Editorial October 5, 1946 Issue

No Classification of Diseases

Paul Stark Seeley

Why do some phases of sin and disease often seem more tenacious and difficult to overcome than others? Is evil really able to inject more power and tenacity into cancer than into colic? That is its claim, but its claim has no law of Truth to support it.

In a paragraph in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," under the marginal heading "Diseases not to be classified," Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 176), "One disease is no more real than another." Heart trouble is no more the reality of man than hives, rheumatism than rickets, arthritis than asthma. The claim of the one evil, mortal mind, that it can classify its lying concepts, calling some mild and little-to-be-feared, and others serious and much-to-be-feared, needs to be seen as a lie about lies. But the lie of false classification is powerless to lift the lie of any disease or any sin above the dead level of the fictitious evil mind which is its origin.

Persistent advertising, dinning into the ears of people that a certain product will turn age into youth, or that some other product will satisfy all mortal cravings, has sometimes temporarily deceived many and secured large sales for the product advertised. So self-assertive mortal mind through persistent suggestion would falsely educate mortals to believe that some of its wares are Goliath monsters of disease or leech-like afflictions of sin. So long as a mortal consents to accept a fraudulent advertiser's statements as being true, he lays himself open to the consequences. So long as a mortal consents to accept mortal mind's false valuation and classification of its beliefs, he opens the door to suffering therefrom.

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