Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/243

Rh Glover came, not to save, but to destroy all man-made knowledge and human institutions. In her world of Spirit, knowledge was an outcast, and the less she knew about what she called the "'ologies and 'isms" the clearer and more searching was her spiritual vision.

If man would get out of his material state and into the realm of Spirit and Intelligence, he must first, she told him, unlearn all that he had learned. All knowledge is harmful, particularly a knowledge of physiology, for it creates false beliefs, and, like obedience to "the so-called laws of health," it multiplies diseases and increases the death rate. Materia medica, physiology, hygiene, and drugs were the deadliest enemies to Mrs. Glover's science. The hardly-won knowledge of the physical scientists was, she declared, the densest and most harmful ignorance. Again and again she repeated, "there is no physical science," and taught her readers that all the laws of nature were to be defied and set at naught. In accordance with his spiritual nature and origin, man should never admit the belief that he has a physical body, or that he dwells in a world of matter which can affect his body. All things are at his command, and the beliefs of cold, heat, pain, or discomfort, should be dismissed at once; and they will disappear. "Why," Mrs. Glover demanded, "should man bow down to flesh-brush, flannel, bath, diet, exercise, air, etc.?" The belief that man requires food, clothing, and sleep, she said, is strengthened by the doctors, and it is the doctors, too, who are principally to blame for the existence and continuance of disease. Disease is a habit, and the habit grows more prevalent as education and enlightenment spread, in proof of which she pointed out that