I answered her that mind force had formed our bodies in the past, as they were now, and that our present, mental force was making future physical conditions; that all things went slowly, and the results of the past were inevitable. I spoke of the influence mind and action had on the body, on circulation, for instance. I said again that physical perfection could not be the aim, but only one of the conditions of progress.
On the subject of disease and cure Ruth and I disagreed entirely. But this we both held to be not tremendously important. I do not care here to record the arguments—not in the least bitter or heated—which we gladly left in air. None of us was in the least convinced by Ruth, and we were frank—she, as well as we—in our expressions of opinion.
So we found Ruth was with us in all that mattered, and had been candidly with us all the while. The children said the club had not changed their views, but enlarged and ordered them.
I read aloud the Christian Science prayer Ruth had brought some weeks ago:
MY PRAYER
“To be ever conscious of my unity with God, to listen for his voice, and hear no other call. To separate all error from my thought of man, and see him only as my father’s image, to show him reverence and share with him my holiest treasures.
“To keep my mental home a sacred place, golden with gratitude, redolent with love, white with purity, cleansed from the flesh.
“To send no thought into the world that will not bless, or cheer, or purify, or heal.
“To have no aim but to make earth a fairer, holier place, and to rise each day into a higher sense of Life and Love.”
We liked all of it, save the words “cleansed from the flesh.” Ruth explained that this meant cleansed from the idea of evil in the flesh.