This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MENTAL PRACTICE
221

not, produce the slightest effect, it has no power over him. Thus a mental malpractitioner may lose his power to harm by a false mental argument; for it gives one opportunity to handle the error, and when mastering it one gains in the rules of metaphysics, and thereby learns more of its divine Principle. Error produces physical sufferings, and these sufferings show the fundamental Principle of Christian Science; namely, that error and sickness are one, and Truth is their remedy.

The evil-doer can do little at removing the effect of sin on himself, unless he believes that sin has produced the effect and knows he is a sinner; or, knowing that he is a sinner, if he denies it, the good effect is lost. Either of these states of mind will stultify the power to heal mentally. This accounts for many helpless mental practitioners and mysterious diseases.

Again: If error is the cause of disease, Truth being the cure, denial of this fact in one instance and acknowledgment of it in another saps one's understanding of the Science of Mind-healing. Such denial dethrones demonstration, baffles the student of Mind-healing, and divorces his work from Science. Such denial also contradicts the doctrine that we must mentally struggle against both evil and disease, and is like saying that five times ten are fifty while ten times five are not fifty; as if the multiplication of the same two numbers would not yield the same product whichever might serve as the multiplicand.

Who would tell another of a crime that he himself is committing, or call public attention to that crime? The belief in evil and in the process of evil, holds the issues