Christian Science, being the Science of harmony, must of necessity relate to every phase of life wherein man seeks the achievement of perfection. Harmony furthers progress, just as a smooth rail facilitates travel. While it is true that a majority of people become interested in Christian Science because of the physical emancipation it brings, it is also true that many come to its study because of the freedom from bondage in circumstance and in environment which it offers. Perhaps a lack of health and physical strength is of all things the most serious handicap to endeavor, yet there is another kind of defeat of achievement known as "being out of place." There are those who are not in their natural orbit of mental capacity. There are those who are failures in the sphere in which they are placed, who could have won honor and success in a vocation adapted to their talents. Some have their calling close in upon them by what is called fate; some have the ideals of parents thrust upon them, and some choose their own calling. It is to the crushed life as well as to the depleted body that the Science which holds out emancipation, appeals. We want the truth, which to know, shall make us free,—free from every wrong condition. We want the Science of emancipation. Man thirsts for liberty. A religion which offers only endurance of sickness and bondage does not go far enough, for it is written "the truth shall make you free."
The great difference between Christian Science and other forms of faith lies in that Christian Science offers the "ounce of prevention" as regards both disease and slavery. It not only frees the slave, but it keeps him free through his understanding of the cause of his bondage.
We learn that as a man thinketh so is he. We learn that wrong thinking produces all wrong living, wrong physical conditions, and that it also places one in a wrong environment. When this is perceived, procedure becomes intelligible, and we are enabled to take the first step in all healing,—diagnosis. We must first see wherein we violate law, before we can cease sinning. Ignorance is no protection in civil law, neither is it a protection in spiritual law. Beginning with the recognition that all bondage is the outward effect of an inner mental causation, self-help is at hand. Emancipation of thought (freedom earned through right-thinking) is the one process in Christian Science.
There is much general misunderstanding concerning the teachings of Christian Science as regards diagnosis. It is said that Christian Scientists do not know how to diagnose disease; do not understand their cases, because they handle them in an entirely different way from materia medica. The Christian Scientist may not test the heart beats of his patient, but he understands how to feel the pulse of mental causation. Materia medica has reduced the cause of disease to microbes. Christian Science has reduced it to mortal law. The microbe is not a cause in itself, it is a result, for it must be created. The Christian Scientist penetrates beyond microbes in his diagnosis; he combats the operation of mortal law, not simply its effects. He does not diagnose by beginning with the effect (or disease) and from thence work his way back to cause, he begins with cause and works from thence to effect. We all know that a lifeless body is no more subject to disease than is a statue of Apollo. Therefore the cause of disease cannot be physical, but must lie in the mental action which operates physically, and which is called mortal law, mortal life, or mortal mind. To be intelligent, therefore, diagnosis must begin with volition, mentality, mortal mind. The Christian Scientist certainly does diagnose; but he begins where materia medica leaves off.
The fact that most of the healing in Christian Science is accomplished after materia medica has failed proves indisputably that Christian Science makes the clearer diagnosis of the cause of disease. The success of Christian Science treatment proves the correctness of its mental diagnosis. How to prevent disease is of more importance to the Christian Scientist than how to heal it. Just how much disease Christian Science is preventing, the public, as yet, is not prepared to discover. Before everything else, Christian Science brings to mankind the "ounce of prevention."
When we speak of a diagnosis of disease, and find its cause to be mental, the public erroneously leaps to the conclusion that by "mental cause" we mean hypochondria, or imagination; and the public thought sometimes scorns to take treatment of a healer who considers its disease to be hypochondria. But if some were to look into Christian Science a little more considerately, and with a little less satisfaction in what they think they know of it, they would find that nearly all the information they have acquired concerning this deep subject, is an incorrect idea, and that this idea is no idea at all, but merely a prejudice, which, if petted, begets a state of unprogressiveness akin to mental petrification. The investigating, progressive thought knows no fellowship with prejudice.
