Chapter III - Spirit and Matter
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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-
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other's error we must conquer our own. If you are
other's error we must conquer our own. If you are
fettered by sin you are unfit to free another from the
fetters of disease; could you break the manacles from
other wrists, with your own hands bound? and yet this
would be equally easy. A little that is true regarding
man's being, does wonders for the sick, so infinite are
the resources of Truth; but alas! how much more good
could be done by the good and honest practitioner, with
more Truth. When a student learns the rules of this
science we expect him to use them according to their
Principle, or not parade his poor example before the
world as a demonstrator. Our hands have been made
weak by this mal-practice; we must not seek the ap-
proval of man, but of God, leaving futurity to explain
us and our motives. It is science to do right, and noth-
ing short of this can lay claim to it. The injunction to
"come out from the world and be separate" has its in-
evitable fulfilment in Christianity, not only from the
natural tendency of opposites to separate, but because
the abuse it receives from sinners who verily believe
they do right to wrong Truth, or cannot see the wrong
they do, separates them. The spiritual are apart from
the material from the necessity of opposite natures. The
immortality of man is only gained by his spirituality,
hence material things are not what he needs; besides,
all things are finally resolved into Spirit, their ultima-
tum, for Life and heaven are of Spirit. What fellow-
ship, then, hath light with darkness, and matter with
the kingdom of heaven that shall come on earth? Mor-
tal man is but a dream; even the belief that Life,
sensation and substance are matter, all of which the
ultimatum of being proves illusion. A dream comes in