All seeds have their seed within themselves, the Scriptures tell us. Their seed is their ego, their vitality, their meaning. If you are treating a case you may discover that you can see with another set of eyes than the ones you ordinarily use. You might be half awake and see something appear in your presence, yet not in your conscious presence. Thus, while treating a man for lameness, you might see a star shining before you. Its meaning would be its seed. You are to take that meaning for your own use. It means that your word shines steadily like a star of hope to the man’s helpless mind. He is feeling a little ray of hope. Its seed is the kindness of the law to you.
It is your business to stop thinking about your treatment, about the man, and give thanks that your words have worked so well. If you are pledged to a principle it will work for you in loving kindness.
The tenth lesson of Science is the gift of skill in handling things with thoughts, so that they record your thoughts perfectly. The instrument must record the singing and joy of the musician. The scroll must teach others what music can do. The instrument must vibrate to the touch of the fingers. Your practice must tell the world what your genius can do. Everything you do must have its process of demonstration, which, by being recorded in plain sight, can show others how to do likewise.
While Paganini lived, he made the violin give forth tones and semi-tones of harmonies unheard of by the ears of man, till, swinging his heaven-tipped bow in the fourth dimension of space, he thrilled multitudes to awed inspiration. But there is no record of these harmonies. They were not inscribed on scrolls, nor did any pupil receive them. He had no skill of instructing in his science.
The tenth stone is the chrysoprasus, which is described as “of quartz, a variety of chalcedony, apple green in color and sometimes used as a gem.” It is the color that stands for the true earth. It is the Heavenly City that descends. It is the bride, the Lamb’s wife. The green fields and white gleaming mountains of Paradise are the new land into which we set our feet, if we have polished the ninth stone of our foundation, the topaz of harmony between our thoughts and our outer world.
If we have discovered how to be joyous and grateful, while yet on earth, which seems so dark and unreliable; if we have learned to smile and praise, while there was nothing, seemingly, to smile about or to be grateful for, there will come a moment when everything we are able to do we can teach others to do, and this is the stone of companionship — the chrysoprasus — for dwelling among equals. The green stone polished and smiling with answering goodness. The chrysoprasus stands for understanding how to handle things without effort.
Everything is as good to us as we have been to it. It records our skill. It tells of our ability to put our Soul life into words. It tells of our ability to discard symbol and realize reality, while we are giving forth thoughts, words, writings. Things and objects and people are the records now of ways we have thought in the past, also of ways we think now. We think new and joyous thoughts of people, of things, of life, and they presently begin to respond to our thoughts. The joyousness you persisted in has recorded itself, and answers back to you, as face answereth to face in the glass. This is the chrysoprasus stone.
When people and things respond because of your words, because of your thoughts, it is to your honor, your credit, your skill, that they have come forth. It is quite different from having things seem to be mysteriously good, unexpectedly kind.
You must know that all the lessons in Science are lessons in consciousness, lessons in your pure intelligence. It is not the chrysoprasus stone of your works when you heal blindness suddenly, or as it were, accidentally. You must know how to heal when you heal; be able to teach others how to heal, and understand keeping your cases well after they are healed. You must know how to make a permanent work. You must play upon all the chords and anvils of appearance with the touch of one whose words will endure after him endure forever.
Jesus taught His disciples how to keep alive, but Paul says they preferred death. In an old French book there is record of a man who pledged himself to the Holy Spirit, and became so quick and efficient with his thoughts that there was nothing he asked for, as a child might ask for a cup of water, but what he got, as quickly as the child would get the water from its kind nurse. After a time he became tired of dwelling among symbols and asked that he might fold himself round with the mantle of death. He never seemed to have any idea of how to teach the process by which he entered into such union with the Spirit of God. He never seemed to have fixed his ideas into the surrounding conditions of his human lot, so that others were greatly benefited because of his conscious intentions. He did not seem to be selfish, but only unconscious on this question.
