The eighth lesson in Science is: “Be not deceived.” These are the words of Jesus. Spirit never deceives. Matter is the only deceiver. Matter makes up all appearances. Matter is formulated, as you know, by thoughts concerning a kind of God who never existed. 

The two friends of Job described one kind of God, and Job described another. Their kind of God was full of punishments for exactly the sort of character they described Job to be. Therefore, in the fullness of time, they reaped the fruits of their ideas; for Job insisted that he was not that character, and they must have imagined it in the peculiar wisdom of their hearts. 

Thus it is with all of us. We look upon others in the red, or green, or blue tints of our own ideas, and see them entirely different from what they are in reality. Then exactly what we describe as their character, which is not the truth about them, must be our own type of mind in some of its ways. Then when we get the punishments we have felt honestly belonged to them, we are utterly astonished and grieved, and feel much abused. This explains why the righteous are strangely afflicted. They see more faults in mankind than any other class of people. Thus the eighth lesson is, “Be not deceived,” either in man or God, for man and God in truth are Good. 

In appearance they may seem evil. In the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred book of [Hinduism], we are told that the Spirit of God saith, “Whoever undeluded knows Me as the Supreme Spirit, worships Me in all forms.” In other words, “Letting forms remain, opposing nothing, but nowise deceived, recognizes Me in all people and in all things.” This is another way of saying that Spirit is the only substance. 

Thus man is Spirit. If man, or all, is Spirit, then I am Spirit. If Spirit cannot be in poverty, I cannot be in poverty. If Spirit cannot be burdened, I cannot be burdened. If Spirit cannot be sick, I cannot be sick. All these are nothing to Spirit, therefore they are nothing to me. I am not deceived by any of them. This is the only religion which will work practically with the mind, and bring out the external forms in new combinations. It is a religion which teaches us to be grateful to Spirit for all the good that comes to us, and appreciate that all the evil that comes is by reason of our having imagined something against man or God, or the universe, which could not be possible at all. We worship Spirit in all forms, and let forms alone. We do not try to change them; they change themselves by our thoughts of Spirit. There is a law of setting aside appearances by Truth. We learn Truth, and we are masters of the law. 

Moses said the same thing in more symbolic language: “Let there be light in the firmament.” He not only means the sun, moon, and stars of the skies, but he means the thoughts that made them. 

Do not be deceived by your imaginations. Live by Principle. The reasoning based upon pure Principle is like sunlight to the mind and life. We soon learn to know the meaning of all things. We know exactly what to do. So, let the reasoning based upon a good true premise guide your life. 

As imaginations arise let them alone. The simple knowledge that they are imaginations is sufficient to make them null and void. Imaginations deal with evil, matter, death, sickness, poverty, old age, pain, failure, and other burdens and bondages of the race. Truth does not deal with them; it leaves them alone. We, being in Truth, also leave imaginations alone. By this lesson you will see that you do not have to try to make your Truth work. You know it. You know the Truth that makes you free. You speak it, and it is its own working principle. 

John the Revelator says the eighth stone is the beryl (in the foundation of Mind). The beryl is the stone which stands for a written record. When a form changes, by reason of our Truth, we have written a record in it. All who see it will see that we have put our seal there. Many a case of sickness would come out for more enduring health if we would write out our treatments and read them over and over by ourselves. One man, who could not feel any illumination from Spiritual teachings, became highly inspired after he began to write down the Science. It will be well for you to write out the treatments as much as you can. If new ideas come to you, put them down. They show that your mind is brightening by its own light. 

There is nothing so gratifying to a teacher of Science as to see the radiance of his students’ minds breaking forth. When they seize the truth for themselves, love it, and reason out each item of their lives by it, and see that no other reasoning has illuminating power, they are the true light in the firmament. When many such minds are utterly wedded to pure doctrine, it is promised that there shall be neither moon nor sun in any material heavens. 

