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A N D S O N.
Qanibersity Agress.
G. EDDY,
M. B
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MRS.
JOHN w I L so N
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94

T H E
PEOPLES IDEA OF GOD:
ITS EFFECT ON
HEALTH AND CHRISTIANITY.
BY
JY
Jº Jº
MRS. M. (BºG) EDDY,
PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST.
FOURTH EDITION.
CAMBRIDGE :
J O H N W I L S ON AND SO N.
Gänibersity #ress.
1889.
‘EY
6 4 +
Copyright, 1886,
BY MARY B. G. EDDY.
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THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD.
ONE LORD, one FAITH, ONE BAPTISM. – Eph. iv. 5.
EVERY step of progess is a step more spiritual. The
great element of reform is not born of human wisdom ;
it draws not its life from human organizations; rather is it
the crumbling away of material elements from thoughts and
things, the translation of matter back to its original lan-
guage, – Mind, and the final unity between man and God.
The footsteps of thought, as they pass from the sensual side
of existence to the reality and Soul of all things, are slow,
portending a long night to the traveller; but the guardians
of this night are the angels of His presence, that impart
grandeur to the intellectual wrestling and collisions with
mortal beliefs, as we drift into more spiritual latitudes. The
beatings of our heart can be heard ; but the ceaseless throb-
bings and throes of thought are unheard, as it changes from
material to spiritual stand-points. Even the pangs of death
disappear accordingly as the understanding that we are
spiritual beings here reappears, and we learn our capabilities
for good, which insures man's continuance and is the true
glory of immortality.
A S
*--
:
|*s,º

4.
The improved theory and practice of religion and of medi-
cine are mainly due to the people's improved views of the
Supreme Being. As the finite and personal sense of Deity,
based on material conceptions of spiritual being, yields its
grosser elements, we shall learn what God is, and what
God does for man. I like the Hebrew term that gives
another letter to the word God and makes it good; for this
unites Science and Christianity, whereby we learn that
God, good, is the divine Principle, – more than a person ;
and this Principle is learned through mind instead of mat-
ter, in and of purity and holiness, of Soul instead of sense,
and by revelation supporting reason. It is the false con-
ceptions of Spirit, based on the evidences gained from the
so-called material senses, that make a Christian only in
theory, shockingly material in practice, and form its Deity
out of the worst human qualities, else of wood or stone.
Such a theory has overturned empires in demoniacal con-
tests over religion. Proportionately as the people's belief
of God, in every age, has been dematerialized and imperson-
alized, has their Deity become good ; no longer a personal
tyrant or a molten image, but the divine and spiritual model
of eternal Life, Truth, and Love, -Life without beginning
or ending, Truth without a lapse or error, and Love univer-
sal, infinite, and eternal. This more perfect idea, held con-
stantly before the people's mind, must have a benign and
elevating influence upon the character of nations as well as
individuals, and will lift man ultimately to the understand-
ing that our ideals form our characters, and “as a man
thinketh so is he.” The crudest ideals of speculative the-
ology have made monsters of men ; and the ideals of materia
medica have made helpless invalids and cripples. The eter-
nal roasting amidst noxious vapors; the election of the

5
minority to be saved and the majority to be eternally pun-
ished ; the wrath of God, to be appeased by the sacrifice and
torture of his favorite Son, are some of the false beliefs
that have produced sin, sickness, and death ; and then would
say that these are natural, and that Christianity and Christ-
healing are preternatural; yea, that make a mysterious God
and a natural devil. It requires more than another Flood to
efface the dire effects of such false systems.
Let us rejoice that the bow of Omnipotence already spans
the moral heavens with light, and that the more spiritual
idea of Good and Truth meets the old material thought like
a promise upon the cloud, while it inscribes on the thoughts
of men at this period a more metaphysical religion founded
upon Christian Science. A personal God is based on finite
premises, where thought begins wrongly to apprehend the
infinite, even the quality or the quantity of eternal Good.
This limited sense of God as good limits human thought
and action in their goodness, and assigns them mortal fetters
in the outset. It has implanted in our religions certain un-
spiritual shifts, such as dependence on personal pardon for
salvation, rather than obedience to our Father’s demands,
whereby we grow out of sin in the way that our Lord has
appointed, namely, by working out our own salvation. It
has given to all systems of materia medica nothing but ma-
terialism, - more faith in hygiene and drugs than in God.
