It is admitted universally that mortals think wickedly and act wickedly. It is beginning to be seen by thinkers that mortals also think and act in a sickly fashion. In common parlance: One person feels sick. Another person knows that if he removes this feeling he must change his friend's consciousness, or sense of suffering and disease, to a consciousness of ease and loss of suffering. This is Christian Science: that mortal mind makes sick, and Immortal Mind makes well; that mortal mind makes sinners, while Immortal Mind makes saints; that a state of health is but a state of mortal consciousness, made manifest on the body, and vice versa; that one person feels wickedly and acts wickedly, while another knows, if he can change this evil sense and consciousness to a good sense, or conscious goodness, that the fruits of goodness will follow, and he has reformed the sinner. Now demonstrate this rule, which obtains in every line of mental healing, and you will find that a good rule works one way, and a false rule the opposite way.
Let us suppose there is a sick person whom another would heal mentally. The healer begins by mental argument. He says "You are well, and you know it;" and he supports this silent force by audible explanation, attestation, and precedent. His mental and oral arguments aim to refute the sick man's thoughts, words, and actions in certain directions, and turn them into divine channels. He persists in this course until the patient's mind yields, and the Christian Scientist has the full control A correction was made in the September 1888 Journal: "On page 250, line 5, of our August Journal, in the article on Animal Magnetism, by Mrs. Eddy, some readers may have noted a puzzling use of the word magnetizer, for which the authoress is in no way responsible. The words should have been: "the Christian Scientist [not magnetizer] has the full control." over this mind on the point at issue. The end is attained, and the patient says and feels, "I am well, and I know it." This mental practitioner has changed his patient's consciousness from sickness to health. The patient's mental state is now diametrically the opposite of what it was when the mental practitioner undertook to transform it.
That this mental method of doing good has power and fruit is patent to both the conscientious Christian Scientist and to the lawless mind-operator. Both should understand, with equal clearness, that if this mental process and power are reversed, and you argue mentally that a man is sick and he knows it, and speak of him as sick, put it into the minds of others that he is sick, publish it in newspapers that he is failing, — and persist in this action of mind over mind, and faith in its fatal manifestation on the body, — it follows, with the certainty of Science, that he will be sick in belief. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he."