The stones, spoken of in Revelation, all stand for living stones, as you know, by which is meant that your living Mind is your God. There are twelve evidences of entire consciousness. You must not be asleep on any point of doctrine. Every faculty must be awake and alive. Unlike the Frenchman, who helped himself by the consciousness of the presence of the Spirit, but who seemed to have been unconscious of the needs of others, not through selfishness but through not realizing; these lessons teach us to realize and to do, leaving nothing undone. This tenth lesson is on the subject of making your work tell, making it stay by you making it as definitely good, and as alive in its good, as your own soul.
It has always been noted by metaphysicians that people who have diseases as the result of their sinfulness do not get well as quickly as those who simply catch maladies from surrounding mental belief in disease. The whole process is unreality, and the idea that people do not give up sin readily is only an imagination. When one imagines that there is a mixture of good and evil in the universe, he is sure to see a great deal of good and evil. If he lets his mind balance on the gloomy side, more than on the joyous side, he will see more evil conditions than good in his lot. He will not touch the tenth lesson. He will not see his world record joyousness, if he does not put joyousness forth from his mind as a steady stream into the world.
Moses said, “Let the earth bring forth cattle and creeping things.” Earth means mind when it is formulated by persistent thought. The bringing forth of mind is “cattle” which is a symbolic word for larger human relations, like governments, schools, homes, friends, family. “Creeping things,” is a term signifying affairs like business, daily tasks, eating, drinking, sleeping. These things, says the text, come forth in a new beauty by the persistent thinking of new truths, cheerful breaths from the Spirit of the Supreme Cheer.
All the world, and our close family relations, are Good beyond good. Let the mind see good step by step. From mountain peak to mountain peak let lofty ideas spring, never forgetting the splendor of one peak, but ever onward. Thus it is with the lessons of Science. One lesson seems to be all. The next takes us to another statement of Truth. The next still on, till the twelve gates of Truth are opened.
Our conscious, wide-awake thoughts, never off guard, must smile, and rejoice that our obedient world may be at last compelled to return our smile. Gentleness, love, cheerfulness, these may seem to be slow in conquering the world, but they have Deity, in all its enduring force, behind them. So Moses here would say, “Stand here and see your mighty principle carried out into government, churches, schools, homes, friends, family life, into daily tasks, eating, drinking, sleeping. Let everything that hath breath or that moveth, praise the Lord.”
You know there is a natural strength within your mind to be your best, and do your most creditable thing. You choose to do and be successful. Some have chosen to be known as very rich. They would have that for their high ambition. Ward McAlister chose to lead society life in New York; Lady Vanderbilt wished to take Mrs. Astor’s place as social leader. Mendelssohn chose to be known by his “Elijah” in music. Haydn will be forever honored for his “Creation.” Raphael will ever be known as the Divine Raphael because of “The Transfiguration.” So, at the height of your genius, there rests some masterpiece of splendor, laid out for you to do from the beginning, before ever the world was. It is the making of your goodness or your Christ character, whose glory rests ever in the center of your own being, manifest in your own world. Things are plastic substance which your skillful fingers mold, as Angelo molded the marble. They are as receptive to your finger touches as the canvas to Perugino, who taught Raphael to paint.
You must find out the secrets of every creature, and make them speak. Your mind is a greater work as the follower of Christ than Mendelssohn’s, for there is music far beyond his masterpiece, but there is no music beyond that which you bring forth from the earth when you have proved that, to you, there is in Truth only God (or Good).
In setting forth to heal a man of his mental formulations, called disease, you disintegrate his accumulated ideas by true Principle. You reason his ideas right out of his mind. It is very much like ungluing them. His ideas fall all to pieces, and there is nothing left of them.
There is always a spot of time, a little moment, when it almost seems as if a man would not let his old ideas go. If at that moment you are true to your Principle, stronger than ever, and ignore his conditions with more skill than ever, you will see him yield his false position without another struggle.
