Even those who do not believe in Christian Science as a whole must be impressed with the Scientists' wonderful religious optimism. Their inspiring mental attitude, the hopeful way in which they face life, always looking toward the light, toward health, toward prosperity, toward success, and turning their backs upon the darkness, upon everything which can mar their health, their efficiency, their happiness, is creating a new world for thousands of discouraged souls.

Christian Scientists insist that since God has created everything that is, and since He is perfect, is all-in-all, He could not possibly create anything unlike Himself, such as disease, or anything else which is not good for His children. God is harmony, they reason, and He could not create discord. He is truth and He could not create error. God is love and He could not create the opposite of love,—hatred, jealousy, envy, selfishness, any evil emotion or passion. Hence all disease, all discord, all the enemies of the race, all Satanic influences in the world must be accounted for in some other way than as decrees of His will, for Perfection could not have produced these imperfections. Love could not create anything antagonistic to itself.

Scientists take a positive and vigorous stand against the admission to their mind of any of the enemies of their health, their prosperity, their happiness or their destiny. Not only is all thought of failure and poverty banished, but they close the portals of their mind against fear, worry and anxiety, against the ravages of jealousy, the poison of hatred, envy, and selfishness. They try to keep their mental realm clear of all black, forbidding pictures, of all sorts of distressing emotions and unfriendly thoughts, while they open it wide to the things which help, inspire and bring hope, the friend thoughts and emotions,—joy, gladness, love, truth, and divine inspiration.

They believe that all human beings were not only made to be healthy but also to be happy, successful, prosperous. They regard poverty, no less than illness, as a mental disease, to be treated in the same manner as bodily disease; and this cheerful religious optimism which they try steadily to maintain is not alone a healing force, but is also a great disease-resisting power.

Health, wholeness, is one of the most important and necessary factors for the attainment of those things which every normal human being desires,—peace, power, plenty, success and happiness. The Scientists' religious optimism is a potent force for placing the mind in the most favorable condition for the attainment of all these things. It removes all hindrances to full, complete self-expression.

It is just as necessary to hold the victorious attitude toward health as it is to hold the victorious attitude toward our career and everything which affects it. It is just as necessary to get rid of our doubts and fears regarding our physical well-being, as it is to get rid of our doubts and fears regarding our ability to succeed.

If we would be strong and vigorous it is quite as important to visualize health, to hold the health ideal, to keep the perfect health picture constantly in the mind, as it is to keep the prosperity, the success ideal in the mind when we are striving for an independence.

The habit of always holding a high ideal of our health, of thinking of ourselves as well, vigorous, physically and mentally perfect, will go very far toward building up a strong disease-resisting barrier between ourselves and all our health enemies. On the other hand, people who never think of themselves as whole, healthy, active and robust, but who constantly hold in mind a picture of themselves as weak, ailing, without vim or stamina, with little or no disease-resisting power, are liable at any time to become victims of disease. The building up of a strong health thought barrier, a vigorous health conviction between ourselves and disease is the best sort of health insurance. Fearing disease, thinking ill health, visualizing physical suffering, is the surest way of attracting those things.

Physicians know that the awful incubus of doubt and worry in the minds of patients, the fear that their disease may be fatal, is the greatest obstacle to their recovery. We head toward our doubts, our fears, our convictions regarding our health, just as we do toward our doubts, fears and convictions regarding other things. If we are convinced that we are not going to be strong, rugged, virile, if we fear that we are likely to develop inherited weaknesses and disease tendencies, we are headed toward these conditions, and will probably realize them. On the contrary, if we hold the victorious attitude toward health, if we visualize the health ideal, the health conviction, we head mentally toward health, and what we head toward mentally is the pattern of that which is continually being built into our life structure.

A healthy body is healthy thought externalized.

Man's normal condition is that of robust health, vigorous vitality, tremendous power of endurance. The Creator evidently intended the human machine to run harmoniously, without friction, without weakness or disability of any kind.