Idolatry sprang from the belief that God is a form, more
than an infinite and divine Mind; sin, sickness, and death
originated in the belief that spirit materialized into a body,
infinity became finity, or man, and the Eternal entered the
temporal. Mythology, or the myth of ologies, said that Life,
which is infinite and eternal, could enter finite man through
his nostrils, and matter become intelligent of good and evil,
6
because a serpent said it. When first good, God, was named
a person, and evil another person, the error that a personal
God and a personal devil entered into partnership and
would form a third person, called material man, obtained
expression. But these unspiritual and mysterious ideas of
God and man are far from correct.
The glorious Godhead is Life, Truth, and Love, and these
three terms for one divine Principle are the three in one that
can be understood, and that find no reflection in sinning,
sick, and dying mortals. No miracle of grace can make a
spiritual mind out of beliefs that are as material as the
heathen deities. The pagan priests appointed Apollo and
Esculapius the gods of medicine, and they inquired of these
heathen deities what drugs to prescribe. Systems of re-
ligion and of medicine grown out of such false ideals of the
Supreme Being cannot heal the sick and cast out devils,
error. Eschewing a materialistic and idolatrous theory and
practice of medicine and religion, the apostle devoutly re-
commends the more spiritual Christianity, - One Lord, one
faith, one baptism. The prophets and apostles, whose lives
are the embodiment of a living faith, have not “taken away
our Lord, that we know not where they have laid him ; ”
they have resurrected a deathless life of love ; and into the
cold materialisms of dogma and doctrine we look in vain
for their more spiritual ideal, the risen Christ, whose mate-
ria medica and theology were one.
The ideals of primitive Christianity are nigh, even at
our door. Truth is not lost in the mists of remoteness, or
the barbarisms of spiritless codes. The right ideal is not
buried, but has risen higher to our mortal sense, and having
overcome death and the grave, wrapped in a pure winding-
sheet, it sitteth beside the sepulchre in angel-form, saying
7
unto us, “Life is God ; and our ideal of God has risen above
the sod to declare his omnipotence.” This white-robed
thought points away from matter and doctrine, or dogma,
to the diviner sense of Life and Love, –yea, to the Principle
that is God, and to the demonstration thereof in healing the
sick. Let us then heed this heavenly visitant, and not
entertain the angel unawares.
The Ego is not self-existent matter animated by mind,
but in itself is mind ; therefore a truth-filled mind makes a
pure Christianity and a healthy mind and body. Oliver
Wendell Holmes said, in a lecture before the Harvard Medi-
cal School; “I firmly believe that if the whole materia
medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be
all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.”
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse writes: “I am sick of learned
quackery.” Dr. Abercrombie, Fellow of the Royal Col-
lege of Physicians in Edinburgh, writes: “Medicine is the
science of guessing.” Dr. James Johnson, Surgeon Extraor-
dinary to the King, says: “I declare my conscientious
belief, founded on long observation and reflection, that
if there was not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary,
man-midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug on the face of the
earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than
now obtains.” Voltaire says: “The art of medicine con-
sists in amusing the patient while Nature cures the
disease.”
Believing that man is the victim of his Maker, we natu-
rally fear God more than we love him ; whereas “perfect
love casteth out fear;” but when we learn God aright we
love him, because he is found altogether lovely. Thus it
is that a more spiritual and true ideal of Deity improves the
race physically and spiritually. God is no longer a mystery
8
to the Christian Scientist, but a divine Principle, understood
in part, because the grand realities of Life and Truth are
found destroying sin, sickness, and death ; and it should no
longer be deemed treason to understand God, when the
Scriptures enjoin us, to “acquaint now thyself with God
and be at peace ; ” we should understand something of that
great good for which we are to leave all else.
Periods and peoples are characterized by their highest or
their lowest ideals, by their God and their devil. We are
all sculptors working out our own ideals, and leaving the
impress of mind on the body as well as on history and mar-
ble, chiselling to higher excellence, or leaving to rot and
ruin the mind's ideals. Recognizing this as we ought, we
shall turn often from marble to model, from matter to mind,
to beautify and exalt our lives.
“Chisel in hand stood a sculptor-boy,
With his marble block before him ;
And his face lit up with a smile of joy
As an angel dream passed o'er him.
He carved the dream on that shapeless Stone
With many a sharp incision.
With heaven's own light the sculptor shone, -
He had caught the angel-vision.
“Sculptors of life are we as we stand
With our lives uncarved before us,
Waiting the hour when at God's command
Our life dream passes o'er us.
If we carve it then on the yielding stone
With many a sharp incision,
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own, -
Our lives that angel-vision.”
