Chapter III - Spirit and Matter
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you from catarrhs and makes you better in mind and
you from catarrhs and makes you better in mind and
hody, if it conflicts in the least with old opinions or
beliefs. The freedom of the sons of God you persecute
because it is a step outside some 'ism, or the favorite
"tree of knowledge" proscribed by Wisdom. Your
teachers inform you, God sends sickness, when the
Scriptures say, He cures it; also, that His laws are
carried out through drugs, food, air, exercise, etc.,
which would make matter intelligent, and the law of
God that walks over matter of none effect. The peril
to the professions, if your eyes are opened to the science
of being, is regarded by your leaders, and the laws of
God disregarded, so far as health is concerned. They
have not discerned, yet, the governing Principle of
being. The Bible teaches us to transform our bodies by
the renewing of the Spirit; explaining the Scriptures
without understanding their application to heal the sick,
does little more towards making man harmonious than
moonbeams to melt a plane of ice. If you understood
the science of being, your thoughts, resting on the sick
and afflicted, would do more toward their recovery
than all the drugs, manipulations, and long prayers
ever adopted. The error of the age is teaching without
proof, and not practicing what you preach. Personal
sense is error; but the Principle of all being is infallible;
therefore, the nearer we approach unto it, the nearer we
are to God, that appoints us more solemn trusts as we
advance higher, but if false to His commissions, in vain
do we attempt to cover it from Wisdom. You may
hide your ignorance of spiritual things from the eyes
of the world, but can never gain the understanding
and demonstration of the science of Life, without an
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honest, high, and God-given purpose. Sin is thought
honest, high, and God-given purpose. Sin is thought
before it is deed, and you must master it in the first, or
it conquers you in the second instance. Jesus said, to
look with foul desire on forbidden objects, breaks a
moral precept; hence, the stress he laid on the charac-
ter of a man that is hidden from our perception. Evil
thoughts reach farther, and do more harm than individ-
ual crimes, for they impregnate other minds and fashion
your body. The atmosphere of impure desires, like the
atmosphere of earth, is restless, ever in motion, and cal-
ling on some object; this atmosphere is laden with
mental poison, and contaminates all it touches. When
malicious purposes, evil thoughts, or lusts, go forth
from one mind, they seek others, and will lodge in them
unless repelled by virtue and a higher motive for being.
All mental emanations take root and bear fruit after
their own kind. Consider, then, the guilt of nurturing
evil and impure thoughts, that send broadcast discord
and moral death. Sooner suffer a doctor infected with
small-pox to be about you, than come under the treat-
ment of one that manipulates his patients' heads, and
is a traitor to science.
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These points are so vital to the success of all learning
These points are so vital to the success of all learning
to heal the sick in the science of being, we hesitate not
to name them, even as we urge their importance when
teaching, and we never withdraw aid or interest from a
student unless we have found him unworthy his place.
Through a metaphysical mode of healing, patients can-
not be made harmonious by a dishonest or impure‑
minded practitioner; it is the Truth of being that heals
in science, and who will say this doctor possesses it?
We have classified sickness, error, and to destroy an-