"The frightened sense"

Every student of Mrs. Eddy's writings must have noticed the importance which she attaches to the destruction of fear in a patient. "Always begin your treatment," she writes, on page 411 of Science and Health, "by allaying the fear of patients." Now with Mrs. Eddy always means always, and it is, therefore, perfectly clear that she saw that fear was a fundamental factor in sickness of any description. The reason for this is perfectly manifest to the metaphysician. Fear is the belief that Life, Truth, and substance are inherent in matter. If the individual were not assured of this, he would certainly begin rapidly to put off the old man with his lusts, and in doing this begin to part company with his fears. Unfortunately, the possession of a material body means the belief in the human mind of the reality of matter, in other words, of the dominating influence of fear. If the individual did not believe that he could suffer and be sick in the flesh, he would be devoid of the fear of disease. If he did not believe that life was inherent in matter, he would be relieved of the fear of death. If he did not believe that clothing, food, and shelter were necessary to the protection of human life, he would to some extent be untroubled by the question of supply: the Arab living on a handful of dates, or the lazzarone basking in the Neapolitan sun, largely are preserved from such fears, and lazily pursue the tenor of their way.

"The love of money," says the great Jewish philosopher, "is the root of all evil," and it is easier to understand this when it is remembered that money is the purchasing power upon which the necessaries of life depend. Thus it comes about that birth and death are only the opposite extremities of a belief of life in matter which metaphysically may be described as fear, and thus it will be seen how necessary it is that the practitioner should follow Mrs. Eddy's advice in always beginning his treatment by destroying the fear of his patient. If this is thoroughly done, if the practitioner realizes that life is spiritual and not material, he will really have nothing else to do, for his patient will be healed. To the sick the danger of material existence is naturally much more present than to the healthy. "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 460 of Science and Health,—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." Now the truth of being is that man is spiritual and not material, in other words, that there is no Life, Truth, nor substance in matter. If, then, the right apprehension of the truth of being is brought home to the patient, his fear of the consequences of sickness in matter must disappear, and with this disappearance health will be present.

Health spiritually maintained represents in some measure the mystery of the incarnation. The individual, that is to say, sees God in the flesh in the exact proportion in which he sees the flesh as the counterfeit of the real man. This perception of true being can, however, only be reached in the proportion in which it is realized that all that exists is infinite Mind, and its infinite idea. The sick man believes his body to be real, and being equally convinced that matter is capable of suffering and of passing through the belief of death, naturally is overwhelmed by a frightened sense of his impotency before the inevitable. If he can be shown that even according to the idealism of natural science the body is only the subjective condition of the human mind, he will turn his attention from the body to this mind, and to this extent he will be in some degree nearer the truth. Still, unfortunately for him, the human mind, by the very fact that it believes in good and evil, in life and death, in sickness and health, is incapable of healing. The only pretense of law it makes to itself is its insistence on death, so that it establishes fear as its governing factor in the moment of birth. It is here that the teaching of Christian Science comes to the rescue of mortal man. It shows him that the only Mind which exists is the divine Mind, and that this being the case the only true thoughts which can exist are harmonious and eternal. In this way it becomes apparent that Mind, which is the Father of all things, cannot be the father of sin, disease, or death, and that these are only counterfeits of spiritual reality. The sick man, consequently, may make his bed in hell, may yield himself to his frightened sense of suffering and death. But even in this moment the fact remains as ever present reality that nothing truly exists but spiritual reality; and, therefore, that though he may make his bed in hell, that bed is only a false belief, and that there, by reason of its omnipresence, is the truth, the knowledge of which will heal him.