CHAPTER III.
PHYSIOLOGY.
Because Metaphysics reverses the position of physics, human reason acts slowly in accepting it, contesting every inch of ground it surrenders; while error, self-complacent and applauded, sneers at the slow marches of Truth. Physiology is a name in our land. Institutions honor it, and before it Materia medica bows the knee. Notwithstanding all this, it has not improved mankind. We shall yet open our eyes to this fact in theodicy, — that calling on matter to remove what mortal mind alone is responsible for is a mistake with grave consequences. The fundamental error of mortal man is the belief that matter is intelligent of good and evil, and constitutes a mortal man and his happiness or misery. But theorizing from mushrooms to monkeys, and thence to man, amounts to but little in the right, and to much in the wrong direction. If we classify the different species of man, mineral, vegetable, and animal, an egg is the author of the genus homo; but we perceive no reason why man should begin there sooner than in the more primitive state of dust, where the figurative Adam commenced. Brains are beneath the craniums of animals: then to admit that brains are man furnishes a pretext for saying that man was once a brute, which is met with the reply, If this be the case, he will again be a brute, according to natural history.
What is man? Brains, heart, blood, or the entire human structure? If he is one or all of the component parts of the body, when you amputate a limb, you have taken away a portion of man, and the surgeon destroys manhood, and worms are the annihilators of man. But losing a limb, or injuring structure, is sometimes the quickener of manliness; and the unfortunate cripple presents more nobility than the statuesque outline, whereby we find “a man's a man, for a' that.” Admitting that matter, blood, heart, brains, the so-called five personal senses, etc., constitute man, we fail to see how anatomy can distinguish between the brute and human, or determine when man is man, and has risen above his progenitors to this estate. If quadruped and biped possess these constituent parts, both must, to some extent, be mortal man, and man matter. According to our theories, the genus homo ranges from dust to Deity, and God entered matter to make man; hence, the spiritual is not even a link in this chain of so-called being, but enters it after matter constitutes itself and man, and is seen only as matter disappears. If man was first matter, he must have passed through every form of matter until he became man; and if the material body is man, he is matter and the dust that returns to dust. But man is the image and likeness of God, Spirit; and the belief of Soul in sense, and of Life in matter, that is named man, is error, and that which Truth, God, consigned to its native oblivion. Anatomy makes man a structural thing; physiology continues this definition, measuring his strength by bones, sinews, etc., and his life by material law. Phrenology makes him a thief or a Christian, according to the development of the cranium; but not one of those defines the image of God or immortal man. The tendency of all true education is to unfold the infinite resources; then, to measure capacities by the size of brains, and limit strength to the size of a muscle, would hold intelligence at the mercy of material organization, and make matter the condition of mind.
Physiology takes the power into its own hands, and out of God's, and is like fiction, in which debauchery is toned down to fascinate, and mankind are in danger of catching its method. The very opposite teachings of physiology are all that will ever re-open the gates of paradise that beliefs have closed, and reach being in science, where man is upright, pure, and free, having no need to consult calendars or clouds to learn the probabilities of the life of an immortal man, or to study brainology to know how much of a man he is. Mistaking his origin and nature, we call man both matter and Spirit; the latter sifted through the former, Soul, put through what is termed personal sense, carried on a nerve, and subject to ejection at the hands of matter! The intellectual, moral, and spiritual, yea, intelligence, was never in a body and subject to that body!
Unless civilization is but advanced idolatry, why should man, in the nineteenth century, bow down to flesh-brush, flannel, bath, diet, exercise, air, etc., when matter is not capable of doing for him what he can do for himself? The idols of civilization are more fatal to health and longevity than the idols of other forms of heathen homage; they certainly call into action less faith than Buddhism in a Supreme Intelligence governing man; and the Esquimaux restore health by incantations as effectually as the modus operandi of the schools.
Physiology is anti-Christian; it teaches us to have other gods before “Me,” the Life of man. The good it is supposed to do is evil, because it would rob man of his God-given birthright. Truth is not the basis of physiology, for it is neither a moral nor spiritual treatise, and the inharmony that calls for physiology is the result of physiology and faith in matter.
Did the teachings of Jesus comprehend the economy of man less than those of Graham or Cutter? His teachings embrace the principle of man's harmony, but our theories do not. “He that believeth in me shall not see death” contradicts not only the systems of man, but points to that which is self-sustaining and eternal. The demands of God are wholly spiritual, and they reach the body through Spirit, that controls matter. There are no physical laws; all law is Mind; matter is not a law-giver, and cannot be a law. The best interpreter of man's needs said, “Take no thought for the body, what ye shall eat or what drink.”
Putting on the full armor of physiology, obeying to the letter the so-called laws of health, statistics show, has neither diminished sickness nor increased longevity. Diseases have multiplied and become more obstinate, their chronic forms more frequent, the acute more fatal, and death more sudden, since our man-made theories have taken the place of primitive Truth.
Explaining man as a physical being evolved from matter is the Pandora-box whereby hope escapes and despair alone remains. If material laws prevent disease, what causes it? Not the laws of God; for Christ, Truth, heals the sick and casts out error; but not through obedience to physiology. Laws of matter are nothing more or less than a belief of intelligence and Life in matter that is the procuring cause of all disease, whereas God, Truth, is its positive cure. Not more sympathy exists between physiology and Christianity than between God and Belial. Failing to recover through adherence to materia medica, physiology, and hygiene, the despairing invalid drops those, and turns in his extremity, as the last resort of mortal man, to God! And his faith in this alternative is less than in drugs, air, exercise, etc., or he would have tried it first, — showing we have other gods before the supreme Mind. The balance of power is given to matter by every theory of the schools; whereas, Spirit at last asserts its mastery over man, and then, and not until then, is man discovered and found harmonious and immortal.
When we implore God to restore the sick, do we ask this of a person, instead of seeking to understand the Principle that heals? And, because of this error, we reach no higher than faith without understanding, and the science of healing is not attained, and our existence as Soul instead of sense is not comprehended. We comprehend Life in science only as we dispute personal sense. The relative claims we permit intelligence and matter determine the harmony of our existence, health, longevity, and Christianity. We cannot serve two masters, and must reach God through divine science, and not through sense, or material law. The Source of all life and perfection we cannot offset with drugs, hygiene, laws material, etc. If man is constituted both good and evil, he will result in evil. There being an error in the premises, there must be error in the conclusion. Any attempt to mingle Spirit and matter is a failure. When healing the sick, to avail yourself of the power of Spirit, you must lose all reliance on matter, and all acknowledgment of its conditions as real, and all consciousness of the disease, so far as you can.