The created is a part of the Creator, an indestructible part of Him. When we rise to a full consciousness of this we shall be victors over disease instead of victims of it; we shall be conquerors instead of slaves of conditions.

Nearly a century ago a celebrated German physician said that there is something in man which was never born, is never sick and never dies, and that it is this something, this omnipotent force within which in reality heals our diseases. No matter what we may call it, this something that repairs and renews is one with the Force that creates us. We may name it variously the God principle, the Christ within us, the divine principle, the omnipotent force or anything else we please; the name does not matter. All mean the same thing, that is, the creative, the all-sustaining Force that holds the universe in harmony.

There is something in you that is lord over your physical organs. There is a power in you, back of the flesh, but not of it, which dominates the flesh, and that is the real you. Your partner in that power is the Intelligence that created you. You are indissolubly interlinked with that Intelligence. You can no more be wiped out of existence than the Creator who made you, because you are an immortal expression of Himself. You are His masterpiece, and His work must partake of His qualities, of His perfection, of His omnipotence, of His omniscience.

The trouble with us is we do not rise to the power and dignity of our divinity. We do not half believe we are divine. We have a sort of vague theory that we are mere puppets, thrown off as separate units into space, without any vital connection with the Power that gave us life. This false theory is the cause of our sufferings.

The reason why we are such shriveled, scrub oaks of human beings is found in the dried-up, mean, stingy ideal of ourselves which we have been taught to hold. We have been reared to think of ourselves as "poor miserable worms of the dust," unworthy to come into the presence of our Father-Mother-God, even though we are fashioned in His image. Instead of carrying through life an ideal of our mental and physical perfection, we carry an ideal of a defective, diseased, physically and mentally imperfect, being. The mind being the molder of the body, the life-giving processes within us build the sort of body that answers to the model in the mind, the ideal which we hold of ourselves. What we really believe ourselves to be, we tend to become. We keep our minds filled with all sorts of discordant, sick pictures, and of course all of these mental images reappear in the body, react upon the life.

On the other hand, every time we affirm that we are one with the creative Force of the universe, that nothing can separate us from our oneness with the One, we tend to build our bodies into the ideal state of perfect health,—mental, physical, and moral wholeness. If we could hold continually the ideal of our wholeness, and visualize ourselves as perfect beings "even as He is perfect," and constantly try to live up to our ideal, any tendency to imperfection, to discord, to disease would be eliminated.

We are only just beginning to realize the tremendous import of the idea that we really fashion our bodies to correspond with our thoughts, that we are co-creators of ourselves with the Divine Power which is back of the flesh, but not of it.

A prominent surgeon in speaking of infantile paralysis says that the physician's mental attitude toward it has a great deal to do with its cure, and that he should hold firmly in mind the idea that the disease is curable.

Every physician should also be a metaphysician. He should be a profound believer in the principle that the Power which created the patient can re-create him, can repair damages, restore diseased or lost tissues. The most advanced physicians do believe that at best they can but help Nature in her healing processes. They realize that the same Power which created the patient is present in the healing of every wound, every broken bone and every hurt we suffer. The surgeon sets the bone, dresses the wound, but the same Power that first created the flesh and bone must do the healing.

The mental healer vigorously denies the reality of disease in the sense that truth is a reality. To him "all is Infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation," as Mrs. Eddy says, and therefore all must be good. Only the good can be real as God made all that is.

The persistent denial that anything could exist which the Creator did not create, and that He could make anything unlike Himself, is one of the fundamental principles of the Christian Science faith. To the healer health is a vital, immortal principle, the everlasting fact, and disease, although it seems painfully real to the sufferer, is but a false belief.

The healer holds in mind only what he desires to establish in his patient's mind. He shuts out everything else. Health is what he wishes to establish, and to do this he holds insistently and tenaciously the health ideal. He refuses to see the sick, diseased man or woman, and persists in visualizing the ideal one that God intended. To him the defective, deficient, suffering being which disease and physical discord have made is not the real man or woman. That being is only a travesty of the ideal, perfect creature the Creator planned.

