Mary Baker Eddy perceived the allness of God, divine Mind, and the inevitable corollary that there is no matter. Before she gave her revelation of the Science of Jesus' theology to the world in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she proved the correctness of this theology by healing disease and sin. Her discovery that all is Mind and its perfect ideas is logical and can be substantiated.
Let us start with the self-evident truth that five and five are ten. You cannot send it anywhere; it is already there. One cannot conceive of a time when five and five have not been or will not be ten. Therefore, the thought that five and five are ten is ever present, eternal, and indestructible. Because spiritual qualities, such as justice and goodness, exist and are ever present and eternal, the Mind which created and includes these qualities must likewise be so. These self-evident truths confirm the ever-presence and eternality of Mind, God.
Mind is also good, One, and infinite. Intelligent Mind could not eternally consist of such opposites as good and evil. It would have to be one or the other. In algebra one cannot conceive of a minus twelve unless he knows what twelve is. Similarly, there would in belief be no evil or lie without something true about which to lie. Evil in every instance is only a negation or lie about some positive good which precedes it. Hence evil, the negative, is too late to be first or true. Consequently, good is primal, evil suppositional. Thus we see that Mind, or God, already proved to be ever present and eternal, must also be wholly good.
We admit, too, that Mind is self-existent and self-sustaining, for only Mind could evolve and sustain Mind. It conceives an unlimited idea of creation, and so must itself be infinite. Again, there can be but one Mind since that one is infinite and all-inclusive. Thus we see that there is one infinite, ever-present, eternal, wholly good, self-existent, self-sustaining Mind, or God.
Jesus asked (Matt. 7:16), "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" And he answered his own question (verse 18), "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." Like produces like; therefore Mind could not evolve matter or anything unlike itself. And since all must proceed from the primal Mind, there can be no matter. Mind is forever expressed, for Mind unexpressed would be a nonentity—no Mind. Mind, God, expresses itself in ideas and in no other way; hence, all that can possibly have existence is the one wholly good Mind and its perfect spiritual ideas. As our Leader tersely says (Science and Health, p. 331): "The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas."
Mrs. Eddy's teaching also logically makes clear the unreality of the whole belief in evil. The misconception that five and five are nine is never true. Being false, it never came into being. Correspondingly, fear and disease are not true because they do not proceed from intelligent, ever-present Mind, God. Only that which is spiritually mental or an intelligent idea could possibly have existence in Mind, in Truth. The only possible consciousness is the one omniscient, perfect Mind and that which reflects it. Let us be grateful that these fundamental truths can be applied to every discordant belief.
The assurance that Mind's government extends to every function of man's being eliminates fear and brings healing. The wise man wrote (Prov. 20:27), "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly." That which animates man is the enlightenment of divine Mind. There is no function of spiritual man, the embodiment of right ideas, that can possibly exist outside the activity of divine Love or fail to be governed harmoniously by this Love.
Man does not have to be changed or improved, for God perfectly conditions His idea, man. In reality he whom we term a patient knows this truth, for he reflects the one perfect consciousness. Nothing can keep us from seeing what is actually present, namely, the intelligence, health, and dominion which the Father has already bestowed on man, His idea.
So Mind and its perfect ideas alone are present. There is no matter. It is most important to admit this spiritual fact. Mortal mind would have us accept its belief in matter. But its belief can never be matter—it remains mortal thought externalized.
In healing, we deal with false mental concepts, not with material conditions. As our Leader writes (Science and Health, p. 297), "The only fact concerning any material concept is, that it is neither scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and dissolution." The understanding that every sickness or problem is an erring thought, and that only a thought needs to be changed, breaks the mesmerism of fear, for "any material concept is ... subject to change and dissolution."
It is utterly impossible for man to be other than completely harmonious. We are not beseeching God to give us something. We are thanking God for what He has done. God has already given His idea, man, everything that it is possible for Him to give or for man to have. The consciousness of man includes all right ideas and can contain nothing but right ideas. An article entitled "Possession" published in the Journal of June, 1917, includes this statement: "It is scientifically impossible to put a wrong thought into consciousness, and there can be no imperfection in Mind, since whatever God knows is perfect and inviolable and can never be changed or altered in any way."
