Someone who had been superintendent of nurses in a large hospital for many years before taking up Christian Science explained to me that nervous tendencies do not develop quickly. "We help build them up," she said, "by lending ourselves to their insistent suggestions time and time again until they burst forth into explosiveness." So-called nervous people can stop thinking of themselves as material and vulnerable. They can accept the true concept of themselves as spiritual and complete.
What are called material nerves are part of the belief of a material body. But a material body is not man, only mortal mind's distorted concept of man. In Science, what is termed nerves, or the nervous system, narrows down to the false, mesmeric claim that man, God's idea, is separated from his source. The spiritual fact is this: divine Mind and its idea, man, are never separated. Mind cannot exist without ideas, and man cannot exist apart from the Mind which conceives and governs him.
Moreover, man's true consciousness is the reflection of divine Mind and of the spiritual qualities that exist in it. The truth is that man is the compound spiritual idea of which the material organism is but the counterfeit. Christian Scientists exchange imperfect material concepts for better, yes, spiritual ideas, and this is the true method of healing. Our work is to acquaint ourselves with God and His incorporeal, perfect idea, man, ever at one with Him. Nerves cannot be spiritualized, but the mistaken belief calling itself nerves must be corrected. Then we shall find ourselves harmonious and at peace, and our nerves will express a normal state.