He does not allow himself to think of, or to picture disease symptoms. To visualize the physical appearance of disease would be to acknowledge its reality, and this would be to defeat his healing. He could not, for example, cure cancer or tuberculosis while mentally picturing the horrible symptoms of these diseases. He wishes to keep all such things out of his mind because of their baleful suggestiveness. Visualizing them would merely etch their reality deeper and deeper in his consciousness, and the suggestion would be conveyed into the patient's consciousness.

The mental healer's aim is to produce in the mind of the person he is treating a consciousness of the scientific reality of health, and of the unreality of disease. It does not matter how the disease symptoms may contradict this principle, or how loudly pain may scream for recognition, he persists in considering disease unreal and in holding the scientific sense of health as the reality. He relies wholly upon Divine Mind as the great healing potency, and steadily affirms his patient's oneness with his Divine Source, and that disease cannot exist in the Divine Presence.

At the very outset he encourages his patient by affirming that, however real his physical discord or disease may seem to him, it cannot affect the God image in him, because that is perfect, as God Himself is perfect, and that in reality there can be no disease. Truth and harmony, he asserts, are the great facts of life. Error is not a reality, but merely the absence of truth; discord is not a reality, but merely the absence of harmony. He assures him that He is God's child, and that God's image cannot be sick, distressed or diseased. "Of course," he says, "this seems very real to you, painfully real, but it is not reality in the sense that truth is a reality." This is discord, the absence of harmony, and divine harmony will antidote all discord just as truth will neutralize error, and as love will neutralize all hatred, jealousy or revenge, or as confidence, self-assurance will neutralize fear, doubt, or self-depreciation.

The healer holds continually the healing suggestions, and concentrates on arousing in his patient expectancy of relief by bracing his hope, confidence, assurance and faith in Divine Mind that restores, renews and heals. He tries to stimulate and to put into active operation the healing potencies latent in him, to awaken in his mind the lost divine image, and to impress upon him the idea that this divine image cannot possibly be dominated or in any way affected by disease.

I have seen a chemist pour a few drops of liquid from different crucibles into a jar of muddy water and in a few minutes the mud would disappear and the water be as pure as crystal. This is in effect what the mental healer does in treating a patient. No matter what the disease is his great remedy lies in mental chemistry, in neutralizing, destroying the error with its natural antidote.

The healer's constant affirmation that there can be no sickness, no disease in God's image in man, is a powerful suggestion which tends to weaken the grip of error in his patient's body. The very shutting out of all fear, of the terror of disease and death, is a great step towards a cure, because these things are depressing to all the bodily functions. Everything that discourages, that makes the patient despondent, is a great devitalizer, and constantly lowers his disease-resisting power.

The arousing of the belief that the healer is a sort of motorman who puts up the patient's dropped trolley pole, thus making connection with the wire carrying infinite power; or that he is a wireless operator who is connecting him with his Divine Source, the source of health and happiness, and that he is actually receiving the flow of divine force, of peace, of immortal life, is of itself a tremendous healing agency.

When he has succeeded in establishing in the mind of his patient the vigorous conviction that health is the everlasting principle, the great fundamental inviolable fact, the healer has gone far toward establishing a scientific consciousness of health, and has laid a most important health foundation.

After a little practice a sick person can do wonderful things for himself through the vitalizing force of auto-suggestion. He can be his own physician. He can recover health and keep it by applying to himself the same principles that the healer applies to his patient. In this way he can keep himself in conscious union with the Divine Source of all supply, of all good, all health.

There are sufficient latent potencies in every human being, if he would only arouse and make them operative, to keep him in health and harmony. We can all be our own healers if we will.

The stream must be as pure as its fountain head unless contaminated later, and there is where we humans come in. We contaminate the health stream with our thought poisons. Our doubts, our fears, our unbeliefs, our brutal passions, our selfishness, our greed, our hatreds, our jealousies, our revenge, our ingratitude for life, for the blessings we enjoy,—all of these things tend to pollute the stream which we receive pure as it flows from the crystal fountain, the divine source of the All Good.