The severest part of teaching metaphysical science is to empty the mind of the thousand and one material beliefs that war against spiritual Truth. You cannot fill a vessel already full. After laboring long with the stored mind to shake its faith in matter, and give it a crumb of faith in God, and the possibilities of Spirit to make the body harmonious, we have remembered our Master's love for little children, and understood how “of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
You admit that mind influences the body somewhat, but conclude that matter, blood, nerves, brain, etc., hold the balance of power. In accordance with this belief, you continue the old routine, and lean on the inert and unintelligent; and this deprives you of the available superiority of mind over matter. We cannot control our body with a negative position. Spirit destroys the belief of matter, and the “flesh warreth against the Spirit,” and they can no more unite in action than good and evil. It is wise not to take a halting or half-way position on this subject, or to think to work equally with right and wrong, Truth and error. There is but one right way, and this is the science of Soul and body, the way to God. To govern the body scientifically you must govern it with Mind, and you will find it impossible to gain control over the body on any other ground. Any conservative ground on this point, or faith stronger in matter than Mind, will never do it.
If you manipulate your patients, you lean on electricity, or matter, more than you rely on Spirit or Truth; and you employ matter more than Mind to heal the sick; while science teaches that all success is on the side of Mind, and that you only weaken your power in metaphysical healing with matter. It is useless to say you manipulate patients, but lay no stress on that manipulation. Then, why do you do it? We answer for you: Because you are ignorant of the result, else not sufficiently spiritual to depend alone on Spirit. And if this is so, why not improve your practice? If you are too much in love with materiality to adopt the science of Mind, and manipulate the sick as a substitute for Truth, and adopt good words instead of good deeds, then you are adhering to error, and have fled to electricity because you are afraid to trust yourself to heal with Truth. “Adam, where art thou?” is the question here at every step. It is not necessary that you manipulate the sick to satisfy them that you are doing something for them; for they are generally satisfied if cured, and manipulation but retards their recovery. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Having more faith in electricity and drugs than you have in Truth, will balance you on the side of matter, where your power as a mesmerist will diminish your ability as a scientist, and vice versa; and this should remind you where your treasure is. Healing the sick through Mind alone, and casting out error with Truth, shows your position in science is correct, and nothing else can. But the sensualist and dishonest man can never rely on Truth to heal the sick; he must depend on mesmerism or medicine, and his only power is exercised in a wrong direction. Jesus cast out error and healed the sick, with neither manipulation nor drugs, but with Divine science, even his God-being.
Indigestion, fatigue, sleeplessness, etc., you say cause distressed stomachs, aching heads, and vice versa; you then cudgel your brains to reproduce in memory what you think has hurt you, when your remedy lies in getting the whole thing out of mind; for matter has no sensation, and mortal mind is all that can produce pain. To reduce inflammation, to dissolve a tumor, or to cure organic disease, etc., my students have found mind more potent than matter. And why not? since Mind is the source and condition of Life, and there is no sensation in matter. When we conclude the stomach or head is disordered or pained, we should consider What art thou that repliest to Spirit? Can the clay reply to the potter? Can matter speak for itself, and does it hold the issues of Life? Pain or pleasure belongs to mind alone, and matter has no partnership with mind, and cannot ache; but believing it does. “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Mind is all that feels, that produces action, or impedes it; but, ignorant of this, or shrinking from its responsibility, you throw the burden on what you term matter, and thus lose your conscious control over the body. Adjust a balance, and a single weight removed from one of the scales gives preponderance to the opposite one. So with body and mind: what you cast into the scale of matter, as weighing for or against health, you have taken away from mind, that should tip the beam against all else. Your belief weighs against your health, while it ought to weigh for it. When the body is sick according to your belief, you go to drugs, search laws of health, and depend on matter to heal it; when the fact is, you have got yourself into the difficulty through such beliefs and false dependences. Matter cannot act of itself; mind governs it, and mortal mind is inharmonious: hence the results of its inharmony upon the body. To lay aside God, as of little use in sickness, is anomalous. If you depend on matter in sickness, and put God aside for the hour of health, you will learn that God can do more for you in sickness than in health.
Because materia medica, physiology, and anatomy insist that man is sick and useless, and suffering and dying, in obedience to the laws of God, are we to believe it? Despite God's spiritual law to the contrary, are we to believe that authority, when Jesus has proved it false? He surely did the will of the Father, and he healed sickness in defiance of what is called material law, in accordance with God's spiritual law. The demands of God relate to mind only; but the claims of physiology, and what are termed laws of nature, arise from matter. Which, then, are we to accept as legitimate, and capable of producing harmony? We cannot obey them both; for one works against the other, and will be supreme in the affections, because they are opposite, and we cannot work from both standpoints; if we attempt it, we shall find ourselves cleaving to one, and forsaking the other.
Our mental control over the body must supersede laws of matter. Obedience to what we call material law prevents obedience to spiritual law that overcomes material conditions, and puts matter under the feet of mind. Like a barrister that would strengthen his plea by introducing the text, “Woe unto you, lawyers, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against man,” we plead for God to restore the sick to health, and then shut out the aid of Spirit through material means, thus working against ourselves, and suffocating our God-given strength and ability. The plea for medicine, laws of health, etc., comes from ignorance of metaphysical science, or the powers of mind. Error produces error; sickness is a material error; and what causes disease cannot cure it, unless it be in homœopathy whence matter disappears, and belief is the dose. To admit that sickness is a condition over which God has no control would make Omnipotence, on some occasions, null and void. The law of Christ, Truth, finds all things possible to Spirit; but the so-called laws of matter find Spirit of no avail, and demand obedience to material codes, thus reversing the basis and demonstration of divine science and Christianity. Discords have not the support of divine law, however much is said to the contrary: our beliefs are not correct, as Jesus clearly proved, healing the sick, raising the dead, etc., contrary to them.
Can the agriculturalist produce a crop without sowing the seed and awaiting germination, according to the so-called laws of God? Yes; for the Bible says error first caused man to “till the ground”; and in this case, obedience to Truth would remove the cause. God never made a necessity for error, or a law to perpetuate it. The supposed laws that produce discord are not the laws of God, for it is the legitimate action of Truth to produce harmony. Such as you construe laws of nature would annul the law of Spirit. But the law of Spirit demands man's entire obedience and affection, heart, soul, and strength. No reservation is made for aught else; man's obedience to Truth gives him strength, yielding to error weakness. Physiology is one of the apples from the tree which to eat the fruit thereof was to open your eyes, and make you as gods; but, instead, it closed them to man's God-given dominion over earth. Christ, Truth, casts out physiology and every law material with the higher spiritual law, that gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and preaches good tidings to the poor. If metaphysical science dishonors the schools, it honors God; and there is no other intelligence to honor.
