We are taught in Christian Science that we are to exercise authority over our servant, the body. "Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 393 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."
Walking down the street, we may come to a red light. The action is, and should be, so habitual that we are hardly conscious that we command the body to stop. The body has not the intelligence to stop, nor could it of itself cross the street after having received our mental order to stop. It has no power within itself to act independently. It cannot rise in the morning, bathe, dress, or feed itself without receiving from consciousness the command to do so.
"Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?" (Isa. 45:9.) The figure which is being sculptured cannot resist the steady chiseling of the artist. In the degree that his purpose is fixed, his thought clear, his hand trained and steady, is the result satisfactory. The minerals and water composing the material body have no more intelligence and power to control the individual than has the clay or the marble to control the work of the sculptor. Both of these must respond to the thought directing them.
