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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12321 ***
+
+RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE
+
+By MARY BAKER EDDY
+
+Published by The Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy
+
+1891, 1908
+
+
+  THIS LITTLE BOOK IS TENDERLY AND RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO ALL LOYAL
+  STUDENTS, WORKING AND WAITING FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SCIENCE OF
+  MIND-HEALING
+                                                    MARY BAKER EDDY
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+  DEFINITION OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
+
+  PRINCIPLE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
+
+  PERSONALITY OF GOD
+
+  HEALING SICKNESS AND SIN
+
+  INDIVIDUALITY OF GOD
+
+  MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
+
+  NON-EXISTENCE OF MATTER
+
+  MATERIALITY INTANGIBLE
+
+  BASIS OF MIND-HEALING
+
+  MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL MAN
+
+  DEMONSTRATION IN HEALING
+
+  MEANS AND METHODS
+
+  ONLY ONE SCHOOL
+
+
+
+
+_How would you define Christian Science?_
+
+As the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the
+divine Principle and rule of universal harmony.
+
+
+_What is the Principle of Christian Science?_
+
+It is God, the Supreme Being, infinite and immortal Mind, the Soul of man
+and the universe. It is our Father which is in heaven. It is substance,
+Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love,--these are the deific Principle.
+
+_Do you mean by this that God is a person?_
+
+The word _person_ affords a large margin for misapprehension, as well as
+definition. In French the equivalent word is _personne_. In Spanish,
+Italian, and Latin, it is _persona_. The Latin verb _personare_ is
+compounded of the prefix _per_ (through) and _sonare_ (to sound).
+
+In law, Blackstone applies the word _personal_ to _bodily presence_, in
+distinction from one's appearance (in court, for example) by deputy or
+proxy.
+
+Other definitions of _person_, as given by Webster, are "a living soul; a
+self-conscious being; a moral agent; especially, a living human being,
+a corporeal man, woman, or child; an individual of the human race." He
+adds, that among Trinitarian Christians the word stands for one of the
+three subjects, or agents, constituting the Godhead.
+
+In Christian Science we learn that God is definitely individual, and
+not a _person_, as that word is used by the best authorities, if our
+lexicographers are right in defining _person_ as especially a finite
+_human being_; but God is personal, if by _person_ is meant
+infinite Spirit.
+
+We do not conceive rightly of God, if we think of Him as less than
+infinite. The human person is finite; and therefore I prefer to retain
+the proper sense of Deity by using the phrase _an individual_ God, rather
+than _a personal_ God; for there is and can be but one infinite individual
+Spirit, whom mortals have named God.
+
+Science defines the individuality of God as supreme good, Life, Truth,
+Love. This term enlarges our sense of Deity, takes away the trammels
+assigned to God by finite thought, and introduces us to higher definitions.
+
+
+_Is healing the sick the whole of Science?_
+
+Healing physical sickness is the smallest part of Christian Science. It
+is only the bugle-call to thought and action, in the higher range of
+infinite goodness. The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the
+healing of sin; and this task, sometimes, may be harder than the cure
+of disease; because, while mortals love to sin, they do not love to be
+sick. Hence their comparative acquiescence in your endeavors to heal
+them of bodily ills, and their obstinate resistance to all efforts to
+save them from sin through Christ, spiritual Truth and Love, which redeem
+them, and become their Saviour, through the flesh, from the flesh,--the
+material world and evil.
+
+This Life, Truth, and Love--this trinity of good--was individualized,
+to the perception of mortal sense, in the man Jesus. His history is
+emphatic in our hearts, and it lives more because of his spiritual
+than his physical healing. His example is, to Christian Scientists,
+what the models of the masters in music and painting are to artists.
+
+Genuine Christian Scientists will no more deviate morally from that
+divine digest of Science called the Sermon on the Mount, than they will
+manipulate invalids, prescribe drugs, or deny God. Jesus' healing was
+spiritual in its nature, method, and design. He wrought the cure of
+disease through the divine Mind, which gives all true volition, impulse,
+and action; and destroys the mental error made manifest physically, and
+establishes the opposite manifestation of Truth upon the body in harmony
+and health.