The belief that five and four are ten cannot be put into intelligent consciousness. Just so, any difficulty with what is termed the body is not in body, but is a belief of something untrue that never touches God's man.
Hence, all error is a false belief, but is never in God or man. One destroys error when he holds to the spiritual fact which error seemingly obscures. Ignorance, uncertainty, false belief, alone believe in and accept erring suggestion. Man, the reflection of God, good, cannot yield to or be dominated by or imposed upon by animal magnetism, for he reflects the one perfect Mind, which cannot be mesmerized. The consciousness of man, God's expression, is unimpairable and uninvadable.
This is strikingly illustrated when one considers that a dream never becomes part of one's body. If you dream you are in pain, only while you dream will you feel pain. Your body remains unharmed. Awakening from the dream, you see that there is no pain to destroy.
If one believes he is in pain, only while he believes it will he seem to experience pain. Yet the pain is not in matter but in belief, and this is proved time and again when one awakens to the truth of man's harmonious, spiritual being and finds that his body and thought are untouched by the belief of pain or disease. This awakening is the appearing to human consciousness of the Christ, Truth, which always heals and saves.
A woman who had been injured when a young girl suffered for sixteen years. Reputable physicians said that the spinal nerves had been injured and that she had tuberculosis of the spine. They averred that decay had set in and that she had only a short time to remain here. When she turned to Christian Science, her practitioner secured for her a copy of Science and Health. Commencing earnestly to read it, she gladly accepted many statements about the perfection of God and man. The fourth day, while she was reading, it became clear to her that God had not created her diseased condition, nor did He see her in it. She glimpsed so clearly her perfection as God's child that she determined no longer to accept the difficulty, saying to herself: "If God does not see me in this condition, I refuse to believe it. He sees me as His perfect child." That day the pain in her back ceased. The next morning she was able to arise, dress herself, and walk downstairs to the astonishment of her household. This healing has proved to be permanent.
The writer has found it helpful to analyze this experience, because if the disease had been a condition in matter, if the physicians' diagnoses had been correct, if the so-called laws of materia medica really governed man, this ailment called incurable could not have been healed through spiritual means. The conclusion then must be that the disease was not God-created, that no law of His was regulating it, nor was any intelligent mind cognizing it, for the one Mind, God, could not and did not see it.
Since what appears as matter is but a creation of supposititious mortal thought, the individual acceptance of the general belief regarding the condition and the seeming difficulty were not two things, but one and the same—and that one a mortal belief. There is nothing else for a material condition to be, since there is no matter on which it can be delineated. Not being truly intelligent, but falsely mental, it never had actual presence, seeming to exist only when believed.
When she accepted her God-given dominion and refused to believe the illusion, it ceased to be. It did not exist to be taken away; it needed only to be disbelieved. The intelligence of divine Mind so enlightened her consciousness that fear and false belief could not occupy thought. There was nothing to obscure the already established harmony of man's perfect being, and healing appeared to human thought.
This woman's experience helps us to see that we are not healing real disease, but through Christ, Truth, are casting out the belief that disease is real. There is in Truth no matter and no disease, for all is Mind and its harmonious, perfect, infinite ideas. The one Mind governs all. To the degree that we acknowledge its ever-present supremacy shall we prove that it governs the body not partially but wholly, and thereby subjugate the belief in matter to divine law. With the Psalmist we can say (Ps. 119:11), "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." Indeed, the truth of man's spiritual being can so illumine consciousness and be so indelibly fixed in our thought that we shall not sin against God by accepting the material sense of cause and effect as real.
Since the real man is one with divine Mind, his consciousness is unalterable and cannot be influenced or dominated by suggestion, for it is "scientifically impossible to put a wrong thought into" it. Consequently, you cannot put disease into the consciousness or identity of man. Furthermore, erring belief expressed as disease never attained presence, never entered true being; hence it does not have to be removed from man. It stays in the realm of belief and disappears when not believed. Let us be grateful that because of our beloved Leader's revelation we are seeing more and more clearly that in Science there is no matter; that what seems to be diseased matter is erring thought, actually nonexistent, for nothing can attain presence or can possibly possess reality or existence except the divine Mind and its ideas.