To remove those objects of sense called sickness and dis-
ease, we must appeal to mind to improve its subjects and
9
objects of thought, and give to the body those better delin-
eations. Scientific discovery and the inspiration of Truth
have taught me that the health and character of man be-
come more or less perfect as his mind-models are more or
less spiritual. Because God is spirit our thoughts must
spiritualize to approach him, and our methods grow more
spiritual to accord with our thoughts. Religion and medi-
cine must be dematerialized to present the right idea of
truth ; then will this idea cast out error and heal the sick.
If changeableness that repenteth itself; partiality that elects
some to be saved and others to be lost, or that answers the
prayer of one and not of another; if incompetency that
cannot heal the sick, or lack of love that will not ; if un-
mercifulness, that for the sins of a few tired years punishes
man eternally, - are our conceptions of Deity, we shall
bring out these qualities of character in our own lives and
extend their influence to others.
Judaism, enjoining the limited and definite form of a
national religion, was not more the antithesis of Christianity
than are our finite and material conceptions of Deity. Life
is God; but we say that Life is carried on through principal
processes, and speculate concerning material forces. Mind
is supreme; and yet we make more of matter, and lean upon
it for health and life. Mind, that governs the universe,
governs every action of the body as directly as it moves a
planet and controls the muscles of the arm. God grant
that the trembling chords of human hope shall again be
swept by the divine Talitha cumi, “Damsel, I say unto thee,
Arise!” Then shall Christian Science again appear, to light
our sepulchres with immortality. We thank our Father
that to-day the uncremated fossils of material Systems, al-
ready charred, are fast fading into ashes; and that man
:
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i
i
IO
will ere long stop trusting where there is no trust, and gorg-
ing his faith with skill proved a million times unskilful.
Christian Science has one faith, one Lord, one baptism;
and this faith builds on Spirit, not matter; and this baptism
is the purification of mind, – not an ablution of the body but
tears of repentance, an overflowing love, washing away the
motives for sin; yea, it is love leaving self for God. The
cool bath may refresh the body, or as compliance with a re-
ligious rite may declare one's belief; but it cannot purify his
mind, or meet the demands of Love. It is the baptism of
Spirit that “washes our robes and makes them white in
the blood of the Lamb; ” that bathes us in the life of Truth
and the truth of Life. Having one Lord, we shall not be
idolaters, dividing our homage and obedience between mat-
ter and Spirit; but shall work out our own salvation, after
the model of our Father, who never pardons the sin that de-
serves to be punished and can be destroyed only through
suffering.
“We ask and receive not, because we ask amiss,” even
dare to invoke the divine aid of Spirit to heal the sick, and
then administer drugs with full confidence in their efficacy,
showing our greater faith in matter, despite the authority
of Jesus that “ye cannot serve two masters.”
Silent prayer is a desire, fervent, importunate: here meta-
physics is seen to rise above physics, and rest all faith in
Spirit, and remove all evidence of any other power than
mind; whereby we learn the great fact that there is no
Omnipotence, unless Omnipotence is the All-power. This
truth of Deity understood destroys discord, with the higher
and more potent evidences in Christian science of man's
harmony and immortality. Thought is the essence of an
act, and the stronger element of action ; even as steam is
I I
more powerful than water, simply because it is more ethereal.
Essences are refinements that lose some materiality; and as
we struggle through the cold night of physics, matter will
become vague, and melt into nothing under the microscope
of mind.
Massachusetts succored a fugitive slave in 1853, and put
her humane foot on a tyrannical prohibitory law regulating
the practice of medicine in 1880. It were well if the sister
States had followed her example, and sustained as nobly
our constitutional “Bill of Rights.” Discerning the God-
given rights of man, Paul said, “I was free born.” Justice
and truth make man free, injustice and error enslave him.
Mental science alone grasps the standard of liberty, and bat-
tles for man's whole rights, divine as well as human. It
assures us, of a verity, that mortal beliefs, and not a law of
nature, have made men sinners and sick, - that they alone
have fettered free limbs, and marred in mind the model of
II] all] .
We possess our own body and make it harmonious or dis-
cordant according to the images that thought reflects upon
it. The emancipation of our bodies from sickness will fol-
low the mind's freedom from sin ; and, as St. Paul admon-
ishes, we should be “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of the body.” The rights of man were vindi-
cated but in a single instance when African slavery was
abolished on this continent, yet that hour was a prophecy
of the full liberty of the sons of God as found in Christian
Science. The defenders of the rights of the colored man
were scarcely done with their battles before a new abolition-
ist struck the key-note of higher claims, in which it was
found that the feeblest mind, enlightened and spiritualized,
can free its body from disease as well as sin; and this
I 2
victory is achieved, not with bayonet and blood, not by
inhuman warfare, but in divine peace.
