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248 This is the “new tongue,” the language of them that “lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover,” whose spiritual interpretation they refuse to hear. For instance: the literal meaning of the passage “lay hands on the sick” would be manipulation; its moral meaning, found in the “new tongue,” is spiritual power, — as, in another Scripture, “I will triumph in the works of Thy hands.”

The Greeks showed a just estimate of the person they called slanderer, when they made the word synonymous with devil. If the simple falsehoods uttered about me were compounded, the mixture would be labelled thus: “Religionists' mistaken views of Mrs. Eddy's book, ‘Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,’ and the malice aforethought of sinners.”

That I take opium; that I am an infidel, a mesmerist, a medium, a “pantheist;” or that my hourly life is prayerless, or not in strict obedience to the Mosaic Decalogue, — is not more true than that I am dead, as is oft reported. The St. Louis Democrat is alleged to have reported my demise, and to have said that I died of poison, and bequeathed my property to Susan Anthony.

The opium falsehood has only this to it: Many years ago my regular physician prescribed morphine, which I took, when he could do no more for me. Afterwards, the glorious revelations of Christian Science saved me from that necessity and made me well, since which time I have not taken drugs, with the following exception: When the mental malpractice of poisoning people was