Page:Science and Health.djvu/402

398 sense, the sick say how can mind have caused disease, “I never thought of the disease until it appeared on my body.” But mind is first, and causation; nothing commences in matter; the plant springs from the eternal Intelligence before we call it matter; but our mortal blindness and its sharp consequences, prove our need to understand the action of mind and its effects; we should study mind more and matter less, if we would avail ourselves of Soul in its control over sense. We can destroy sickness, the same as sin, by learning its origin and nature in mind, instead of body, and finding the belief that occasions it.

You can prevent or cure scrofula, hereditary disease, etc., in just the ratio you expel from mind a belief in the transmission of disease, and destroy its mental images; this will forestall the disease before it takes tangible shape in mind, that forms its corresponding image on the body. The science of being destroys the errors of sense with the Truth of man, and this is “casting out devils and healing the sick.” Unconscious matter cannot dictate terms to conscious mind, causing either pain or pleasure; and matter is unconscious. The belief that our body forms conditions of its own, independent of mind, is the error of mortal man that makes him mortal.

You say the body feels, but the fact that pain is not felt without mind, and can be removed through it, proves mind the origin and cause of suffering. All the diseases on earth, (and there are none in heaven), never interfered for a moment with man's Life and its harmonious phenomena. Man is the same after, as before a bone is broken, or a head chopped off. Casualties