inverted image. Human reason acts slowly in accepting spiritual facts, but calling on matter to remove what the human mind alone has occasioned is fatal.
The fundamental error is to suppose that man is a material outgrowth, and that bodily cognizance of good or evil constitutes his happiness or misery. Theorizing from mushrooms to monkeys, and from monkeys to men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, and very much in the wrong. If we classify mortals as mineral, vegetable, or animal, an egg is the author of the genus homo; but there is no reason why man should begin in the egg, rather than in the more primitive dust, like the figurative Adam.
Brains are within the craniums of animals. To say then that brain is man, is to furnish the pretext for saying that man was once a brute, an assertion which must be met with the reply. If once he was a brute, he will be again, according to natural perpetuation of identity.
What is man? Brains, heart, blood, the material structure? If he is but a material body, when you amputate a limb, you must take away a portion of the man; the surgeon can destroy manhood, and the worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb, or injury to a tissue, is sometimes the quickener of manliness; and the unfortunate cripple may present more of it than the statuesque athlete, — teaching us, by his very deprivations, that “a man's a man, for a' that.”
Admitting that matter (heart, blood, brains, the so-called five personal senses) constitutes man, we fail to see how anatomy can distinguish between the brute and humanity, or determine when man is really man, and has progressed farther than his progenitors. If quadruped and biped possess the constituent parts of man, they must, to some extent, be human; and, by parallel reasoning, man must be a brute.
This materialism grades man from the dust upward; but how is the material species maintained when man passes the Rubicon of spirituality? Spirit forms no proper link in this chain of being, but reveals the eternal chain as uninterrupted; yet this is seen only as matter disappears.
If man was first matter, he has passed through all its forms to become man. If the material body is man, he is mere matter, or dust. But man is the image and likeness of Spirit; and the belief that there is Soul in sense, or Life in matter, belongs to the mortal mind that is to be put off, to which the apostle refers.
Anatomy makes man structural. Physiology continues this explanation, measuring human strength by bones and sinews, and human life by material law. Phrenology makes man thieving or honest, according to the development of the cranium; but anatomy, physiology, phrenology, do not define the image of God, or immortal man. To measure capacities by the size of the brain, and limit strength to the exercise of a muscle, would subjugate intelligence, and place Mind at the mercy of organization and non-intelligence.
Matter, taking divine power into its own hands, is like a fiction, in which debauchery is attuned to such fascination, that mankind are in danger of catching its moral contagion. The spiritual opposite of materiality will reopen, with the key of Science, the gates of Paradise, that human beliefs had wellnigh closed, and find man unfallen, upright, pure, and free, having no need to consult almanacs for the probabilities of Life, or to study brainology in order to learn how much of a man he is.
Mistaking his origin and nature, we make man both matter and Spirit, — Spirit being sifted through matter, carried on a nerve, exposed to ejection at the hands of matter. Think of it: the intellectual, the moral, the spiritual, — yea, Intelligence itself, — subjected to non-intelligence!
Is civilization but a higher stage of idolatry, that man, in the nineteenth century, should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels and baths, to diet, exercise, air? Nothing is able to do for man what he can do for himself with omnipotent aid.
The idols of civilization are far more fatal to health and longevity than the idols of older forms of heathenism. They call into action less faith than Buddhism, in a supreme governing Intelligence. Even the Esquimaux restore health by incantations, as effectually as civilized practitioners by their modus operandi.
Whatever teaches man to have other rulers before Jehovah is anti-Christian. The good matter is supposed to do is evil, for it would rob man of God, Omnipotent Mind. Truth is not the basis of Theogony. Modes of matter form neither a moral nor spiritual system. The inharmony that calls for them is the result of faith, already exercised, in matter rather than Spirit.
Did Jesus apprehend the economy of man to a less degree than Graham or Cutter? Christian ideas certainly embrace the Principle of man's harmony, which human theories do not. “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die,” contradicts not only the systems of man, but points to the self-sustaining and eternal.
The demands of Truth are spiritual, and reach the body through Mind. The best interpreter of man's needs said, “Take no thought for the body, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink.”
Putting on the full armor of physiology, and obeying to the letter the so-called laws of health (so the statistics show; have neither diminished sickness nor lengthened life. Diseases have multiplied and become more obstinate. Their chronic forms have become more frequent, the acute more fatal. There are more sudden deaths since our man-made theories have taken the place of primitive Truth.
The explication of man as purely physical, dependent wholly on organization, is the Pandora box, from which many evils escape. If there are material laws which will prevent disease, what then causes it? Not divine law, for Christ healed the sick and cast out error, but never in obedience to physics.
The so-called laws of matter are nothing but a false belief in the presence of Intelligence and Life where they are not. This is the procuring cause of all disease. The opposite Truth — that Intelligence and Life are spiritual, never material — is the cure of all disease. No more sympathy exists between the flesh and Spirit than between Christ and Belial.
Failing to recover health through adherence to Materia medica, physiology, and hygiene, the despairing invalid drops them, and turns in his extremity to God, as the last resort. His faith in Him is less than it was in drugs, air, exercise, or he would have resorted to Mind first. The balance of power is conceded to be with matter, by most of the medical systems; whereas, Spirit at last asserts its mastery, and then, and not until then, is man found to be forever harmonious and immortal.
Should we implore only a personal God to heal the sick, or should we understand the Divine Principle that heals? If we rise no higher than blind faith, the Science of Healing is not attained, and Soul-existence, in the place of sense-existence, is not comprehended. We apprehend Life in Science, only as we correct personal sense. Our relative admission of the claims of good or evil determines the harmony of our existence, — our health, our longevity, and our Christianity.
We cannot serve two masters, or reach Divine Science through material sense. The Source of all health and perfection is not matched by drugs and hygiene. If man is constituted both good and evil, he will end in evil. An error in the premises must appear in the conclusion. To avail yourself of the power of Spirit, you must depend upon no human reliance.
Christian Science understood would disabuse the human mind of the thousand and one material beliefs that war against spiritual Truth. You cannot add to the contents of a vessel already full. Laboring long to shake one's faith in matter, and convey a crumb of faith in God, — an inkling of the possibilities of Spirit to make the body harmonious, — I have remembered often our Master's love for little children, and understood how truly such as they belong to the heavenly kingdom.
You admit that Mind influences the body somewhat, but conclude that stomach, blood, nerves, bones, hold the preponderance of power. In accordance with this belief, you continue in the old routine. You lean on the inert and unintelligent, never discerning how this deprives you of the available superiority of Mind. The body is not controlled scientifically
