Article December 11, 1902 Issue

Mystery and Manifestations

Edward C. Butler

Mexican Herald

THE only things in this world that are mysterious are the things we do not understand. The telephone is a mystery to a child, and to many a man for that matter, because they do not understand the brainless thing that talks. Nature's "open book" is a mystery to millions, but how simple it is to the botanist. Yet that botanist can never make a flower like God's flower. Back of all this so-called mystery is God, divine Principle, who governs all, and the flower expresses God's unseen beauty, though faintly. On page 512 of Science and Health, we read: "From the infinite elements of the one Mind [God] emanate all forms, colors, and qualities: and these are mental, both primarily and secondarily. Their spiritual nature is discerned only through the spiritual senses. Mortal mind inverts the true likeness, and confers animal names and natures upon its own misconceptions." Is this mysterious and incomprehensible? If so, it is because we do not understand it. What is true in one direction is true in all. The God who guides and governs the universe, and whom we but faintly see reflected in the most beautiful things about us, is the same God who governs and guides man. He is reflected in man, and all men, to a greater or less extent, manifest such reflection. God reflected in man is never a sick or sinful reflection. "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him, where sinning mortal man appears in sense. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick" (Science and Health, p. 476). If Jesus were on earth to-day he would heal the sick and the sinful just as he did in Palestine, without medicines and wholly by the realization of Truth. His followers, Since his time, have healed in the same way. Christian Scientists effect all their cures in the name of Christ, and according to the method inculcated by Jesus Christ. As Christian Scientists, we cannot be too positive in our rejection of medicine and all material remedies, and in placing our sole reliance upon our Father—God.

Again, in Science and Health we read, "It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus also would have recommended and employed them in his healing" (p. 143). "Jesus never spoke of disease as dangerous or difficult to treat" (p. 147). "Mind as far outweighs drugs in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin" (p. 148). Is this mysterious and incomprehensible? If so, it is because we do not understand it. But thousands of Christian Science practitioners do understand it, and in proportion to their understanding is their ability to heal the sick and raise the dying to life.... Some day these practitioners will be enabled to realize the Truth so absolutely and unerringly that their practice will be uniformly successful.

They are now subject to the criticisms and condemnation that fell one hundred years ago on Samuel Hahnemann, the good old German physician, who was the father of homoeopathy. He found out, what should have been known ages ago, that mankind was tired of medicines, tired of being experimented upon.... He had done the world a great good, but he antagonized old prejudices, and an act was passed forbidding physicians from dispensing their own medicines, and Hahnemann was obliged to leave Leipsic.

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