "And behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." (Ex. 3: 2)

It is not your understanding of this that makes it so, but the truth that is itself the fact.

This truth has always been the fact.

Then does your knowing this put out the fire and save the house?

No.

Have you not through argument just convinced yourself that the fire of God is the one and only fire and that the house of God is the one and only house, and that therefore, these are both intact and eternally about their Father's business?

The claim, then, has nothing to do with a fire or with a house. Those are only the facts about which the negation, the one malicious mind, makes its hypnotic suggestion.

The axe must be laid at the root of the tree, the belief that there is a mind apart from the one Mind, which, operating as hypnotic suggestion, appears as a fire burning down a house.

The realization of God as the one and only Mind, filling all space, destroys the belief that there is malicious mind and its belief of a destructive fire.

The question arises, would not this understanding of Christian Science, operating to destroy the power of fire to burn a house, destroy also its power to operate in a useful capacity?

No, because the understanding of fire as the activity of God, the presence of good, sees that activity as destroying only that which is unlike good.

The fire of good, spontaneously consuming that which is unlike good, leaves the right heat for every purpose desired.

Did not Jesus, after his resurrection, have a fire, "and fish laid thereon," (Jno. 21: 9) for his disciples?

You do not think that he who saw the loaves and fishes for the thousands in the desert needed to make a fire or catch the fish?

Mind embraced all for Jesus.

Truth destroys only whatever is contrary to Truth.

Discord automatically disappears in the presence of Truth.

The human interpretation of this appears as whatever is "nearest right under the circumstances," (Mis. 288: 13) thence achieving the absolute.

Because all is Mind, every effect is a Mind effect, not a matter effect as it appears to be.

The stilling of the storm by Jesus is called a miracle. It was not a miracle. It was the spontaneous law of Mind interpreting itself naturally in its allness as the removal of everything unlike itself.

A storm may be beautiful and grand. Waves, embraced by Mind, cannot be harmful.

The understanding of this immediately translates anything contrary to good into intelligible language, and causes the disappearance of whatever seems wrong.

Out of Position

Man's position is as assured as is God's. Man is that whereby God is shown forth or known. In other words, man is the position of God.

Therefore, man's position is intact, complete.

Because God is, and is all that is, there is no power or presence to interfere with, or in any way to change man's position.

The law of continuance is ever-operative as the law of Mind. In consequence, there is never a condition such as "out of position."

The remuneration from position must be abundant, to include within itself all that means perfection, comfort, completeness; for are not the perfection, comfort and completeness of God made manifest as man?

Position is omnipresent, for Mind is.

It is not dependent on anything but Mind.

Man, being the position of God, eternally and perfectly fills that position.

Position is and is yours. Therefore you never look for it. You open your eyes and see it.

There is no mind to suggest hypnotically a belief of out-of-position, or a disagreeable position, and so forth. The one Mind is the All-Mind.

This realization makes the one position, or man's perfect relationship to Mind, eternally available.

It does not produce it, it is it.

Poor Business

Business is the state of being busy, or busyness.

This implies thinking, for thought is all there is to action.

Therefore, business is the activity of Mind. It is Mind interpreting its infinite resources to man.

Because there is one Mind, there is one business and that is the business of Mind.

Inasmuch as Mind is infinite good, business is infinitely good.

Business is the eternal oneness of supply and demand.

God is supply and man is demand. Business is the communion between God and man.

Whatever supply is, demand is and has.

There is no lapse or gap between them. One is, because the other is.

Not an item enters into business that does not originate with Mind.

It must, therefore, not only have its place but also be in its place.

Not a pin could appear to be manufactured without Mind.

Whence, then, comes a surplus of goods, if even every pin has its place and is in its place?

It is impossible that Mind could think, and its thought go wandering about, seeking a resting place.

Intelligence cannot think without definite purpose.

Purpose implies fulfillment. Mind thinks, and it is done.

The place of Mind's thought is with its Thinker. It is never separated from Him.

What appear as things, do not need to be placed, for they are eternally in their right place as the thought of intelligence.

Salesmanship is not the act of selling something, but the seeing of the order and harmony of Mind everywhere present, with everything already rightly placed.

This is to be about the Father's business.

This understanding destroys all effort to sell mesmerically or otherwise. In other words, to seek to put something where it is not already placed, is an effort which would deny the allness and orderliness of good.

