Scientific Christian Mental Practice

11. The Way of Wisdom

Confucius, the Chinese sage, who lived 550 B.C., said, “A man filled with truth hath power over heaven and earth, gods and devils. Nothing in the universe can injure him. Water and fire cannot cause him to fear.” Nothing can harm one who actually believes himself safe, though the one who tells him he is safe does not believe it. Then how much more will he be kept safe who, himself holding the Truth, believes what is true, despite lack of faith about him. This is what is meant; possessing life, and thereby calling to one’s self the life of heaven and earth. 

The eleventh lesson has for its subject one of those experiences of mind where, having taken the basis, or premise, that a man is perfectly well because he is a spiritual being, not subject to material conditions, you come to an experience where it seems as if your premise, which has pleased you so much and had so much reasonableness in its appeal, is, after all, much feebler than the premise or mental position of the man who claims to be sick. 

You will notice that the last lesson showed the importance of holding your highest thoughts while the man’s or woman’s condition gives the appearance of holding on to evil. It is no kind of position to take, in mind, that sickness is more powerful than health. The strongest position you can take is on the side of the happy and peaceful state, as the real state. Even if a man tells you he is well when his liver is being destroyed (so his doctors say) and you cheerfully and innocently believe him, he will be recovered from his malady and his life prolonged (to use old terms) awhile, because of your simple faith. 

In the Andover Review for June, 1889, you may read of an aged man who went through the most extraordinary experiences, at the command of people he thought were superior beings. His faith was so simple that it held his life unhurt, springing from pinnacles, or diving under seas. 

Confidence, or faith, is a life principle. Always after taking a premise there comes a time when it seems as if it would not work after all. Paul said: “Stand, and having done all, stand.” He also said that God is able to make a man stand firm to his highest premise, after he has once taken it. 

You have not forgotten the fourth axiom, that mind will demonstrate as much Truth as it has courage to stand by its affirmations. The tenth lesson matches the fourth — only the tenth relates to the environment. Its axiom is like the fourth, viz., the world will persist in exhibiting before you what you persist in affirming the world is. All dissolving, ungluing conditions come from your giving up your old affirmations. 

If now you have become shaken up, and fall back to your old thoughts that scientific statements sound better than they demonstrate, your new affirmations must come from your warm feelings, or the world will set itself to the old tune again. Paul said that God is able to make us stand. He means that those who have recognized that within themselves is God, must live the life which that knowledge kindles. We cannot possibly go back to affirmations of evil, when we know that by affirmations our premise of life is made just as we choose. 

The Japanese have a teaching that the divinity within your own soul may set aside the question of God, and by faith in itself work all the miracles ever thought of. 

If you have heard this tenth lesson, of the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus that maketh free from the law of sin and death, you will certainly know what to think and to do in a time of special excitement, or in the time when you would persist in showing some ugly condition over and over. You persist as hard as it does, only you persist in ignoring it, and living on your side of the question. To you there is only one side of the question. Persistence is a wonderful manager. Daniel ignored Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity three and one-half years before it fell into nothingness. 

The call in Science is for you to take the position that your life, health, strength, support, defense, are from God. As God cannot fail, so these cannot fail. Cannot you persist in believing in your side of the question a few years? There is no need of its taking a few years to bring out your ideas, but if you have to stand by a premise, that Elisha and Daniel and Jesus and Kurozuma demonstrated, you can do it. Think that being true to your idea will be as wealth straight from the Spirit of God, so that you can feed all the seemingly poor people in the world; health straight from the Spirit of God, so that you can heal all the sickness in the world; wisdom straight from the Spirit of God, so that you can impart wisdom to all the seemingly dark minds in the world. You know by this time that this is only a mode of expressing that by your wisdom you see wisdom; by your health you see health; by your provisions you see bounty everywhere. 