What we term laws of health are simply laws of mortal belief, the premises whereof are error; therefore, the conclusions are error. Truth has made no laws to regulate sickness, sin, and death; for these errors are unknown in Truth. Belief produces the results of belief, and the penalty it affixes will be as positive as the belief that caused it: our remedy lies in reaching to the bottom of the thing, in finding out the error of belief that produces a mortal body, and not to honor error with the title of law, and yield obedience to it. Truth, Life, and Love make the only demands on man that are legitimate or eternal, yea, that are of God; and they are spiritual, and enforce only obedience thereto. We say, “My hand hath done that;” but what is the “my” but mind, the cause of all the action of the body? The so-called voluntary and involuntary actions of the mortal body are governed alone by mortal mind, not matter. Controlled by intelligence, man is eternal, and governed by the Principle of being wherein is all harmony and immortality; but that which is governed by belief is discordant and mortal. We say the body suffers from the effects of cold, heat, fatigue, etc.; but this is a belief and error, and not the truth of being, for matter cannot suffer: mortal mind alone suffers, and not because a law of matter has been transgressed, but a law of this mind. We have demonstrated this fact, for when you destroy the belief in regard to the suffering, the suffering disappears, and the effects of what you term a broken law, producing consumptions, etc., disappear with the belief. A lady whom we cured of consumption breathed with great difficulty when the wind was east. We sat silently by her side a few moments, and her breath came gently, the inspirations were deep and natural. We then requested her to look at the weather-vane. She looked, and saw it was due east. The wind had not changed, but her difficult breathing was gone, for it was not the wind that had produced it; our metaphysical treatment, changing the action her belief had produced on the system, relieved her, and she never suffered again, from cast winds. Here is testimony on this point: —
“I take pleasure in giving to the public one instance out of the many of Mrs. Glover Eddy's skill in metaphysical healing. At the birth of my youngest child, eight years old, I thought my approaching confinement was several weeks premature, and sent her a message to that effect. Without seeing me, she returned answer the proper time had come, and she would be with me immediately. Slight labor pains had commenced before she arrived; she stopped them immediately, and requested me to call a midwife, but to keep him below stairs until after the birth. When the doctor arrived, and while he remained in a lower room, she came to my bedside. I asked her how I should lie. She answered, ‘It makes no difference how you lie,’ and simply said, ‘Now let the child be born,’ and immediately the birth took place without a single pain. The doctor was then called into the room to receive the child, and saw I had no pain whatever. My sister, Dorcas B. Rawson, of Lynn, was present when my babe was born, and will testify to the facts as I have stated them. I confess my own astonishment. I did not expect so much, even from Mrs. Eddy, especially as I had suffered before very severely in childbirth. The M. D. covered me with extra bed-clothes, charged me to be very careful about taking cold, and to keep quiet, then left. I think he was alarmed at my having no labor pains, but before he went out I had an ague coming on. When the door closed behind him, Mrs. Eddy threw off the extra bedding, and said, ‘It is nothing but the fear the doctor has produced that causes these chills,’ and they left me at once. She told me to sit up when I chose, and as long as I chose, and to eat whatever I wanted. My babe was born about two o'clock in the morning, and the following evening I sat up several hours. I ate whatever the family did; had a boiled dinner of meat and vegetables the second day, made no difference in my diet, except to drink gruel between meals, and never experienced the least inconvenience from it. I dressed myself the second day, and the third day felt unwilling to lie down, and in one week was about the house, well, running up and down stairs and attending to domestic duties. For several years I had been troubled with prolapsus uteri, which disappeared entirely after Mrs. Eddy's wonderful demonstration of metaphysical science at the birth of my babe.
“Miranda R. Rice.
A student visited his home in Boston, and requested our counsel in a difficult case that he was treating but not curing. We examined the case, and told him the difficulties were produced by a fall several years ago. That was the belief latent, and when he returned to his practice he wrote us the following letter: —
“April 2, 1880.
“Last Saturday, when I was at home, and you examined my patient, she had the most wonderful chemical, or something of the kind, that I ever heard of. She was sitting talking with some ladies, and felt a little faint, her head ached, and she said she would go to bed, when she felt a crash, just as when she was thrown from a carriage, and knew nothing for four hours. Great black and blue spots, just where she was bruised years ago when she fell, appeared, and she acted and talked like a person under the influence of morphine. After the discoloration was gone, the cuticle came off in scales, and she is better than ever now, and walks without a cane. Has been out to ride to-day. What can it be? What does it mean?
“G. D. Choate.”
We hope this period will settle the question, Which is the master of health, happiness, and being, — mind or body? Not a blade of grass springs up, or a spray buddeth within the vale, or a leaf unfolds its fair outlines, or a flower starts from its cloistered cell, only as the result of mind. That God constitutes a law of discord, or institutes penalties without law, is a mistake. Every sinner makes his own error, and every invalid his own suffering. Deity never made Hades to get ready for sinners, and found there were so many sinners they had to make their own hells. But goodness makes its own heaven, and sin its own hell. If we admit the same reality to discord as to harmony, one must have as high a claim upon us as the other. If evil is as real as good it is as immortal; and if death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth. If pain is as real as the absence of pain, it must be immortal, and harmony not the fact of being.
The Mohammedan believes a pilgrimage to Mecca is salutary to the saving of his soul, to save what is immortal, and must be right, or it could not continue forever. Another believes that inanimate matter can save a man's life. The first belief is paganism — the second, materia medica.
Disease is an impression originating in the unconscious mortal mind, and becoming at length a belief that the body or matter suffers. This belief is like the dream of sleep, wherein the suffering is in mortal mind; but this mind always has a body with it, and says the suffering is there, although that body is sensationless, and at rest, showing you that all suffering and disease are formations of thought, that appear upon the body by the consent of minds. If the dream of disease and suffering, that goes on in sleep, should continue long enough, the body would manifest the disease and pain. The smile of the sleeper indicates the sensation produced physically by the pleasure of mortal mind, and its corresponding effect on the body. The indications of pain or pleasure, sickness or care, are traced in unmistakable signs upon the face, whereas you think a thought of consumption, latent and hereditary, produces no sign upon the body, and scoff at the declaration of metaphysical science that mortal mind produces all lung complaints and utters them. Sickness is a germ of belief, springing from a seed of thought, either your own or another's; its soil is mortal mind, and you have a crop abundant or scanty according to the seedlings in that soil, sown by yourself or others. Materia medica, physiology, treatises on health obtained and sustained by what is termed material law, sickness produced and cured by the same law, are the sowers and husbandmen of sickness and disease. It is proverbial that as long as you read a medical work you will be sick; and the sedulous housewife of homœopathy, searching Jahr, ever ready with pellet and powder to put you into a sweat, to move the bowels, or to produce sleep, is sowing the seed of sickness by day and by night; and her household will follow her example, and reap the reward of leaning on matter that proves a broken reed. The description of disease by clairvoyants and medical charlatans, those quacks in mind and quacks in matter, is the most prolific modern source of sickness. They are the principal manufacturers of disease and death; they form the image of disease in mortal mind by telling the patients they have it, and after that they work up the material into a certain fabric; then they go to work to destroy that fabric and unmake their manufactures, and their suffering dupes are satisfied to see them busy, and to pay for making them sick and trying to heal them. This is “the seed within itself” spoken of in the Bible, bearing fruit after its own kind. Doctors deport themselves generally as if there was no mind, and they had taken the ground versus metaphysics that all is matter. Ignorant that mortal mind governs the body, they hesitate not to poison this fearing fount with more fear, and to form the disease in thought by declaring it a fixed fact before they go to work to eradicate it from that mind with the faith they inspire in matter. They poison the mind, and find the antidote for that in the poisons of matter, on the homœopathic basis that “like cures like.”