But this understanding does not stop diligent activity on the part of what appears as the salesman, rather does it make him more active in discovering the omnipresence of good.

The consciousness, the realization, that the one Mind is, and is all that is, and that there is no mind to suggest hypnotically a belief of poor business, is God's business, and, therefore, man's business.

Failing Crops

Crops, like position and business, are inseparably one with the consciousness that is, and is all.

Did not God make "every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew"? (Gen. 2: 5)

Then is not that for which both plant and herb exist, namely, the showing forth of crop the beauty, perfection and the abundance of its Maker likewise present?

Crop is never absent from plant or herb. The one is the corollary of the other.

Mind includes the all of both. Therefore, crops are always bountiful, perfect and everpresent. They are Mind interpreting itself to you. To limit crops is to limit your understanding of God.

It is not failure of crops that is the claim, but rather the hypnotic suggestion of a belief of failure or shortage, a belief which would imply that there is a malicious mind.

The realization that God is the only Mind negates this lie, and reveals good as All-in-all.

Jesus condemned the belief of unfruitfulness when he said to the fig tree that had no fruit on it, even though "the time of figs was not yet" (Mark 11: 13) :

"Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away." (Matt. 21: 19)

In this, Jesus illustrated the fact, that with Mind, there is no fixed season for a crop, but that crop is omnipresent, exactly as the multiplication table has not a time when it will work and a time when it will not work. Its presence is the enlightenment which follows man's obedience to Principle.

Weather

Weather is the belief that atmospheric conditions produce a variety of climates, good and bad.

Mind, embracing all action, includes all atmospheric action or condition.

Then, is not all weather as directly subject to understanding as is a mathematical problem?

Is not even the simplest mathematical problem the appearance of mathematical perfection in embryo, and is not the solution present with the problem?

Any weather condition is the omnipresence of the perfection of weather, interpreted finitely.

Christian Science interprets it correctly and bad weather gives place to good, for it is not the weather that is bad.

When you destroy the belief that malicious mind is, with the realization that God alone is Mind, the hypnotic suggestion of a belief of bad weather vanishes. In its place is seen exactly the right heat, cold, rain, or whatever is required to best show forth the perfection of weather as the presence of God.

Thus as the voice of God you speak with absolute authority to every belief of weather, and prove that "even the winds and the sea obey him." (Matt. 8: 27)

Heredity

The human concept of heredity, no matter in what form it appears, is always based on the belief of a beginning; in other words, an origin, from which characteristics, etc. are derived.

Heredity implies something existent prior to birth.

This invites the question, When does the so-called mortal begin?

Does he begin at his so-called birth, or does he begin prior to birth, at the point of conception?

The conception of a finite or mortal sense is the origin of the lie or negation about the divine sense.

When does any lie begin? Is it not with the conceiving of the lie?

Then the lie about the divine man begins with the conceiving of the false belief that he has a beginning.

Because of this, Science and Health says of mortals, "They never had a perfect state of being, which may subsequently be regained. They were, from the beginning of mortal history, 'conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity.'" (. & H. 476: 14)

A lie, by its very nature, is always conceived in falsity or iniquity, and yet it is proclaimed as the truth.

Because prior to his conception there is nothing to the mortal except the man of God about which the mortal concept is the lie, and because no hereditary claim is made about any influence coming after birth, it follows that every hereditary belief must be a belief that supposedly originates during the interval between what is called conception and what is called birth.

This is known as the period of pregnancy or gestation.

Then the specific claim of heredity must be one of pregnancy.

The human or false concept of pregnancy is the belief that the young mind or mortal is being formed and during this formative period is susceptible to impregnation with various beliefs, later to be shown forth as personal traits of character and tendencies to disease ending in death.

The true concept of pregnancy is that which infinite Mind always is, infinitely pregnant with its own illimitable idea, having nothing outside of itself with which to inflict any untoward condition on that with which it is pregnant.

Pregnancy is the eternal communion between Mind and its idea in which Mind endows its offspring with its own qualities.

The only hereditary law, therefore, is the law of good, of perfection--the one and only pregnancy.

Then it is neither pregnancy nor heredity that needs to be corrected. It is the belief that there is a mind apart from the one Mind, which, operating hypnotically, appears as a false sense of pregnancy with its so-called hereditary laws.