But the practice of divine chemistry will enable us to clear up our muddy life streams. We have in ourselves the remedies which will neutralize the vicious poisons we have allowed to flow into and befoul our life stream. We can by the right use of our powers purify it as the chemist purified the jar of muddy water. By right thinking we can neutralize the poison sewage of our bodies, just as chemists can take the foul sewage water which flows out from a city and by the help of chemicals neutralize all the filth, making it absolutely pure again. By applying their antidotes we can neutralize the poisons of disease, the results of wrong thinking and living, which sap and embitter our lives, which make us suffer from all sorts of ills and leave us unable to accomplish one-tenth of what we might if we had that splendid physical and mental vigor which is normal to humanity.

We must offer the same uncompromising opposition to the reality of all kinds of disease, mental and physical, that the mental healer does. We must see ourselves as he sees his patient, in the wholeness, the completeness, the Creator intended. It is the ideal man or woman we must visualize, never the one weakened, deformed by horrible diseases or their symptoms. By recognizing only the real man or woman, unaffected by wrong thinking, we cut off the vicious effects of the mental enemies which are fighting to perpetuate disease or other unfortunate conditions.

The constant holding of the health ideal, of the truth thought, the health and prosperity thought, the optimistic thought, the kindly, cheerful, helpful thought and the shutting out of all their opposites, not only help to restore health, but also increase tremendously the disease-resisting power. Right thought is a health, efficiency, and happiness tonic.

The vital thing in establishing health is to adopt the victorious attitude toward it as toward every other good thing we desire. If we wish to have abounding health (and who does not?) we must cultivate implicit faith in health as our birthright, in the truth that, being the children of Perfection, we must partake of the qualities of perfection, and hence be free from the imperfection of disease or sickness.

Without faith in our wholeness we are not, and cannot be, whole. Without faith in the healing power of Divine chemistry no healing is possible either by patient or healer. The patient may not always have a conscious faith, but the healer has, and a similar faith is aroused in the patient later, as he begins to feel the divine healing power operating and working like a leaven in his nature.

There is no one thing that is emphasized so much in the Bible, and especially in Christ's teachings as faith. Every benefit, every healing depends for its efficacy on the sufferer's faith. In all of His healing this one condition of faith was imperative—"According to thy faith be it unto thee."

When the disciples told their Master that they could not heal certain cases He rebuked them, and told them that they failed because of their lack of faith. "According to thy faith be it unto thee," he reiterated constantly. He recognized the great healing power of faith, and impressed upon His followers the truth, that without it no healing was possible.

Every physician knows that his patient's faith in his power to cure him, in the efficacy of the remedies he applies, are curative agencies. Faith in medicinal remedies is what makes them effective. It is faith that furnishes the potency of thousands of so-called remedies, which have no intrinsic value whatever.

We all know how the visualizing of disease and the fear of it affect the mind in undermining the health ideal. Confidence in our health is really its sustaining and buttressing power, for the moment we destroy this we lessen our resisting power and invite disease.

The image perpetually held in the conscious mind becomes indelibly etched in the subconscious mind and the body conforms to the thought. To attain perfect health we must hold the image of physical perfection, we must constantly keep in mind this ideal state. We must build ourselves thought pictures of a superb body in all its strength and wholeness; we must relentlessly strangle every image of weakness or disease, every sick suggestion that would blur the picture of perfect wholeness and harmony into which we wish to grow.

What a revolution we would make in our lives if we could only learn to live this health ideal instead of its opposite, the disease ideal!

Every child should be reared to think health instead of disease; should be made to realize that health is the everlasting fact, that disease is not a necessary evil, and was not intended for us, that it was not intended we should suffer. If the young mind were saturated from infancy with health ideas and ideals it would build up a strong disease-resisting power that would make it immune to all health enemies. If every child were trained to believe that he was a god in the making, that he had within him the embryo of divinity which ought to develop into a God-like being, we should not have so many mental and physical Lilliputians.

