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 faith; but I must know its Science, and I won my way through divine discovery, reason, and human experiment.
I had no human aid. The revelation of Truth to the understanding came, as to all, through divine power; when “unto us a child is born,” a new idea has birth, and “his name is Wonderful.” This is the origin of Christian Science in this century.
That Life is God, that the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its strength with material drugs, have been demonstrated to me. Reviewing this brief experience, I cannot fail to discern the coincidence of the human with the divine.
My medical researches and experiments had prepared the way for metaphysics. Every material dependence had failed, and I can now understand why; for I see the means by which mortals are divinely driven to a spiritual source for health, happiness, and Life. My experiments in homœopathy had made me sceptical as to material curative methods.
Jahr, from Aconitum to Zincum oxydatum, enumerates the general symptoms, the characteristic signs, that demand the different remedies. But the drug is attenuated to such a degree that not a vestige of it remains; and from this I learn that it is not the drug that cures the disease, or changes one of the symptoms.
I have attenuated Natrum muriaticum (common table-salt) until there was not a single saline property left. The salt had “lost its savor;” and yet with one drop of that attenuation in a goblet of water, and a teaspoonful of the water administered at intervals of three hours, I have cured a patient sinking in the last stage of typhoid fever.
The highest attenuation of homœopathy, and the most potent, steps out of matter into Mind; and thus it should be seen that Mind is the healer, or metaphysics, and that there is no efficacy in the drug.
A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and the patient looked like a barrel as she lay in the bed. I prescribed the fourth attenuation of Argenitum nitricum, with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, I began to fear a crisis, or aggravation of symptoms from the prolonged use of these remedies, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine, when she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets for a while, and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain as before. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the effects. After trying this she informed me that she could get along two days without globules; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets, with occasional visits from me, — employing no other means, — and was cured.
When I learned of a verity that Mind, and not matter, effects the cure, I had such qualms of conscience over attributing the cure to matter that I gave up a respectable profession, and heard the soft impeachment that I had lost my wits, or become a Spiritualist — which seems to me much the same thing.
My experiments have proved the fact that Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. A change of belief changes all the physical symptoms, and determines a case for better or worse. Nerves carry a changed report according to the changed belief. The indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the necessities of matter, or the false beliefs of a so-called material existence.
Destruction of the auditory nerve, and paralysis of the optic, are not needed to ensure deafness and blindness; for if mortal mind says, “I am deaf and blind,” it will be so without an injured nerve. Every theory opposed to this fact (as I learned in metaphysics) makes man, who is immortal in understanding, mortal in belief.
What is termed matter manifests nothing but mortality. Not a glimpse or manifestation of Spirit is obtained through matter. Spirit is positive; and for positive Spirit to pass through negatives would be its destruction.
Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea, governed by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics, thought passes naturally from effect to cause. The point for others to decide is, whether mortal mind is causative, or the Immortal Mind. We should forsake the basis of material belief, for the facts of Science and their Principle.
The authentic history of Caspar Hauser is a useful hint as to the fraility and inadequacy of mortal mind. It proves, beyond a doubt, that education constitutes this so-called mind; and that, in turn, mortal mind avenges itself on the body, by the false sense it imparts. Incarcerated in a dungeon, where neither sight nor sound could reach him, at the age of seventeen Caspar was still a mental infant, crying and chatteriug with no more intelligence than a babe, and realizing Tennyson's description: —
An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
His case proves material sense to be but a belief, formed by education alone. The light that affords us joy gave him a belief of intense pain. Fear suffused his eyes. They were inflamed by the light, since, to his belief, it gave suffering instead of joy. After the babbling boy was taught to speak a few words, he asked to be taken back to his dungeon, and said that he should never be happy anywhere else. Outside of dismal darkness and cold silence he found no peace. Every sound convulsed him with anguish. All that he ate, except his black crust, produced violent retchings. All that gives pleasure to our educated senses gave him pain in those very senses, trained in an opposite direction.
All this is evidence of the correctness of Christian Science. Alexander Pope was right in his account of Man: —
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, —
A being darkly wise and rudely great,
With too much knowledge for the sceptic's side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, —
He hangs between: in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err,
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, —
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
The less there is said of physical structure or law, and the more there is said about moral and spiritual law, the higher the standard of mortals will be, and the further removed from imbecility of mind and body.
We are told that the simple food our forefathers ate assisted to make them healthy; but that is a mistake. Their diet would not cure dyspepsia at this period. With rules of health in the head, and the most digestible food in the stomach, there would still be dyspeptics. The effeminate constitutions of our time will never grow robust until individual opinions improve, and mortal belief loses some portion of its error.
We must release pharmaceutics, and take up ontology. We must look into the Science, instead of accepting the sense of things. We should master fear, instead of cultivating it. It was the ignorance of our forefathers, concerning the knowledge that to-day walks to and fro in the earth, that made them more hardy than our trained physiologists, more honest than our sleek politicians.
Learning is useful if it is of the right sort. History, observation, invention, philosophic research, and original thought are requisite for the expansion of mortal mind, are essential to its growth out of itself, error.
The tangled barbarisms of learning we deplore,