Dishonesty destroys one's ability to heal mentally. Conceit cannot avert the effects of deceit. Taking advantage of the present ignorance in relation to Christian Science Mind-healing, many are flooding our land with conflicting theories and practice. We should not spread abroad patchwork ideas that in some vital points lack Science. How sad it is that envy will bend its bow and shoot its arrow at the idea which claims only its inheritance, is naturally modest, generous, and sincere! while the trespassing error murders either friend or foe who stands in its way. Truly it is better to fall into the hands of God, than of man.
When I revised "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," in 1878, some irresponsible people insisted that my manual of the practice of Christian Science Mind-healing should not be made public; but I obeyed a diviner rule. People dependent on the rules of this practice for their healing, not having lost the Spirit which sustains the genuine practice, will put that book in the hands of their patients, whom it will heal, and recommend it to their students, whom it would enlighten. Every teacher must pore over it in secret, to keep himself well informed. The Nemesis of the history of Mind-healing notes this hour.
Dishonesty necessarily stultifies the spiritual sense which Mind-healers specially need; and which they must possess, in order to be safe members of the community. How good and pleasant a thing it is to seek not so much thine own as another's good, to sow by the wayside for the way-weary, and trust Love's recompense of love.
Plagiarism from my writings is so common it is becoming odious to honest people; and such compilations, instead of possessing the essentials of Christian Science, are tempting and misleading.
Reading Science and Health has restored the sick to health; but the task of learning thoroughly the Science of Mind-healing and demonstrating it understandingly had better be undertaken in health than sickness.
Disease Unreal
Disease is more than imagination; it is a human error, a constituent part of what comprise the whole of mortal existence,—namely, material sensation and mental delusion. But an erring sense of existence, or the error of belief, named disease, never made sickness a stubborn reality. On the ground that harmony is the truth of being, the Science of Mind-healing destroys the feasibility of disease; hence error of thought becomes fable instead of fact. Science demonstrates the reality of Truth and the unreality of the error. A self-evident proposition, in the Science of Mind-healing, is that disease is unreal; and the efficacy of my system, beyond other systems of medicine, vouches for the validity of that statement. Sin and disease are not scientific, because they embody not the idea of divine Principle, and are not the phenomena of the immutable laws of God; and they do not arise from the divine consciousness and true constituency of being.
The unreality of sin, disease, and death, rests on the exclusive truth that being, to be eternal, must be harmonious. All disease must be—and can only be—healed on this basis. All true Christian Scientists are vindicating, fearlessly and honestly, the Principle of this grand verity of Mind-healing.
In erring mortal thought the reality of Truth has an antipode,—the reality of error; and disease is one of the severe realities of this error. God has no opposite in Science. To Truth there is no error. As Truth alone is real, then it follows that to declare error real would be to make it Truth. Disease arises from a false and material sense, from the belief that matter has sensation. Therefore this material sense, which is untrue, is of necessity unreal. Moreover, this unreal sense substitutes for Truth an unreal belief,—namely, that life and health are independent of God, and dependent on material conditions. Material sense also avers that Spirit, or Truth, cannot restore health and perpetuate life, but that material conditions can and do destroy both human health and life.