Article January 1, 1916 Issue

On page 460 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says:...

E. M. Ramsay—Lerwick, Shetland Islands

The Shetland Times

On page 460 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says: "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being." I have endeavored to explain that this "truth of being" is the great fact set forth in the first chapter of Genesis; that the reality or essence of the universe, including man, is spiritual and "very good." This is in complete accord with our Lord's command, "Be ye . . . perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Now if anything is absolutely perfect for the least fraction of time, it will be perfect throughout the ages; but nothing material can ever be perfect. That which is the image and likeness of God is not the material body, but the divine qualities which a man manifests, and which are at hand for all to manifest. The day will come, however far off that day may now appear to be, when men will awake from their present false sense of bondage to matter, to sin, disease, and death, to perceive the true facts of being—"the glorious liberty of the children of God." In that day we shall find that sight, hearing, and the other faculties which now appear to pertain to matter, are really mental qualities, part of our inalienable spiritual inheritance.

Perhaps the following illustration may help to elucidate this point: Two friends share a bedroom. Jock gets into bed and falls asleep before Aleck is ready to put out the light. Aleck sees Jock lying motionless in bed with closed eyes, and addresses a remark to him, but receives no answer. To the sense of Aleck, Jock sees and hears nothing. But what about Jock's sense of things? On falling asleep, Jock finds himself running to catch a train; he sees, hears, joins in the busy life of noonday. If some one in the dream should ask him, "What enables you to see and hear?" the answer would probably be, "I see and hear with my eyes, my ears, and my brain, of course." As long as the dream lasts Jock seems surrounded by material objects, as by day. This surely shows that the seeing and hearing are not parts of the body, but accompaniments of a normal consciousness. Many people, some of them known to myself, have been healed of blindness and deafness by the recognition that these powers, being part of God's ever present nature, cannot be lost. A mortal many lose the sense of their presence, or may never have known this sense, but it is as near him as purity was near Mary Magdalene in the dark days before she met our Saviour and was born anew. It was a change of consciousness which showed her something which had always been hers, but which she had never known.

While Christ Jesus walked this earth, he was undoubtedly subject to belief in some of the limitations of the flesh. Had this not been so, he could not have shown us the way of life; but a closer study of the passages referred to will show us some things which may have escaped our notice. In the wonderful story of our Lord's conversation with the woman of Samaria, his fatigue was overcome by the power of the truth which flooded his consciousness as he spoke to her the words of life, and so he declined the food which the disciples begged him to eat. In the same way, we read that after some of the long days spent in healing and teaching he would find the best refreshment in a night spent in prayer. Then, again, he himself said that he could have avoided the awful ordeal of the crucifixion: "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" He went through this experience for the sake of mankind, to show us that the way out of the flesh is by overcoming every thought which is not of God, to prove to us that the real life of man cannot be destroyed, that nothing can "separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

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