Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/306

294 for the disease disappears. The evidence before the senses is not the Science of the spiritual man.

I will here state a phenomenon which I discovered in 1867. If you call mentally and silently the disease by name, as you argue against it, as a general rule the body will respond more quickly; just as a person replies more readily when his name is spoken; but this is because you are not perfectly attuned to Divine Science, and need the arguments of Truth for reminders. To let Spirit bear witness without words, is the more scientific way. For myself, I heal without silent argument.

Jesus once recognized a malady by its imaginary name. This was when he conversed with the maniac, who declared that the demons within him were called Legion. The Divine Healer commanded these devils to enter a herd of swine, as if they were so many genuine beings, and the animals appeared to suffer with a disorder which is not transferable.

At other times Jesus called the disease by name, as when he said to the epileptic boy, “Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.” It is added that “the spirit rent him sore and came out of him, and he was as one dead” — clear evidence that the malady was not material.

These instances show the concessions which Jesus was willing to make to the popular ignorance of spiritual life-laws. Often he gave no name to the distemper he cured. To the Synagogue-ruler's daughter, “not dead but sleeping,” he simply said, “Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise !” To the sufferer with the withered hand he only said, “Stretch forth thy hand!” and it “was restored whole as the other.”