Page:Science and Health.djvu/399

Rh This was one of our Master's rules for casting out error and healing the sick. It referred, however, not to legal proceedings, or processes material, but to a mental tribunal and judgment. The adversary was not man, but error; and the directions, how to proceed with sin or sickness that would impose through belief apenalty for transgressing law that is not law, insomuch as justice is the moral signification of law, and injustice implies its absence. Shall a teacher pay the penalty of sickness for performing well and faithfully her tasks? or a great mind, because of the good it has done, fall soonest a prey to disease? must man suffer at the hands of God, for steadfastly doing right? Shall the mother droop, or suffer, because of maternity, if such is the design of her being? Because of fatigue, exposure to cold, or some supposed infringement of the so-called laws of health, we ignorantly admit there is danger of being sick, and this mental position decides the physical one; therefore, “agree with thine adversary quickly;” say to this belief, “Get behind me, satan, for thou savorest not the things that are of God, but those that are of man;” it is not a broken moral law to which your penalty is attached, but a condition of matter, a demand from something wholly unintelligent and incapable of justice. God has no law of injustice, wrong proceeds from belief, and not Truth. To conclude quickly on the treatment of error, was the rule our Master left for casting it out. He never recommended laws of health to our knowledge. On a law that is not God's, we have a moral right to pass judgment, and to commute its sentence; every instance of matter, or the body, governing man, is justly