Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/245

Rh According to lexicography, teleology is the science of the final cause of things; and divine Science (and all Science is divine) neither reveals God in matter, cause in effect, nor teaches that nature and her laws are the material universe, or that the personality of infinite Spirit is finite or material. Jesus said, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” Now, what saith the Scripture? “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

It is admitted that mortals think wickedly and act wickedly: it is beginning to be seen by thinkers, that mortals think also after a sickly fashion. In common parlance, one person feels sick, another feels wicked. A third person knows that if he would remove this feeling in either case, in the one he must change his patient's consciousness of dis-ease and suffering to a consciousness of ease and loss of suffering; while in the other he must change the patient's sense of sinning at ease to a sense of discomfort in sin and peace in goodness.

This is Christian Science: that mortal mind makes sick, and immortal Mind makes well; that mortal mind makes sinners, while immortal Mind makes saints; that a state of health is but a state of consciousness made manifest on the body, and vice versa; that while one person feels wickedly and acts wickedly, another knows that if he can change this evil sense and consciousness to a good sense, or conscious goodness, the fruits of goodness will follow, and he has reformed the sinner.