Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/370

358 mortal mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection. When this mental contagion is understood, we shall he more careful of our company; and we shall avoid the loquacious advocate of disease, as we do the advocate of crime. Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to the hearing or advocacy of error.

Palsy is a belief that attacks mortals through fear, and paralyzes the body, making certain portions of it immovable. Destroy the fear, show mortal mind that no muscular power can be lost, — for Mind is supreme, — and you will cure the palsy.

Ossification, or any unusual condition of the bones, is as directly the action of mortal mind as insanity. Bones have only the substance of thought; they are only an appearance to mortal mind.

The so-called substance of bone is formed first by the parent's mind, through self-division. Soon the child becomes a separate, individualized thought, — another mortal mind, which speedily takes possession of itself.

What you call matter was originally primitive error in solution, — the unformed mortal mind, likened, by Milton, to “chaos and old night.” One theory about this mortal mind is, that its sensations form blood, flesh, and bones. The Science of Being — wherein all is Mind, or God and His thoughts — would still be clear, but for the belief that Mind can result in matter, or that Mind can enter its own embodied thought, and bind itself with its own beliefs, calling its bonds material.

Let us suppose two parallel cases of bone-disease, both similarly produced, and attended with the same symptoms. A surgeon is employed in one case, and a Christian Scientist in the other. The surgeon — believing