A belief is all that ever made a drug remedy the ailments of a man. Anatomy admits that mind is a portion of mortal man. Then, if man is sick, why do you doctor matter alone, and deal the dose of despair to mind? You declare the body is diseased, and picture to mind the disease, hold it in your own thought, and roll it under your tongue like a sweet morsel. We must understand that the cause and cure of all disease rest with mind, and address ourselves to the task of preventing the images of disease taking form in thought and effacing the forms of disease already in the mind. Because metaphysics is at war with physics, even as Truth makes war upon error, the old schools will battle science another century. When there were not so many doctors, and less thought given to sanitary subjects, there were better constitutions and less disease. In olden times, who that ever heard of dyspepsia, spino-meningitis, hay-fever, and rose-fever? What an abuse of nature to say that the smile of God, a rose, can produce suffering! The joy of its presence, its beauty and modesty, should uplift the thought and destroy a fever. The sweetness of the clover and breath of new-mown hay is profaned when they result, like snuff, in sneezing and nasal twangs. If a thought at random had called itself dyspepsia, and appeared to our forefathers, it would have died at once of benevolence and industry. People had less time then to be selfish, and confine thought to their bodies, and for the sickly after-dinner talk; the exact amount the stomach could digest was not discussed according to Cutter, and made a law of mortal mind; therefore a man's belief was not so severe upon the gastric juices, and Beaumont's Experiments governed not his digestion. The action of mortal mind on the body was not as injurious before the curing and curious Eves got medical works, and the unmanly Adams charged their falls and the fate of their offspring upon the credulity of their wives. The primitive privilege to “take no thought about what ye shall eat,” left the stomach and bowels to act in obedience to nature instead of art, and gave the gospel a chance to be seen in its glorious results upon the body. A ghastly array of diseases were not kept before the thought. Less books on digestion and more “sermons in stones and good in everything” made the better health and greater longevity of the antediluvians. When the mechanism of mortal mind goes on undisturbed by fear, selfishness, or malice, disease cannot enter the mind and get a foothold.
Damp atmospheres and freezing snows may have empurpled the round cheeks of our forefathers, but they never reached the refinement of inflaming their bronchial tubes; and because they were as ignorant as Adam before informed by his wife of tubes or troches, lungs or lozenges. The nineteenth century would load with disease the air of Eden, and hunt mankind down with superficial airs and conjectural evils. Mind is the best friend or worst foe of the body, and Truth the universal healer.
Shall an M. D. conduct the case of organic disease, and the metaphysician be allowed to try his hand on the imaginary disease, hysteria, hypochondria, or hallucination? But one disease is not more real than another, did you but know that every disease is hallucination, and carries its results no further than mortal mind maps out and the name it has given it entitles it to do. Facts are stubborn things, and you will find in metaphysics that the decided type and acute disease, however severe, is more ready to yield to that treatment than the less distinct type and unfamiliar form. The metaphysical treatment handles the most malignant contagions with perfect assurance, because it is science, and not guessing, that guides it, and treats them with more certain results than any other method on the globe. A metaphysician who understands and adheres strictly to the rules of our system, and rests his demonstration on its great basis, Truth, and the results of Truth on disease, is the only one safe to employ in the most difficult and dangerous cases. Mind will as far outstrip medicine in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is science in every instance; and medicine is not a science, it is speculative and void. In medicine, the same rule that succeeds in one instance fails in another; and this is all owing to the different mental states that are not comprehended, and are without a sign except to the skilful metaphysician. The rule in metaphysics never varies, and if you fail to cure the case, it is only because you have not been able to understand it sufficiently, and have not wrought metaphysics far enough to work out the full results of that rule, and prove the Principle capable of destroying every disease. Many of our best men and women have passed away since this book went to press that might have been saved by the science of which it treats. The minor hosts of Esculapius are flooding our land with diseases; utterly ignorant of the unity of mind and body, they treat the sick as if there was but one in the case, and that one was body without mind. To match the ancient question, we propose this modern one: Which was first, mind or medicine? And if medicine was first, what made the medicine? And if Mind was first and self-existent, it was God. But God does not employ medicine, or appoint it as a means, else Jesus would have recommended and employed drugs in healing. If Mind was first, it made medicine; but it never made matter, therefore its medicine was Mind; for it could not have been that which Mind does not include. Truth is God's medicine for error of every sort. Mortal mind makes error a medicine; it takes the greater fear to medicine the less; it appeases malice with revenge, and quiets pain with morphine; of two evils, it chooses the greater. This is self-evident, that because all is mind, mortal mind must have called itself matter, and said, That is my medicine, and made it so; or matter must have been Mind to make itself medicine. But to do that, matter must have known the false beliefs of mortal man and the properties that they attribute to matter. Unerring and omnipotent Mind could create nothing beyond itself for a remedy. The erring, finite illusion named mind needs something besides itself, and so it believes. And creates its god of matter because it is an idolator from the beginning, claiming more than one mind, having other gods. It makes its own idols, calls them matter, worships them, and concludes, with pagan pride, it has endowed its material god of medicine with ability beyond itself. The beliefs of mortal mind rob and enslave it, and then impute the results of those beliefs to a third personality, named Satan. That mortal mind is superior to its mortal body and governs it, we must first learn, and second how it governs the body; whether through faith in what it terms matter as a law or as a medicine, or faith in itself; whether it governs the body through a belief in the necessity of sin, sickness, and death; or a disbelief in that, and a higher faith in immortal Mind, and a perfect Mind producing a perfect man. Also, mortal mind, by relinquishing error step by step, improves this so-called mind and its body until the error disappears and nothing is left that deserves to perish. The error of ignorance as well as the intentional wrong is not science, and must be discovered and corrected to attain harmony. The beliefs that rob mind and enthrone what they term matter, — their own formation, and the lowest stratum of mortal mind, — and imprison mind in what it creates, are at war with science, and have established, as our Master said, a kingdom divided against itself, that cannot stand, an error that kills itself. The triumphs we achieve over the body elevate and consecrate mind and body; they rise higher for it, and present more the true ideal of man and woman. The universal ignorance of mind and its recuperative energies occasions the only scepticism regarding metaphysical pathology.
A physician of the old school remarks, with great gravity, “We know that mind affects the body somewhat, and advise our patients to be hopeful, cheerful, and take as little medicine as possible; but the mind cannot cure or affect organic difficulties.” The logic is lame that facts contradict. We have cured through metaphysics what is termed organic disease as readily as the purely functional. Few will deny that death has been occasioned by a fright, with no other cause to produce it, and that fact proves every function of the body and its entire organism governed by mortal mind in that instance. Fear stopped the action of the blood, heart, lungs, and brain. That mortal mind did govern the condition of every organ we have overwhelming proof. Mortal mind is the autocrat of the mortal body, that yields to no power except by its own consent. It wields the sceptre of a monarch, until immortal Mind robs it of its supposed realm. If this mind has the power to kill, it has the utter control of what is termed the human mechanism, and if it can control it in one direction it can in another. If it can make a healthy organ cease to act, it can as readily make the action healthy, and increase or diminish it. It does all that, and the only difficulty in the case is to acknowledge it, and to learn how it does it, and how to make this mind fit for such a trust, and to fall at the feet of Truth self-destroyed. Mortal mind produces what is termed organic disease as directly as hysteria, and must undo its errors of sickness and sin, and it cannot destroy one without the other. We have demonstrated it sufficiently to remove the question beyond cavil, and have not more evidence of our existence than of the utter control mind has over the body. Mortal mind and body are one, neither one can exist without the other. Mortal matter is but a false term for mortal mind, that builds its own superstructures, and the body is the cruder, grosser, and basil portion of this mind, and is but a material and sensual belief first and last. To learn something of Truth, immortal Mind, and do good, is science; but to use mortal mind to work evil is a misuse that destroys its own supposed power. Evil is a negative; it is the absence of good, and nothing, because it is the absence of something. Error is but the supposed absence of Truth, but Truth is omnipresent, and error a liar. There is no power in evil, and we all shall learn this. Error has a statement of its supposed self; it says, “I am an ‘I,’ a small power over-mastering good”; but this falsehood exposes it, and should strip it of all pretensions. The only power of evil is its own self-destruction; it can never destroy an iota of good, and every attempt to do that has done just so much towards destroying the evil.