When we love our reasonings we are in the light. When we listen to the opinions of man, or side with our imaginations, we strike our darkness at once. Then our intellect is our light. It takes its premise; those are its stars. If intellect believes God is far off, then the stars, which are suns, will be far away. Of course there are other meanings to this text, but I will give you one which it is good to remember. “Let there be light” means, let reasoning, based on Truth, be your light of the sun. Let imaginations stand where your right reasonings put them. Eternal reasoning is eternal day. Night with its stars symbolizes the rest which mind takes at certain stages of its reasonings. There are halting places in mental action. Then we speak nothing, think nothing, do nothing. We have spoken Truth. 

We have many symbols of these halting places of the mind. There is the Sabbath. There is the halting place between childhood and youth; between middle age and old. age. All these are to cease when we understand that they are symbols. Their substance is to be plain to us. We see now how a sick, deformed body will change its looks to robust beauty. But even in robust beauty, as we now see it, we are not beholding the possibilities of beauty and health at their fullest. People have as much more beauty and health and vigor belonging to them as the difference between deformity and the marvelous beauty of Hypatia. For between the night, with its moons, and the day, with its sunshine, is the difference between what we now see, and the real beauty of people and things. “Eye bath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them that love him.” 

To love is to see God in all. This sight, or this love, puts out evil. So of intelligence. Even the greatest minds tell how limited they feel their knowledge to be. They also tell how ignorant and incompetent they feel to solve the problem of life. But such is not the way those feel who are in the light of reasoning, based upon the first principle that God is Wisdom, for Understanding Absolute is in them, and is also in all things, informing them of high Truth. Whenever man tells of his ignorance he is speaking of the formulations of his imagination. This lesson would say, “Let that which is light indeed be your light, or, let Truth be your words. Truth of Spirit, and truth of matter.” It is true that matter is ignorant; it knows nothing. Are you Spirit or matter? Tell the truth about it. Reason it out well. 

People have gotten mixed up with old delusions. They think they must look forward to old age. This is getting crystallized into the future. They think of a history in matter. This is getting crystallized into the past. This lesson is about the light. It is about freedom. On the material plane light is the freest process of nature. You cannot bottle it up. It will shed itself to the farthest that its nature tells it to. If you hide it under a bushel, it burns the bushel and makes a greater light than ever. If you hide it in iron vaults, it heats things red hot and melts and destroys them. While it lasts you may hide it behind some screen, but you cannot quench it by confinement. So of the eternal, unquenchable light of the reasoning based on the truth that there is one God, above you all, and through you all, and in you all it cannot be spoken without shedding its light through the next statement of Science. And once it is set streaming through the mind, we must speak and think and write and live the doctrine. 

The doctrine is a fire an unquenchable light. It is not like the symbol, which can be put out. It is like the Truth itself, eternal, indestructible. It is along the way somewhere that you get on fire with the Holy Spirit, so that you live the doctrine. If you do not catch the fire the first time along the pathway of the Science, go over the statements again and again. The race is not always to the swift. “Come and let us reason together,” saith the Lord. “The righteous shall shine like the sun.” “Be not deceived.” 

Great doctrines have been looked into by thoughtful men, and they have turned about and seen how differently appearances work from principles first uttered. This has caused them to be silent concerning Truth, and much exercised about the effects of Truth which they have called laws. As for instance: If one becomes spiritually minded he loses his taste for certain kinds of food. 

Seeing this, the Zoroastrians proclaimed that all men should abstain from those foods. They mistook an effect for a cause. They tried for a long age of time to prove that fasting from food would make people spiritual. It never did, for material actions are not the cause of Spirit. The reverse is the way of the law. That is, according to the way of the Spirit in man, so will his outer actions be. Men banded themselves together saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul. Such was the outcome of the teachings of fasting. 

There is the same idea in the use of words. We speak certain words after we become spiritual. Therefore it is said that speaking those words would make us spiritual. The effect is confounded with the cause again. In the case of words which the Spirit uses, we cease to undergo the sufferings which call more and more attention to the physical body. Fasters are very exercised over their physical feelings, and thus are as materially minded as gluttons. The same with people who beat their bodies, or freeze them, or otherwise abuse them. Their whole mind being given to their bodies, they are even more materially occupied than people who please their bodies with warm clothing and fresh and beautiful adornings, and have freedom from pain of all kinds. 