One of our great health troubles lies in the fact that we have been accustomed from childhood to lay too much emphasis on matter, on the support of the body. As a matter of fact, the mind is everything. But mind is not confined to the head alone. We are all mind. We think all over. We live all over. Our sensations are the intelligent expression of all the cells of the body.

The body is a great coÖperative institution composed of billions of cells. Some of these cells have a higher functioning quality than others, but they all have their appointed places. Every cell is an important member of the body corporation and has a voice in the government of the whole. When we are wounded or diseased, for instance, billions of these tiny cell repairers, healers, renewers, health builders, rush instantly to the wounded part to repair and restore the injured tissues.

We are all conscious that there is continually going on within us these repairing, renewing, reinvigorating, as well as healing, processes. We feel that there is a marvelous and beneficent intelligence ever working miracles within us, a power which heals our wounds and cures our hurts.

Whence comes the intelligence which governs and directs the work of these little builders and repairers? It comes from the Within of us, for our objective mind is comparatively passive in the process. But the great Intelligence back of the flesh, which keeps the heart beating, the lungs breathing, and all of the various bodily functions in activity, never ceases working, and never leaves us for an instant. It permeates every atom of the body, illuminating each separate cell with a reflection of its own light.

Scientists are making marvelous discoveries regarding the location of the seat of intelligence,—mind. Until recently it was supposed to be confined solely to the brain. But now we know the mind, the brain, or the thinking part of us, extends the entire length of the spinal cord, that there is gray brain matter everywhere in the sympathetic nervous system. In fact recent experiments indicate selective power in the cells all through the body.

Regular gray matter has been found in the finger tips of deaf, dumb and blind people, thus showing that wherever there is a need there is intelligence. We know what marvels blind and deaf mutes perform by their sense of touch, in distinguishing colors, even fine variations of shades in delicate fabrics, in correctly sensing denominations of paper money and coins, and accurately describing statues and other forms from merely running their fingers over them. This shows that intelligence is everywhere in the body.

Some of our foremost scientists now believe that the cells composing each organ form a sort of coÖperative community intelligence which presides over that particular organ. They hold that the bodily organs have what may be termed minds of their own, and are vitally connected with the so-called spinal column brain and the solar plexus brain, as well as with the brain proper. This theory is borne out in fact. We know how quickly the stomach sympathizes with the mental attitude, how it responds to our thoughts, our emotions; also how quickly the heart, the kidneys respond to our mental states—fear, worry, joy, anxiety, love, hate, jealousy, whatever emotion dominates us.

If there were not a very intimate connection between the brain and the stomach (and the same principle applies to the heart, the kidneys and other organs) the digestion would not be affected so seriously by our changing moods and emotions. Inasmuch as it is so affected, is it not reasonable to assume that the stomach cells are influenced by the thought which you project into them? Is it not reasonable to assume that by sending into these cells black, gloomy, discouraging pictures of indigestion and dyspepsia you injuriously affect them? If these cells have intelligence, and if they respond instantly to our different mental states, as we know they do, isn't it natural that they should be correspondingly affected by our opinion of them, by our lack of confidence in them, our suspicion of their ability to digest our food properly, by our constant complaining of our stomach and our miserable digestive apparatus?

Give a dog a bad name and you might as well kill him, is an old saying. In the same way, impress, force home on your stomach, your heart, your liver, or any other bodily organ the conviction that it is inefficient, weak, good for nothing, and in addition swallow a mouthful of mental dyspepsia with every mouthful of food, and, sooner or later, it will accept your verdict and be just what you claim it is.

In other words, instead of handicapping them by wrong thought, we must give our bodily organs a fair chance to do their legitimate work. If we expect them to act perfectly, as the Creator intended they should, we must treat them as we would treat our children. We must by right thinking help them to be normal instead of making them abnormal by doubting, being suspicious of them. We must visualize them as our co-workers, our partners, our friends, not as our enemies, our tormentors.