There is no involuntary action. Mind includes all action or volition. But mortal mind names one action voluntary and another involuntary. But separate this mind from the body that we see, and that body loses all appearance of life or action; while this mind has a body that is acting and appearing to live the same as the other one that it made, and strayed from when it went into another dream of itself in sleep. Mortals, or what are termed mortal men, comprehend not their own existence, which proves their ignorance of Mind, God, and their ignorance of mortal mind and its creations. If a dose of poison is swallowed through a mistake, and while physician and patient are expecting a favorable result from the medicine, the patient grows worse, did mortal mind cause that effect? It did, and as directly as if it had been done consciously. In the allegory of material creation, the Adam, or belief of life and intelligence in matter, had the naming of all material things, and the name signified the property, quality, and form of the thing; therefore mortal mind universally has determined the qualities and effects of what it terms matter, and this general say so has become a law of belief that holds the balance of power. The few who think the drug harmless in case of a mistake in medicine are unequal to the many who have named it and believed it a poison, and governed the result of taking it. The remote cause or belief is stronger than the predisposing and exciting cause, because of its priority; and the past mortal thought connects with the present, although this is not understood. The adult has a deformity that, thirty years ago, was produced by a fright of his mother; and that chronic error is more difficult of cure than the acute injury caused by an accident, unless we base the cure on science and immortal Mind, to whom all things are possible, and wrest it from the hands of belief or mortal mind. What is termed disease is formed unconsciously by mortal mind. The belief of sin, that has grown terrible in strength, and controls the individual, was an unconscious error in the beginning, a mere embryo of mortal mind, without motive, that afterwards governed the so-called man, in whom dishonesty, envy, and malice ripened into action, and passed in shame and woe to their last stage, self-destruction.
When darkness comes over the earth the senses of mortal mind are without the evidence of light. This so-called mind knows not where the sun is, or if there is a sun; science, an emanation from immortal Mind, must decide that question. And we are willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of the sun and his influence on the earth. If what is termed the personal senses see no sun for twenty-four hours, mortal belief admits there is a solar light and heat that govern the earth, because science has beaten that belief out of its cruder theories and established other evidence. No more should we deny the effect of mortal mind on its own body when the cause is not seen, and the belief producing the effect is unconscious of what it is doing. The valve of the heart opening and closing upon the blood obeys the mandate of mortal mind as directly as the hand that is moved by the will; but mortal and material anatomy admits one action and not the other. Mortal mind is self-ignorant, or it could never be self-destroyed; it would live if it knew how to live. The inanimate and unconscious substratum of mortal mind forms all mortal things; they start from an unconscious source, and from the lowest instead of the highest stratum. The reverse of this is the case with all the formations of immortal Mind: they proceed from the highest source. From the lower mental strata and unconscious mortal mind start the formation of brains, and from brains the formation of beliefs, and from beliefs the reproduction of the species of inanimate and animate mortal mind. Brains are ignorant of mortal thought, and those thoughts are ignorant of what they produce in their circle back again upon the body, filling it with their beliefs of pain or pleasure, life and death, and changing it to matter, or its five so-called senses. Mortal mind determines a man by the size of his brain and body. The birth, growth, maturity, and decay of mortals are as the grass that starts from the soil dark and dirty to become a beautiful green blade, then to wither and return to its native nothingness. The Hebrew bard swept the strains of mortal existence with startling tones from his mournful lyre. “As for man, his days is as grass, as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.” But when hope rose higher, and grasped the realities of being, he wrote: “Then shall I be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness. For with Thee is the fountain of Life. I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.”
Brains give us no idea of God's man; they reveal not Mind; they are not the organ of the Infinite. As we yield our claims to more than one mind we shall gain our likeness to God as created by Him, the eternal good, and include no other element of being. As a material basis of life is seen a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual Principle or Life of man will dawn upon us and lead us to where the young child lies, to the spiritual idea of Life and what it includes. Even mortal mind must improve to escape from its own barriers; it should no longer ask of the head, heart, or lungs, What is man's prospect for life? leaving mind helpless, intelligence mute before non-intelligence.
Physiology has never explained soul, and had better not undertaken to explain body. Life is and was and ever will be independent of matter, for Life is God, and man is the idea of God, that dust can neither make nor unmake. Physiology, like drugs that produce irritation because the quantity is insufficient, causes sickness, and to cure it recommends a double dose.
Each method of medicine has its advocates, and the preference of mortal mind for any one method creates a demand for it, and the body will seem to require it. You can even educate a healthy horse into physiology far enough to take cold without his blanket; when the wild animal, left to his instincts, snuffs the wind with delight. Epizoötic is an educated finery that a natural horse has not.
The science of being reveals man and immortality upon the basis of Spirit, and not matter; but what we term personal sense defines mortal man, hence his mortality. We have discerned disease in mortal mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, many weeks before the so-called disease made its appearance on the body; and because disease is a belief, a latent thing of mind, before it appears as matter, we are never mistaken in our metaphysical diagnosis of disease. Whenever an aggravation of symptoms has occurred, in the chemicalization we have seen the mental signs that assured us the danger was over before the patient felt the change, and have said to the patient, “You are healed,” sometimes to his discomfiture, when he was incredulous of the fact; but it always proved as we foretold. We name these facts merely to show that disease has a mental, instead of a physical origin; and that faith in rules of health, or in drugs material, begets and fosters disease, by keeping the mind on the subject of sickness, through fearing it, dosing it, or trying to avoid it. The faith reposed in those things had better remain in one's self. Understanding the control that mortal mind holds over body, we should have no faith in material means. Metaphysical science reveals the origin of all disease wholly mental, also that all disease is cured by mind, and not matter, however much we trust the drug, or medium through which this faith is exercised, for it is Mind, and not matter, that heals the sick. When we read the minds of patients from a spiritual basis, it enables us to heal them; for the action of Spirit restores harmony. Healing the sick metaphysically enables us to heal the absent as well as the present. The spiritual capacity to apprehend thought, is reached only when man is found not having on his own righteousness, but the righteousness of God. Metaphysical science enables us to read mind, but not as a clairvoyant; and to heal through mind, but not as a mesmerist. When man is governed by Spirit, God, who understands all things, he knows that to Spirit all things are possible. The only approach to this affluence of Truth that heals the sick in divine science are the footsteps of Truth and Love, the example of our Master, and the understanding of metaphysics. Christianity is its basis; and physiology, that pins our trust to matter instead of God, is directly opposed to it. Ignorant of the footsteps whereby it is reached and the foundation of metaphysical healing, you may attempt to take with it mesmerism, mediumship, electricity, etc.; but not one of those can mingle with metaphysical healing, or demonstrate it. Whosoever reaches the understanding of this science, in its higher significations, will perform the sudden cures of which it is capable by taking up the cross and following Christ, Truth. We are scientific only as we let go material things and take strong hold of the spiritual, until we have left all for Christ, Truth. Our beliefs are not spiritual: they come from the hearing of the ear, from a person instead of a Principle, and from the mortal instead of immortal.
