Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/112

100 of Scripture, and that compilation can do no more for mortals than moonbeams to melt a river of ice. The error of the age is preaching without practice.

The finger-posts of Divine Science point the way our Master trod, and require of Christianity the proof (rather than the profession) that he required. We may hide spiritual ignorance from the world, but can never gain the Science of spiritual Life, and its demonstration, through ignorance or hypocrisy.

Sin is thought before it is acted. You must master it in the first instance, or it will master you in the second. Jesus declared, that to look with desire on forbidden objects is to break a moral precept. He laid great stress on the action of the human mind, unseen to the senses.

Evil thoughts and aims reach farther and do greater harm than visible crimes. Evil thoughts, lusts, and malicious purposes, going forth, like wandering pollen, from one human mind to another, find inadvertent lodgment, unless virtue and Truth build a strong defence. Better suffer a doctor infected with small-pox to attend you, than be treated mentally by one who obeys not the Christian requirements of Science.

Fettered by sin yourself, it is difficult to free another from the fetters of disease. With your own wrists manacled, it is hard to break another's chains. But a little leaven ferments the whole mass. A grain of Christian Science does wonders for the sick, so omnipotent is Truth; but more of Science is needed.

If the student adheres strictly to my teachings, and does not venture to break the rules of Christian Science, he cannot fail of success in healing. It is Science to do