In the case of using words, we find there is nothing at all in great truths to call attention to material things. The words, as we speak them, are given forth as the utterance of the Spirit of Life within us. All point to the Spirit, and go forth from the Spirit. We see them, by their mysterious ways, attending to the externals. So we obey both the Bhagavad Gita and Jesus, and take no thought about what we eat, drink, or wear as to whether it is wise to wear more or less. 

Paul, very often, became much exercised in his mind over material things. At one moment it was meat, and at another it was the length of man’s hair and woman’s hair. These subjects are not in the mind of a spiritually minded man. He lets them alone. The man who is thinking righteously will be immaculately neat in his dress and about his person, but it will be the natural, unpremeditated movement of that immaculate Spirit he is thinking about. He will be very honorable in his dealings with men and women, but it will not be because of his thinking all the time about his duties to them. He will perform his duties because his mind is set on right principles. 

These are the lights of Moses the works of a man and the thoughts of a man. Jesus Christ called works signs, which is the same as lights. They tell where a man stands in spirituality. He said. Working to bring to pass anything is evidence of mind being on material things, for, when we are spiritual, we are not trying to bring great things to pass, yet they come to pass. 

The lofty reasonings of Science are the sunshine of the Spirit. They are the works of Truth. Truth is in us. Let it shine. Truth performs great tasks. Let it shine on miracles of health, cheering, enlightening the nations. 

Discussing symbols is getting mixed up in and identified with what we think and talk about. A young man was treating a lady against coughing so much. While he was treating her he told her a great many good reasons why her cough was not real, but all the time her cough troubled him. 

He was eager to help her. She kept on coughing for six weeks, to his dismay. One day he said the cough was nothing to him, she might cough all she liked. From that day she never coughed again. He had struck the eighth lesson: “Let forms remain, they are nothing to us.” 

Such an attitude toward the world of matter is the quickest way to get rid of its abnormal and ugly appearances. Those appearances feed and grow fat on our feeling badly about them, and talking and thinking about them as something that can hurt or disturb us. Notice that the cough was not cured until he gave up thinking it was his burden to cure her. He let the Spirit tell the Truth about it. Then both himself and the woman were free. 

Spirit never mourns over robberies nor over deaths, nor over pain and crying. They are nothing to Spirit. He who suddenly realizes any sort or kind of evil as nothing at all, has touched the second treatment of environing conditions, whether people or things are his burden. This feeling in its genuineness comes generally by denying the seeming and affirming the real. It opens the eyes to see purely from a spiritual standpoint. There is a great power of clear sight that comes by setting yourself free from thoughts about lustful passions and sensual appetites. Next you feel that evil is nothing whatever to you and even if you do not feel that it is nothing to you, the way of the Spirit is your way of meeting appearances. By this I mean that Spirit or Divine Intelligence has one way of looking at the universe and all things in it. That way is to know the Good only. There is nothing else to Intelligence. That which sees evil is no intelligence at all. If we should let intelligence speak, we must speak as intelligence does. 

If our patient, with any kind of malady, comes the second time to us, we have received statements of evil against somebody or something, as to their not seeming to be bad but hiding badness. This is a question of deception. If anybody or anything appears good it is our pleasure to believe it is genuine goodness. Do not allow yourself to believe that a man or woman, a child, or an object, hides evil but appears good, for, if you do, they will not come the second time saying in joyful affirmation, “I am entirely cured.” You are being deceived by thinking either things or people are deceptive. 

Whether it is affairs of business or in sickness, do not believe that there are lustful passions and sensual appetites lurking back of appearances, or that good appearances are hiding bad conditions. And do not believe that there is something wrong with a business even though it appears to be successful and flourishing. All that looks well is making a heroic fight to be God’s good way in your eyes. Believe in it. Speak kindly of it. 

