The First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other [20] gods before me,” suggests the inquiry, What meaneth this Me,—Spirit, or matter? It certainly does not signify a graven idol, and must mean Spirit. Then the commandment means, Thou shalt recognize no intelligence nor life in matter; and find neither pleasure [25] nor pain therein. The Master’s practical knowledge of this grand verity, together with his divine Love, healed the sick and raised the dead. He literally annulled the claims of physique and of physical law, by the superiority of the higher law; hence his decla- [30] ration, “These signs shall follow them that believe;... if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; [Page 29.] they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” [1] Do you believe his words? I do, and that his prom- ise is perpetual. Had it been applicable only to his immediate disciples, the pronoun would be _you_, not _them_. [5] The purpose of his life-work touches universal human- ity. At another time he prayed, not for the twelve only, but “for them also which shall believe on me through their word.” The Christ-healing was practised even before the Christ- [10] ian era; “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There is, however, no analogy between Christian Science and spiritualism, or between it and any specu- lative theory. In 1867, I taught the first student in Christian Science. [15] Since that date I have known of but fourteen deaths in the ranks of my about five thousand students. The census since 1875 (the date of the first publication of my work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scrip- tures”) shows that longevity has _increased_. Daily letters [20] inform me that a perusal of my volume is healing the writers of chronic and acute diseases that had defied medi- cal skill. Surely the people of the Occident know that esoteric magic and Oriental barbarisms will neither flavor Chris- [25] tianity nor advance health and length of days. Miracles are no infraction of God’s laws; on the contrary, they fulfil His laws; for they are the signs fol- lowing Christianity, whereby matter is proven power- less and subordinate to Mind. Christians, like students [30] in mathematics, should be working up to those higher rules of Life which Jesus taught and proved. Do we [Page 30.] really understand the divine Principle of Christianity [1] before we prove it, in at least some feeble demonstra- tion thereof, according to Jesus’ example in healing the sick? Should we adopt the “simple addition” in Chris- tian Science and doubt its higher rules, or despair of [5] ultimately reaching them, even though failing at first to demonstrate all the possibilities of Christianity?