Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/346

334 through association, — calling up the fear that creates the image of disease, and its consequent manifestation on the body.

This fact in metaphysics is illustrated by the following incident. A gentleman was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared in the gentleman, and he died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no such patient had been in that bed.

If a child is exposed to contagion or infection, the mother is frightened, and says, “My child will be sick.” The law of mortal mind, and her own fears, govern her child, more than the child governs itself, and produce the very results which might have been prevented through the opposite understanding. Then it is believed that the exposure to the contagion wrought the mischief.

You say or think, because you have partaken of salt fish, that you must be thirsty, and you are thirsty accordingly; while the opposite belief would have produced the opposite result.

Note this: belief can only bring on disease; it can never remove it. You say you have not slept sufficiently, or have overeaten. You are a law unto yourself. Saying this, and believing it, you will suffer in proportion to your belief and fear. But your sufferings are not the penalty for having broken a material law; for it was a law of mortal mind that you disobeyed.

The remote cause of all disease is a diseased belief, — a conviction of the necessity and power of ill-health, and a fancy that the mind is helpless to defend the body, and wholly incompetent to control it. Without the