The first strength of mind is the strength to endure. This is purity, which is long life. A good man may seem to be very frail, but he will live on and on where others, more robust looking, would falter, because goodness is a substance in man which endures. We get this by never accusing of unclean or sensual nature. 

The second strength is the strength of youth, the strength of fearlessness. It comes to you by always believing everything is good which seems good, and that everyone is good who seems good. Do not think tobacco hides a poison, do not think rum hides a sting. Do not think that anyone who is kind to you, or whom you love or respect or enjoy the society of, or who looks kind or good, is bad, no matter who tells you so, or what interior feeling you have that they are. Let your conscious thoughts and words be according to the Good. This will give you a young and fearless look in the face, and keep your vigor. Childhood and youth never believe in bad where good seems to be. 

A very childlike man in Massachusetts was told by some men, who were making fun of him but seemed kind and wise, to send warming pans to the torrid zone. He did so and made a fortune. 

His simple acceptance of their kindness was a success to him. He could not have been made to believe that such kindly seeming men were trying to deceive him. You will find that anyone who is full of certainty that what seems good is good, has a young look. Old age comes from not refusing to be deceived. Youth is kept by refusing to believe evil of people or things. Not believing evil takes out the sting of what seemed to be evil. 

The character which holds its own steadily is a successful character. A certain lawyer wanted to take a boy to train who would succeed him in his law practice. He took a way to test the tenacity of the assembled boys in holding a point until it was brought out satisfactorily. He told a thrilling story of a prize rabbit, which was in a bam which caught fire. Many and varied incidents took place at the fire. 

Amusing speeches were made, and every boy forgot the rabbit except one keen-eyed boy over in the corner. “What became of the rabbit?” he asked. Nothing diverted his mind from the main idea of the story. “You are my boy,” said the lawyer and dismissed the others. 

In healing your patients your mind must be kept to its first intentions. Whatever comes up to divert your thoughts, go back again and again to your purpose. If you have determined to set anything right by mental action, let nothing turn you from it. You can train your mind so that even while you chat and laugh about various matters, it is running along like a mighty river within you, singing great truths of Science. If you are by seeming accident of circumstances put where it seems impossible to carry out your honorable duties, and you will keep your mind on them, without saying much but not being diverted from your original intention, all will be fulfilled. 

Fretting is being diverted. Crying is being diverted. Where there’s a will there’s a way to cure your cases, and to straighten out your affairs, in the Science of Mind. Even your dreams tell you the state of your mind. Everything that happens tells you how you stand toward your premise. Being diverted from a purpose is being deceived. It is getting mixed with things and people, when you ought to be clear and light. 

A certain lady always cures her patients by looking steadfastly at a beautiful Madonna which hangs in her room. She talks to it as if it were the living patient, expressed in that buoyant young womanhood. Nothing turns her mind away. If it seems to do so, she talks very fast, as thinking quickly compels her to be attentive. 

Jonah kept his mind on the memory of how Jerusalem looked, while he was shut up in the whale. It acted as a rope to draw him out into freedom. Greatrakes, the Irishman, never let his popularity at houses of prominent people make him forget to attend to his healing. He finally was turned out of favor because he would cure animals as well as people by his healing powers and out of loving-kindness. In shutting him away they shut away their own health, but he did what he felt was his duty before God, regardless of the favor of the rich or great. This steadfastness is being true to Principle. 

Pericles would walk on only one street in Athens. He never dined out socially. He gave his time, his life, his attention to his study of right government. Therefore, he is handed down as the wise governor of Athens. Michelangelo said, “Art is a jealous God. It requires the whole and entire time.” He shut himself away from everybody while painting the Sistine Chapel. Newton was of no marvelous mind, and one of those who had been his early companions asked him how he succeeded so astonishingly. “By intending my mind,” he said. Upon entering the land of true thinking I call your attention to this high principle of action. 

Nothing will return satisfaction like the knowledge of God. Nothing widens and beautifies character like a trained mind. Nothing trains the mind like the daily reiteration of noble propositions of Good and Truth. Mind is not quickened and satisfied by the study of music or mathematics. It is apt to give way under the pressure of years. But the study of Spirit brightens the mind as the years roll on. 