The eleventh lesson has for its axiom: Judgment is as great and competent as will and meekness can agree. This axiom, like every other one, is universally true. For instance, you have a strong will. Naturally you feel like having everything go your own way. This is well, if you have meekness of character enough to yield your point instantly when you see you are wrong. Such a combination will make your judgment quick and accurate. In the first place, your mind will unconsciously be trying all the time to protect your strong will, so that it won’t have to be yielding to another man’s quicker judgment of the case than yours. Secondly, you will be consciously directing your will along the right so far as you can see it. We may always count upon it that we have exercised our will to carry out our notions, wrong or right, if we come to a particular point where we do not quickly know what to do. Or, we may have let ourselves yield to doing something we did not have a will to do, when our will was set right and the temptation was set wrong. We call this unbalanced condition of mind, foolishness or ignorance. Nothing discourages a man like seeing what bad judgment he has used. Bad judgment always comes from turning to the way our best judgment disapproves, or, comes from carrying out our own will, regardless of everything, forgetting and ignoring judgment, or calling our vigorous will judgment. 

Science teaches that you may take a base in your mind that you have consumption, and regardless of God’s good presence of health, you may stick to it until consumption shows up and ends in its own habitual way. Or, you may take a base that you are sound and well, and hold out on that line until your health is a miracle. 

Some people can see this law better by calling it a premise which people take in mind. For instance, you take the premise that you already show signs of breaking down in your health. Every other thought you have will bow down to this one. When you think you will work hard, your premise shouts out, “No, you must look out, you are breaking down.” So, you knuckle under to a premise you yourself made up. What made you take that premise in the first place? “Oh,” you answer, “because I felt my years.” Who said you ought to feel your years? Mortal man or God man? How do you know but that these feelings you had were the quickening renewals of a spiritual influx of new strength? Was it necessary for you to take your premise with mortal man instead of God man? The siding with the low and dying side, instead of the high and living side, was not meekness, it was simply foolish yielding against your will, which blunts good judgment. I assure you that you can make your judgment perfect by living up to the highest spiritual premise where your natural will leads you. 

You can give birth to the divinest decision by compelling your meekness to unite with your will, as to your health, as to your strength, as to your prosperity. 

Things look badly against your affairs do they? Do you will them to be bad? No, a thousand times no. Your will is for good, but your poor will cannot carry the day alone. It has to be married to meekness. Meekness means yielding. This word “yielding” has gotten a good many Christians into misery. It has seemed to them to mean yielding to the evil and hard side of the appearance, when all the time it meant yielding to the spiritual doctrine, although appearances argued louder than spiritual realities. 

A young man who had looked into the intentions of God with respect to man found he had been thinking that he must yield to his poverty as sent of God. He saw his mistake. God does not send poverty. Whoever has said that the bountiful God is a giver of poverty has lied. He has been badly tempted, and has foolishly yielded to the temptation to judge against his will on the material side, as much as any person who ever dropped into lying or stealing. 

All weakness of the body comes from yielding to appearances, when the man or woman ought to have yielded to spiritual doctrine. Therefore, when a man or woman asks you for help from weakness, you may know the mainspring to touch is foolishness and ignorance, and these being unreality, nothingness, shadow, you can easily say, “Your will never fell through temptation.” The doctrine of the fall of man came from believing in the reality of temptation, on the material side. 

When the will is set to carry a point, whether the Scriptural doctrine says one way or another, you will have more crosses than you can count, for it is materiality which you formulate yourself. You compelled what you know to be nothing, to seem real. This is foolishness. It is said to be harder to get rid of than ignorance. You can see this by the way an idiot and an ignorant child act. With the latter you have pleasure in the speed with which he responds to your instructions, and with the other your heart fails, when you have labored as long for no response, apparently. Both these children are the full bloom of the weed which you may call belief in foolishness and ignorance, or perverted will. It has both names in the Bible. 

