Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/429

Rh The Science of mental practice is susceptible of no misuse. If an abuse appears, this is not from Truth or

Christian Science, but from error. If mental practice is used for any purpose but healing morally and physically, its power will diminish, until the practitioner's healing ability is wholly lost. Christian Scientific practice begins with the keynote of harmony, “Be not afraid!” Said Job: “The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me.”

Let the author allude to a phenomenon which she discovered in 1867. If you mentally and silently call

the disease by name, as you argue against it, as a general rule the body will respond more quickly, — just as a person replies more readily when his name is spoken; but this is because you are not perfectly attuned to Divine Science, and need the arguments of Truth for reminders. To let Spirit, through the power of divine Love, bear witness, without arguments, to the healing Truth, is the more excellent way.

It is recorded that once Jesus asked the name of a disease, — a disease moderns would call dementia. The

demon, or evil, replied that his name was Legion. Thereupon Jesus cast out the evil; and the insane man was changed, and straightway became whole. The Scripture seems to import that Jesus caused the evil to be self-destroyed.

The efficient cause and foundation of all sickness is error, arising either from ignorance or sin. It is always a false sense entertained, not resisted, which induces