Healing by pure reasoning is healing by an ever increasing energy. Healing by pure reasoning is far better than healing by keeping in mind the face of the Madonna. Is not that a material picture? Still, we are not to condemn any practice, you must remember. We are not to speak ill of anything which has brought ease from pain or weariness to mankind. It is good. It is good to show us its best side. 

In the Catholic Church it was said at one time that nothing is evil which brings forth good, but that led to their doing very cruel things, hoping to bring about good results. In Science there is no cruel pathway to some future good. There is no real advantage in surgery. Nobody ever gets wounded to help someone else. The angels of mercy and goodness fly ahead of the true Scientist and keep his pathway free from hurts. In Science there is no call to be brave, because there is nothing to fear. It is a sign of having stood true to Principle if we come out of the lion’s jaws safely. It is a sign that we have been steadily true if we never get into the lion’s jaws or sore afflictions. 

So, it is not a signal that we have been absolutely true to our Principle if our patient comes to us a second time without the perfect cure. It is a sign that we can cure him, however. For, if we had entirely yielded to being deceived, he could not have come. Keep on with your reasonable doctrine in his presence. If he tells of evil symptoms, like pain, or if he tells of what happened to him, like restlessness or unhappiness, do not think you need to believe it. Many a case has been cured by mentally saying “No” while people were talking of ills. At any rate, it is nothing from beginning to end. As it is to Spirit, so it should be to you. It is nothing. 

One practitioner who caught this idea of persistence to the true idea, being not diverted at all, takes only one case of healing at a time and practices for that one constantly until he heals him. You sometimes hear practitioners telling of having nothing to do. Ask them if they have one case on hand. “Oh yes,” they tell you. And I tell them that it is the call of the Spirit for them to attend to the duty they have in hand, and the next duty will be attracted as to a magnet. If you do the best you can think of with such material as you have at hand, you will be sowing a principle as great in bringing you out successfully as if you had repeated the multiplication table by putting five more to each statement. 

So with healing. Tell off each bead; it is a living blood drop. It will stir your pulses faster; it will throw out the fires of your soul. They will warm the cold blood of your patient. They will warm your affairs. They will make you a healer whose power will increase and increase. 

Each man, each woman, each event that comes to you, will be to you the signal that you are to think a certain way. There are cases that touch your mind like electric batteries, and suddenly you think with vehemence. Sometimes you think so rapidly that it seems more like feeling than thinking. Many people will say that they did not utter any words, and yet their cases were cured, because they felt such a strange hot rush pass through them. This rush of feeling came because the words they had been speaking were just ready to work, and they worked fast. This is a cheering and delightful principle of the right thoughts. They strike you in their strength at such unexpected times. If you devote most of your time to healing, you will most likely heal many cases suddenly. You must know it is because of the ideas you have been holding. Do you suppose that if some great good thought had not been started in you once, such fruits could have come to you? 

This Truth has ideas which are going forth and changing the mind of the entire race. It is the subtlest doctrine ever sprung upon the race. You are at home and maybe bruise your foot. You immediately say, “It is nothing; there is nothing to fear; there is no pain; I cannot be hurt. I am Spirit.” Maybe you just put out your hand with a motion that means “No”. The whole pain is gone immediately. Do you suppose that those words ever stop going? No, they are still traveling around in the air, and wherever they drop down upon a mind that thinks its foot or its head is hurt, involuntarily that mind repeats some part of your idea. 

The poem, “Beautiful Snow,” was thought of by two people simultaneously. As one thought it out, the other caught it flying. It is the same with inventions. There is no knowing which man really thought out any of the great inventions. Many times it is the second thinker who gets the name for the invention, or discovery, as America was named for Americus instead of Columbus. 