Here is a vast subject called Christian Science, or the Science of being. The Science of being,—think of it!—a subject as deep and broad and wide as being itself, and yet all that many are satisfied to know of it is, that it is medicineless, and that it is said to consider all disease hypochondria or imagination, an impression which arouses either resentment or ridicule. Only one thing supposedly known, and that one wrong! "The sick know nothing of the mental process by which they are depleted, and next to nothing of the metaphysical method by which they can be healed" (Science and Health, p. 416). The Christian Scientist does not begin with imagination as the cause of disease, though he regards its cause as metaphysical rather than physical. To attribute to imagination the cause of all disease would be to classify all disease as hypochondria. Christian Scientists treat hypochondria as a disease called hypochondria, and treat typhoid fever as a disease called typhoid fever, but they do not by any means diagnose all disease as hypochondria, any more than does materia medica. We do not call disease imagination; we call it the manifestation of sin, and ignorance or illusion, and deal with it as such. "The procuring cause and foundation of all sickness is ignorance and sin" (Science and Health, p. 411). There is nothing ridiculous in that; we all agree that disease is a violation of law, and that ignorance is the absence of knowledge of law. Wherein we differ is with regard to what constitutes law.
"What is Truth?" was Pilate's question, even as it is the question of to-day, What is law? Materia medica agrees that disease is the result of a violation of law and an ignorance of law, but considers law as physical. The Christian Scientist perceives law to be spiritual. Both are earnest students of law, but the one delves in matter, in microbes and miasma; the other penetrates the realm of Mind, morals, and mastery. One gropes for causation in matter, the other seeks causation in Spirit, or Mind. Herein they differ. "The mental conception and development of disease are not understood by the patient; but the physician should be familiar with mental action and its effect, in order to judge the case according to Christian Science" (Science and Health, p. 403). The Christian Scientist's knowledge of mental action gives him a superior diagnosis, and increased ability to cope with the case.
In Christian Science disease is diagnosed as a violation of law, the outcome of ignorance. The violation of law is uncovered. Further than this the ignorance of law is enlightened, thus obliterating the cause of disease. The sufferer is instructed—there can be no doubt of that, for it is shown in the fruits of healing, and is expressed in unbounded gratitude. The unreceptive may not be enlightened, but we prove by our works,—by moral regeneration and physical healing,—that the patient who is receptive may be enlightened. He who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, who knocks, to him it is opened.
Ignorance—what is it? Who made it? Was it ever made? Was it ever a thing? Was it ever a law? Did it ever possess government? Was it ever a power? Above all things, was it ever mind? Before Christian Science was discovered, when the world was in the partial sleep of Adam, what was that ignorance? Was it a creation or a negation? What did the light dispel? It dispelled nothing, it revealed, as light invariably does. Ignorance, thy name, then, is nothing, absence, evil, devil; without creator, creation, or presence.
It would be far more consistent to say that Christian Science teaches that disease is a manifestation of ignorance, rather than a disordered imagination. In the same sense that ignorance is a nothing, disease is called nothing. It has been said, "If disease is a nothing, why do you try to heal it?" and one may answer likewise. "If ignorance is a nothing, then why do you try to enlighten it?" The whole world acknowledges that ignorance is a nothing, or the absence of knowledge, and that the only way to destroy such ignorance is to supplant it with knowledge, enlightenment. We destroy disease by that same very simple process. We destroy, not so much a disease, as we enlighten an ignorance of health. When one is sick, one may be said to be in ignorance of health for the time being. The Christian Scientist introduces the knowledge of health necessary to the experience of it. A sinner may be said to be in ignorance of virtue; the Christian Scientist introduces the knowledge of good, God, necessary to the experience of virtue or goodness. It would be more consistent to say that a Christian Scientist believes that sin is the ignorance of good, God, rather than to accuse him of speaking lightly of sin and its consequences.
There are none who believe more firmly that sin punishes itself, than does the Christian Scientist, and for this reason none more sedulously avoid sinning, or lapsing into the ignorance of good, God. Sin is a violation of law; ignorance is an apathy or stupidity concerning law. One is aggressive, the sin of commission; the other is asleep, the sin of omission. "Stolidity, which is a resisting state of mortal mind, suffers less, only because it knows less of material law" (Science and Health, p. 388).