Solomon said: “The foolishness of man perverteth his way.” Way is a word often used for will. When one does not respond to four treatments, he must be treated a fifth time. If he comes a fifth time, what makes him come, if that time does not find him joyously acknowledging his health? He comes because you have not touched his judgment. You have not struck the chord of his will. Why not? Because your own judgment has a veil before it. What veil is before your own judgment? I will tell you. It is your persistent habit of detecting ignorance and stupidity in people, and wailing about your own stupidity and ignorance. If you have seen that you did not know something, you have called yourself ignorant. If you have seen that somebody else did not know what you thought they ought to, or failed to be quick enough to please you, it was on your tongue, or in your mind, that they were either foolish or ignorant. It is the fall of man. It is all the fall there is. 

It is yielding to appearances. Spiritually, you have the power of discernment so strong that a child, man, or woman can tell you anything you ask instantly. Judging that they cannot, and judging that you yourself cannot, keeps a veil before your mind. And you can tell when it is thickest, because your problem comes up again and again, and your patients come the fifth time, or they appear very weak and discouraged. 

Many a practitioner has felt very discouraged when her patient has talked hard on the dark and feeble side. But it was only the final throw of the mind of old belief to hold its own. It is the last grasp of the patient’s belief in sickness, when he complains and whines in a discouraged manner; but it is the very best sign to you that his belief in evil is on its last legs. 

How does your will want the case to talk? Of course it wants him or her to talk buoyantly and cheerfully. So marry your will to the spiritual facts of the case. Rouse your judgment. This is the man of you. Notice the eleventh text. “Let us make man and let him have dominion.” Then put it with this one: “The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son.” The Son is man, whom the Divine will and Divine meekness bring out as Jesus Christ. His will. He said, was omnipotent God. His meekness, He said, was to God. There is the almighty judgment of Jesus Christ in you. 

If your environments come the fifth time troubling you, let the powerful judgment of Jesus Christ speak of the Spirit of the universe, and take down the evil that hides your prosperity. You can say, “I do not accuse the world or myself of foolishness or ignorance; therefore, I see clearly the prosperity of my new life now. “If your patient comes the fifth time, tell him the same principle. 

If a person seems very weak or feeble, say these words mentally, before you attempt to treat him. 

I know that if you take every Friday afternoon to insist upon the Jesus Christ judgment within you as knowing mankind to be the expression of the wisdom of God and therefore intelligent and wise at all times, and if you positively take the premise that you do not accuse the world, or yourself, of foolishness or ignorance, nobody will ever come the fifth time uncured, and your affairs will never seem to wilt or hang heavy. Your own mind must be this man having dominion. Your own judgment must reign supreme. It must have no evil before it. 

Do not let another man’s discouragement pervert your judgment. Touch the chord of his will. Does he not will to be free, wise, and strong? If you mentally unload him of all the yielding to appearances he has ever done, he will spring up and respond to that touch of your judgment. 

All discouragement, all feebleness, all fainting, halting, stopping, are signs to you to come forth with the fifth treatment. Come boldly forth. The powers of omnipotence are on your side. 

John called the character which man exhibits after making the fifth treatment of his environment, the Jacinth stone of his character. Mind is composed of twelve powers. When mind exercises these twelve powers it has twelve characteristics, which shine like polished jewels. They make a perfect foundation for an absolute demonstration of Jesus Christ Spirit. The first time you go the rounds of these twelve powers, you may not show much difference in character. The second time, the third time, the millionth time around the statements, and how shining your life and mind become. 

It is written that “Our daughters shall be like precious stones fitly polished.” “Daughters” are meek statements of the spiritual side of our lives, when the material side tells a different story. 

The first six statements are the beautiful powers of your mind as to your own looks, your own judgment. The last six relate to your surroundings. So when I say fifth treatment, I mean the eleventh lesson, or point of doctrine. Some call it the eleventh perfect premise. 

The perfect jacinth is the ruby. The son of man is ruddy — is red with ruddy health, robust strength. His judgment is warming, kindling, reviving, like the wine fires of the ruby. 

