Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/322

310 we hope for, stimulates the system to act in the direction that Mind points out. The admission that any bodily condition is beyond the control of Mind disarms man, prevents him from helping himself, and enthrones matter through belief. To those struggling with sickness, such admissions are discouraging, — as much so as the advice to a man who is down in the world, that he should not try to rise above his difficulties.

Will you bid a man let evils overcome him, — assuring him that all misfortunes are from God, against whom mortals should not contend? Will you tell the sick that their condition is hopeless, unless it can be met with a drug? Is a bullet the only refuge from evil chances? Is there no divine permission to conquer evil with Mind?

We should remember that Life is God, and that God is omnipotent. Not understanding Science, the sick will have little faith in it before they feel its beneficent influence. This shows that faith is not their healer.

Recollect, it is not the body, but mortal mind, that reports food as undigested, — that declares the gastric juices, the nervous tissues, and mucous membrane to be out of shape. Matter does not inform you of these derangements, but mind; and this mental testimony can be destroyed only by the better results of the opposite testimony.

Our dietetic speculations admit that food sustains the life of man, and then discuss the certainty that food can kill him.

This false reasoning Jesus rebuked, in his metaphors of the fount and stream, the tree and its fruit, and a kingdom divided against itself. If God institutes hygienic laws, that food shall support human life, He will