+
+
+_By the individuality of God, do you mean that God has a finite form?_
+
+No. I mean the infinite and divine Principle of all being, the
+ever-present I AM, filling all space, including in itself all Mind,
+the one Father-Mother God. Life, Truth, and Love are this trinity
+in unity, and their universe is spiritual, peopled with perfect beings,
+harmonious and eternal, of which our material universe and men are the
+counterfeits.
+
+
+_Is God the Principle of all science, or only of Divine or
+Christian Science?_
+
+Science is Mind manifested. It is not material; neither is it of
+human origin.
+
+All true Science represents a moral and spiritual force, which holds
+the earth in its orbit. This force is Spirit, that can "bind the sweet
+influences of the Pleiades," and "loose the bands of Orion."
+
+There is no material science, if by that term you mean material
+intelligence. God is infinite Mind, hence there is no other Mind.
+Good is Mind, but evil is not Mind. Good is not in evil, but in
+God only. Spirit is not in matter, but in Spirit only. Law is not
+in matter, but in Mind only.
+
+
+_Is there no matter?_
+
+All is Mind. According to the Scriptures and Christian Science, all is
+God, and there is naught beside Him. "God is Spirit;" and we can only
+learn and love Him through His spirit, which brings out the fruits of
+Spirit and extinguishes forever the works of darkness by His marvellous
+light.
+
+The five material senses testify to the existence of matter. The
+spiritual senses afford no such evidence, but deny the testimony of
+the material senses. Which testimony is correct? The Bible says:
+"Let God be true, and every man a liar." If, as the Scriptures imply,
+God is All-in-all, then all must be Mind, since God is Mind. Therefore
+in divine Science there is no material mortal man, for man is spiritual
+and eternal, he being made in the image of Spirit, or God.
+
+There is no material sense. Matter is inert, inanimate, and
+sensationless,--considered apart from Mind. Lives there a man who
+has ever found Soul in the body or in matter, who has ever seen
+spiritual substance with the eye, who has found sight in matter,
+hearing in the material ear, or intelligence in non-intelligence?
+If there is any such thing as matter, it must be either mind which
+is called matter, or matter without Mind.
+
+Matter without Mind is a moral impossibility. Mind in matter is pantheism.
+Soul is the only real consciousness which cognizes being. The body does
+not see, hear, smell, or taste. Human belief says that it does; but destroy
+this belief of seeing with the eye, and we could not see materially; and
+so it is with each of the physical senses.
+
+Accepting the verdict of these material senses, we should believe man
+and the universe to be the football of chance and sinking into oblivion.
+Destroy the five senses as organized matter, and you must either become
+non-existent, or exist in Mind only; and this latter conclusion is the
+simple solution of the problem of being, and leads to the equal inference
+that there is no matter.
+
+
+_The sweet sounds and glories of earth and sky, assuming manifold forms
+and colors,--are they not tangible and material?_
+
+As Mind they are real, but not as matter. All beauty and goodness are
+in and of Mind, emanating from God; but when we change the nature of
+beauty and goodness from Mind to matter, the beauty is marred, through
+a false conception, and, to the material senses, evil takes the place
+of good.
+
+Has not the truth in Christian Science met a response from Prof.
+S.P. Langley, the young American astronomer? He says that "color
+is in _us_," not "in the rose;" and he adds that this is not "any
+metaphysical subtlety," but a fact "almost universally accepted,
+within the _last few years_, by physicists."
+
+
+_Is not the basis of Mind-healing a destruction of the evidence of the
+material senses, and restoration of the true evidence of spiritual sense?_
+
+It is, so far as you perceive and understand this predicate and postulate
+of Mind-healing; but the Science of Mind-healing is best understood in
+practical demonstration. The proof of what you apprehend, in the simplest
+definite and absolute form of healing, can alone answer this question of
+how much you understand of Christian Science Mind-healing. Not that all
+healing is Science, by any means; but that the simplest case, healed in
+Science, is as demonstrably scientific, in a small degree, as the most
+difficult case so treated.
+
+The infinite and subtler conceptions and consistencies of Christian Science
+are set forth in my work Science and Health.
+
+
+_Is man material or spiritual?_
+
+In Science, man is the manifest reflection of God, perfect and immortal
+Mind. He is the likeness of God; and His likeness would be lost if inverted
+or perverted.