When he speaks he helps you. The wine of prosperity is handed to you in the good news from your business. “Drink ye all of it,” said Jesus. “It is my blood of the new testament.” If you will bear in mind that the Spirit of Jesus Christ was health, life, prosperity, red with the reviving as the wines he gave at the wedding feast, you will understand the results of taking eleven right statements. You will have the judgment of the transcendent being that you are. You will be awakened. If I say to you that this is the only manner of thinking which has any practical effect in the life, on the triumphant and joyous side, you will have only the truth from me. It is in justice to this doctrine that I acknowledge it is the only way you can think that will be every day safety for you. 

There are twelve conditions of human life which may be met by twelve truths. These twelve conditions being met by Truth, you may be sure that your life will be free, glad and powerful. 

The Brahmins had a teaching which read: “So dwell on the highest thoughts; this is the life of the awakened.” 

There is one thing which good judgment awakens, that has been brought out by some Scripture writers, and that is beauty. The perfect in judgment are perfect in beauty. The beauty of Jesus Christ is because of His judgment. The ruby is the beauty stone. The polish of meekness — that is the angel of beauty, who measures the City. He is bound to no traditions. What others believe he must be in order to be beautiful, he needs not. That which his own judgment decrees is his own charm. 

So, no matter what others believe about the portent of your dream of the night, you must judge that it means something good for your surroundings — something others might call evil. 

Your judgment yielding to the good says some blessed good is coming to you. If you see symbols, speak of their good for your own surroundings. They all come for your benefit. They tell you that your environments are good. Then your ideas will be recognized as good by others sooner or later. 

There is one universal Mind which is the perfect intelligence from whence all ages of men draw their stock of intelligence. Man may draw all this intelligence for his own use and not decrease it at all, as he might know all mathematics, and his neighbor might know all, and all the town might know all of mathematics, and not rob each other, nor exhaust mathematics. The more you speak according to this judgment, the more judgment your neighbors will have. They may not see at first that you are wise with the Mind Divine, from which you are drinking each day by taking these twelve lessons home to yourself, but after a time they will acknowledge the excellency of your judgment. Indeed you yourself may not always see why you say and do certain things, but afterwards you will see that it was your wisest course. 

The refusal to call any man, woman, or child ignorant or foolish will uncover your dormant chord. You will leave the strings of your soul exposed for the winds of God to blow over, and bring out the tones of music, the radiant beauty, given unto your judgment from the foundations of the universe. 

When you lay your judgment to the line, and your righteousness to the plummet of the highest truths you have heard, then, says the prophet, your old covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with hell will not stand. You give up your old ideas in meekness, you talk aloud your new ideas, after you have thought them, and after you have written them. They are the outgrowth of solid soil. 

Sometimes you will be astonished to hear people speaking rapidly and lightly of the lofty Truth that you could not speak until after it had been sown into your deep soil of profound meditation. Sometimes you yourself may speak this way. The fruitage of lightly handling these mighty principles is light. By the deep thought of the mind the word of the lips is solid judgment in ripe fruitage. 

Isaiah told the City, which typifies us, that when they had gotten themselves into captivity through careless speaking of their Science, they would be glad to have money to redeem themselves with. But they should not be redeemed with money, they should be redeemed by their fidelity to their religion, entirely independent of money. 

So, once in a while, you may find that nothing you do yourself causes your patient’s cure. So far as you see, he gets his cure by reason of somebody else’s treatments, after you have practiced with him. Or, you may find that money is not given to you to get out of debt with, yet somehow, by one deal or another, there are no debts there. This is really your will married to a kind of weak yielding to scientific statements. You did not make them your deep life, and therefore solid assistance. 