There is no such mind, because God is the one and only Mind, and His law of heredity is perfection, harmony, and completeness.

While considering the question of heredity, it is well to remind oneself of the fact already brought out, that the most insidious belief attached to the origin of the mortal is the false claim that animal or venereal poison is his progenitor and that this poison must sooner or later accomplish its purpose and bring forth death.

In belief the whole human race is doomed because of this poisonous origin.

Therefore, it is essential to understand the truth about man's origin, what he inherits, what forms him, and what maintains him. Otherwise, what would there be with which to counteract the law that says that what begins must end. "If Life ever had a beginning, it would also have an ending." (S. & H. 469: 5)

Truth is the true poison, the law of destruction to all unlike itself.

Science and Health declares that, "Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon." (S. & H. 228: 7)

Is not the mortal continually confronted with the suggestion that he has to overcome something inherited from some ancestor, regardless of whether he knows anything about that ancestral origin?

The fact is that man, as the thought of God, inherits all that God is; and that inheritance is supreme.

It is interesting to note that materia medica is now saying that the foetus, or egg, from which the mortal supposedly springs, cannot be impregnated by anything from without. Hereditary conditions, it asserts, are due to association, etc., thus bearing out the diagnosis of Christian Science that it is mental impregnation, hypnotic suggestion, and not physical phenomenon, that accounts for hereditary conditions.

Rheumatism

Rheumatism, like gout, is the belief of an oversupply of uric acid in the blood, or, as it has sometimes been stated: not enough alkali to neutralize the acid; wrong balance.

What do you know about uric acid?

Since God, being All-in-all, includes within Himself all that uric acid means and is, can there be an excess or a deficiency of uric acid?

Can kidneys, liver, bowels, or lungs cease to be the eternal activity of intelligence, and fail to perform their perfect functions rejecting all that is unlike good?

Mind interprets itself to you in its own definite language as action, alkali, chemistry, etc.

This interpretation is the very essence of harmony and perfection.

Is there an excess or a deficiency, then, of uric acid; or is rheumatism only a hypnotic belief of maladjustments?

You know that every claim is hypnotism and never a wrong thing.

Inflammation, swelling of the joints, soreness every symptom of rheumatism, or of any other disease, is always hypnotic belief.

All are destroyed through the realization that God is the only Mind. This leaves no evil mind to suggest any lying belief.

You do not get rid of rheumatism, for there never has been such a thing; but you reject the hypnotic suggestion of a belief of imperfect action, because God is the only Mind.

Thus rheumatism disappears.

Germs

The germ of goodness is the only germ, and this germ, in its infinity of variety, expresses God in all its ways.

Malicious suggestion may call this germ a typhoid germ, a tubercular germ, a pneumonic germ, or any other kind. Just as it divides its sense of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms into either harmless or dangerous species, so it classifies its sense of the germ kingdom into good germs and bad germs.

Did Daniel have two kinds of lions?

Did Jesus have two kinds of water, one rough and the other smooth, one to be walked upon and the other to be drowned in?

There is one germ and one only. That is the germ of God, the germ of good, the germ that always works "together for good to them that love" (Rom. 8: 28) good.

Do you love this germ "with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength"? (Mark 12: 30) Or are you anxious to destroy it?

Is this the germ that is always in heaven? It is. Because it is, it blesses you.

No hypnotic suggestion can deceive you into belief in any other germ.

The one Mind, as the only Mind, is the law of total annihilation to any claim of a supposititious mind to hypnotically suggest a belief in a germ apart from the germ of God. There is no such mind.

Alcoholic Drunkenness

Alcohol is defined as the "pure spirit of wine," and the use of this, we are told, makes a man drunk.

Is it supposable that, in the sight of Principle, the use of one thing differs from the use of another?

Alcohol, indulged in as a beverage, is supposed to inflame and irritate the pneumogastric nerve, which in turn affects the brain lobes. Thus alcohol allegedly causes its victim to become befuddled and lose his balance. If taken in sufficient quantities, it is presumed to cause him to lose consciousness.

Is alcohol something outside of that which comes to you as consciousness? Does it, in fact, come to you in a different way from the way in which water comes to you?