+
+According to the evidence of the so-called physical senses, man is
+material, fallen, sick, depraved, mortal. Science and spiritual sense
+contradict this, and they afford the only true evidence of the being
+of God and man, the material evidence being wholly false.
+
+Jesus said of personal evil, that "the truth abode not in him," because
+there is no material sense. Matter, as matter, has neither sensation nor
+personal intelligence. As a pretension to be Mind, matter is a lie, and
+"the father of lies;" Mind is not in matter, and Spirit cannot originate
+its opposite, named matter.
+
+According to divine Science, Spirit no more changes its species, by
+evolving matter from Spirit, than natural science, so-called, or material
+laws, bring about alteration of species by transforming minerals into
+vegetables or plants into animals,--thus confusing and confounding the
+three great kingdoms. No rock brings forth an apple; no pine-tree produces
+a mammal or provides breast-milk for babes.
+
+To sense, the lion of to-day is the lion of six thousand years ago; but
+in Science, Spirit sends forth its own harmless likeness.
+
+
+_How should I undertake to demonstrate Christian Science in healing
+the sick?_
+
+As I have given you only an epitome of the Principle, so I can give you
+here nothing but an outline of the practice. Be honest, be true to thyself,
+and true to others; then it follows thou wilt be strong in God, the eternal
+good. Heal through Truth and Love; there is no other healer.
+
+In all moral revolutions, from a lower to a higher condition of thought
+and action, Truth is in the minority and error has the majority. It is
+not otherwise in the field of Mind-healing. The man who calls himself a
+Christian Scientist, yet is false to God and man, is also uttering
+falsehood about good. This falsity shuts against him the Truth and the
+Principle of Science, but opens a way whereby, through will-power, sense
+may say the unchristian practitioner can heal; but Science shows that he
+makes morally worse the invalid whom he is supposed to cure.
+
+By this I mean that mortal mind should not be falsely impregnated. If by
+such lower means the health is seemingly restored, the restoration is not
+lasting, and the patient is liable to a relapse,--"The last state of that
+man is worse than the first."
+
+The teacher of Mind-healing who is not a Christian, in the highest sense,
+is constantly sowing the seeds of discord and disease. Even the truth he
+speaks is more or less blended with error; and this error will spring
+up in the mind of his pupil. The pupil's imperfect knowledge will lead
+to weakness in practice, and he will be a poor practitioner, if not a
+malpractitioner.
+
+The basis of malpractice is in erring human will, and this will is an
+outcome of what I call _mortal mind_,--a false and temporal sense
+of Truth, Life, and Love. To heal, in Christian Science, is to base your
+practice on immortal Mind, the divine Principle of man's being; and this
+requires a preparation of the heart and an answer of the lips from the
+Lord.
+
+The Science of healing is the Truth of healing. If one is untruthful, his
+mental state weighs against his healing power; and similar effects come
+from pride, envy, lust, and all fleshly vices.
+
+The spiritual power of a scientific, right thought, without a direct
+effort, an audible or even a mental argument, has oftentimes healed
+inveterate diseases.
+
+The thoughts of the practitioner should be imbued with a clear conviction
+of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God; that He is All, and that there
+can be none beside Him; that God is good, and the producer only of good;
+and hence, that whatever militates against health, harmony, or holiness,
+is an unjust usurper of the throne of the controller of all mankind. Note
+this, that if you have power in error, you forfeit the power that Truth
+bestows, and its salutary influence on yourself and others.
+
+You must feel and know that God alone governs man; that His government
+is harmonious; that He is too pure to behold iniquity, and divides His
+power with nothing evil or material; that material laws are only human
+beliefs, which govern mortals wrongfully. These beliefs arise from the
+subjective states of thought, producing the beliefs of a mortal material
+universe,--so-called, and of material disease and mortality. Mortal ills
+are but errors of thought,--diseases of mortal mind, and not of matter;
+for matter cannot feel, see, or report pain or disease.
+
+Disease is a thing of thought manifested on the body; and fear is the
+procurator of the thought which causes sickness and suffering. Remove
+this fear by the true sense that God is Love,--and that Love punishes
+nothing but sin,--and the patient can then look up to the loving God,
+and know that He afflicteth not willingly the children of men, who are
+punished because of disobedience to His spiritual law. His law of Truth,
+when obeyed, removes every erroneous physical and mental state. The belief
+that matter can master Mind, and make you ill, is an error which Truth
+will destroy.
