God, good, to make man sick, and then leave him to heal himself, — for Spirit to produce disease, and leave the remedy with matter.
God can no more produce sickness than good can end in evil, or health occasion disease. Good never made sin for an experiment, or caused a result by first constituting that which produced it, and then punishing the sin it made possible. Evil is not supreme, good is not helpless; nor is a law of matter primary, and a law of Spirit secondary.
Body is not first, and Soul last, nor is evil mightier than good. The Science of Being repudiates self-evident impossibilities, or the amalgamation of Truth and error in cause or effect. It separates the tares and wheat in time of harvest.
The clay cannot reply to the potter. The head, heart, lungs, and limbs do not inform us that they are dizzy, diseased, consumptive, or lame. If this information is given, mortal mind has given it. Neither immortal and unerring Mind, nor so-called matter, — the inanimate substratum of mortal mind, — can carry on such telegraphy; for God is too pure to behold iniquity.
Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hate, and Life no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to aught unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.
Sickness, sin, death, are not the true and good; they are the false and erroneous, that Truth never created. Perfection is not the life of imperfection. Because God is good, and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity. Therefore it was not produced in Truth, but is illusion, the mirage of error. Divine Science reveals this grand fact. On its basis Jesus demonstrated Life, by overcoming sin, sickness, and death, never yielding them obedience.
There is but one primal Cause; therefore there can be no effect from any other cause; and there can be no actual reality in anything which proceeds not from this great and only Cause. Sin, sickness, and death are not the Science of Being. They are the fruits of error, and show the absence of the real.
The scientific fact is the spiritual fact of all things. The spiritual fact, duplicated in the action of man as well as the universe, presents harmony, the ideal of Truth. If scientific fact be inverted, the opposite discord appears, which bears no resemblance to reality. The only evidence of this appearing is obtained from the material senses, that afford no evidence of God, Spirit, or spiritual creation. They define all things materially, and have only a finite and personal sense of Deity.
This so-called mind acts against itself, and is self-destructive, in obedience to the immutable law of Spirit. Hence those words of our Master, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” Error “soweth the wind and reapeth the whirlwind.”
What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say, “I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well.” It is mortal mind that speaks thus, and which appears to fulfil its own statement. To mortal sense, sin and suffering continue unto the end; but immortal sense includes no evil or pestilence. Because it has no error of sense, and no sense of error, it is immortal.
If God makes man sick, sickness must be good; and its opposite, health, must be evil; for all that He makes is good, and will stand forever. The transgression of a law of mortal mind brings the belief of sickness. The remedy is Truth, not matter. If the transgression of God's law produces sickness, it is right to be sick; and we cannot if we would, and should not if we could, annul the decrees of Wisdom.
If sickness is real, it belongs to Truth and Immortality. If true, it is a part of Truth; and would you attempt, with drugs or without them, to destroy a quality or condition of Truth? But if sickness or sin is illusion, — and waking from this mortal dream will bring to light health, holiness, and immortality, — then this awakening is Christ, or Truth, casting out error, and healing the sick. This is the salvation that cometh through the Divine Principle demonstrated by Jesus.
The sculptor turns from the marble to his model, to perfect his conceptions. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiselling our thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have we not accepted the material model? and are we not reproducing it, aided in our work by vicious sculptors of hideous forms? Do we not hear, from all mankind, of the imperfect model? Is the world not holding it before our gaze continually? The result is, that we follow those lower patterns, limit our life-work, and adopt, into our own experience, the angular outline and deformity of mortal models.
To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk there. We must form perfect models in thought, and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let harmony, health, unselfishness, goodness, mercy, and justice form the mind-pictures, and sin, sickness, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.
Does Wisdom make blunders to be afterwards rectified by man? Does a law of God produce sickness, and man put that law under his feet by healing that sickness? To my understanding, the sick are never really healed by drugs, hygiene, or any material method. These merely evade the question. They are soothing syrups to put children to sleep, satisfy mortal belief, and lull its fears.
We think we are healed when a disease disappears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never thoroughly healed until this liability is removed. Mortal mind, being the remote and exciting cause of all suffering, the cause must be renovated through Science, or sense will get the victory.
Unless every ill is met aright, and fairly overcome by Truth, it is never conquered. If God destroys not sin, sickness, and death, they are not destroyed to mortal mind, but are immortal. What God cannot do, man need not attempt. If God heals not the sick, it is because He cannot or will not. In either case lesser attempts would be hopeless, for no power equals the Infinite.
Upon this stage of existence goes on the dance of belief. Mortal thoughts chase each other like snowflakes drifting to the ground. Science has revealed that Life is not at the mercy of death, nor happiness the sport of circumstance. Error becomes more imperative as it hastens towards self-destruction. This action of mortal mind on the body is illustrated when an abscess grows more painful before it bursts and ends with suppuration, or a fever becomes more severe before it abates.
The fright is so great, at certain stages of mortal belief, as to destroy that belief. In the illusion of death mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: that they are not dead; and that they have but passed the portals of a new belief that reaches this discovery. Truth works out the nothingness of error in just these ways. Sickness, as well as sin, is a suicide, — an error that culminates in self-destruction.
Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While age is halting between two opinions, or battling with a belief, youth makes easy and rapid strides toward Truth.
A little girl who had occasionally listened to my explanations, wounded her finger badly. She seemed not to notice it. On being questioned about it she answered ingenuously, “There is no sensation in matter.” Bounding off, with laughing eyes, she added, “Mamma, my finger is not a bit sore.”
It might have been months or years before her parents would have laid aside their drugs, or reached the mental height their little daughter so naturally accepted. The more stubborn beliefs of parents often choke the good seed in the minds of themselves and their offspring. Ignorance, like “the fowls of the air,” snatches away the good seed before it has sprouted.
Loss of identity, through the understanding of Science, is like the loss of the tones of music in their Principle. The great mistake of mortals is to suppose that man is both mortal and immortal, both good and evil.
The vesture of Life is Truth. According to the Bible, the facts of being are commonly misconstrued, for it is written, “They parted my garments among them, and for my vesture did they cast lots.” The Divine Science of man is woven into one web of consistency, without seam or rent; but it has been torn, and lots have been cast for its fragments. Mere speculation has appropriated no part of the vesture; but inspiration restores every part to the divine fabric and robe of righteousness.
Man gives neither shape nor comeliness to beauty. Beauty possesses those qualities even before they are perceived by man. Beauty