A very lame man was at a political meeting when slavery was called a “divine institution.” This so stirred his mind that it held his body free from lameness and he jumped to his feet. The people laughed to see him forget his lameness, and when he saw them laughing he remembered it again, and sat down, as lame as ever. There was a time when this text would have been his entire healing, “Touch not the earth.” His mind should have kept him from the earthly condition, and soared away on the ideas he knew were divine. So, when a woman who was being healed kept shouting how much worse she was, the healer took less notice of her than before, and praised God in her secret mind with harder praises than ever, till the patient ceased screaming, and after a few moments cried, “I am entirely healed.”
If a patient comes before us the fourth time for healing, it shows there is a conflict going on within his mind and body. It shows that, before we saw him, we had been somewhat disturbed on the question of which is more powerful in the world, good or evil. Maybe we had been wondering if, after all, there was not a Satan. Maybe we had thought it might be, in the long run, that good, and right, and justice, would prevail, but at present things were pretty dark. Things must have seemed very much mixed up to us. So on comes the patient for the fourth treatment, and up comes the undissolved trouble again.
Well, the first thing to do is to bow the head, and let the Spirit speak of faith, confidence, steadfastness. We have come to the middle wall of partition.
We are where we must let the Spirit say, “I do not believe in mixtures. I do not believe in failure. I believe in success.”
If you will take Thursday afternoon and say all that the Spirit does not believe, and all that the Spirit does believe, you will not have a long treatment with a case when it appears the fourth time. You will see the good health stand out very plainly, right then and there. Or, if, when you begin to feel so mixed within your own mind on the question of evil, and good, you will say strongly:
“I do not believe in evil, I believe in the Good. I do not believe it takes time for goodness to prove itself powerfully; I believe goodness demonstrates itself instantly. I do not believe in sickness, I believe in health. I do not believe in trouble, I believe in peace.”
You will bring the patient’s good health out with great skill.
Let us stop the lesson right here, and rally ourselves and say, as strongly as the Spirit speaks it:
“I do not believe in evil, I believe in the Good. I do not believe it takes time for goodness to prove itself powerfully; I believe goodness demonstrates itself instantly. I do not believe in sickness, I believe in health. I do not believe in trouble, I believe in peace.”
If your business troubles face you after you have treated faithfully three treatments, you certainly have been doubtful in your mind whether you could settle them by mental process or not. Doubt is sure to haul your lame business back into its lameness again. What you want to do is to refuse the lame side of the question. Don’t touch it. “Touch not the earth,” means keep your eye on the mark of the high calling.
God’s prophet once told the Jews that it would not do for them to number the soldiers, or the people, because it was at a time when it would have discouraged them to know what a small army they had. So it is sometimes best not to think how your patient is at all, not to ask him a single question, not to talk to him at all, not even to answer his questions. Keep your mind only on one side of the argument. Keep it on the side of your faith. Ignore the rest. “I do not believe a word of it not a word,” you say while he mourns, or cries, or complains, or describes his ailments. So, too, you say to your affairs, when they keep facing you with what looks like disaster, “I do not believe it, I do not believe that side of the question. I believe in success, victory, prosperity, for myself in the name of Jesus Christ.” You say it to all that troubles you. You say it to everything and everybody that comes for a fourth time. You say it every Thursday afternoon. The old conditions must unglue, must go. God reigns. Believe it.
“God lives in me in His strength and glory,
He lives in me as my strength divine.
By the light of His love I read life’s story,
And the key of the world is mine.”
The Good Mind is your God. Let the Good Mind speak when you speak. Let the Good Mind speak its own glorious Truth through you. We all see things according to the mind we use. If we use the Good Mind which is in us, how can we help seeing how true the world looks? How can we help turning the key into every tree and rock and animal, by the light of the topaz stone of cheerfulness, till its goodness stands out in eternal visibility? The ego of the stone is its God life. When it is plainly visible to you, by the use of your own consciousness, then it is visible forever. When you cure your case by your wisdom, you will cure him for all eternity. He cannot have the malady again. But you must remember that you are to make all mankind every whit whole. All creatures of the earth are to be obedient records of your conscious calling of their names.
