and is far from the Science of Being. Truth, and not Will, is the healer, that says to disease, “Peace, be still.”
The personal senses may cherish affinities with their opposites. In Christian Science Truth never mingles with error. Mind has no affinity for matter; therefore Truth is able to cast out the ills of the flesh. Mind, God, sends forth the aroma of Spirit, the atmosphere of Intelligence. The belief that a pulpy substance, under the skull, is Mind, is a mockery of Intelligence, the mimicry of Mind.
The theory that Spirit is distinct from matter, but must pass through it, or into it, to be individualized, would reduce Truth to the dependency of error, and require Something to be made manifest through Nothing. Better the suffering that awakens mortal mind from its dream, than the false pleasures that tend to perpetuate it.
Scientists can heal the sick who are absent from them, since space is no obstacle to Mind. Immortal Mind heals what eye hath not seen. The whole world is made better by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error.
Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensuous belief in matter, is animal magnetism; but when mortal mind, contradicting the evidence of the senses, yields to the government of God, it can go forth on errands of love. In proportion as you understand Christian Science, you lose animal magnetism; and you disarm sin of its imaginary power, as you gain spiritual understanding.
You can have no power opposed to God in Science, and the senses must give up their false testimony. Your influence for good is the weight you throw into the right scale. The good you do, and the good you embody, give you the only power obtainable. Evil is not power. It is a mockery of strength, that ere long betrays its weakness, and falls, never to rise again. Bowring's verse expresses my thought on this subject: —
The chain of being is complete in me;
In me is matter's last gradation lost,
And the next step is Spirit — Deity!
The following testimonials are appended, simply to elucidate my topic: —
I was suffering from pulmonary difficulties, pains in the chest, a hard and unremitting cough, hectic fever; and all those fearful symptoms made my case alarming. When I first saw Mrs. Glover (afterwards Mrs. Eddy) I was reduced so as to be unable to walk any distance, and could sit up but a portion of the day. Walking up stairs gave me great suffering in breathing. I had no appetite, and seemed surely going to the grave, the victim of consumption. I had received her attention but a short time when my bad symptoms disappeared, and I regained health. During this time I rode out in storms to visit her, and found the damp weather had no unpleasant effect on me. From my personal experience, I am led to believe that the Science by which she not only heals sickness, but explains the way to keep well, is deserving the earnest attention of the community. Her cures are not the result of medicine, mediumship, or mesmerism, but the application of a Principle that she understands.
James Ingham.
East Stoughton, Mass.
Miss Ellen C. Pillsbury, of Tilton, N. H., was suffering from what her physicians called enteritis, of the severest form, following typhoid fever. Her case was given up by her regular physician, and she was lying at the point of death, when Mrs. Glover (afterwards Mrs. Eddy) visited her. In a few moments after Mrs. Glover entered the room and stood by the bedside, Miss Pillsbury recognized her aunt, and said, “I am glad to see you, aunty.” In about ten minutes more Mrs. Glover told her to rise from her bed and walk. Miss Pillsbury rose and walked seven times across her room, then sat down in a chair. For two weeks before this we had not entered her room without feeling obliged to step lightly. Her bowels were so tender that she felt the jar, and it increased her sufferings. She could only be moved on a sheet from bed to bed. When she walked across the room, at Mrs. Glover's bidding, Mrs. Glover told Miss Pillsbury to stamp her foot strongly upon the floor, and she did so without suffering from it. The next day she was dressed, and went down to the table; and on the fourth day made a journey of about a hundred miles in the cars.
Mrs. Elizabeth P. Baker.
The following is a case of heart-disease, which I cured without having seen the patient: —
Please find inclosed a check for five hundred dollars, in reward for your services, that can never be repaid. The day you received my husband's letter I became conscious, for the first time in forty-eight hours. My servant brought my wrapper, and I arose from bed and sat up. The attack of heart-disease lasted two days, and we all think I could not have survived, but for the wonderful help received from you. The enlargement of my left side is all gone, and the doctors pronounce me rid of heart-disease. I had been afflicted with it from infancy. It became organic enlargement of the heart and dropsy of the chest. I was only waiting, and almost longing, to die, but you have healed me. How wonderful to think of it, when you and I have never seen each other. We return to Europe next week. I feel perfectly well.
Louisa M. Armstrong.
Mr. R. O. Badgely, of Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote: “My painful and swelled foot was restored at once on your receipt of my letter, and that very day I put on my boot and walked several miles.” He had previously written me: “A stick of timber fell from a building on my foot, crushing the bones. Cannot you help me? I am sitting in great pain, with my foot in a bath.”
I never believed in taking certificates or presenting testimonials of cures; and usually, when healing, have said to the individual, “Go, tell no man.” I have never made a specialty of healing, but labored, in every way that God directed, to introduce metaphysical treatment. I offer a few testimonials, simply to support my statements about Christian Science.
Lynn, June, 1873.
My little son, a year and a half old, had ulcerations of the bowels, and was a great sufferer. He was reduced almost to a skeleton, and growing worse daily. He could take nothing but gruel, or some very simple nourishment. At that time the physicians had given him up, saying they could do no more for him, and he was taking laudanum. Mrs. Eddy came in, took him up from the cradle, held him a few minutes, kissed him, laid him down again, and went out. In less than an hour he was taken up, had his playthings, and was well. All his symptoms changed at once. For months previously blood and mucous had passed his bowels, but that day the evacuation was natural, and he has not suffered from his complaint since. He is now well and hearty. After she saw him he ate all he wanted. He even ate a quantity of cabbage just before going to bed.
L. C. Edgecomb.
I was called to visit Mr. Clark, in Lynn, confined to his bed six months with hip-disease, caused by a fall upon a wooden spike, when quite a boy. On entering the house I met his physician, who said he was dying. He had just probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious for several inches. He even showed me the probe, that had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The doctor passed out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and sightless; the dew of death was upon his brow. I went to his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids closed gently, the breathing became natural; he was asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his eyes and said, “I feel like a new man; my suffering is all gone.” It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon when this took place.
I told him to rise, dress himself, and take supper with his family. He did so. The next day I saw him in the yard. Since then I have not seen him, but am informed that he went to work in two weeks, and that pieces of wood were discharged from the sore as it healed. These pieces had remained there ever since the injury received in his boyhood.
Since his recovery I have been informed that his physician claims to have cured him; and that his mother has been threatened with an insane asylum for having said, “It was none other than God and that woman who healed him.” I cannot attest to the truth of that report, but what I saw and did for that man, and what his physician said of the case, occurred just as I have narrated. For three years I sought day and night the solution of this problem of Mind-healing. I searched the Scriptures, and read nothing else, not even a newspaper. I kept aloof from society, and devoted my time and energies to discovering a positive rule. I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced, according to primitive Christian healing, by a holy, uplifting