The main principles of this Truth are old and have long been in the world, but some years ago there were a great many invalids suddenly inspired with the idea of Christ’s everlasting healing presence, and thought the same treatments that we now use. They did not think them all; they felt them, and used such ones as came first to mind. For instance, about thirty-five years ago a lady was sitting by her friend, who was very ill. Suddenly she said, “You are healed by the power of God.” And it was true. The friend arose at once, entirely well. When asked what she said mentally, before she spoke aloud, she answered, “I thought,‘You are well now, not sick, only you don’t know you are well. You must know it.’.” You see, to her the acute illness was nothing. It was not there. If she had held on to that principle as the truth of every seemingly sick one, she would have made a great healer. 

Many people feel the idea of health so thoroughly that they cannot feel anything else, even if a man seems to be very ill. Their touch is full of their feeling of health. The touch of Jesus was full of healing. If you put your hand on your patients they are apt to think that it is your hand and not the idea that heals them. This new presentation of Truth is the information to the world that all healing is done by ideas and by nothing else. Therefore, ideas might just as well be given without symbols or carriages, as with them. The good religious man of old times kissed the cross and thought the cross would save him. He ate bread and thought it would make him spiritual. It was the meaning of the cross and the bread which helped him. They meant, “Nothing is evil where Christ is. All is good where Christ is, and He is here now.” If he held to these ideas and left out the cross and bread, it would have been all the same. 

You do not need symbols — you do not need carriages in order to carry your ideas to people. 

Ideas will go and light wherever you send them. If you call the name, James Brown, he will hear you, even if he is one hundred miles away and you only call mentally. Then if you tell him over and over exactly what you want him to know, he will catch the whole purport of your ideas. If your ideas are the Truth about his health and his life, he will brighten up and get well. Maybe he does not know you are speaking to him. He simply thinks as you think, and feels that he has gotten well without a doctor. He has caught what you said, as the inventor catches the idea of a machine. 

The whole race is feeling very differently about religion. They deny the existence of Satan. They deny that God made any devil. They deny that God put Bunyan in jail through wicked men, in order to make him write Pilgrim’s Progress. They deny that God puts us through great afflictions to see what stuff we are made of, to test our character. They deny that children are born with wicked or naughty tempers. They deny everything that the world used to believe. It has a very strange effect upon mankind. They get up strange inventions, because their minds get so clear after feeling those denials blowing in the air about them. In many new and unexpected places gold suddenly appears. It came because somebody said, “There is plenty of gold for everyone.” He did not think that the plenty was right in his own hands. He thought it was afar off somewhere. So, afar off, in a remote spot, the gold was born. 

What is wanted is a doctrine of NOW and HERE. You must take up this Truth in a stronger fashion than it has ever been taken up before, with the idea of Now and Here. 

If the man one thousand miles off from you gets well when you tell him his pains are gone, why should not the poor man over there in the place five hundred miles away from you get hold of some money to meet his obligations when you tell him that he has not lost his property, and that he is supplied bountifully. God is just as much the Provider of his children as He is the Healer. “The Lord will provide” is as much Scripture teaching as, “The Lord is thy Healer.” While healing is very well demonstrated now, supporting is not so well demonstrated, apparently. You will have to see that poverty is no reality. You must not get mixed up with the idea of poverty any more than with the idea of sickness. They all belong alike to the realms of nothingness. You must not be deceived by your seeming to be ignorant or unhappy. Ignorance and unhappiness are as much negation as sickness. Let us all together say to all the poverty of the world, “Poverty is unreality; there is no such thing as poverty; it is nothing to Spirit. Spirit owns all things.” Let us say to unhappiness, “There is no unhappiness in Spirit. All is joyous peace.” And let us say within our own minds, “Now! now!” 

All things evil in seeming, that come to us at first for healing, come as the formulations of our talks and thoughts about other people or ourselves being in the flesh senses. We say we do not, as Spirit, believe in sensual formulations. This is our first treatment. All things evil which come to us the second time, come as the formulations held there by our talk or thoughts, since we first saw them, about how hard things are to bear, and what poisons and stings and hurts the world has in it. We may have accused our friends of being deceitful or dissimulating or hypocritical. 