The whole of demonstration is the fruitage of your own judgment: “Ye have sold yourselves for a thing of naught, and ye shall be redeemed without money,” is the voice to a half-hearted, insincere, timid, unprofound acceptance of Science. Even writing the Science glibly brings out the redemption, without substantial, solid aid coming. Even thinking the Science lightly does the same. Living it comes from thinking it deeply, writing honestly, speaking sacredly. When the outward life accords, then is judgment risen in her beauty. Then is healing instantaneous. Then, if you ask for help, it comes exactly as your perfect judgment would indicate. The point is to get your perfect judgment forward. It comes forward by handling this eleventh lesson. It is signaled to be handled every time the fifth treatment is necessary. Judgment, when it is good, touches the loftiest ideas and the plainest themes with equal respect. One often finds that his demonstration waits for him to give up his prejudices with respect to what is high or low. All must be alike to him, when they are names and descriptions of Spirit. 

One woman, whose grief was that she was so ugly to look upon and could not make herself highly thought of, insisted that her affirmation must be a high one. So she took, “I am absolute Love.” A friend, to whom there was no high or low name of Deity as used by Jesus Christ, told her to use the interpretation of her own name for a constant affirmation. It was a meek one, “I am the King’s daughter.” It was the right one to soften and refine her face, and win her way for her. But it sounded so low to her that she refused it. Yet it was the only treatment of meekness belonging to her, as the one of Jesus, “I am meek and lowly of heart,” belonged to Him. 

Perfect judgment touches the life chords of each situation with the right word. Lofty ambitions are evidences of belief in high and low places. In reality there is neither high nor low in Christ Jesus. To the Spirit, all that is, is Good. That which is evil is not, never was, and never will be. 

So they who believe in high or low will have to take some statement which to them seems low, as that lady will have to speak her simple one in order to carry her point. 

Scientific statements, held along in their order, will bring you to where you will see, no matter how unsuccessful you may appear, that you are not unsuccessful, because Spirit is not unsuccessful. You have fairly to seem to be unsuccessful, practically, before you can see that it is so. The instant your judgment is accurate with respect to success and non-success, all things, will work out to your pleasure, even in the old way of looking at them. The mind must agree with the Spirit; then comes perfect judgment. This is man. Judgment hath dominion. The keys of heaven and earth are given unto perfect judgment. 

The law and the Gospel must be one. In the Gospel there is no material remedy for disease. In the law. Truth is the healer. In the Gospel there is no disease, and not even Truth heals disease. In the law disease seems very real, and the law that Truth is its remedy seems so rigorous that it is accounted a terrible thing to take a pill for neuralgia. Whoever thinks anything is terrible must certainly believe in it greatly. It must have great power in his eyes. He may have to take a pill to see how unreal it is, how simple, how far from terrible. The law is against hating anything. Even stealing must not be hated. Why not? Because there is no stealing. We do not need to hate what does not exist. What is stealing? 

It is delusion of imagination. Is not God the only living being? Can God steal? This is a very awakening activity of mind. Thinking this way will bring forth wise judgment. Then this judgment will balance all things. Thieves, as they are called, will find there is a way of support preferable to stealing. 

When judgment is come forth, you will find you are not bound to methods of curing the sick, not bound to the modes of eating and drinking, sleeping and dressing. As judgment ripens with yielding the will to spiritual ideas, over and over, you will see great events and great circumstances yielding to very simple actions on your part. One man felt suddenly, after long practice of thinking spiritual ways, that he could as easily make gold as cure bones, but a voice seemed to say to him: “You would act foolishly with gold if you had it.” He yielded the point at once. It looked meek and good on his part to yield to a warning voice, but no voice from the Spirit ever accuses a mind of foolishness or ignorance. Here is where he should have used the eleventh lesson, or the fifth treatment of environments. Here was one of his self-accusations formulated right close to him, and audible as a human voice. It had bloomed in order to be refused for the sake of Spirit. 