A man's good animal health does not necessarily imply a superfine spirituality, nor does the Christian invalid betray materiality because of his physical weakness. One may be healthy in swinish content, the other may be ill because the quickened sense beats itself against the bars of its cage in an exhaustive struggle for the realm of Soul.
The Christian invalid often resents the statement that sickness is the result of sin. Our idea of sin may suggest a moral offence, and he may become indignant at the intimation that he has violated the moral law, but when it is seen that every thought which does not proceed from God proceeds from sin; that God does not create fear in man, and that fear is ungodly, and is sin, because it is a belief in the absence of God; that we could never fear if we felt ourselves to be safe in God; that fear is not only sin, but an ignorance of the presence of God; then the patient perceives a broader view of the term sin.
Few have risen completely above all physical fear, and so resentment becomes unwarranted. A man may be wholly moral, and yet unenlightened spiritually. He may not be sensitive to his physical fear, and Christian Scientists offer no reason for offence when they suggest that sin, fear, and ignorance are the causes of his physical discord. An obstinate refusal to consider one's ignorance is, after all, no less a sin than self-righteousness. "The great difficulty lies in our ignorance of what sin is" (Science and Health, p. 427). Christian Science teaches that any violation of the first commandment is sin. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is interpreted as meaning, thou shalt believe in no power or presence or creator apart from God. To believe in the creation, presence, and power of disease thus becomes a sin. To yield to fear, in the belief that God is absent and disease is present, is ignorance, the cause of all sin, sickness, and death. Few, then, are so virtuous but that they occasionally break the first commandment, believing in something beside good, God; and so sin.
Because Christian Science teaches that health is produced by self-government, or a control of the cause of disease, and that man was made to have dominion not only over the fish of the sea, but, as Mrs. Eddy writes, over the fish in the stomach also, this does not imply that such self-government is a conscious use of mortal mind and will-power. We do not, as is often intimated, "keep up on nerve." True self-government is the dominion of enlightenment, that dominion which knowledge has always held over ignorance.
Much sickness is caused by ignorance of self-government, the yielding to sympathy, human ties, which effect unity in bondage, rather than freedom in the emancipation of true brotherhood, and so "we weep because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have small-pox because others have it" (Science and Health, p. 153). This mesmeric copying of mortality, this low sympathy with physical life instead of assertive agreement with the spiritual life, is another form of sin and ignorance which causes sickness.
It has been said that Christian Science incites unsympathetic conduct, going so far as to produce unsympathetic motherhood. Christian Science enlightens the mother. It shows her how to shield her child from her own fears and ignorance; teaches her self-control; teaches her also not to weep when her child weeps, yawn when her child yawns, and have disease when it has disease. It enables her to keep her self-possession; it gives her a greater helpfulness in time of need, thereby qualifying her to express a larger, more selfless love. Christian Science motherhood denies the selfishness of a greedy love; it holds out a wondrous protecting love, offering self-help, self-government, self-protection, in the form of a selfless mother-love. Such mothers reflect something of the All of Motherhood, the Mother-God, and the next generation shall rise up and call her blessed, it will say with Paul, "I was free born."
Another cause of much disease is demoralizing environment, and rasping circumstances. In Christian Science we may go beyond a diagnosis of disease, and diagnose the cause of any unnatural condition of living or deteriorating environment, in order to heal or obliterate it. All false conditions are, like disease, the result of sin and ignorance. Christian Science holds out a condition of health of mind, body, and environment. It is the salvation of every condition in life, wherein man seeks the achievement of perfection. It is the Science of liberty, the Science of life. It is the "peace, be still!" to human discord, misery, and woe. It is the eternal command "Let there be light," that speaks unceasingly into the void of ignorance, blindness, and darkness. It is the power of God revealed, the divinity of man unveiled, Emmanuel, God with us, practically demonstrated in its power of mental, moral, and physical regeneration.