+
+You must learn to acknowledge God in all His ways. It is only a lack of
+understanding of the allness of God, which leads you to believe in the
+existence of matter, or that matter can frame its own conditions, contrary
+to the law of Spirit.
+
+Sickness is the schoolmaster, leading you to Christ; first to faith
+in Christ; next to belief in God as omnipotent; and finally to the
+_understanding_ of God and man in Christian Science, whereby you
+learn that God is good, and in Science man is His likeness, the forever
+reflection of goodness. Therefore good is one and All.
+
+This brings forward the next proposition in Christian Science,--namely,
+that there are no sickness, sin, and death in the divine Mind. What
+seem to be disease, vice, and mortality are illusions of the physical
+senses. These illusions are not real, but unreal. Health is the
+consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather,
+the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else. In a moment
+you may awake from a night-dream; just so you can awake from the dream
+of sickness; but the demonstration of the Science of Mind-healing by
+no means rests on the strength of human belief. This demonstration is
+based on a true understanding of God and divine Science, which takes
+away every human belief, and, through the illumination of spiritual
+understanding, reveals the all-power and ever-presence of good, whence
+emanate health, harmony, and Life eternal.
+
+The lecturer, teacher, or healer who is indeed a Christian Scientist,
+never introduces the subject of human anatomy; never depicts the muscular,
+vascular, or nervous operations of the human frame. He never talks about
+the structure of the material body. He never lays his hands on the patient,
+nor manipulates the parts of the body supposed to be ailing. Above all, he
+keeps unbroken the Ten Commandments, and practises Christ's Sermon on the
+Mount.
+
+Wrong thoughts and methods strengthen the sense of disease, instead of
+cure it; or else quiet the fear of the sick on false grounds, encouraging
+them in the belief of error until they hold stronger than before the belief
+that they are first made sick by matter, and then restored through its
+agency. This fosters infidelity, and is mental quackery, that denies the
+Principle of Mind-healing. If the sick are aided in this mistaken fashion,
+their ailments will return, and be more stubborn because the relief is
+unchristian and unscientific.
+
+Christian Science erases from the minds of invalids their mistaken belief
+that they live in or because of matter, or that a so-called material
+organism controls the health or existence of mankind, and induces rest
+in God, divine Love, as caring for all the conditions requisite for the
+well-being of man. As power divine is the healer, why should mortals
+concern themselves with the chemistry of food? Jesus said: "Take no
+thought what ye shall eat."
+
+The practitioner should also endeavor to free the minds of the healthy
+from any sense of subordination to their bodies, and teach them that the
+divine Mind, not material law, maintains human health and life.
+
+A Christian Scientist knows that, in Science, disease is unreal; that
+Mind is not in matter; that Life is God, good; hence Life is not
+functional, and is neither matter nor mortal mind; knows that pantheism
+and theosophy are not Science. Whatever saps, with human belief, this
+basis of Christian Science, renders it impossible to demonstrate the
+Principle of this Science, even in the smallest degree.
+
+A mortal and material body is not the actual individuality of man made
+in the divine and spiritual image of God. The material body is not the
+likeness of Spirit; hence it is not the truth of being, but the likeness
+of error--the human belief which saith there is more than one God,--there
+is more than one Life and one Mind.
+
+In Deuteronomy (iv. 35) we read: "The Lord, He is God; there is none
+else beside Him." In John (iv. 24) we may read: "God is Spirit." These
+propositions, understood in their Science, elucidate my meaning.
+
+When treating a patient, it is not Science to treat every organ in the
+body. To aver that harmony is the real and discord is the unreal, and
+then give special attention to what according to their own belief is
+diseased, is scientific; and if the _healer realizes_ the truth, it
+will free his patient.
+
+
+_What are the means and methods of trustworthy Christian Scientists?_
+
+These people should not be expected, more than others, to give all their
+time to Christian Science work, receiving no wages in return, but left to
+be fed, clothed, and sheltered by charity. Neither can they serve two
+masters, giving only a portion of their time to God, and still be Christian
+Scientists. They must give Him all their services, and "owe no man." To do
+this, they must at present ask a suitable price for their services, and
+then _conscientiously earn their wages_, strictly practising Divine
+Science, and healing the sick.
