diviner form visible to those beholding him here.
The Rev. ——said in a sermon: A true Christian would protest against metaphysical healing being called Christian Science. He also maintained that pain and disease are not illusions but realities; and that it is not Christian to believe they are illusions. Is this so?
It is unchristian to believe that pain and sickness are anything but illusions. My proof of this is, that the penalty for believing in their reality is the very pain and disease. Jesus cast out a devil, and the dumb spake; hence it is right to know that the works of Satan are the illusion and error which Truth casts out.
Does the gentleman above mentioned know the meaning of divine metaphysics, or of metaphysical theology?
According to Webster, metaphysics is defined thus: “The science of the conceptions and relations which are necessary to thought and knowledge; science of the mind.” Worcester defines it as “the philosophy of mind, as distinguished from that of matter; a science of which the object is to explain the principles and causes of all things existing,” Brande calls metaphysics “the science which regards the ultimate grounds of being, as distinguished from its phenomenal modifications.” “A speculative science, which soars beyond the bounds of experience,” is a further definition.
Divine metaphysics is that which treats of the existence of God, His essence, relations, and attributes. A sneer at metaphysics is a scoff at Deity; at His goodness, mercy, and might.
Christian Science is the unfolding of true metaphysics; that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes. Science rests on Principle and demonstration. The Principle of Christian Science is divine. Its rule is, that man shall utilize the divine power.
In Genesis i. 26, we read: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air.”
I was once called to visit a sick man to whom the regular physicians had given three doses of Croton oil, and then had left him to die. Upon my arrival I found him barely alive, and in terrible agony. In one hour he was well, and the next day he attended to his business. I removed the stoppage, healed him of enteritis, and neutralized the bad effects of the poisonous oil. His physicians had failed even to move his bowels—though the wonder was, with the means used in their effort to accomplish this result, that they had not quite killed him. According to their diagnosis, the exciting cause of the inflammation and stoppage was—eating smoked herring. The man is living yet; and I will send his address to any one who may wish to apply to him for information about his case.
Now comes the question: Had that sick man dominion over the fish in his stomach?
His want of control over “the fish of the sea” must have been an illusion, or else the Scriptures misstate man's power. That the Bible is true I believe, not only, but I demonstrated its truth when I exercised my power over the fish, cast out the sick man's illusion, and healed him. Thus it was shown that the healing action of Mind upon the body has its only explanation in divine metaphysics. As a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he.” When the mortal thought, or belief, was removed, the man was well.
What did Jesus mean when he said to the dying thief, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”?
Paradisaical rest from physical agony would come to the criminal, if the dream of dying should startle him from the dream of suffering. The paradise of Spirit would come to Jesus, in a spiritual sense of Life and power, Christ Jesus lived and reappeared. He was too good to die; for goodness is immortal. The thief was not equal to the demands of the hour; but sin was destroying itself, and had already begun to die—as the poor thief's prayer for help indicated. The dying malefactor and our Lord were inevitably separated through Mind. The thief's body, as matter, must dissolve into its native nothingness; whereas the body of the holy Spirit of Jesus was eternal. That day the thief would be with Jesus only in a finite and material sense of relief; while our Lord would soon be rising to the supremacy of Spirit, working out, even in the silent tomb, those wonderful demonstrations of divine power, in which none could equal his glory.
Is it right for me to treat others, when I am not entirely well myself?
The late John B. Gough is said to have suffered from an appetite for alcoholic drink until his death; yet he saved many a drunkard from this fatal appetite. Paul had a thorn in the flesh: one writer thinks that he was troubled with rheumatism, and another that he had sore eyes; but this is certain, that he healed others who were sick. It is unquestionably right to do right; and healing the sick is a very right thing to do.
Does Christian Science set aside the law of transmission, prenatal desires, and good or bad influences on the unborn child?
Science never averts law, but supports it. All actual causation must interpret omnipotence, the all-knowing Mind. Law brings out Truth, not error; unfolds divine Principle—but neither human hypothesis nor matter. Errors are based on a mortal or material formation; they are suppositional modes, not the factors of divine presence and power.
Whatever is humanly conceived is a departure from divine law; hence its mythical origin and certain end. According to the Scriptures—St. Paul declares astutely, “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things,”—man is incapable of originating: nothing can be formed apart from God, good, the all-knowing Mind. What seems to be of human origin is the counterfeit of the divine—even human concepts, mortal shadows flitting across the dial of time.
Whatever is real is right and eternal; hence the immutable and just law of Science, that God is good only, and can transmit to man and the universe nothing evil, or unlike Himself. For the innocent babe to be born a lifelong sufferer because of his parents' mistakes or sins, were sore injustice. Science sets aside man as a creator, and unfolds the eternal harmonies of the only living and true origin, God.
According to the beliefs of the flesh, both good and bad traits of the parents are transmitted to their helpless offspring, and God is supposed to impart to man this fatal power. It is cause for rejoicing that this belief is as false as it is remorseless. The immutable Word saith, through the prophet Ezekiel, “What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.”
Are material things real when they are harmonious, and do they disappear only to the natural sense? Does this Scripture, "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things" imply that Spirit takes note of matter?
The Science of Mind, as well as the material universe, shows that nothing which is material is in perpetual harmony. Matter is manifest mortal mind, and it exists only to material sense. Real sensation is not material; it is, and must be, mental: and Mind is not mortal, it is immortal Being is God, infinite Spirit; therefore it cannot cognize aught material, or outside of infinity.
The Scriptural passage quoted affords no evidence of the reality of matter, or that God is conscious of it. The so-called material body is said to suffer, but this supposition is proven erroneous when Mind casts out the suffering. The Scripture saith, “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth;” and again, “He doth not afflict willingly.” Interpreted materially, these passages conflict; they mingle the testimony of immortal Science with mortal sense; but once discern their spiritual meaning, and it separates the false sense from the true, and establishes the reality of what is spiritual, and the unreality of materiality.
Law is never material: it is always mental and moral, and