The waters form the land. The waters of your mind must be left free to form your natural world. The land of your being is your present condition; it is your circumstances. The land, being once formed, it takes great and unusual force of the waters to change its shape and appearance. So the land might be called the doctrine of fate, as indeed your circumstances have been called your fate. Whatsoever you have thought consciously, your mechanical and obedient conditions of life must unresistingly record.
The land adhesion of your natural state of affairs is undermined, disintegrated, dissolved, by the true way of thinking. The true way of thinking, which we set to flowing through us, seems, sometimes, to be long in accomplishing its mission, but it comes to pass that our conscious thoughts get greater and greater impulse as we think on, till our whole earth falls to pieces. Friends change marvelously. Home reinstates itself. Maybe we seem to have no home. Business falters. Maybe we seem to fail. But this is the point where we are at the sepulchre in the beautiful garden of resurrection. We need not say, “They have taken away my Lord,” simply because things look as if they were failing us. We must look up up! Touch not the earth, touch God! We do not believe in material ways of thinking any more, and old conditions, manufactured by our material ways of thinking, must unglue in order that the conditions formulated by our true new ways of thinking may come forth.
“If the earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved,” no matter what part of our circumstances it represents, there is a spiritual house, eternal, not materially thought, not materially born, but spiritually thought out, and now showing its seed, its germ, its face, through the ungluing particles of the old disturbed conditions.
Scientific Christians, who have been very strong and steadfast, have seen everything change around them, because they have so entirely changed their thoughts. Holding steadfastly to some one principle, some one idea, they have gone through many seeming trials with victory. Once a lady saw that her husband looked as if he were passing into another sphere. She said, “God is Love.” She did not treat her husband at all. Over and over she repeated the words, although not conscious that in Science we never treat anything violent directly, but turn our mind entirely to Spirit. She did this very way. Soon her husband rallied. Another woman saw her family in great trouble and knew that she could not endure circumstances that were dissolving around her. She could think of no words to say except, “Jesus Christ,” and they all came through safely.
Whenever any disturbed condition arises, do not believe in it enough to notice it. Behind you, over you, near you, there is a voice saying, “Touch not the earth, touch Me.” So you look away from your environments, and with just the assertion, “I do not believe in evil, I believe in Good,” you will put your mind entirely on the Spirit near you. All acute cases of sickness are signals for saying firmly what you do believe, and what you do not believe.
One woman had so much trouble that she felt that she was losing her mind. She said, “I do not believe it is Thy will that I should be in trouble.‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee’.” Then she kept looking away from her troubles. She would not allow herself to think of them. Over and over she repeated Isaiah’s promise, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee,” till help came to her. She was saved, not only mentally, but conditions adjusted themselves. After you have determined to breathe toward you the spirit of cheerfulness, the unbalanced and distracted state of your affairs will seem to make it impossible to hold your own in the midst of your changing and disordered seeming world. “Be steadfast,” said Paul, “Unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” He also noticed that it was just the same in a man’s affairs as in his mind. If a man has determined to follow this path, he finds himself sometimes very ecstatic, very happy, then he gets despondent. He feels doubtful whether it is true, whether he can make a success of his life on the spiritual plane. This is his mind in relation to doctrine. He must tell himself that he believes every word he has spoken, and believes it will all demonstrate exactly as he has spoken it.
The same thing happens with your cases in healing. They delight you one day and discourage you the next, if you let them move your feelings by their ups and downs of conduct. This is where you must state that you believe your doctrine is working itself out in its own way, and there is nothing in the man working against your doctrine. Tell what you believe about your case, and what you do not believe. His actions are only the exposure of some doubts you yourself have been having, where you ought to have spoken:
“I DO BELIEVE IN THE GOOD.”
