Page:Science and Health.djvu/195

Rh The belief that fasting or feasting enables man to grow better, morally or physically, is one of the fruits of the “tree of knowledge,” against which Wisdom warned man, and of which we had partaken in sad experience; believing for many years, we lived only by the strictest adherence to dietetics and physiology. During this time we also learned a dyspeptic is very far from the image and likeness of God, from having “dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, or beasts of the field”; therefore, that God never made one; while the Graham system, hygiene, physiology, materia medica, etc., did, and contrary to His commands. Then it was we promised God to spend our coming years for the sick and suffering; to unmask this error of belief that matter rules man. Our cure for dyspepsia was, to learn the science of being, and “eat what was set before us, asking no questions for conscience' sake;” yea, to consult matter less, and God more. When we govern our bodies by the understanding of this great Truth, that Spirit forms its own conditions of body, we shall be perfectly harmonious; we should not hold the body a seat of pain or pleasure, but be able to dictate terms to it, even as to a muscle that we admit is dependent on mind for its action. But to attain this government over the body requires more instruction and explanation than we have space for in this book; we always advance slowly with students, requiring them to digest one part of the science before giving out another, and so on. We hear it said, “I go into the open air daily to overcome a predisposition to take cold; and yet I have continual colds.” Yes, and you will not listen to the explanation that frees