besides God, good. God would not be omnipotent if there were in reality another mind creating or governing man or the universe.
Immortal Mind is God; and this Mind is made manifest in all thoughts and desires that draw mankind toward purity, health, holiness, and the spiritual facts of being.
Jesus recognized this relation so clearly that he said, “I and my Father are one.” In proportion as we oppose the belief in material sense, in sickness, sin, and death, and recognize ourselves under the control of God, spiritual and immortal Mind, shall we go on to leave the animal for the spiritual, and learn the meaning of those words of Jesus, “Go ye into all the world … heal the sick.”
Can your Science cure intemperance?
Christian Science lays the axe at the root of the tree. Its antidote for all ills is God, the perfect Mind, which corrects mortal thought, whence cometh all evil. God can and does destroy the thought that leads to moral or physical death. Intemperance, impurity, sin of every sort, is destroyed by Truth. The appetite for alcohol yields to Science as directly and surely as do sickness and sin.
Does Mrs. Eddy take patients?
She now does not. Her time is wholly devoted to instruction, leaving to her students the work of healing; which, at this hour, is in reality the least difficult of the labor that Christian Science demands.
Why do you charge for teaching Christian Science, when all the good we can do must be done freely?
When teaching imparts the ability to gain and maintain health, to heal and elevate man in every line of life—as this teaching certainly does—is it unreasonable to expect in return something to support one's self and a Cause? If so, our whole system of education, secular and religious, is at fault, and the instructors and philanthropists in our land should expect no compensation. “If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?”
How happened you to establish a college to instruct in metaphysics, when other institutions find little interest in such a dry and abstract subject?
Metaphysics, as taught by me at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, is far from dry and abstract. It is a Science that has the animus of Truth. Its practical application to benefit the race, heal the sick, enlighten and reform the sinner, makes divine metaphysics needful, indispensable. Teaching metaphysics at other colleges means, mainly, elaborating a man-made theory, or some speculative view too vapory and hypothetical for questions of practical import.
Is it necessary to study your Science in order to be healed by it and keep well?
It is not necessary to make each patient a student in order to cure his present disease, if this is what you mean. Were it so, the Science would be of less practical value. Many who apply for help are not prepared to take a course of instruction in Christian Science.
To avoid being subject to disease, would require the understanding of how you are healed. In 1885, this knowledge can be obtained in its genuineness at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. There are abroad at this early date some grossly incorrect and false teachers of what they term Christian Science; of such beware. They have risen up in a day to make this claim; whereas the Founder of genuine Christian Science has been all her years in giving it birth.
Can you take care of yourself?
God giveth to every one this puissance; and I have faith in His promise, “Lo, I am with you alway”—all the way. Unlike the M. D.'s, Christian Scientists are not afraid to take their own medicine, for this medicine is divine Mind; and from this saving, exhaustless source they intend to fill the human mind with enough of the leaven of Truth to leaven the whole lump. There may be exceptional cases, where one Christian Scientist who has more to meet than others needs support at times; then, it is right to bear “one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
In what way is a Christian Scientist an instrument by which God reaches others to heal them, and what most obstructs the way?
A Christian, or a Christian Scientist, assumes no more when claiming to work with God in healing the sick, than in converting the sinner. Divine help is as necessary in the one case as in the other. The scientific Principle of healing demands such cooperation; but this unison and its power would be arrested if one were to mix material methods with the spiritual—were to mingle hygienic rules, drugs, and prayers in the same process—and thus serve “other gods.” Truth is as effectual in destroying sickness as in the destruction of sin.
It is often asked, “If Christian Science is the same method of healing that Jesus and the apostles used, why do not its students perform as instantaneous cures as did those in the first century of the Christian era?”
In some instances the students of Christian Science equal the ancient prophets as healers. All true healing is governed by, and demonstrated on, the same Principle as theirs; namely, the action of the divine Spirit, through the power of Truth to destroy error, discord of whatever sort. The reason that the same results follow not in every case, is that the student does not in every case possess sufficiently the Christ-spirit and its power to cast out the disease. The Founder of Christian Science teaches her students that they must possess the spirit of Truth and Love, must gain the power over sin in themselves, or they cannot be instantaneous healers.
In this Christian warfare the student or practitioner has to master those elements of evil too common to other minds. If it is hate that is holding the purpose to kill his patient by mental means, it requires more divine understanding to conquer this sin than to nullify either the disease itself or the ignorance by which one unintentionally harms himself or another. An element of brute-force that only the cruel and evil can send forth, is given vent in the diabolical practice of one who, having learned the power of liberated thought to do good, perverts it, and uses it to accomplish an evil purpose. This mental malpractice would disgrace Mind-healing, were it not that God overrules it, and causes “the wrath of man” to praise Him. It deprives those who practise it of the power to heal, and destroys their own possibility of progressing.
The honest student of Christian Science is purged through Christ, Truth, and thus is ready for victory in the ennobling strife. The good fight must be fought by those who keep the faith and finish their course. Mental purgation must go on: it promotes spiritual growth, scales the mountain of human endeavor, and gains the summit in Science that otherwise could not be reached—where the struggle with sin is forever done.
Can all classes of disease be healed by your method?
We answer, Yes. Mind is the architect that builds its own idea, and produces all harmony that appears. There is no other healer in the case. If mortal mind, through the action of fear, manifests inflammation and a belief of chronic or acute disease, by removing the cause in that so-called mind the effect or disease will disappear and health will be restored; for health, alias harmony, is the normal manifestation of man in Science. The divine Principle which governs the universe, including man, if demonstrated, is sufficient for all emergencies. But the practitioner may not always prove equal to bringing out the result of the Principle that he knows to be true.
After the change called death takes place, do we meet those gone before?—or does life continue in thought only as in a dream?
Man is not annihilated, nor does he lose his identity, by passing through the belief called death. After the momentary belief of dying passes from mortal mind, this mind is still in a conscious