You cannot be aware of anything unless it comes as consciousness to you. It follows, then, that consciousness embraces within itself all that is true about alcohol.

Whatever consciousness is, that you know alcohol to be, and since God is the one consciousness, only the quality of good can be attached to alcohol.

The "pure spirit of wine" used in the Scriptural sense of wine, is the pure essence of isness of "Inspiration; understanding." (S. & H. 598: 17)

The qualities of good are the laws of good. The laws of good cannot be wrongly interpreted and cannot injuriously affect brain-lobes; nor can they produce unsteadiness of either Mind or body.

Then you know that the process is not one of healing the alcoholic habit, but one of destroying the hypnotic suggestion of a belief of injurious alcohol.

The remedy for alcoholic drunkenness is not to do away with alcohol, as such, any more than it is to do away with eyes or brain or lungs, as such, simply because these organs are said to be diseased.

The remedy is to destroy the belief that there is a mind that can operate hypnotically as a belief of drunkenness, through alcohol or through any other avenue.

The realization of the one Mind as the AllMind is the destruction of drunkenness. "Whatever intoxicates a man, stultifies and causes him to degenerate physically and morally.

Strong drink is unquestionably an evil, and evil cannot be used temperately: its slightest use is abuse; hence the only temperance is total abstinence. Drunkenness is sensuality let loose, in whatever form it is made manifest." (Mis. 288: 32)

Total abstinence means absolutely turning away from the hypnotic belief and indulgence in a mind apart from God.

The one Mind alone satisfies man and crowns "him with glory and honor." (Ps. 8: 5)

Other False Appetites

There are many phases of drunkenness; alcoholic drunkenness is but one of them.

All belief in materiality is drunkenness in varying degree; for it is the belief in something apart from Mind, a desire for something outside of itself, a departure from the straight line of Principle, the bringing in of a "third." It is the breaking of the First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Ex. 20: 3)

"If a man is an inebriate, a slave to tobacco, or the special servant of any one of the myriad forms of sin, meet and destroy these errors with the truth of being by convincing him that there is no real pleasure in false appetites." (S. & H. 404: 3) Because man is the idea of Mind, the whole source of his conscious being and power is derived from the one infinite, all inclusive consciousness, God.

Man has the right then to be absolutely satisfied – he is satisfied, complete.

When anything arrays itself against Mind, it must be rejected replaced. You must cheerfully give up cherished beliefs if you would enter into the kingdom of your birthright.

The unwillingness to give up what is pleasurable – this very word "pleasurable" means trusting in materiality "is the unseen sin, the unknown foe." (Ret. 31: 17)

To the consciousness aroused by Truth, things will not be merely pleasurable. To the quickened sense of what substance is, Mind alone is joy.

Then, what you see, taste, smell, hear and feel will testify of God. This will be very different from saying, "This delights my palate."

Jesus did not make wine at the Feast at Cana through any of the accepted processes, but by seeing the presence of Mind as all the water there is, he saw the presence of Mind as all the wine there is. This so uplifted thought that it was satisfied better satisfied than with the wine just consumed.

Mrs. Eddy has said, "The depraved appetite for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, is destroyed only by Mind's mastery of the body." (S. & H. 406: 28)

These drugs are indulged in for their so-called "stimulating" qualities; they are not considered food.

Since God is the only power, all true stimulation comes from Him.

What appears as food will be the last belief of materiality to be given up because it carries with it the idea of sustaining life the eternal function of Mind.

It is a very different condition, however, when indulgences are involved.

Parasite

A parasite is the belief that one sense of life, can prey upon another; that there is something out of its rightful place.

God is Life and is All-in-all.

Where, then, is there one life to prey upon another?

Can that which is all be out of place? It cannot. Then, parasite is not something out of place, but is a belief that there is a mind that can operate hypnotically and suggest something out of place.

The realization that there is one Mind only, maintaining all, destroys the belief of any mind apart from itself.

This destroys the false sense of parasite and the lie vanishes.

Obstetrics

The word obstetrics is derived from the Latin obsto, I stand before, in the sense of assisting. The word as commonly used means the scientific assistance given at childbirth.

Obstetrics is not the bringing to light of something new, but the making known of that which already is and has always been.

What appears as the birth of a new child is finite sense, claiming oneness with infinity.