You cannot help noticing how chilling and depressing doubt is. It comes up and shakes you. Its name is fear. Many people call their doubt of the Good now working out with them in safety and power, fear. They speak of their fear, or they shake within themselves and hide it. Maybe some of you call it apprehension. Maybe you call it the blues. Its honest name is doubt. It is the dark shadow cast by the figure of faith, which stands so near you. You feel fear shake your hopes. Faith stands near. You know she can do anything. She can raise your hopes to highest heaven. She can fulfill your slightest wish. She is warming, strengthening, comforting. You can choose faith, or you can choose doubt. Both are near. One is the reality of life, the other is unreality. One or the other is chosen by what you say most vehemently. I have heard of people passing through those seasons of unhappiness, caused by doubt of the Good working with them, and almost without exception they have lain down and given up to dark and dismal feelings first, and then feebly struggled to lay hold of faith. The fact is you have to choose faith the first thing. Your first words determine your future.
But, you say, “I had my house burned down, my husband at the point of death. My two boys ran away. My money is all gone. My acquaintances deserted me. It is not possible to say that I believe this all good.” Here is where you are mistaken. This is where so many make their mistake. The Science does not say death is good. It says there is no death. The Science does not say the deserters are good. It says there is no such thing as desertion. The Science does not say poverty is good. It says there is no poverty. The Science does not say the changing ugly conditions are good. It says there is only Good. “Look not toward the earth, look unto Me.”
It is a very important turn of the wheel of the law, this one of trying to make out that misery and death and poverty are good. They are not here. How can they be good? Their absence is good. That which is present is Good. If anybody abuses you (in the seeming) do not say it is your business to say abuse is good. Say rather, that it never transpired. Do not speak to any person mentally; speak to God. It is God who is Good. “There is only one Good and that is God,” said Jesus Christ.
When you tell me your husband was so and so, your money was so and so, your children were so and so, and you could not say they were good conditions, you are at this important stone of your journey in Science. You must not think of a single one of these appearances. They are not there at all. God is there. Touch not the earth with thy mind. Touch Me. Not an evil is here. Not one. God is here. If you feel the shakiness of fear, you can say, “There is nothing to fear. I am clinging to the loving God.” You can say, “I will not doubt the Good. I believe in the loving God.” You can say, “I do not believe in appearances. I believe in God here present in loving kindness.” In such a seemingly hard set of circumstances as mentioned, you will find it the most comforting thing in the world to say, “I do not believe in the power of a whole army of evil conditions. I believe God is bringing us all through safely.”
Why should you write a letter to your mother, or your uncle, or your brother, begging for help out of your misery, at a moment when the universe stands waiting for you to touch not the earth at any angle, but to touch God? This is called “The valley of decision.” The whole world finds it so much easier to talk and think and write on the dark side that Joel said, “Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision.” The worse the condition, the less you are to turn your mind toward it. “Touch it not. Touch Me.”
Goethe, the mighty thinker, writing of choosing between your pathways of feeling, said, “Here eyes do regard you in eternity’s stillness. Choose well; your choice is brief and yet endless.” That which comes over us about whether we believe in God in us now, comes over us when we put our cheerful doctrine upon the world. It seems as if our world all turns against us. But we have no right to agree with what comes. The Jesus Christ Spirit within us, and shedding its radiance around us, judges not after the sight of the eyes, nor after the hearing of the ears. There is no combination of circumstances so hard, so black, so complicated, but what God can work a miracle in them.
Now, if we examine doubt a little more closely we shall see that it is not doubt of the Good at all. It is fear that the Good won’t work NOW. We think the Good lets evil run on so long, and multitudes of good people pass away before their good deeds are respected, and ages go on before their character is believed in. You will see how we all have a sneaking feeling that we would like to know what good it will do us if our wrongs are not set right now. Come, face this adversary right up. Its name is belief in time, belief that it takes time for God to work. “No,” you say, “I don’t mean that I think God needs to take time, but that He does take it.” This is the adversary, then, belief that God always takes a long time to work out our cause for us.
