I enjoin it upon my students to hold no controversy or enmity over doctrines and traditions, or over the misconceptions of Christian Science, but to work, watch, and pray for the amelioration of sin, sickness, and death.  If one be found who is too blind for instruction, no longer cast your pearls before this state of mortal mind, lest it turn and rend you; but quietly, with benediction and hope, let the unwise pass by, while you walk on in equanimity, and with increased power, patience, and understanding, gained from your forbearance.  This counsel is not new, as my Christian students can testify; and if it had been heeded in times past it would have prevented, to a great extent, the factions which have sprung up among Scientists to the hindrance of the Cause of Truth.  It is true that the mistakes, prejudices, and errors of one class of thinkers must not be introduced or established among another class who are clearer and more conscientious in their convictions; but this one thing can be done, and should be:  let your opponents alone, and use no influence to prevent their legitimate action from their own standpoint of experience, knowing, as you should, that God will well regenerate and separate wisely and finally; whereas you may err in effort, and lose your fruition.

Hoping to pacify repeated complaints and murmurings against too great leniency, on my part, towards some of my students who fall into error, I have opposed occasionally and strongly—­especially in the first edition of this little work—­existing wrongs of the nature referred to.  But I now point steadfastly to the power of grace to overcome evil with good.  God will “furnish a table in the wilderness” and show the power of Love.

Science is not the shibboleth of a sect or the cabalistic insignia of philosophy; it excludes all error and includes all Truth.  More mistakes are made in its name than this period comprehends.  Divinely defined, Science is the atmosphere of God; humanly construed, and according to Webster, it is “knowledge, duly arranged and referred to general truths and principles on which it is founded, and from which it is derived.”  I employ this awe-filled word in both a divine and human sense; but I insist that Christian Science is demonstrably as true, relative to the unseen verities of being, as any proof that can be given of the completeness of Science.

The two largest words in the vocabulary of thought are “Christian” and “Science.”  The former is the highest style of man; the latter reveals and interprets God and man; it aggregates, amplifies, unfolds, and expresses the all-God.  The life of Christ is the predicate and postulate of all that I teach, and there is but one standard statement, one rule, and one Principle for all scientific truth.

My hygienic system rests on Mind, the eternal Truth.  What is termed matter, or relates to its so-called attributes, is a self-destroying error.  When a so-called material sense is lost, and Truth restores that lost sense,—­on the basis that all consciousness is Mind and eternal,—­the former position, that sense is organic and material, is proven erroneous.