Chapter XII - Christian Science Practice
Unspoken pleading
412:1
your patient is healed. The great fact that God lovingly
your patient is healed. The great fact that God lovingly
governs all, never punishing aught but sin, is your stand-
point, from which to advance and destroy the human fear
of sickness. Mentally and silently plead the case scien-
tifically for Truth. You may vary the arguments to meet
the peculiar or general symptoms of the case you treat,
but be thoroughly persuaded in your own mind concern-
ing the truth which you think or speak, and you will be
the victor.
Eloquent silence
412:10
You may call the disease by name when you mentally
You may call the disease by name when you mentally
deny it; but by naming it audibly, you are liable under
some circumstances to impress it upon the
thought. The power of Christian Science and
divine Love is omnipotent. It is indeed adequate to un-
clasp the hold and to destroy disease, sin, and death.
Insistence requisite
412:16
To prevent disease or to cure it, the power of Truth,
To prevent disease or to cure it, the power of Truth,
of divine Spirit, must break the dream of the material
senses. To heal by argument, find the type
of the ailment, get its name, and array your
mental plea against the physical. Argue at first men-
tally, not audibly, that the patient has no disease, and
conform the argument so as to destroy the evidence of
disease. Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and
that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence
of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the
body corresponds with the normal conditions of health
and harmony.
The cure of infants
412:28
If the case is that of a young child or an infant, it needs
If the case is that of a young child or an infant, it needs
to be met mainly through the parent's thought, silently
or audibly on the aforesaid basis of Christian
Science. The Scientist knows that there can
be no hereditary disease, since matter is not intelligent
413:1
and cannot transmit good or evil intelligence to man, and
and cannot transmit good or evil intelligence to man, and
God, the only Mind, does not produce pain in matter.
The act of yielding one's thoughts to the undue contem-
plation of physical wants or conditions induces those very
conditions. A single requirement, beyond what is neces-
sary to meet the simplest needs of the babe is harmful.
Mind regulates the condition of the stomach, bowels, and
food, the temperature of children and of men, and matter
does not. The wise or unwise views of parents and other
persons on these subjects produce good or bad effects on
the health of children.
Ablutions for cleanliness
413:12
The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural
The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural
nor necessary than would be the process of taking a fish
out of water every day and covering it with dirt
in order to make it thrive more vigorously in its
own element. "Cleanliness is next to godliness," but
washing should be only for the purpose of keeping the
body clean, and this can be effected without scrubbing the
whole surface daily. Water is not the natural habitat of
humanity. I insist on bodily cleanliness within and with-
out. I am not patient with a speck of dirt; but in caring
for an infant one need not wash his little body all over each
day in order to keep it sweet as the new-blown flower.
Juvenile ailments
413:24
Giving drugs to infants, noticing every symptom of
Giving drugs to infants, noticing every symptom of
flatulency, and constantly directing the mind to such
signs, – that mind being laden with illusions
about disease, health-laws, and death, – these
actions convey mental images to children's budding
thoughts, and often stamp them there, making it probable
at any time that such ills may be reproduced in the very
ailments feared. A child may have worms, if you say so,
or any other malady, timorously held in the beliefs con-