Beliefs illusive
383:21 The tobacco-user, eating or smoking poison for half a
century, sometimes tells you that the weed preserves
his health, but does this make it so? Does his
383:24 assertion prove the use of tobacco to be a salu-
brious habit, and man to be the better for it? Such in-
stances only prove the illusive physical effect of a false
383:27 belief, confirming the Scriptural conclusion concerning a
man, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he."
The movement-cure - pinching and pounding the poor
383:30 body, to make it sensibly well when it ought to be in-
sensibly so - is another medical mistake, resulting from
the common notion that health depends on inert matter
384:1 instead of on Mind. Can matter, or what is termed
matter, either feel or act without mind?
Corporeal penalties
384:3 We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought
that we have transgressed a material law and must of
necessity pay the penalty. Let us reassure
384:6 ourselves with the law of Love. God never
punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for
deeds of kindness, though they expose him to fatigue,
384:9 cold, heat, contagion. If man seems to incur the penalty
through matter, this is but a belief of mortal mind, not
an enactment of wisdom, and man has only to enter his
384:12 protest against this belief in order to annul it. Through
this action of thought and its results upon the body, the
student will prove to himself, by small beginnings, the
384:15 grand verities of Christian Science.
Not matter, but Mind
If exposure to a draught of air while in a state of
perspiration is followed by chills, dry cough, influenza,
384:18 congestive symptoms in the lungs, or hints of
inflammatory rheumatism, your Mind-remedy
is safe and sure. If you are a Christian Scientist, such
384:21 symptoms are not apt to follow exposure; but if you
believe in laws of matter and their fatal effects when
transgressed, you are not fit to conduct your own case or
384:24 to destroy the bad effects of your belief. When the fear
subsides and the conviction abides that you have broken
no law, neither rheumatism, consumption, nor any other
384:27 disease will ever result from exposure to the weather. In
Science this is an established fact which all the evidence
before the senses can never overrule.
Benefit of philanthropy
384:30 Sickness, sin, and death must at length quail before
the divine rights of intelligence, and then the power
of Mind over the entire functions and organs of the
385:1 human system will be acknowledged. It is proverbial
that Florence Nightingale and other philanthropists en-
385:3 gaged in humane labors have been able to
undergo without sinking fatigues and expo-
sures which ordinary people could not endure. The ex-
385:6 planation lies in the support which they derived from
the divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual
demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and en-
385:9 durance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the
penalty which our beliefs would attach to our best
deeds. Let us remember that the eternal law of right,
385:12 though it can never annul the law which makes sin its
own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but
those due for wrong-doing.
Honest toil has no penalty