Editorial September 17, 1938 Issue

Spiritual Law Supreme

George Shaw Cook

Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 384), "We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought that we have transgressed a material law and must of necessity pay the penalty." One who finds himself manifesting a discordant physical condition may be tempted, even though he knows something of Christian Science, to attribute his discomfort to the violation of a so-called material law. For example, he may believe that the symptoms of a cold are present because of his having been in a draft, that he is fatigued because of overwork, or that he is ill because of some other asserted law of matter. It is well, then, to remember that, as Mrs. Eddy continues on the same page, "God never punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for deeds of kindness, though they expose him to fatigue, cold, heat, contagion. If man seems to incur the penalty through matter, this is but a belief of mortal mind, not an enactment of wisdom, and man has only to enter his protest against this belief in order to annul it."

There are various so-called laws of health—medical laws and so forth—which are in fact laws of disease, rather than of health. These supposed laws do not emanate from divine Mind, God, the only real Lawgiver, and therefore they exist not as law, but only as belief. Instead of being actual or divine law, they are only generally accepted beliefs of the human or mortal mind operating—or seeming to operate—in the name of law. When one of these spurious laws is set aside in its operation through the declaration and demonstration of divine or spiritual law, as frequently happens, it is proved not to be law, but only belief.

It is evident that any belief of mortal mind which is without a believer is utterly innocuous. And all so-called health laws must have believers in order to gain currency and appear to have effect. These asserted laws are as a rule inoperative unless and until they receive recognition and endorsement from organized groups and are thus brought to public notice through different kinds of propaganda.

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