Page:Science and Health.djvu/194

190 drank, it produced violent retchings. Thus we passed most of our early years, as many can attest, in hunger, pain, weakness, and starvation. At length we learned that while fasting increased the desire for food, it spared none of the sufferings occasioned by partaking of it, and what to do next, having already exhausted the medicine men, was a question. After years of suffering, when we made up our mind to die, our doctors kindly assuring us this was our only alternative, our eyes were suddenly opened, and we learned suffering is self-imposed, a belief, and not Truth. That God never made man sick; and all our fasting for penance or health, is not acceptable to Wisdom, because it is not the science of being, in which Soul governs sense. Thus Truth, opening our eyes, relieved our stomach, also, and enabled us to eat without suffering, giving God thanks; but we never afterwards enjoyed food as we expected to, if ever we were a freed slave, to eat without a master; for the new-born understanding that food could not hurt us, brought with it another point, viz., that it did not help us as we had anticipated it would before our changed views on this subject; food had less power over us for evil or for good than when we consulted matter before Spirit, and believed in pains and pleasures of personal sense. As a natural result, we took less thought about “What we should eat or what drink,” and, fasting or feasting, consulted less our stomach and our food, arguing against their claims continually, and in this manner despoiled them of their power over us to give pleasure or pain, and recovered strength and flesh rapidly, enjoying health and harmony that we never before had done.