Mrs. Eddy's pantheism deprived her, of course, of a personal God, and she insisted on the impersonality of God with the utmost vigor.41 But she rightly found what she calls "the leading factor in Mind-Science," in the con- sequent proposition that "Mind" (with a capital "M") "is all, and matter is naught"; or as she otherwise expresses it, that "the only realities are the divine mind and its ideas";42 "nothing possesses reality and existence except God." 43 She sums up her entire teaching in four funda- mental propositions which she declares to be self-evident, and so true that they are still true if they are read back- wards: (i) God is all in all; (2) God is good; Good is Mind; (3) God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter; and (4) Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease." 44 More at large she expounds her system thus: "God is supreme ; is mind ; is principle, not person ; includes all and is reflected by all that is real and eternal; is Spirit and Spirit is infinite; is the only substance; is the only life. Man was and is the idea of God ; therefore mind can never be in man. Divine Science shows that matter and mortal body are the illusions of human belief, which seem to ap-
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pear and disappear to mortal sense alone. When this be- lief changes as in dreams, the material body changes with it, going wherever we wish, and becoming whatever belief may decree. . . . Besiege sickness and death with these principles and all will disappear."
Frances Lord says the first lesson we must learn, accord- ingly, is that "in the universe there is only the all and the nothing." "God is all." "Since God is all, and God is good, the all is the good; whatever is not good is not real and may be proclaimed so." The power of proclamation is so great that if we train ourselves to deny that an evil is, and to affirm that it is not — it is not. "We could teach ourselves Denial," she explains, "using any error to deny away; but we deny Disease because we have set ourselves this particular task."45 "Mind," she says in further ex- planation, "in its thinking faculty is pure understanding. Understanding casts a shadow; this shadow is Intellect. Intellect believes things and has opinions. Intellectual belief casts a shadow; this shadow is the human body." 46 "If the body shows forth a bruise, the shadow is showing forth as a defective shadow. Then the substance, or would- be substance, must be defective. But we have just said it is intellectual belief that plays the part of substance to the shadow we call the body. Then the defect must be in some intellectual belief: it must consist in some mis- taken opinion or notion which the thinking mind holds. . . . Yes, the bruise pictures out some mistaken ideas." 47 "What is the harm of a shadow?" she continues. "There is no harm whatever in a shadow, provided it knows it is a shadow; the harm of error comes in when it forgets this and claims independence. What is the proper way to handle a shadow ? Shall we argue with it, talk to it, coax it? No." This is the essential teaching of the whole school. Only Frances Lord goes a step further in this shadow-dance. She believes also in Karma: that is, shortly, in Inheritance. If the cause of illness lies further
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back than this life, "it is incurable, except the patient can be led to realize in so deep a sense the meaning of the words, 'There is no power in evil,'" that he is lifted above even "the old shadows of former lives and thoughts."48
Now, if bodily disease is only "an appearance, a sensu- ous seeming, an empty show," an illusion only — as Mrs. Eddy says, "You will call it neuralgia, but I call it Illu- sion"— all that is necessary to cure disease is to dissipate the illusion, that is to say, to change the mind. No knowledge of anatomy is necessary; no medicament, no regimen, no anything except the projection of a healthy image of body. We are sick because we think ourselves sick; we are well whenever we change our minds and say we are well until we believe it. There is only one possi- bility of failure. Suppose you are thinking yourself well, but others persist in thinking that you are sick. This is unfortunate: for as fast as you project yourself a well body, they project you a sick one. You must get all about you to think with you to insure success. Nay, you must get the whole world to do so — unless you can per- suade the world to forget you utterly, which should do just as well.49