Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/354

342 be hopeful is still better; but to understand that sickness is a delusion, and that Truth can destroy it, is best of all, for it is the universal and perfect remedy.

We say that one mortal mind can influence another, and thereby affect the body; but we rarely remember that we govern our own bodies. The mesmerizer produces pain by making his subject believe that he feels it. Here pain is proven to be a belief without an adequate cause. That social curse, the mesmerist, by making his victims believe they cannot move a limb, renders it impossible for them to do so until their belief or understanding masters his.

So the sick, through belief, have induced stiff joints and cramped muscles. The only difference between voluntary and involuntary mesmerism is, that one is done consciously and the other unconsciously.

In the one case it is understood that the deformity or disease is a mental illusion; while in the other it is insisted that the misfortune is a material effect. Mortal mind is employed to remove the illusion in one case; but matter is appealed to in the other. Really, both have their origin in mortal mind, and are produced by it; and they should be healed by Immortal Mind.

Faith in time and medicine will soothe fear and change belief. Faith even removes bodily ailments for a season; or else it changes those ills into new and more difficult forms of disease, until at length the Science of Mind comes to the rescue, and we comprehend the mystery.

“But,” says one, “no man can mesmerize me.” That is a mistake. Mortal man is a belief, and not the Truth of Being. The boaster is constantly producing on himself the results of belief; and he will continue to do so,