Did you ever see people who, when they were in great trouble, never touched it with their thoughts, but touched only the God side? Did you ever see anybody who faced up that little sneaking fear that it would take a long time to set his affairs straight, and took the fear by the throat, saying, “I am not going to believe that the Almighty needs an instant of time, as I reckon time, to bring forth right conditions here and now.” You must know by this time that it is the Jesus Christ doctrine that by a man’s word he is justified and condemned. What can I expect but time, if I believe in time? What can I expect but fear, if I believe in fear? What can I expect but hatefulness, if I say hatefulness is good? All these things are my own imagination. Looking toward the Heavenly City, I talk of the desert. Lo, looking toward the joyous peace of God’s presence, I talk of trouble!
The chrysoprasus is the stone which stands for your sight of the Good, where others see evil, your speech of God’s blessed kindness, where you might feel deep bitterness.
It is singular how all the green-tinted stones of John bear up on seeing the True Kingdom through the false appearance. In the midst of what seems to you to be your degradation, when you look old, feel sick, fear poverty, cry at failure, if you cease to give way to all this for an instant, the green stone teaches you that the ego, the seed, the meaning of it all, is for you to know that you are a transcendent being, with transcendent powers. You were born of God. You go toward God. You know God. You have the power of God. It is the same with your patient. He is a transcendent being coming into your sight. It is the same with your affairs. They are Paradise coming into view.
When the storms come thickest (according to the seeming) the peace of your soul is nearest. In the heart of the cyclone is the intensest peace. The ship only needs to make one turn to be in the heart of the cyclone. We have only to look away from turmoil, “Look unto Me,” and the great storm will calm down, the sorrows will have nothing to exercise themselves upon. You have heard that the Brahmins once taught that the flower of the soul springs soon after the storm, but the soul’s flower will not bloom if it chooses to be in the storm.
There is nothing can shake your patient’s cure out of sight, except your own fears. You need not be afraid of his sickness, you need not fear you will fail; you have only to be afraid that your family affairs will not come out right, and this will be quite enough to show a disturbance in his conditions. It is quite enough to bring him to you for the fourth time. All sudden attacks, and all our cases when they seem to be worse, need our fourth treatment for outside conditions. You need to be filled with the tenth lesson of Science. They all show we ought to be polishing the chrysoprasus stone, which means taking our mind away from the earthly things entirely, fixing it upon heavenly themes, so that our world, with which we in particular deal, may show here and now that our practice of joy is being responded to by our world.
All the lessons of Science turn to the side of joy and peace, strength, and happiness. There is not one that gives sanction for despondency on our part. Jesus was so cheerful and joyous that He was called a glutton and a wine bibber. He was so full of confidence in the good of all people that He was accused of associating with people of bad reputation. He was so firm on the side of good that He walked around among the most wicked circumstances. He went without food, without friends, without home, so much that they called Him a poor man, and said He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
All the time He was the owner of the universe. He was the Prince of Peace. He was the Central Fire of Holiness. He was the Joy Bringer. It is His doctrine that the world today begins to realize is its greatest need. We have only to give it forth day by day, in order to see it demonstrate itself.
When evil conditions appear we do not have anything to do about them. We have only to see the presence of God above them. The child’s diphtheria is not diphtheria at all. It is the signal that, by the right words now spoken, you can bring out a perfect character, a renewed intelligence, a beautiful health. You may say promptly, “I do not believe in diphtheria. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in peaceful health, here and now.”
If you have thought seriously of some great point in Science for a long time, you will be faced up with its mighty effects. All the opposition of your lot, your human nature, everything in your disposition, will meet your statement somewhere.
Take your premise that the Holy Ghost will teach you all things. Treat your own self for freedom from stupidity and ignorance. Commence at the very day of your birth in the flesh. Deny that any cause, or result of any kind, leading to folly, or sickness, or trouble, has existed in your life. Pronounce yourself a spiritual being, with spiritual powers, untrammeled, unhindered, unrestrained, sealed from the beginning to preach the gospel, and to demonstrate it through the universe; that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is salvation from evil for mankind.
There is no salvation for mankind except by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. In yourself is that Spirit. Let it always speak. Let it always think through you. By taking yourself in hand to be wise, you can quicken your understanding, exactly as you can cure yourself of bodily sickness. When you treat yourself, begin at the beginning, and come down to the present moment, always calling yourself spiritual and not material.