Above the platform of human rights let us build another
staging for diviner claims, even the supremacy of Soul over
sense, wherein man co-operates with and is made subject
to his Maker. The lame, the blind, the sick, the sensual
are slaves; and their fetters are gnawing away life and hope;
and their chains are clasped by the false teachings, false
theories, false fears, that enforce new forms of oppression,
and are the modern Pharaohs that hold the children of
Israel still in bondage. Mortals, alias mortal minds, make
the laws that govern their bodies, as directly as men pass
legislative acts and enact penal codes; while the body, obe-
dient to the legislation of mind, but ignorant of the law of
belief, calls its own enactments “laws of matter.” The leg-
islators who are greatly responsible for all the woes of man-
kind are those leaders of public thought who are mistaken
in their methods of humanity.
The learned quacks of this period “bind heavy burdens
that they themselves will not touch with one of their fin-
gers.” Scientific guessing conspires unwittingly against
the liberty and lives of men. Should we but hearken to
the higher law of God, we should think for one moment of
these divine statutes of God ; let them have “dominion over
all the earth.” “And if they drink any deadly thing it
shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and
they shall recover.” The only law of sickness or death is a
law of mortal belief, and infringement on the merciful and ,
just government of God. When this great fact is under-
stood, the spurious, imaginary laws of matter— when mat-
ter is not a law-giver — will be disputed and trampled under
the feet of Truth. Deal, then, with this fabulous law as with
I 3
an inhuman State law; repeal it in mind, and acknowledge
only God in all thy ways, “who forgiveth all thine iniquities,
and healeth all thy diseases.” Few there be who know
what a power mind is to heal when imbued with the spirit-
ual truth that lifts man above the demands of matter.
As our ideas of Deity advance to truer conceptions,
we shall take in the remaining two thirds of God's plan
of redemption, — namely, man's salvation from sickness and
death. Our blessed Master demonstrated this great truth
of healing the sick and raising the dead as God's whole
plan, and proved the application of its principle to human
wants. Having faith in drugs and hygienic drills, we lose
faith in Omnipotence, and give the healing power to matter
instead of Spirit. As if Deity would not if he could, or
could not if he would, give health to man; when our Father
bestows heaven not more willingly than health ; for without
health there could be no heaven.
The worshippers of wood and stone have a more material
Deity, hence a lower order of humanity, than those who be-
lieve that God is a personal Spirit, But the worshippers of
a person have a lower order of Christianity than he who un-
derstands that the Divine Being is more than a person, and
can demonstrate in part this great impersonal Life, Truth,
and Love casting out error and healing the sick. This all-
important understanding is gained in Christian Science,
revealing the one God and his all-power and ever-presence,
and the brotherhood of man in unity of Mind and oneness
of Principle.
On the startled ear of humanity rings out the iron tread
of merciless invaders, putting man to the rack for his
conscience, or forcing from the lips of manhood shameful
confessions, – Galileo kneeling at the feet of priestcraft, and
I4.
giving the lie to science. But the lofty faith of the pious
Polycarp proved the triumph of mind over the body when
they threatened to let loose the wild beasts upon him, and
he replied: “Let them come ; I cannot change at once
from good to bad.” Then they bound him to the stake, set
fire to the fagots, and his pure faith went up through the
baptism of fire to a higher sense of Life. The infidel was
blind who said, “Christianity is fit only for women and
weak-minded men.” But infidels disagree; for Bonaparte
said: “Since ever the history of Christianity was written,
the loftiest intellects have had a practical faith in God ; ”
and Daniel Webster said: “My heart has assured and re-
assured me that Christianity must be a divine reality.”
As our ideas of Deity become more spiritual, we express
them by objects more beautiful. To-day we clothe our
thoughts of death with flowers laid upon the bier, and in
our cemeteries with amaranth blossoms, evergreen leaves,
fragrant recesses, cool grottos, smiling fountains, and white
monuments. The dismal gray stones of church-yards have
crumbled into decay, as our ideas of Life have grown more
spiritual; and in place of “bat and owl on the bending
stones are wreaths of immortelles, and white fingers point-
ing upward.” Thus it is that our ideas of divinity form our
models of humanity. O Christian scientist, thou of the
church of the new-born ; awake to a higher and holier love
for God and man; put on the whole armor of Truth ; rejoice
in hope; be patient in tribulation, — that ye may go to the
bed of anguish, and look upon this dream of life in matter,
girt with a higher sense of Omnipotence; and behold once
again the power of divine Life and Love to heal and rein-
state man in God's own image and likeness, having “one
Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
Jº
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