Mind is infinite space and Mind is omnipresently expressed.

Therefore, there is no room for more than that which already is.

Human belief is the negation of this, but by reversing the negation, the positive fact of the omnipresence of good and all that good means, is seen as the All-presence.

This presence goes through no process of birth or formation. It is ever present, beautiful, complete and whole, showing forth all the glories of Mind as perfect action, symmetry and harmony.

All communion with Mind is obstetrics.

It is the understanding of Mind in the infinite purity of its unfolding--the eternal communion between Mind and its idea.

In what appears as the healing of every claim is the operation of the law of obstetrics--the unfolding of divine energy.

There is no malicious mind to operate hypnotically and to suggest a belief of any obstetrics contrary to this.

God is the one Mind and holds within Himself all unfoldment.

This is the obstetrics Mrs. Eddy says every Christian Scientist should "be familiar with." (S. & H. 463: 5) It is the basis of all right knowing, whether appearing as a birth, business transaction, or as health.

Teeth

The Bible says that all the hairs of your head are numbered.

Why? Because the thought of God cannot be separated from God. Since hair can be known only as consciousness, it is forever one with God, the one consciousness.

Thus, it is forever known and numbered, forever right and in place.

If hairs are numbered and in place, is not the same thing true of teeth?

That which exists as the thought of God cannot be decayed or lost, for Mind is the one substance forever imparted to its idea.

Two times two can never get away from its principle and be lost. It cannot become five, or anything else that is wrong.

Then, what appears as a decayed tooth or a lost tooth is a purely hypnotic state, for God is all there is to tooth.

The omnipresence of God insures the omnipresence of tooth.

It is not a case of the tooth, at all, but a belief about tooth.

God has no belief about anything. He knows His own perfection always. That perfection is intact.

Then the claim is once again cleared up by the realization that there is no malicious mind to act hypnotically and appear as a belief of imperfect or lost tooth, for the one Mind, God, infinite good, is the All-Mind.

Heart Disease

The heart is commonly regarded as the most important organ of the body because the mortal is supposed to die when the heart stops. So long as the heart continues to beat, life is said to be present, thus, in theory, making life dependent upon a material organ.

Life and heart are linked together in human belief. But does this belief bear analysis?

The organ, heart, is supposedly composed of chemical constituents, which have been reduced by modern scientific theory to points of energy represented by a mathematical formula. Nothing could be more mental than a mathematical formula, nothing more indestructible.

This proves that the heart is not matter, as such. What, then, is it?

God, being All-in-all, embracing within His infinite variety of expression every concept to which meaning can be given, includes within that allness that which is meant by heart, including valves and so forth, whether called a human organ or a mathematical formula.

Since, in order that one may be conscious, consciousness must first be, it is obvious that consciousness of the fact, heart, is all there is to heart..

Stating this differently, God is all that there is to heart, irrespective of any other interpretation of it.

Heart, then, is perfect and is one, everywhere present and functioning as it should.

This brings us squarely to the actual claim in so-called heart disease. It is that there is malicious mind.

Our problem, then, is not to deal with a material, diseased heart, but to realize that because God is the one and only Mind, there is no malicious mind to operate hypnotically as a belief of diseased heart.

It is interesting to note that human belief is undergoing a changing concept in regard to the part played by the heart. Whereas, a few years ago, death was regarded as instantly present with the stoppage of the heart action, today, medical practice very often attempts "resuscitation" for many minutes, even hours, in some cases, after the heart has ceased to beat, proving that human belief is yielding to the fact that life cannot be at the mercy of the muscle we call the heart--a muscle, by the way, that is considered the toughest and most resistant of all the organs of the body.

Eczema

Eczema is the name given to a well-defined case of the belief of animal or venereal poison in the blood.

You have already seen that the whole of mortality or mortal belief is the expression of death, in contradistinction to immortal man, the expression of Life.

As the expression of death, mortal man must, as it were, contain within his own being the seeds that are finally to bring forth death and thus prove his false or mortal origin.

The statement of Mind, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly," (Jno. 10: 10) is met with the negative: I have come that they might have death and have it more inevitably.

Eczema vividly illustrates this poisonous taint in the blood. But whether outwardly visible or not, this animal poison is ever-operative in the human interpretation of man and must be destroyed through the understanding of what man’s origin really is; that he is the idea of God, without beginning or end.

