“God the Rewarder”

In the 11th chapter of Hebrews, we read: “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” This verse, rightly understood and applied, furnishes us with directions for overcoming our physical ills, as well as all other forms of evil and limitation. To make this evident, let us spend a moment in analyzing certain of the claims of error.

Contrary to the usually accepted belief, the body, as such, is incapable of experiencing either pain or pleasure. If it were, a corpse would experience pain or pleasure. It is only when consciousness is connected with the body that pain or pleasure can be experienced. This shows that, in reality, it is consciousness that aches, or burns, or smarts, or feels weak. The word “disease” means dis-ease; and it is consciousness that is dis-easy, if there is any disease, and not the body. When there is dis-ease, the body is often correspondingly abnormal, through swellings, false growths, sores, or wastings; and the discomfort seems to be located in or at these abnormal portions of the body. Consequently, it has usually been inferred that the abnormal condition of the body causes the discomfort of the mind; but exactly the reverse is true, as can be proven in two ways.

If consciousness becomes disassociated from the body through death, the swellings, false growths, sores, or wastings, may remain on the body, but they no longer occasion discomfort in any way, either to the body or to the mind, showing that flesh, as such, is incapable of sensation. Neither will abnormal conditions (except the general condition of decay) develop in the body, when consciousness is not associated with it. This shows that discord is not first in the body, and afterwards in consciousness, but is first in consciousness, and then is manifest on the body as a result.

To be sure, it must be admitted that a swelling, or sore, often develops to quite an extent on the body before the active mind discovers its appearance there or notices pain from it, and this fact has caused the vast majority of mankind to believe that disease originates in the body, and afterwards begins to disturb the mind; but the fact is, that the human mind (which is the mind that we must deal with when we are analyzing the claim of error) has a sub-conscious phase, through which the body is mostly governed, unless God’s government is being scientifically demonstrated. Disease usually begins in this subconscious phase of the human mind, and then begins to be manifest on or in the body, and then, last of all, begins to disturb the conscious mind. In the analysis of error, falsehood, or unreality, it is the so-called sub-conscious mind, of whose operations little has been known until lately, that is the chief channel and seat of disease and sin, so far as the mortal individual is concerned. In the absence of control by divine Mind, the conscious and sub-conscious mortal mind act and react upon each other, and educate each other in sin and disease, using the body as a go-between, — a mere football, as it were, to be kicked back and forth between conscious and sub-conscious arguments of evil: but the sub-conscious mind is the original sinner, and, unless prevented from doing so by the Christ-mind, it recurrently, and often continually, throws up into the conscious mind all manner of sinful and painful feelings, and the conscious mind thinks that the body is the source or cause of these sinful or painful feelings, instead of discerning the deeper source of evil in the mortal sub-consciousness. It is this mortal sub-consciousness that must be cleansed by the application of divine Mind, in order to rid both the conscious mind and the body of evil and discord. The method of doing this will be spoken of a bit later.

The second proof that abnormalities in the body are not the cause of discomfort in consciousness, is the fact that the pain or other discomfort in the mind is often completely removed hours, and sometimes weeks, before the swellings or false growths, which at one time seemed painful, have disappeared from the body. If these abnormalities of the body were the cause of mental distress, mental distress could not disappear until the physical abnormalities had been overcome. Almost invariably, the removal of discomfort from the mind through Christian Science treatment is followed, sooner or later, by normal conditions of the body.

It has now been clearly shown, that all disease originates mentally, and is located in consciousness, and that abnormalities of the body are not, strictly speaking, disease, because they are not dis-ease, but are mere manifestations or effects of disease, — never its cause. Hence, it is very evident that the proper effort to cure disease must center its activity on removing evil from the consciousness; and if it be removed from the consciousness, it will disappear from the body automatically. That which is to be treated is the mind and not the body.

It must be entirely evident, on statement, that a diseased or dis-easy mind is an evil mind; and that the way to overcome an evil mind is to attack it with that which is opposed to it, namely, good Mind. Now there is only one good Mind. Christ Jesus declared: “There is none good, save one; that is God.” If we intelligently and persistently turn to this good Mind, God, that Mind will remove evil from our consciousness as naturally as the sun removes darkness from our eyes, when we turn from darkness toward the sun.

Whoever beholds the light of the sun, beholds coincidently rays of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and every intermediary shade and tint of color, all beautifully blended together in what we call light. Likewise, whoever diligently turns to God, and mentally beholds Him, cannot fail to increasingly behold, and to gradually receive into his own consciousness, love, joy, peace, strength, harmony, health, substance, plenty, entertainment, intelligence, and life, all beautifully blended together in that “true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;” for God is omnipresent, not beyond the reach of any man’s mental gaze; yea, he is in every man’s very heart, when that man will diligently open his heart to God.

So if we turn to God, knowing that He is here, and if we diligently seek Him, He will reward us by shining in our hearts and minds with every conceivable form of good; and in proportion as this comes to pass, in that proportion the darkness of sin and disease are driven from every phase of the human consciousness, and we are healed, or made whole, in consciousness, — just where we need to be healed, and then the body soon automatically reflects the divine harmony, which, through the power of God, has been established in the mind. Accordingly, in the treatment of disease, the advice of St. Paul is most excellent: “Be willing (be choosing) to be absent from the body (in thought), and present with the Lord.” For God is the healer; and He will reward us with healing, if we come to Him with diligence.

Suppose darkness should say to itself, “I am going to rise up and attack light.” What would become of the darkness when it got within reaching distance of the light? How much would it accomplish aside from its own destruction?

Moral: If there be no error (darkness) in a man’s own consciousness, the errors of his ancestors, and all adverse thought-influences, will be as powerless to harm him as darkness is powerless to harm light. And this is true by gradation as well as true as a matter of complete attainment. The elimination of any portion or kind of error from a man’s own consciousness, through turning to God, renders him more immune from the attacks of any form of error originating from without.