Maybe we have thought that we ourselves are not truthful. Whenever we have agreed with something as being an evil which was not evil, we may be sure something or someone will come the second time for help. 

We have a law of morning statements of Truth which we might call prayer. These treatments are all prayers. Our afternoon statements are prayers. The only difference between our prayers in the Truth and the old orthodox prayers is that we pray as if we had already received the blessings instead of begging for them. We say the man is healed. We do not beg for the man to be healed. 

In the Buddhist temples they have been striking on the sounding rims of great bells for generations, crying, “O let the good come.” There is such a pathetic intimation in this prayer that the good is not already here that it is no wonder the good has never appeared in the way they wish. They ought to name in certainty what good is already here. That will cause the good to appear, for indeed health is already in our midst, so we may say it is well. The good is in our affairs, and if we tell the truth about them, it will exhibit. We make nothing by our words; we only exhibit what is already made. Therefore Jesus said, “Pray as if ye had already received.” Of course we have already received, and why should we not be truthful and say so? Through truth the good is visible. Good waits for truth. Good will not show you good health, good strength, good provisions, good life, except through the glass of truth. Do not expect answers to begging prayers. 

Look over all the answered prayers you have ever heard of and see how suddenly the beseeching hearts stopped and said, “Thy will be done.” The will of God is for health, for life, for prosperity, for peace, for friends, and peace in the home. So, when they ceased begging they were one with the Divine will and it was so their will that their prayer that moment was the kind of which Jesus spoke. 

In Truth we begin at once to acknowledge the will of God about all things. We become aware that what is not well with us is not the will of God. Through the ages there has been an unprincipled laying of sickness, pain, deformity, and poverty to the will of God. We now cease in this Science from such mistakes. 

Persistent thought about the laws of physical force has given man an extraordinary energy of body and mind. He has not yet learned how to use the force intelligently. If he keeps on thinking of how to use the force he had stored himself with, he certainly must come to the knowledge that he needs to use the force. 

Persistent thought about healing general sickness, or, as it was said of Jesus, “He healed all manner of diseases,” will give you so much healing force you will draw multitudes of sick people to you to be healed. Your persistent thought that there is no sickness will put sickness away from people before you can see them. Persistent thought about prosperity, and how prosperity is brought to us, will make you a magnet for prosperity. Your prosperity will not be the highest prosperity, it will not be useful prosperity, unless you know how to teach others to be prosperous. The pressure of your great riches upon you will make you stiff and sickly unless you can let the spiritual Principle flow freely through yourself to others. There must be a draft or the fire will not burn. There must be a valve, or a piston and wheel will wait forever before pulling the cars. There must be a free giving of your Truth, or the world may wait another million years for the wretched poverty of its people to be gone. 

So you are to think your truth and not be diverted from speaking what you know. You are to write your truth and not be diverted from writing what you know. The beryl stone signifies the need of putting your truth into everyday tasks. While you are at work say some mighty word into the fabric of being, as a ventriloquist throws his voice into his wax figures. In your case you are only speaking aloud what the spirit of the fabric is now saying. It is the great I AM. 

Do you remember the promise of David that even the night shall be light about thee? And of Eliphaz in Job, that the stones of the field shall teach thee? This is because it is written in them what you ought to say. 

It is the province of the pen and paper to hold in eternal place certain things. You cannot afford to write very far off from what the Spirit is whispering through the white sheets of paper. And whatever subjects are touched by the writing you make shall have fastened into them native tongues of truth, and nobody can handle them without wondering how he came by such unexpected ideas. What you set your pen to tell is the beryl stone. Not until you have written the Absolute Truth have you gotten past the beryl stone. If you have written only a little you have not even begun to polish that stone. Maybe it is still covered within the earthiness of long years of thinking the first error concerning the I AM, and also the first error concerning environments. 