Man is not the product of the union of the so-called male and female bodies, nor of the poisons that are the essence of these bodies.

You have seen that man is never in a womb, never in process of being formed, any more than God Himself could ever be formed.

Man co-exists with God.

Then, because he never is created, no animal poison enters into his make-up, later to show itself as eczema or other bad blood conditions.

The claim therefore, is not one of bad blood, for right where suggestion says there is a humor in the blood, there is the very presence of God defining perfect blood, pure blood.

The claim is, of course, that malicious mind is, and that as such isness it appears hypnotically as a belief of eczema.

You destroy the lie, as you do in every case, through the realization that there is no malicious mind, because God is the one and only Mind.

No case is ever completely corrected until this realization of the allness and omnipresence of the one Mind reigns as consciousness.

Realization means feeling in your heart, as well as seeing with your intelligence.

Into realization no personal element enters; in it no human desire remains.

Only pure oneness with God abides--oneness with all that means and is good.

Blood is called the life-stream of being. Then is it not your communion with Mind--purity itself, isness itself--uncontaminated by anything outside of its own pure selfhood?

It is, and this consciousness destroys the lie about being.

Epidemic

Epidemic is a disease in itself.

It illustrates how wholly mental disease is.

The epidemic of influenza during the closing days of the World War spread to places where no possible contagion by physical contact could be traced.

Epidemic is fear-contagion.

Is not fear-contagion purely mental suggestion in its impersonal sense?

A claim of epidemic is handled in exactly the same way in which you would release the victim of a hypnotist.

In the latter case, you would not deal with a wrong thing. Your attention would be devoted to destroying the belief that there is malicious mind to control or govern.

Knowing that God is the one Mind, that He is all the Mind there is, you cannot be duped into attempting to deal with another mind.

This realization would break the claim of hypnotism and free the victim.

An epidemic is dealt with in exactly the same way.

Fear, contagious belief, is both the hypnotist and the hypnotism.

It is not contact, nor any form of matter, that has to be destroyed for the claim is purely mental suggestion--in other words, hypnotism.

Do not be deceived into arguing down any of the various symptoms, as in an ordinary case of sickness; contagion has none, in that sense.

Epidemic is pure hypnotic contagion; it is fear, not physical contact.

Symptoms have no more to do with contagion than have the motions of the hypnotized victim's arms and legs, in swimming on dry boards under the influence of the hypnotist, anything to do with the real claim.

The man is not in water, and therefore is not really swimming. Nor do you think he is; so you do not consider either swimming or water.

You handle hypnotism.

You do the same with epidemic and destroy it through the realization of God as the one and only Mind.

Sin is the belief in a power or presence apart from God.

The breaking of the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," (Ex. 20: 3) is the only sin, for this Commandment includes within itself all the other Commandments.

The keeping of the first is the keeping of all. To believe in something apart from God includes all there is to killing, for such a belief kills the allness of your God.

To adulterate the truth with human belief is adultery. There could be no human adultery, if communion with God were all that was accepted as consciousness.

To steal is to deny God's allness, and so rob Him of His wholeness.

To bear false witness is to entertain any belief in matter, in limitation, in the opposite of God.

All purely human desire is a tacit denial of God's allness and omnipresence and of man's atone-ment with Him.

To love thy neighbor as thyself is to find God, the Self of you as thy neighbor.

Did not Jesus say that if you broke one Commandment, you broke all?

Then is not the First Commandment all-inclusive?

It is, and the breaking of it is the only sin.

Man, as the activity of God, is the pureness of good and so is the law of destruction to all unlike good.

When the belief of the virus of evil is met with the infinite virus, or energy of isness, as being all that is, evil, as hypnotic suggestion, vanishes.

A Nameless Case

Let us examine now, as a final case, one where apparently there is no visible reason for the sickness a case without a name.

In other words, suppose a patient to be sick and dying, and that no physical diagnosis can be made of the case.

The physicians who have been in charge declare that they can find no reason for the trouble; yet the patient is slowly dying.

How would Christian Science deal with such a situation?

In the first place, no case is a puzzle to the Christian Scientist, for to him no case is ever material.

Every case is always sin the sin of accepting a mind apart from the one Mind thus breaking the First Commandment, and, in so doing, breaking all ten.

