Chapter XII - Christian Science Practice
Ignorance of our rights
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man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God.
man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God.
Ignorant of our God-given rights, we submit to unjust
decrees, and the bias of education enforces
this slavery. Be no more willing to suffer the
illusion that you are sick or that some disease is develop-
ing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temp-
tation on the ground that sin has its necessities.
No laws of matter
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When infringing some supposed law, you say that
When infringing some supposed law, you say that
there is danger. This fear is the danger and induces the
physical effects. We cannot in reality suffer
from breaking anything except a moral or
spiritual law. The so-called laws of mortal belief are
destroyed by the understanding that Soul is immortal,
and that mortal mind cannot legislate the times, periods,
and types of disease, with which mortals die. God is the
lawmaker, but He is not the author of barbarous codes.
In infinite Life and Love there is no sickness, sin, nor
death, and the Scriptures declare that we live, move, and
have our being in the infinite God.
God-given dominion
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Think less of the enactments of mortal mind, and you
Think less of the enactments of mortal mind, and you
will sooner grasp man's God-given dominion. You must
understand your way out of human theories
relating to health, or you will never believe
that you are quite free from some ailment. The har-
mony and immortality of man will never be reached
without the understanding that Mind is not in matter.
Let us banish sickness as an outlaw, and abide by the
rule of perpetual harmony, – God's law. It is man's
moral right to annul an unjust sentence, a sentence never
inflicted by divine authority.
Begin rightly
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Christ Jesus overruled the error which would impose
Christ Jesus overruled the error which would impose
penalties for transgressions of the physical laws of
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health; he annulled supposed laws of matter, opposed
health; he annulled supposed laws of matter, opposed
to the harmonies of Spirit, lacking divine au-
thority and having only human approval for
their sanction.
Hygiene excessive
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If half the attention given to hygiene were given to the
If half the attention given to hygiene were given to the
study of Christian Science and to the spiritualization of
thought, this alone would usher in the millen-
inium. Constant bathing and rubbing to alter
the secretions or to remove unhealthy exhalations from
the cuticle receive a useful rebuke from Jesus' precept,
"Take no thought . . . for the body." We must beware
of making clean merely the outside of the platter.
Blissful ignorance
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He, who is ignorant of what is termed hygienic law, is
He, who is ignorant of what is termed hygienic law, is
more receptive of spiritual power and of faith in one
God, than is the devotee of supposed hygienic
law, who comes to teach the so-called igno-
rant one. Must we not then consider the so-called law
of matter a canon "more honored in the breach than
the observance"? A patient thoroughly booked in medi-
cal theories is more difficult to heal through Mind than
one who is not. This verifies the saying of our Master:
"Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a
little child, shall in no wise enter therein."
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One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion,
One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion,
in which the senses had engulfed him, wrote to me: "I
should have died, but for the glorious Principle you teach,
– supporting the power of Mind over the body and show-
ing me the nothingness of the so-called pleasures and pains
of sense. The treatises I had read and the medicines I
had taken only abandoned me to more hopeless suffering
and despair. Adherence to hygiene was useless. Mortal
mind needed to be set right. The ailment was not bodily,