Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/361

Rh attention. In ontology I learned the nature and essence of all being, — Mind, and its essential qualities. Its pharmacy is moral, and its medicine is intellectual and spiritual, for physical healing; yet this most important branch is the one least understood and demonstrated by metaphysical quacks.

The anatomy of Christian Science is mental self-knowledge, and involves the art of dissecting thoughts, in order to discover their quality, quantity, and origin. Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question. This branch of study is indispensable to the excision of error. It teaches when and how to probe the self-inflicted wounds of malice, envy, and hate. It bids mad ambition pause. It bestows the hallowed influences of unselfishness, philanthropy, spiritual love, and the government of the body, both in health and sickness.

Teacher and student should be familiar with the obstetrics of this Science. To attend properly the birth of the new child, or the divine idea, you should so detach mortal thought from its material conceptions, that the birth will be natural and safe. Though gathering new energies, an idea should injure none of its useful surroundings, in the travail of spiritual birth. It should not have within it a single element of error, and should remove properly whatever is offensive. Then would the new idea, conceived and born of Truth and Love, be clad in white garments. Its beginning will be meek, its growth sturdy, and its maturity undecaying.

The treatment of insanity is especially interesting. However obstinate the case, it yields more naturally than most diseases to the salutary action of Truth, which is the counteraction of error.