This is the one and only sin, the sin of sins. This sin embodies within itself all hatred, envy, jealousy, malice, revenge, covetousness, lust, desire, and so forth. It is "the fundamental error of faith in things material ... the unseen sin, the unknown foe, the heart's untamed desire which breaketh the divine commandments." 1

Not a single note of malicious suggestion can be played except on one or another of these chords, all of which are summed up in the "faith in things material." (Ret. 31: 16)

So, in destroying any unknown, would-be subtle foe, you canvass the field of suggestion, in order to leave not a single avenue down which evil can hide.

You know that evil is not mind, for Mind means wisdom, intelligence, the truth about something.

You know that evil is not a creator and therefore has no avenue or channel, no man, woman or child, place or thing, through which it can act. It has nothing to act upon or through, no object or subject.

You know it has no power; no action; no law by which to guide or control; no history; no past, present or future; no law of continuance or occupancy.

Evil has no laws in or of materia medica, anatomy, physiology, matter, nature, or anything else through which to act.

As malicious mental suggestion, divorced from all materiality, evil cannot operate hypnotically as a belief of sickness, death, poison, etc., nor as any so-called evil mental quality, such as envy, jealousy, hatred, etc., nor be influential as such.

Evil offers no resistance to Truth, nor to the activity of Truth, nor to the Christian Science prayer, which is treatment.

It has no material substance, no bodily presence to resist or obstruct the operation of Truth.

Nor has it any form of process, mode of development, decay, or failure, to retard the orderly unfoldment of Mind.

Thus you would cover the entire range of hypnotic suggestion and destroy every avenue for malicious mind.

In so doing, you would leave the final, inevitable conviction, the realization that God, infinite good, is the only Mind, the only presence.

Conclusion

Mrs. Eddy, in Science and Health, illustrates a case fully. She supposes a case of liver-complaint.

The cases handled here have been used to illustrate a certain general procedure if arguments are used.

But in no way do these illustrations pretend to go into the minutiae of any case, or to outline how you would handle a case yourself.

In no sense of the word are they formulas.

Formulas are fatal in Christian Science, because they are pure materialism.

Intelligence alone must guide you and show you what to handle.

With infinite intelligence as your intelligence, it is possible for you to know exactly what to handle and how to handle it.

You have supreme confidence in your own understanding because God is your Mind, and you know all that you need to know about every case.

Every case is distinct and unique, or it could not be a case.

There is no duplication of anything in Mind or in its negation.

Two thoughts alike would not be two, but one. There is, then, no duplication of treatment, no copying, no imitating.

Mind is ever new and spontaneous, and the negation of Mind, being the denial of Mind, is equally new and automatically present.

Every moment brings its own particular opportunity, and a case is but an opportunity presented in the language that you can best understand and profit by.

It is opportunity for right interpretation. No case offers difficulties to intelligence.

There is nothing hidden, unknown, or unrevealed about it.

As enlightenment, Mind may appear to you in any form.

Whatever you need to know about any case you can know, and you do know.

This enlightenment may appear to you as something the so-called patient tells you; it may appear as something you read, or something another person tells you; it may appear as something that comes to you as your own conclusion.

But whatever is necessary for you to know, will appear; it will always appear, when you acknowledge infinite intelligence as the one and only Mind, the one and only Practitioner; when you acknowledge that it is your Mind on the case.

God is not limited in His means of informing His own idea.

See, then, that you do not limit Him; but, "Open (your) affections to the Principle that moves all in harmony, from the falling of a sparrow to the rolling of a world." (Mis. 174: 10)

Look to God alone for guidance.

You are alone with your "own being and with the reality of things." (’01 20: 9)

If you never allow a "third" into your thinking, you will find yourself the king and priest "unto God," referred to by the Revelator. You will be possessed of all the majesty and might that belongs to that kingship and priesthood. (Rev. 1: 6)

"Crown the power of Mind as the Messiah," (S. & H. 116: 14) and "give to Mind the glory, honor, dominion, and power everlastingly due its holy name." (S. & H. 143: 29)

This is the spirit of Christian Science that alone wins the day.

Arguments are only to bring you, not the patient, to the final complete conviction that Spirit is supreme and all.

Thus you speak as "one having authority." (Matt. 7: 29)