Spirit never believes in God: it is God, Life, and Truth. Power is a material belief, a blind force, the offspring of will and not Wisdom, of the mortal and not the immortal Mind. The headlong cataract, the devouring flame, the tempest's breath, lightning and storm, together with all that is selfish, dishonest, and impure, represent power. Moral and spiritual might are the result of Spirit, which holds the “winds in His fist”; and that which they produce accords with science, and is harmonious.
“Will-power” is not science; it belongs to the senses, and is objectionable. Willing the sick to recover is not metaphysics but sheer nonsense; will can infringe upon the rights of man; it is mesmerism, that produces evil continually, and is far from the science of being. Truth, and not “will,” is the healer, the “Peace, be still” to disease.
To the so-called personal senses, opposites affinitize; but not so in metaphysical science, where Truth never mingles with error, or Mind with matter, and therefore Truth is able to cast out the ills of the flesh. Mind, God, sends forth the aroma of Spirit, the atmosphere of intelligence surrounds Soul. The belief that a pulpy substance under the skull is mind, is the mocker of intelligence, a mimic mind and mortal error. That Spirit is distinct from matter but must pass through it or into it to be identified, would reduce Truth to the necessity of error, and require something to be made manifest through nothing. Better the suffering that awakens mortal mind from its dream than the false pleasures that tend to perpetuate it.
Metaphysicians can heal the sick, absent from them: space is no obstacle to mind. Our students are healing those whom they never saw. The world is made better by the aroma of Truth on its pinions of light chasing away the darkness of error. Mortal mind acting from the basis of the senses or a belief is animal magnetism; but when this mind, contradicting the evidence of the senses, yields to the understanding and government of immortal Mind, God, it goes forth on its errand of love, and this is metaphysics. In proportion as you understand metaphysics, you lose animal magnetism, and obtain spiritual power, and disarm mesmerism and mortal mind of their imaginary power to kill and destroy. You have no power opposed to God in science, and the weight of your influence to do good is the balance that you obtain in the right scale when healing. The good you do and the good you possess give you the only power there is in metaphysics. Evil is not a power; it is a mockery of strength that ere long betrays its weakness, and falls, never to rise again.
The following testimonial elucidates our subject: —
“I was suffering from pulmonary difficulties, pains in the chest, a hard and unremitting cough, hectic fever, and all those fearful symptoms that made my case alarming. When I first saw Mrs. Glover (afterwards Mrs. Eddy), I was reduced so as to be unable to walk any distance, or to sit up but a portion of the day; to walk up stairs gave me great suffering in breathing; I had no appetite, and seemed surely going down, the victim of consumption. I had not received her attention but a short time, when my bad symptoms disappeared and I regained health. During this time I rode out in storms to visit her, and found the damp weather had no effect on me. From my personal experience, I am led to believe the science by which she not only heals the sick, but explains the way to keep well, is deserving the earnest attention of the community. Her cures are not the result of medicine, mediumship, or mesmerism, but the application of a principle that she understands.
“James Ingham.
“August 11, 1865.
“Miss Ellen C. Pillsbury, of Sanbornton Bridge, now Tilton, N. H., after typhoid fever, was suffering from what her physicians called enteritis of the severest form. Her case was given up by her medical physician, and she was lying at the point of death, when Mrs. Glover (afterwards Mrs. Eddy) visited her. In a few moments after she entered the room and stood by her bedside, she recognized her aunt, and said, ‘I am glad to see you, aunty.’ In about ten minutes more, Mrs. Glover told her to ‘rise from her bed and walk.’ She rose and walked seven times across her room, then sat down in a chair. For two weeks before this, we had not entered her room without stepping lightly. Her bowels were so tender, she felt the jar, and it increased her sufferings. She could only be moved on a sheet from bed to bed. When she walked across the room at Mrs. Glover's bidding, she told her to stamp her foot strongly upon the floor, and she did so without suffering from it. The next day she was dressed, and went down to the table; and the fourth day went a journey of about a hundred miles in the cars.
“Mrs. Elizabeth P. Baker.”
The following is a case of heart-disease, cured without having seen the individual: —
“Please find inclosed a check for five hundred dollars, in reward for your services that can never be repaid. The day you received my husband's letter, I became conscious, for the first time in forty-eight hours. My servant brought my wrapper, and I arose from bed and sat up. The attack of the heart lasted two days, and we all think I could not have survived but for the wonderful help I received from you. The enlargement of my left side is all gone, and the M. D.s pronounce me rid of heart disease. I had been afflicted with it from infancy. It became organic enlargement of the heart and dropsy of the chest. I was only waiting, and almost longing, to die. But you have healed me: and yet how wonderful to think of it, when we have never seen each other. We return to Europe next week. I feel perfectly well.
“Louisa M. Armstrong.”
Mr. R. O. Badgely, of Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote: “My painful and swelled foot was restored at once on your receipt of my letter, and that very day I put on my boot and walked several miles.” He had previously written us: “A stick of timber fell from a building on the top of my foot, crushing the bones. Cannot you help me? I am sitting in great pain, with my foot in a bath.”
We have never believed in taking certificates or presenting testimonials of cures, and usually when healing have said to the individual, “Go, tell no man,” having never made a specialty of the practice of healing, but were laboring, as we thought, in every way that God directed, to introduce this great subject of metaphysical healing. We offer these few testimonials simply to support our statements of metaphysical science. The following is from a lady in Lynn: —
“June, 1873.
“My little son, a year and a half old, had ulcerations of the bowels, was a great sufferer, reduced to almost a skeleton, and growing worse daily, could take nothing but gruel or some very simple nourishment. At that time the physicians had given him up, saying they could do no more for him. He was taking laudanum when you came in and took him up from the cradle, in your arms, held him a few minutes, kissed him, and laid him down again and went out. In less than an hour after that he got up, had his playthings, and was quite well. All his symptoms changed at once. For months previously blood and mucus had passed his bowels, but that day the evacuation was natural, and he has not suffered from his complaint since, but is well and hearty. After you saw him he ate all he wanted. In about three days after you called he ate a quantity of cabbage just before going to bed.
“L. C. Edgecomb.”
