Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/474

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
454
SCIENCE AND HEALTH.

openly known. Her object, ever since entering this field of labor, has been to prevent suffering, never to Misuse. produce it. That we cannot mentally both produce and prevent error is self-evident. In the legend of the shield which led to a quarrel between two knights, because each of them could see but one face of it, both sides were beautiful, according to their degree; but there is no good aspect to malpractice, either silvern or golden.

Christian Science is not an exception to the general rule, that there is no excellence without labor in a direct Backsliders and fighters. line. One cannot scatter his fire, and at the same time defeat the enemy. To pursue other vocations, and at the same time advance rapidly in the demonstration of this Science, is not possible. Departing from Christian Science, many learners commend diet and hygiene. They even administer drugs, intending thereby to initiate the cure which they mean to complete with Mind! The Scientist's demonstration rests on one Principle, and there must and can be no opposite rule. Christian Science is fully stated in this book. Let it be applied to the cure of disease, without resort to other means.

Mental quackery rests on the same platform with all other quackery. The chief plank in this platform is the Charlatanism. doctrine that Science has two principles in partnership, one good, the other bad, — one spiritual, the other material, — and that these two may be simultaneously at work on the sick. This theory is supposed to favor practice from both a mental and material standpoint. Another plank in the platform is this, that error will finally have the same effect as Truth.