Jesus said that the Father would send the Holy Ghost, in His name, and that the Holy Ghost would teach us all things. How true it is that only the early disciples ever tried to prove this. Men have studied books and languages, machines and trees, but they have not practiced hearing the Holy Ghost through the name of Jesus Christ. So it is that we have nobody on earth who can answer all the questions that are asked in science, art, and literature, through the expression of pure spiritual wisdom, as secured by speaking the name of Jesus Christ.
Whoever follows out this Science discovers that something about himself is soon healed. You will find that already you can point to different ways in which you are better for knowing this Science. If you have been healed of something, you can see that all things may be healed. One or two conditions may not go out except by persistence. You have to stick faithfully to something. There is a part of the doctrine that practically fits your poverty, for instance; but poverty does not go out with a little dose of that part of the Science. You have to take a great quantity of it. They tell us that some people have to take a great deal of the water of Lourdes before they are healed, while others get well very soon after a little of it.
Jesus Christ told His disciples that they could not cure epilepsy except they prayed so earnestly that they forgot to eat. We often see Scientists leave their cases, and leave their important work, for the sake of their dinner, or their beds, when it is evident that, if they do so, their whole interest is not devoted to their doctrine. There is such a thing as forgetting all about everything, because you are so absorbed in your doctrine. You do not do this all of the time, but you surely do some of the time. Jesus said there were cases which would not yield till after we had been absorbed just so powerfully.
A mother got down on her knees to pray for money to send her boy to school. She was so deeply absorbed in prayer that she did not eat or sleep for three days. Then, suddenly, she came forth, her face radiant. She had received a mental assurance of answer. That very day the money came. Go by yourself, alone with God, sometimes, and speak alone to Him. Reason with the Almighty, as Job did.
A beautiful nature once wrote a little pamphlet about how he took every little item of his life to the Holy Spirit, and talked with God as a man would talk with his friend. The consequence was that he knew what he needed to know, and was helped all he needed help. His requests were very simple. He never asked for healing, and he never asked for the fullness of wisdom, which Jesus Christ commanded. I speak of him only to show you that if a little of the Christian doctrine, believed in, would do so much, if the short practice which people give to the Holy Presence will heal and help so much, what may you not expect from a life absolutely dedicated to the Spirit. If God will support a man who spends all his time in spiritual devotions, why not give all your time to the Spirit? If God will teach all wisdom to the man who converses with God continually, why not make God our Counselor, our Guide, our Friend?
When a physical or mental disturbance arises, as the effect of opposing Truth, it is called chemicalization. It is always met by keeping right on with the Truth. It is always the sign that Truth is working fast. It shows that we are to welcome the Spirit. If our friend seems to fall down in a faint, we speak rapidly: “I do not believe in fainting and failure. I believe in life and activity.”
In a public dining room in a western town, a man struck a waiter. The waiter struck him back. Instantly, the guests rushed back and forth. There was great confusion. A Scientist present never looked up at all, but said within her own mind: “It is nothing at all, peace is here. I do not believe in disturbance. I believe in harmony. “It was amazing how quickly people picked themselves up, and the man and the waiter settled the matter.
You can quell the very roughness of the ocean storm by sending your steady word of peace over the waters, as Jesus Christ demonstrated. They will respond. Response to constant treatment, on the part of people and affairs, is typified by the chrysoprasus stone. The whole Kingdom of God is here, ready to break into your sight. When one seeming thing comes forth, through seeming trials, as the result of our treatments, we have touched the tenth stone of our City.
The oftener you bring order out of chaos, the oftener you touch the tenth stone. The oftener you ignore mixed-up and grievous states of affairs, the oftener you touch the tenth stone of your character. To stand still and hold on to one statement, when another statement seems to have the whole battle, is to become a skillful workman, approved of heaven. While there is no great issue at stake we do not seem to have a great test of our skill. When the storm faces the ship, if she is a good one she ignores the storm, and pulls all sound and clean into port.