Judgment comes of compelling yourself to believe just as much as you hope for. If you hope to cure everybody that comes to you, you are able to believe all that you hope. If you only hope that you can cure them, you will be disappointed. Hope needs faith. If you cannot believe you can cure all, take a night or day for the statement of what you believe in Truth. Covenant with the Spirit for the Spirit to do all your cures for you. The government is on the shoulders of perfect judgment we are told. Therefore, let perfect judgment be born in you. The strong man says “I can!”. The strong man says “I will!” The wise man says “I know!” The perfect man says, “I know what to do, and I am able to do it, therefore I will do it.” 

The state of mind that calls for you to state what you can and will do, is when you have steadily ignored the harsh and hard side of life, as it has been showing itself to you. When things looked dark and hard, you did not allow your mind to think about them at all. You thought only of God, the Spirit. You kept hold of the highest statement you had. You ignored the appearance. Then, after you had won the battle, or seemed plainly to have things coming out right, you had a feeling of blankness. You felt devoid of power, devoid of ideas. This is the blankness of a clear paper, upon which you may write what you like. Declare, that as the Mind of Jesus Christ, you do not believe in foolishness or ignorance. Declare, that as the Mind of Jesus Christ your judgment is perfect judgment. Declare, “I know all things. I can do all things.” 

The blankness is like a smooth mass of protoplasm, out of which some idea will arise, which will govern all other ideas. Nothing can stand before that one idea which comes up when you feel blank, absent-minded, vague. If you can make it strongly enough felt that your main idea is on the side of Jesus Christ in you, then you will do the work of Jesus Christ in wisdom and strength. 

There is no more potent opportunity for the use of judgment than this one. Have you not had something of this feeling lately? Let us take the fifth treatment together, to rouse your judgment away from the clutches of the old temptation to believe in foolishness and ignorance as belonging to us. Let us, as Mind, now state the eleventh premise: 

“I never accuse the world, or myself, of foolishness or ignorance. I am the judgment of God. I know all things and do all things well.” 

This idea is a living amoeba, that arises from the protoplasm of mind, that lies still as the sea waiting for the winds to blow over it, like the waters which the angels troubled or stirred. So the mind is still, until the angel of Truth stirs it. 

Right near at our hand is the Heavenly City. While we have called it distant, could we expect it to be near? Right here, visible to us, is the Heavenly Land. Could we expect it to show us its beauties if we talked of its being invisible? Right now you are wise and immortal, free, strong, and at peace. Can you ex- pea to feel your own true nature and delight in your estate, if you keep talking and thinking of how little you know, how mortal flesh and blood are, and how unhappy you are? 

Buddha taught that Self is the Lord over self. If you and I do not speak from the spiritual Self of us, it will not act. We are the arbiters of our own destiny. The Spirit is truthful and takes us at our word. If we say, “I am foolish and ignorant,” it lets us be what we say we are. Having endowed us with wisdom to know that we are the sons of God, with free will, does it suppose we could be telling we are something we do not want to be? The Spirit supposes nothing. It believes all things. Spirit brings its fountains of power to all words of “I am,” and “I will.” 

Buddha says, “A fool does not know when he commits evil deeds.” Then there are no fools, for there is a Spirit in all men which pushes them away from all evil. The wise man breathes his breaths as airs of omnipotence. He drinks his waters as cups of strength. He eats his food as the Spirit renewing itself. He knows all actions as spiritual, and so knows no decay, no failure, no death. The wise know no evil. They know there is none. They know no sickness. They know there is none. They set their faces like flint to know the ways of God. 

This is the true foolishness, namely: determination to know nothing among us save Jesus Christ. This is the true ignorance: ignorance of evil, through knowing it is not reality. 

