Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/338

322 serpents unharmed, to heal the sick and cast out evils in proof of the supremacy of Mind.

When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall

gain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his capabilities revealed. It is highly important — in view of the immense work to be accomplished before this recognition of divine Science can come — to turn our thoughts towards divine Principle, that finite belief may be prepared to relinquish its error.

Man's wisdom finds no satisfaction in sin, since God has sentenced sin to suffer. The necromancy of yesterday

foreshadowed the mesmerism and hypnotism of to-day. The drunkard thinks he enjoys drunkenness, and you cannot make the inebriate leave his besottedness, until his physical sense of pleasure yields to a higher sense. Then he turns from his cups, as the startled dreamer who wakens from an incubus incurred through the pains of distorted sense. A man who likes to do wrong — finding pleasure in it and refraining from it only through fear of consequences — is neither a temperate man nor a reliable religionist.

The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless

woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to learn Life in divine Science. Without this process of weaning, “Canst thou by searching find out God?” It is easier to desire Truth than to rid one's self of error. Mortals