We were called to visit Mr. Clarke, in Lynn, confined to his bed six months with hip disease, caused by a fall, when quite a boy, on a wooden spike. On entering the house, we met his physician, who told us he was dying. He had just probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious for several inches, — even showed us the probe that had the evidence of that on it. The doctor passed out. He lay with his eyes fixed and sightless, the dew of death upon his brow. We went to his bedside, and in a few moments his face changed; its death pallor gave place to a natural hue, the eyelids closed gently, the breathing became natural, and he was asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his eyes and said, “I feel like a new man, my suffering is all gone.” It was between three and four o'clock, P. M., this took place. We told him to rise, dress himself, and take supper with his family. He did that, and the next day we saw him out in his yard. We have not seen him since, but are informed he went to work in two weeks, and that pieces of wood were discharged from the sore as it healed, that had probably remained there ever after the injury in boyhood that was done to the bone, as the surgeons termed it. Since his recovery we have been informed that his attending physician claims to have cured him, and his mother has been threatened with an insane asylum for having said “It was none other than God and that woman that healed him.” We cannot attest to the truth of that report, but what we saw and did for that man, and what his physician said to us of the case, we know occurred just as we have related it.
Our own case of recovery from the effects of a fall was more remarkable still. We became insensible after the injury, and were taken to the house of Mr. Samuel Bubier, one of our most respected citizens. The kindness and care of his excellent wife, and the administration of ether, carried us through the first night; we were then removed on a bed to our home; the case was pronounced fatal by our attending physician and surgeon; he said we could not survive over three days. The third day was the Sabbath; our clergyman visited us before services, prayed with us, and said farewell. We asked him to call after meeting. He replied by asking us if we knew the fatal nature of our injury, and that we were sinking, and might not survive through the day. We replied that we knew it all, but had such faith in God we thought He would raise us up. After he left, we requested to be left alone; the room was full of people, but they all passed out. We opened the Bible to the third chapter of Mark, where our Master healed the withered hand on the Sabbath day. As we read the change passed over us; the limbs that were immovable, cold, and without feeling, warmed; the internal agony ceased, our strength came instantaneously, and we rose from our bed and stood upon our feet, well. The clergyman called after services, and we met him at the door, and that day prepared our family supper. There are persons living who can attest to the above facts. We have understood that our attending physician said, about three years ago, in a meeting of a medical society in Boston, that his medicine cured us at the time of that accident, and we acknowledged it then. He may not have said that; we hope that he did not, for the sake of his own honor and integrity, for we can prove, by our nurse and others, that we refused to take a particle of medicine, or to be etherized, or to have a simple application to the injured parts after we reached our home. The accident occurred in the evening, on our way to a temperance meeting, and we were taken to our home on a bed the next morning, and rose from it on the third day, as afore stated. Our physician was astounded when he called Monday forenoon and found us about the house. We transcribed what he said to our journal, and it was as follows: “What! are you about? Was it those higher attenuations I gave you that have produced such a result?” We replied, “Come here and we will show you,” and went to our table by the bedside, opened the drawer, and there he saw every particle of medicine he had left for us. He looked with blank astonishment, and continued: “If you will tell me how you cured yourself I will lay aside drugs and never prescribe another dose of medicine.” We replied, “It is impossible for us to do that now, but we hope to explain it at some future period to the world.” For three years thereafter we sought day and night the solution of that problem, searched the Scriptures, read nothing else, not even a newspaper, kept aloof from society, and devoted all our time and energies to discovering a rule for that demonstration. We knew its Principle was God, and we thought it was done according to primitive Christian healing, by a certain action of mind on the body, through a holy uplifting faith; but we wanted to find the science that governed it; and, by the help of God, and no human aid, we did find it, and were reminded of the shepherds' shout, “For unto us a Child is born,” a new idea has birth, and “his name is Wonderful.”
That life is God, and the might of Omnipotent Spirit divides not its all-might with drugs or matter, has been demonstrated to us. There were results connected with our recovery at the time we have named that rendered it still more remarkable, which we have not given to the public. Reviewing our brief experience, we cannot fail to discern the coincidence of the human and divine. Our medical researches and experiments had prepared the way for metaphysics. Every material dependence failed us, and we can now understand why, and the means by which, mortals are God-driven to a spiritual source for health, happiness, and Life. Our experiments in homœopathy had made us sceptical in material curative methods.
In the two hundred and sixty remedies of the Jahr, from Aconitum to Zincum oxydatum, we found the general symptoms, characteristic peculiarities, and moral symptoms, that demand the different remedies; but when the drug was attenuated to a degree that not a single vestige of it remained, we could but learn it is not the drug that cures the disease or changes one of the moral symptoms. We have attenuated Natrum muriaticum (common tablesalt) until there was not a single saline property left, — “the salt had lost its savor,” — and with one drop of that attenuation in a gobletful of water, and a teaspoonful of the water drunk at intervals of three hours, have cured a patient sinking in the collapsed stage of typhoid fever. The highest attenuation and most potent of homœopathy steps out of matter into mind; and there it should be named metaphysics, that claims no efficacy in the drug, and credits all to mind. A case of dropsy given up by the faculty fell into our hands; it was a terrible case; tapping had been employed, and the patient looked like a barrel in the bed. We prescribed for her the fourth attenuation of Argentum natricum, with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly, but believing then somewhat in the etcætera of medical practice, we began to fear a crisis, or aggravation of symptoms from its prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine, as she was recovering. It then occurred to us to give her the unmedicated pellets for a while, and watch the result. We did so, and she continued to gain as before, and finally said she would give up her medicine, one day, and risk the effects. After trying this she informed us she could get along two days without the medicine, but the third day she suffered, and was relieved by taking it. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated globules, with occasional visits from us, employing no other means, and was cured. When we learned of a verity that mind, and not matter, does the cure, we had such qualms of conscience over calling it matter that does the good that we gave up our respectable profession, and listened to the soft impeachment that we had lost our wits, or become a Spiritualist, which is the same thing. Our experiments proved to us the facts that we have stated of metaphysics, namely, that mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. A change of belief changes all the physical symptoms, and determines the case for better or worse. Nerves bear a changed report according to the changes in belief; therefore, personal sense is but a manifest belief, while the indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the necessities of matter, or the false beliefs of a so-called material existence. If the auditory nerve is destroyed and the optic nerve paralyzed, that need not occasion deafness and blindness, for mortal mind must say, I am deaf and blind, and believe it, to make it so. Every theory opposed to this fact found out in metaphysics makes man, that is immortal in understanding, mortal in belief. What is termed matter manifests nothing but mortality; therefore, not a glimpse or manifestation of Spirit is obtained through matter. Spirit is positive to all things, and all else is negative; and for positive Spirit to pass through a negative or matter would destroy Spirit and make it nothing.
Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea governed by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, and mathematics, we pass naturally from matter to mind in hypotheses. The point to decide is, whether we are willing to stop with mortal mind as causation, or to leave the basis of material beliefs for the fact in spiritual science and its Principle. The authenticated history of Caspar Hauser is a useful hint on the frailty and inadequacy of what is termed mortal mind, proving beyond a doubt that education constitutes this so-called mind, and in turn this mind is avenged on the body by the false sense it imparts. That infant, incarcerated in a dungeon where neither sight nor sound could reach him, at the age of seventeen was an infant, still crying and chattering, with no more intelligence than a babe. What we term material sense was proven in his case a belief formed alone by education. The light that affords us joy gave him a belief of intense pain; and that mortal belief and fear suffused his eyes, and they were inflamed by the thought that light gives suffering instead of joy. After the poor babbling boy was taught to speak a few words, he asked to be taken back to his dungeon, and said he was never happy anywhere else. Outside of dismal darkness and cold silence he found no peace, every sound convulsed him with pain, all that he ate but his black crust produced violent retchings, all that gives pleasure to our educated senses gave pain to those very senses educated in an opposite direction, — proving beyond scruple the correctness of metaphysics.
| “ | Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, |
| A being darkly wise and rudely great, | |
| With too much knowledge for the sceptic's side, | |
| With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, | |
| He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest; | |
| In doubt to deem himself a god or beast; | |
| In doubt his mind or body to prefer. | |
| Born but to die, and reasoning but to err, | |
| Alike in ignorance, his reason such, | |
| Whether ho thinks too little or too much; | |
| Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; | |
| Still by himself abused or disabused; | |
| Created half to rise and half to fall; | |
| Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; | |
| Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, — | |
| The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!” |
The less thought or said of physical structure or law material, and the more that is uttered and depicted of the moral and spiritual, the higher is the standard of manhood, and the further removed from imbecility of mind and body. The simple food our forefathers ate we are told helped to make them healthy, but that is a mistake: their diet would fail to cure dyspepsia at this period. With rules of health in the head, and the most digestible food in the stomach, there would be dyspeptics. The effeminate constitutions of our time will never grow robust until the individual opinions improve, and their beliefs lose somewhat of error. We must let go of physiology, for one thing, and take up ontology; look into the science instead of accepting the sense of things; and master fear instead of creating it. The ignorance of our forefathers of the knowledge that to-day walks to and fro in the earth made them more hardy than our trained physiologists, and more honest than our sleek politicians. Learning is useful if it is of the right sort; history, observation, invention, deep research, and original thought are requisite to the expansion of mortal mind and its growth out of itself. It is the scheming barbarisms of learning that we deplore, — the mere doctrine, speculative theory, or nauseous fiction. Novels, remarkable only for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity, are filling our young readers with wrong tastes and sentiments. Our systems of thinking and writing are lowering their standards to accommodate our purses and meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of instruction; hence the core of mortal mind is not readjusted, and its coverings are thickly inlaid with foreign devices. If knowledge is power, it is not wisdom, but a blind force, whose material origin is made known by losing in time what it gains in power.
Letting down the bars of sects, and admitting eclectic religion and metaphysical practice, ameliorates sin, sickness, and death. Give the science of metaphysical healing a hearing in our pulpits, free discussion from the press, and the place in our institutions of learning that physiology now occupies, and it would eradicate sickness and sin in less time than they have been increasing on the old systems and stereotyped plans to beat them. But incorrect teaching will lower the standard of Truth. Since ever man hath sought out many inventions, he has not learned that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of knowledge. Many a hopeless case of disease is induced by a single post-mortem examination; but not from poison or material virus, but the fear of the disease and the image brought before the mind during this stirred state of feeling that is outlined on the body. Books that would rule disease out of mortal mind, and efface the images and thoughts of disease, instead of impressing them with force of description and medical detail, would abate sickness and ultimately destroy it. Physiology would have you believe the body is diseased independent of mind, and despite its protest or its co-operation. This error is as evident to us, and will be to others at some future day, as the rejected doctrine that all are lost who are not elected to be saved. The shocking doctrine that man is governed all his days, and killed at last, by his body, is too absurd to last another century. The press sends forth unwittingly many a plague-spot on the human family, giving names for diseases, and long explanations that form their images distinctly in thought, and affect people like a Parisian name for a new garment, — every one will be getting it. A minutely described disease has cost a man all his earthly days in suffering. What a price for knowledge! But not exceeding its original cost, when God said, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die.” The doctor's mind reaches his patients; his belief in disease, and the reality and fatality it has to him, harms his patients more than his calomel and morphine, inasmuch as the higher stratum of mortal mind is more potent than its lower substratum, called matter. A patient hears the doctor's verdict as a martyr hears his death-sentence. He may seem calm under it, but he is not; his fortitude may sustain him, but his fear has already developed the disease and is mastering the case. The power of mortal mind over its own body is little known; its action to destroy the body, reversed, would restore health. But take away the penalty that must follow sin, and mortal mind could not destroy its own body. Sin alone brings death, it is the element of destruction. Sickness, sin, and death are not the concomitants of Life: no law supports them, and they have no relation to God that establishes their power to exist. The doctor is the artist that outlines disease, and fills his delineations with sketches from class-books. After disease is formed in mortal mind, it is sure to appear on the body, sooner or later. The thought of disease is sometimes formed before you see your doctor, and before he addresses himself to unform it by a counter-fear, perhaps a blister, the application of caustic, croton oil, or a surgical operation. Taking another direction for your faith, he more frequently prescribes drugs for hope to lean upon, until the elasticity of mortal thought reacts upon itself, and reproduces a more pleasing picture of health and harmonious formations. The patient's belief is moulded and formed by his doctor's belief of the case, even if he says nothing to support his own theory; his thoughts and his patient's commingle, and the stronger rules the weaker: hence the importance for doctors to be metaphysicians.
We respect the motives and philanthropy of the higher class of physicians, and know if they understood the science of metaphysical healing they would abandon the systems of drugging. Even this reform in medicine would ultimately deliver mankind from the oppressive bondage of sickness that our theories enforce.
Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise did it, or that the arm less used must be fragile. If matter was the cause of action, and muscles, without the co-operation of mortal mind, lifted the anvil and smote the nail, it might be true that hammering enlarges the muscles. But the trip-hammer is not increased in size by action; and why? — for muscles are as much matter as wood and iron. Because mortal mind is not producing that result. Muscles are not self-acting, and if mortal mind moves them not, they are motionless. Hence the fact that mortal mind enlarges and strengthens them through the mandate of mind, — its own demand and supply of power, — and not because of exercise or muscles, but what the blacksmith believes, is the strength of his arm.
Man develops his own body, and moves it how and where the mind says; and whether this result is produced consciously or unconsciously is of less importance than to know the fact. The feats of the gymnast prove that the latent powers of man are unknown to him, and mind, fixing on some achievement, makes its accomplishment possible, as a general rule; the exceptions confirm the rule and prove the lack is in the mortal sense of what can be done. Had Blondin believed it impossible for him to walk a rope over Niagara's abyss of waters, he could never have done it; but believing he could do it gave his muscles flexibility and power, that was attributed, perhaps, to a lubricating oil. His fears must first disappear, and his force in putting resolve into action must then appear. When Homer sang of the Grecian gods, Olympus was dark. The pagan worship began with muscles, but the law of Sinai lifted thought to the song of David, the worship of God through mind instead of matter, and the grand capacities of being, bestowed by immortal Mind, as when the Psalmist said, “Thou madest man to have dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet.”