Article December 4, 1926 Issue

Redemption of Body

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

Jesus plainly indicated the mental and individual nature of human salvation when he taught that men are not defiled by external things. Not food or atmosphere or any other material condition, but the "evil thoughts" which proceed "out of the heart" defile; and we are assured, by both precept and experience, that so long as the evil things which the Master enumerated remain within consciousness men will continue to be defiled. Following along the line of our Saviour's teaching, Mrs. Eddy asks (Christian Healing, pp. 17, 18), "If sickness and death came through mind, so must they go; and are we not right in ruling them out of mind to destroy their effects upon the body, that both mortal mind and mortal body shall yield to the government of God, immortal Mind?"

The redemption of the body, therefore, is a process which must take place in an individual's mental life, and involves a change of consciousness from evil to good. The conditions which debase and enslave the thoughts of men are the conditions which, sooner or later, debase and enslave their bodies; and until the "liberty of the children of God" is attained through better thinking, mortals' physical sense will not be wholly freed from what the apostle called "the bondage of corruption." When it is clearly recognized that this corruption or defilement is entirely a condition of thought, the mortal has taken the first step out of his bondage, provided he is willing to be made free through mental, spiritual reformation.

It is a much simpler matter to discern the relation between mortal mind and body than it is to prevent the experience of discordant conditions. On page 167 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy, with a finality that is unanswerable, points to the one means for accomplishing this when she writes: "The scientific government of the body must be attained through the divine Mind. It is impossible to gain control over the body in any other way." But mortals are diligently trying every other way by which to gain this control. They appeal to drugs, surgery, manipulation, will-power, mental suggestion, hypnotism, and so on ; but these declare themselves, by their very nature, to be not the medium of divine Mind; and none of them ever evolved "the scientific government of the body." The best that can be said for wrong methods is that they are only palliative; and their reaction is apt to take the sufferer back into the same or possibly worse captivity. Materialism has not discovered, nor is it capable of discovering, the means for counteracting the evils it occasions; and the so-called human mind finds itself helpless to redeem its sense of body, while its corrupt fountains continue to pour forth their noxious streams. After four thousand years of medical practice and nearly two thousand years of doctrinal Christianity, the great majority of mankind find themselves held in a slavery to the material senses which is as pronounced as their ignorance of man's spiritual origin and sonship with God.

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