+
+The author never sought charitable support, but gave fully seven-eighths
+of her time without remuneration, except the bliss of doing good. The only
+pay taken for her labors was from classes, and often those were put off
+for months, in order to do gratuitous work. She has never taught a Primary
+class without several, and sometimes seventeen, free students in it; and
+has endeavored to take the full price of tuition only from those who were
+able to pay. The student who pays must of necessity do better than he
+who does not pay, and yet will expect and require others to pay him. No
+discount on tuition was made on higher classes, because their first classes
+furnished students with the means of paying for their tuition in the higher
+instruction, and of doing charity work besides. If the Primary students
+are still impecunious, it is their own fault, and this ill-success of
+itself leaves them unprepared to enter higher classes.
+
+People are being healed by means of my instructions, both in and out
+of class. Many students, who have passed through a regular course of
+instruction from me, have been invalids and were healed in the class;
+but experience has shown that this defrauds the scholar, though it heals
+the sick.
+
+It is seldom that a student, if healed in a class, has left it
+understanding sufficiently the Science of healing to immediately
+enter upon its practice. Why? Because the glad surprise of suddenly
+regained health is a shock to the mind; and this holds and satisfies
+the thought with exuberant joy.
+
+This renders the mind less inquisitive, plastic, and tractable; and deep
+systematic thinking is impracticable until this impulse subsides.
+
+This was the principal reason for advising diseased people not to enter
+a class. Few were taken besides invalids for students, until there were
+enough practitioners to fill in the best possible manner the department
+of healing. Teaching and healing should have separate departments, and
+these should be fortified on all sides with suitable and thorough
+guardianship and grace.
+
+Only a very limited number of students can advantageously enter a class,
+grapple with this subject, and well assimilate what has been taught them.
+It is impossible to teach thorough Christian Science to promiscuous and
+large assemblies, or to persons who cannot be addressed individually, so
+that the mind of the pupil may be dissected more critically than the body
+of a subject laid bare for anatomical examination. Public lectures cannot
+be such lessons in Christian Science as are required to empty and to fill
+anew the individual mind.
+
+If publicity and material control are the motives for teaching, then
+public lectures can take the place of private lessons; but the former
+can never give a thorough knowledge of Christian Science, and a Christian
+Scientist will never undertake to fit students for practice by such means.
+Lectures in public are needed, but they must be subordinate to thorough
+class instruction in any branch of education.
+
+None with an imperfect sense of the spiritual signification of the Bible,
+and its scientific relation to Mind-healing, should attempt overmuch in
+their translation of the Scriptures into the "new tongue;" but I see that
+some novices, in the truth of Science, and some impostors are committing
+this error.
+
+
+_Is there more than one school of scientific healing?_
+
+In reality there is, and can be, but one school of the Science of
+Mind-healing. Any departure from Science is an irreparable loss
+of Science. Whatever is said and written correctly on this Science
+originates from the Principle and practice laid down in Science and
+Health, a work which I published in 1875. This was the first book,
+recorded in history, which elucidates a pathological Science purely
+mental.
+
+Minor shades of difference in Mind-healing have originated with certain
+opposing factions, springing up among unchristian students, who, fusing
+with a class of aspirants which snatch at whatever is progressive, call
+it their first-fruits, or else _post mortem_ evidence.
+
+A slight divergence is fatal in Science. Like certain Jews whom St. Paul
+had hoped to convert from mere motives of self-aggrandizement to the love
+of Christ, these so-called schools are clogging the wheels of progress by
+blinding the people to the true character of Christian Science,--its moral
+power, and its divine efficacy to heal.
+
+The true understanding of Christian Science Mind-healing never originated
+in pride, rivalry, or the deification of self. The Discoverer of this
+Science could tell you of timidity, of self-distrust, of friendlessness,
+toil, agonies, and victories under which she needed miraculous vision to
+sustain her, when taking the first footsteps in this Science.
+
+The ways of Christianity have not changed. Meekness, selflessness, and
+love are the paths of His testimony and the footsteps of His flock.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Rudimental Divine Science, by Mary Baker Eddy
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12321 ***