The more truly you speak of things, the more clearly stands out the meaning of each one. Its countenance gives you its light. Jesus, stooping down, wrote in the sand, and now everything has felt the handwriting He sent under the waters to be sung to the ends of the earth, for all things are to be ready to say “Amen” when we also shall write down what He said of them. Make your record in all things. Bring out the record in all things. Thus shall all things shine. The night shall be light. The moon is to have the light of the sun, and the sun is to be seven times brighter than it now is. 

All things are truly written full of such deep and wonderful messages that we should not be deceived by what is said against them. The air is filled, packed solid, with everlasting record of what we ought to have demonstrated. This is the unchangeable handwriting of God. Here is the science of music waiting in the silence for someone to express it. Ages have gone by and still this silent music is waiting for someone to read it. Mankind has never gotten beyond Handel, Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, in music. Why not, when there is music beyond their highest and noblest? 

Here is the science of mathematics packed into the airs, with computations beyond Euclid, Le Gendre and D’Alembert. Why does no one read the marvelous handwriting on the solid air walls, and teach us the science of numbers aright? Here is the science of happiness and bliss. Its truth is written in beautiful letters, clear and bright, and legible like the angles and facets of the beryl stone of Revelation. Why does no one read off its easy directions, so that “There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” 

Right here is our truth whispering in our ears. That is our eighth lesson. It is so audible to our ears, its voice is so distinct. Having ears to hear, why do we not hear? Its writing is so plain, so legible. Having eyes to see, why do we not see? 

The coming of any patient a second time, the appearance of trouble the second time, shows that we have to put down our heads and let the Spirit speak over us: 

“I have not been deceived into seeing evil in anyone or anything. 

I see good in all things and in all people, always, without delusions. 

I never accuse anyone or anything of seeming imperfection in any way. 

I never accuse myself of seeming imperfection, or of hiding imperfections. 

All is the light of Truth in Jesus Christ.” 

This is standing aside in the mortal for Spirit to speak. You ought to wait a moment and see what treatment comes to you strongest. If you have devoted yourself to letting the Spirit speak of never accusing of deception, you will suddenly find a treatment spring into mind. You will feel very bold about giving it, for taking off the veil of hypocrisy is very emboldening. 

Afternoon thoughts should be all about your environment. Morning thoughts should be about your own nature. “In the morning sow thy seed, and at even withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good,” said the preacher in Ecclesiastes. 

Now if you call to mind the name of the friend you have treated, you may follow with me along the line of a second treatment. We will not stop to think whether we have treated him or her before or not. We know one treatment is enough for one day. We know that this is the second treatment which Scripture teaches, and we give it. Say to him or her exactly what I am saying to the one I have seemed to be deceived into believing to be a diseased person: 

I am not deceived into believing in you as diseased. You have not inherited the formulations of deception. You have inherited Truth only. 

You have not been deceived by a race mind formulating deceptions around you. 

You have not been deceived by people around you formulating disease by the falsity of their beliefs. 

You have not formulated self-deceptions. You have not formulated deception between yourself and me. 

I do not believe in the formulations of deception either by mesmerism, magnetism, psychology, auto-suggestion, or hypocrisy. I believe only in the clean handwriting of God on every part of your mind, and standing forth from every part of your body. 

You are now showing forth perfection through every manifestation of your being. You have heard the Truth of God. You express the Truth of God. I see through you, and in you, and by you, perfect health throughout. You are every whit whole. 

You are therefore ready now to acknowledge that your health is perfect. You acknowledge it to all around you, to yourself, and to me, now. 

In the name of Jesus Christ I pronounce you healed now and forever, Amen. 

You may give this same treatment before sleeping tonight. Write it out as well as you can remember it. Read it aloud. It is not what the flesh saith, but the everlasting voice of the Spirit. 

These treatments react upon ourselves, and do us as much good as they do our patients. 

Around us and before us, in the plain sight of our mind, our spirit, and our soul, is our perfect power, ready to rise to accomplish the works of God. 

Join with me now in saying: 

The words that I speak unto you, 

I speak not of myself, 

but the Father that dwelleth in me, Fie doeth the Works. 

God works through me to will and to do that which ought to be done by me. 

Amen.