FAITH-CURE

It is often asked, Why are faith-cures sometimes more speedy than some of the cures wrought through Christian Scientists?  Because faith is belief, and not understanding; and it is easier to believe, than to understand spiritual Truth.  It demands less cross-bearing, self-renunciation, and divine Science to admit the claims of the corporeal senses and appeal to God for relief through a humanized conception of His power, than to deny these claims and learn the divine way,—­drinking Jesus’ cup, being baptized with his baptism, gaining the end through persecution and purity.

Millions are believing in God, or good, without bearing the fruits of goodness, not having reached its Science.  Belief is virtually blindness, when it admits Truth without understanding it.  Blind belief cannot say with the apostle, “I know whom I have believed.”  There is danger in this mental state called belief; for if Truth is admitted, but not understood, it may be lost, and error may enter through this same channel of ignorant belief.  The faith-cure has devout followers, whose Christian practice is far in advance of their theory.

The work of healing, in the Science of Mind, is the most sacred and salutary power which can be wielded.  My Christian students, impressed with the true sense of the great work before them, enter this strait and narrow path, and work conscientiously.

Let us follow the example of Jesus, the master Metaphysician, and gain sufficient knowledge of error to destroy it with Truth.  Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only be overcome with good.  This brings out the nothingness of evil and the eternal somethingness, vindicates the divine Principle, and improves the race of Adam.

FOUNDATION-STONES

The following ideas of Deity, antagonized by finite theories, doctrines, and hypotheses, I found to be demonstrable rules in Christian Science, and that we must abide by them.

Whatever diverges from the one divine Mind, or God,—­or divides Mind into minds, Spirit into spirits, Soul into souls, and Being into beings,—­is a misstatement of the unerring divine Principle of Science, which interrupts the meaning of the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Spirit, and is of human instead of divine origin.

War is waged between the evidences of Spirit and the evidences of the five physical senses; and this contest must go on until peace be declared by the final triumph of Spirit in immutable harmony.  Divine Science disclaims sin, sickness, and death, on the basis of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, or divine good.

All consciousness is Mind, and Mind is God.  Hence there is but one Mind; and that one is the infinite good, supplying all Mind by the reflection, not the subdivision, of God.  Whatever else claims to be mind, or consciousness, is untrue.  The sun sends forth light, but not suns; so God reflects Himself, or Mind, but does not subdivide Mind, or good, into minds, good and evil.  Divine Science demands mighty wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we sail into the eternal haven over the unfathomable sea of possibilities.