Just think of the horrible pictures of their various organs people get from medical books, which describe minutely symptoms of diseases which they imagine they have! Many people never visualize a normal picture of themselves. They never think of themselves as the perfect beings God intended them to be. What they hold constantly in mind is a picture of an abnormal, diseased, weak, defective creature. They picture their stomach, their liver, their kidneys, their heart in a diseased, imperfect condition. Instead of regarding them as friends, as members of the same family, they look on them as malicious enemies who cause them constant suffering. "Oh," they cry out, "I've got such a miserable stomach! I can't eat anything. Everything I eat hurts me." "My treacherous old heart, how it pumps. I can't walk or do any of the things I like because of it." "My liver is all upset. I seem to be out of kilter everywhere. My kidneys are affected, my back troubles me, and really I might as well be dead!"

Such horrible visualizing and belittling of the hard-working bodily organs would ruin the health of the best trained athlete. If you would be a friend to yourself, you must be a friend of your organs, which are so intimately and sympathetically connected with your brain-mind—the central station of your body. You must believe in their perfection, in their normal functioning. You must picture them trying to help you to carry out your great life purpose instead of working at cross purposes with you. You must have confidence in them, think of them as your friends instead of enemies handicapping your success and ruining your chances in life. Replace the pictures of diseased organs with their opposites, pictures of their wholeness, their completeness, their soundness, and you will find yourself coming into health and power.

Assume the victorious attitude, and think of yourself as an absolutely perfect being, divine, immortal, possessing superb health, a magnificent physique, a vigorous constitution, a sublime mind.

Every morning when you rise, before you go to bed at night, and whenever you think of it during the day, stoutly affirm the fact of your perfection physically, mentally and morally. Constantly assert mentally, and, when alone, orally, "I am health because I am of God. God is my life, He is the great creative Power that sustains and upholds me every instant. This Power is perpetually re-creating me, and trying to keep me up to the ideal, the original plan of my being when I was created. I shall coÖperate with it to-day, and every day. I shall aim to be perfect, even as my Father."

There is a great restorative power in the mere resolve to be well, strong and vigorous, in affirming and tenaciously holding the perfect ideal of ourselves which the Creator had in His plan of us. There is a re-creative force in the realization that any departure from this ideal means departure from God, from perfect health, from the reality of the perfect physical, mental and moral being planned by Him.

You will be surprised to see how this mental attitude, this visualized physical ideal, will be reproduced in the body.

The mind is the body builder, the great health sculptor, and we cannot surpass our mental model. If there is a weakness or flaw in the thought model, there will be corresponding deficiencies in the health statue. As long as we think ill health, doubt our ability to be strong and vigorous, as long as we hold the conviction of the presence of inherited weaknesses and disease tendencies, look upon ourselves as victims instead of conquerors of ill health, in short, as long as the mental model is defective perfect health is impossible.

Joyous, abounding health can be established just as anything else can be established, by right thinking and right living, by thinking health instead of disease, thinking strength instead of weakness, harmony instead of discord, thinking true thoughts instead of error thoughts, love thoughts instead of hatred thoughts, health thoughts, upbuilding thoughts instead of destructive tearing down thoughts.

A great many regular physicians now, and all soon will, show patients how they can make use of the great healing, medicinal power of thought, the miracle of right thinking, which unites them with the Force back of the flesh. They will show each patient what attitudes of mind, what affirmations and what auto-suggestions will tend to keep him in harmony; they will teach him the healing use of suggestion. The physician of the future will use largely for his remedies, ideas, mental attitudes, and suggestions.

The time will come when parents and teachers will realize the tremendous force, the character-building power in the affirmation of health, wholeness, completeness, harmony. They will teach children to exert this power that will drive out discord and dispel disease. They will impress upon the young that affirmation of perfect ideals, holding in mind the model of a perfect man, a perfect woman, not the one marred, crippled, shorn of strength and beauty by violation of mental law, or by vicious living, will protect them from all assaults from without and from within.

If that mind was always in us which was in Christ, the mind that gives health, peace and happiness, that perpetuates harmony, truth and beauty, we should never know discord of any kind. Perfect health would be the rule and not the exception, because we should never transgress the laws of our being.