The Power of Resistance

THERE has never been a time in history when mankind have been so assiduously exploited from a purely material or physical standpoint as to-day. Under the guise of seeking to maintain material health, the belief in disease is propagated, and the man who falls in line finds himself the helpless victim of constantly threatening disaster from which he must seek some escape. In consequence, much is said and more implied in regard to physical fitness or the power of resisting this sea of troubles which belief of life in matter engenders. The only scientific process lies in turning thought away from the erroneous drift of material suggestion to unerring immortal Principle, the sustaining cause and creator of all that is. This is the haven opened by Christian Science, the door through which a man finds his power of resistance equal to every emergency. The Christian Scientist finds that the Christ-teaching turns absolutely from matter to Principle to define man; and so he learns that the power that holds man intact, perfect, and whole is Spirit, the creator. He also arrives at the fact that there is one creator and one creation, and all that is true is immortal and perfect. Life, therefore, is not in creation. Life is God, the Principle of man, and so it follows that creation is not material but spiritual. Man is the expression of Truth; he cannot, then, deviate from the exact and pure, and he is infinitely sustained in expressing Mind.

Since man has no quality underived from God, and God is infinite good, every disease is a deviation from Principle. Thus defined, disease is reduced to a nonentity, for effect cannot deviate from its cause. Health is the expression of Principle and therefore of that which always is. It is never separated from true consciousness and can never lapse. An erroneous assumption is never actual and can never be fashioned into a fact, but is always purely suppositional. Only the right is real, and only the true finds its representation in fact. The student of geometry learns that every triangle contains 180 degrees in the sum of its angles, no matter what variation the triangle may assume in shape or size. Through erroneous reasoning, it might be supposed possible to form a triangle with less or more degrees. This belief, however, could have no actual representation or outline, for every possible triangle constructed would refute the supposition and be one with the truth, and any other outline would be nothing to the point. While this is easily seen to be true in respect to the triangle, it exemplifies all-inclusively and as unerringly the difference between the real and the unreal, good and evil, right down the line; the one is, the other is not.

The conclusion, therefore, is evident that disease, based as it is on the assumption of something specifically wrong, cannot be outlined, nor can it operate in experience. The belief in disease is purely hypothetical, and never could and never does interrupt the continuity of what is true. Disease, like every other mistake in reasoning, having no origin in fact, can claim no symptoms or development. It must be an isolated, disconnected suggestion that in no way includes a next step, but reaches it in belief through ignorant and fearful association of thoughts. Disease, since it is avowedly a deviation from normal, or the standard of Principle, is a phenomenon of animal magnetism. Mrs. Eddy clearly defines this term when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 102), "Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in sense it is an unreal concept of the so-called mortal mind." No man, surely, is under a necessity to study or contemplate disease in order to avoid it. He must see it only for what it is, and let his obedience to Principle be, "Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." Man's power to resist evil lies in his absolute spiritual derivation, which precludes evil.