The man who is on the point of bankruptcy and saves himself by his Science, touches the stone of his assurance. He hits upon his sure way of life. He knows how to work his Science. The man whose eyesight fails him, and his treatments only seem to put him into deeper darkness, knows, if he holds to one principle till it pulls him safely into light, just how to make everything yield to his treatment. Difficulties never daunt him.
The chrysoprasus stone signifies the type of mind seeing land ahead — whether anybody else sees it or not. Columbus, driving on in spite of opposition, is the Scientist ignoring terrible appearances, and driving on with his doctrine. The chrysoprasus stone stands for increase of seed, for enlargement of germs, for greater manifestations from lesser ones. One idea of Good, held in mind, is a deathless seed, for if it is in mind, it is outside in your affairs also. What you are thinking about is surely in your surroundings. They are obedient to your suspicions. Your doubts are on the shade side. They are obedient to your confidence, your faith, your steadfast ignoring of your own evil feelings. When a case comes the fourth time, tell mentally what you do not believe, and what you do believe. When a disfigured state of affairs comes up, give this fourth treatment.
When you feel grieved or frightened at what is said or done in your world, give this fourth treatment. You may be interested to know that chemicalization means that things are coming out in a better state of affairs. It never means anything else. It is like alkali and acid in chemistry. When they mix they form a new base. So, when Truth goes singing over the thoughts of men, they have to begin to think in a new way. There is nothing to fear, there is no pain in chemicalization. There is no sorrow, if you do not believe in such things. You need not have a patient come to you the fourth time, but if he should come, you yourself are in chemicalization, and so is he. You have been mixed up and troubled about something which did not need to take an instant of your notice. Please, now, take your case you have been naming with me, bow your head, and let the Spirit of Jesus Christ say:
I have not believed in a mixture of good and evil.
I do not believe in evil of any kind. I believe that all is Good.
There is no reality in trouble. All is peace.
There is no reality in sickness. All is perfect health.
I do not believe in anything wrong. I believe all is well.
Now, call the name of the patient and speak to him or her in this way, while I speak to the one who has been called diseased.
There is no mixture of good and evil in you. All is Good.
I do not believe in an inheritance of any kind of sickness, disease, or pain. I believe in an inheritance of Good only.
I do not believe in a race of beings partly good and partly evil. I believe in the universe of God.
I do not believe in contagion of evil through the mixed and confused thoughts of the people round about us. I believe in their God Mind only.
I do not believe in your evil thoughts. They affect you not at all. Your mind is God.
I do not believe in my own errors. They are not real. They cannot affect you. My mind is Good. I believe in God.
You are every whit whole.
Your life is God. It cannot be threatened with death, nor fear death, nor yield to death in any part of your being.
Your health is God. It cannot be threatened with disease, nor fear disease, nor yield to disease in any part of your being.
Your strength is God. It cannot be threatened with weakness, nor fear weakness, nor yield to weakness in any part of your being.
You are showing forth to the people around you that you are healed. You acknowledge to yourself that you are healed. You acknowledge to me that you are healed.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I pronounce you healed now and forever.
I assure you that if you will focus all your mind to such a treatment as this, if you repeat it over and over, you will be so confident of the Good and the right coming forth victorious, that nothing can distract your attention at all. By such treatments as this you will see the whole world healed of grief, of sickness and pain, and of poverty and sin. It is, as you see, an orderly way of telling all the highest Truth you know. For my part, I feel it is a doctrine that needs only to be once heard, to take an everlasting hold on the heart.
I believe it is so reasonable that when we think it over all alone by ourselves, that even then the universal Mind of man responds, and unconsciously they are all believing it. It is the perfect doctrine of prophecy. Let us once more bow our heads and proclaim to the universal Mind:
I do not believe in evil. I believe in Good.
I do not believe in poverty. I believe in the bounty of God.
I do not believe in sickness. I believe in health for all the world now.
Amen.