Article December 26, 1908 ISSUE

THE COURAGE TO SAY, NO

SAMUEL GREENWOOD.

To resist evil—to say, No, to wrong suggestions—is generally considered the right thing to do; but until Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health diagnosed disease as a "temptation," capable of being resisted as successfully and in the same manner as the temptation to sin, no one thought of taking that attitude toward sickness. (See Science and Health, pp. 218, 381, 450.) It is safe to say, however, that if this view were more universally adopted, and men realized that they have the same power from God to resist sickness and suffering that they have to resist moral evils, there would be less work for the doctors and a decided increase in Christianity. Jesus treated disease as the work of the devil, or Satan, and we have his authority for doing likewise. He healed sickness and sin with the same word; and on the basis that errors which are subject to correction by the same rule are of the same lineage, we may properly conclude that sin and disease have a common source, and that the truth is the antidote for both.

Christian Scientists are often condemned for denying the sense of sickness, as it is assumed that in so doing they are denying facts, and are therefore telling untruths; but these same critics deny the power of evil whenever they resist the temptation to be other than upright and honorable, and if it is right to deny one it is right to deny every phase which evil assumes. Christians are enjoined to war against the flesh as well as the devil, which surely means that they are to resist the thraldom of pain as well as of pleasure in the senses. The temptation to sin is recognized as wholly a mental suggestion, while sickness is regarded as purely a physical disorder, yet both are trespassers on the individual right of self-government, and both should be resisted for the same reason. It is evident that nothing can enter consciousness except through one's thoughts, since there can be no consciousness at all apart from mind; therefore bodily conditions should not be considered less amenable to thought than are moral conditions, especially when it is admitted that the entire universe is governed by divine Mind alone.

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