The fourth strength of mind is the strength of inspiration. It enables one to see what ought to be done. It gives one wisdom to know how everything ought to be done. It gives him quick skill to do it. There is the fire of wisdom and beauty in the sunshine of inspiration. John calls it the strength of the eagle, which is always a symbol of inspiration. We have no treatment which equals the denial of accusations of foolishness and ignorance for causing the inspiration of wisdom. Buddha taught that all deeds wrought out by mind, and carried into the life as far as we can exercise our thoughts, bring happiness. “All forms are unreal. “He said, “He who knows this becomes passive in pain; this is the way to purity. “He advises the repetition of prayers. Repeat them often. 

When you take your life in your hand, to speak of your own spiritual nature as it was at the time of your supposed birth in the flesh, do not stop short of six day’s repetition of your treatments. Deny that there are any causes, or results of causes, in you or around you, that could lead to disease, poverty or failure. Take yourself for each year. If you set out upon the journey of treating a case, even if that one is cured of his malady the first day, do not let his high welfare escape your faithful mind for six days. This is a training process. Each day send your high blessing. 

The ancient Bible taught that it is good to tame the mind, which is difficult to hold in and very flighty, rushing whither it listeth, but once tamed it will bring you great happiness. 

One who had dropped all thoughts of evil from his mind, for a certain period of time, found out that if we are given to detracting from the merits of our companions, easily picking flaws in them, we get weaker and weaker, and cannot possibly destroy weakness in others. He found that there is no path to peace through outward acts. We must truly not see the faults of our neighbors as reality. We must not see ignorance or foolishness hiding the intelligence and freedom of our neighbors. This is called taming the mind. 

We cannot crush out criticism. It will not be crushed. We can deny it, and this erases it from our mind. Being free from criticism, the mind runs only to recognition of Good. It is then perfectly tamed. The unity of mind is a great fact to recognize. There is but one Good Mind. All the good and the wise render this same verdict as to what is just and right, when their accusation is laid aside. 

Accusations are prejudices against people, which keep the highly efficient judgment from speaking. They do not emanate from the One Mind. Prejudice against a religion will act against your business judgment just as possibly as your health. Prejudice against people will very likely hit your business affairs. It does not always strike at your bodily health the first thing. The feeling we have against alcohol, tobacco, opium, is a prejudice against an imaginary substance. That prejudice held on to is foolishness. That prejudice taken hold of, as a principle, because appearances teach us to fight the poor little ideas, is simply ignorance. So on the same plane every prejudice is found to be a tacit accusation of others or ourselves as to foolishness and ignorance. We could not possibly hold out intolerance to anything if we were not accusers of that which brings about feebleness and failure. 

Therefore, we will take our cases and meekly say now:

I have never, as the judgment of Jesus Christ, accused the world, or myself, of being foolish or ignorant. 

Now we will speak to the case by name: 

You are not the result of inheriting foolishness and ignorance. You inherit the wisdom of God, your Father. 

You are not surrounded by a foolish and ignorant race. You are surrounded by the wisdom of God. 

Your daily associations do not burden and darken you by the weight of their foolishness, or the darkness of their ignorance. All is wisdom, from which you draw wisdom every moment. 

You do not weigh down your own mind with wilfulness in thinking evil. You know no weakness or failure of any part of your being. You are the spiritual light that cannot fail. 

I do not persist in thinking of you as faltering or feeble in any part of your being. I see you as strength, freedom, light. 

Your strength is Good, and cannot be threatened with weakness, or yield to weakness, in any part of your being. 

Your life is Good. It cannot be threatened with death in any part, nor fear death, nor yield to death. 

Your health is of the Spirit and cannot be threatened with disease and sickness, nor fear disease or sickness, nor yield to disease or sickness in any part of your being. 

You are ready to acknowledge to all around you, to yourself, and to me, that you are every whit whole. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I pronounce you healed, now and forever. Amen. 

Repeat this treatment before you sleep. If any other words come to you while you are treating the case, be sure to use them, for every new way of thinking that springs up out of the good soil of the old way, is the new plant which the Heavenly Father hath watered. For this reason every teacher ought to be glad to hear of the success of his student each in his own way, though all agreeing with the foundation Principle.