of disease already located in the human mind.
Because Science is at war with physics, even as Truth is at war with error, the old schools will oppose it. When there were fewer doctors, and less thought was given to sanitary subjects, there were better constitutions and less disease. In olden times, who ever heard of dyspepsia, cerebro-spinal meningitis, hay-fever, and rose-cold?
What an abuse of nature to say that a rose, the smile of God, can produce suffering. The joy of its presence, its beauty and modesty, should uplift the thought and destroy any possible fever. It is profane to fancy that the sweetness of clover and breath of new-mown hay may cause, like snuff, sneezing and nasal pangs.
If a random thought bad called itself dyspepsia, and appeared to our forefathers, it would have died at the hands of benevolence and industry. Then people had less time to be selfish, to confine thought to the body, to spend in sickly after-dinner talk. The exact amount of food the stomach could digest was not discussed à la Cutter, or considered a law of the human mind. A man's belief in those days was not so severe upon the gastric juices. Beaumont's Experiments did not govern the digestion.
The action of mind on the body was not so injurious before the curing and curious Eves embraced medical works, and the unmanly Adams charged their falls, and the fate of their offspring, upon the credulity of their wives.
The primitive privilege, to take no thought about food, left the stomach and bowels free to act in obedience to nature, and gave the gospel a chance to be seen in its glorious effects upon the body. A ghastly array of diseases was not kept before the imagination. Fewer books on digestion, and more “sermons in stones and good in everything,” gave better health and greater longevity to our forefathers. When the mechanism of the human mind goes on undisturbed by fear, selfishness, or malice, disease cannot enter and gain a foothold.
Damp atmospheres and freezing snows may have empurpled the round cheeks of our ancestors, but they never reached the refinement of inflamed bronchial tubes; because they were as ignorant as Adam, before he was told by his wife that there were such things as tubes or troches, lungs or lozenges.
The Nineteenth Century would load with disease the air of Eden, and hunt mankind down with superimposed airs and conjectural evils. Mind is at once the best friend and the worst foe of the body, and Truth the universal healer.
Shall a regular practitioner treat all the cases of organic disease, and the Christian Scientist try his hand only on hysteria, hypochondria, or hallucination? One disease is no more unreal than another. All disease is the result of hallucination, and can carry its ill effects no further than mortal mind maps out. Facts are stubborn things. Christian Science finds the decided type of acute disease, however severe, quite as ready to yield as the less distinct type and chronic form of disease. It handles the most malignant contagion with perfect assurance.
Because guided by Divine Truth, and not guess-work, the Theologus (i. e. the student, or expounder, of the divine law) treats disease with more certain results than any other healer on the globe. The Scientist who understands and adheres strictly to the rules of my system, and rests his demonstration on its sure basis, is the only one safe to employ in difficult and dangerous cases.
Mind as far outstrips drugs in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is Mind Science in every case. Medicine is not a science, but a bundle of speculative human theories. The prescription that succeeds in one instance fails in another, owing to the different mental states of the patient. These states are not comprehended; and they are without a sign, except to the skilful Scientist. The rule, and its perfectness in my system, never vary. If you fail to succeed in any case, it is because you have not demonstrated the rule and proven the Principle.
Many of our best men and women have passed away, since this book was begun, who might have been saved by the Science of which it treats. The minor hosts of Æsculapius are flooding our land with diseases, because they are utterly ignorant of the unity of the human mind and body. They treat the sick as if there were but one factor in the case, and that one body, without mind.
There is an old riddle in natural history — Which was first, the egg or the bird? To match the ancient question, I propose this modern one: Which was first, Mind or medicine? If Mind was first, and self-existent, then Spirit, not matter, must have been the first medicine. It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, or obtain them for human use; else Jesus also would have recommended and employed them in his healing.
Mind being first, it made medicine; but the medicine was Mind. It could not have been that which departs from the nature of Mind. Truth is God's medicine for error of every sort. The human mind would use error as a medicine, and take the greater evil to cure the less. It would appease malice with revenge, and quiet pain with morphine. Of two evils, it chooses the greater. The Divine Mind never called matter medicine, or made it so; and matter required a material and human belief before it could be considered as medicine.
Omnipotent Mind could not possibly create a remedy beyond itself. Erring, finite, human mind needs something besides itself. So it believes in something else, and raises matter into a god; for the human mind was an idolater from the beginning, having other gods and more than the One Mind.
Here you see how sense makes its own idols, names them matter, worships them. With pagan pride it has attributed to a material god of medicine an ability beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and enslave it, and then impute this sad result to another personality of illusion, named Satan.
Follow out true cultivation;
Widen Education's plan;
From the Majesty of Nature
Teach the Majesty of Man!
In these lines Charles Swain points out the true duty of man.
A physician of the old school remarked with great gravity: “We know that mind affects the body somewhat, and advise our patients to be hopeful, cheerful, and take as little medicine as possible; but mind can never cure organic difficulties.”
The logic is lame and facts contradict it. I have cured what is termed organic disease as readily as purely functional disease, and with no other means except Mind. Few will deny that death has been occasioned by fright. This proves that every function of the body, its entire organism, is governed by the human mind; unless this mind yields to the Divine Mind, and is saved from itself. Fear has stopped the action of the blood, heart, lungs, and brain.
That mortal mind does govern every organ of the mortal body we have overwhelming proof. It is the autocrat of the mortal body, that yields to no power except by its own consent. It wields the sceptre of a monarch, until the immortal Divine Mind takes away its supposed realm.
If the human mind has the power to kill, it has utter control of what is termed the human mechanism. If the human mind can make a healthy organ cease to act, the Divine Mind can more readily make the action of being harmonious and eternal. Divine Mind does all that. The only difficulty is to see and acknowledge it, yield to this power, and fall at the feet of Truth.
Mortal mind produces what is termed organic disease as certainly as it produces hysteria, and must undo its own errors, sicknesses, and sins. I have demonstrated this beyond all cavil. The evidence of Mind's absolute control is to me as sure as the evidence of my existence.
Mortal mind and body are one. Neither exists without the other, and both must be changed by the immortal. Mortal matter is but a false conception of this mortal mind. It builds its own superstructures, of which the body is the grosser and more basal portion — a material and sensual belief first and last.
Evil is a negation,
