Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/377

Rh suddenly to the supreme tribunal, and opens the argument for the defence: —

The prisoner at the bar has been sentenced unjustly. His trial was a tragedy, and is morally illegal. Mortal Man has had no proper counsel in the case. All the testimony has been on the side of Material Sense, and we will unearth this foul conspiracy against the liberty and life of Man. The only valid testimony in the case shows the alleged crime never to have been committed. The prisoner is not proved “worthy of death, or of bonds.”

Your Honor, the lower court has sentenced Mortal Man to die, but Man was made in the image of God. Denying justice to the body, that court commended Spirit to heavenly mercy, — Spirit which is God of Himself, Infinite Wisdom, and Man's only lawgiver! Who or what has sinned? Has the body committed a criminal deed? Counsellor Belief has argued that the body should die, while Mortal Mind, which alone is capable of sin and suffering, is comforted and commended to mercy. The body committed no offence. Mortal Man, in obedience to higher law, helped his fellow-man, an act which should result in good to himself.

The law of our Supreme Court decrees that whosoever sinneth shall die; but good deeds immortalize man, bringing joy instead of grief, pleasure instead of pain, and life instead of death. If liver-complaint was induced by trampling on Laws of Health, it was a good deed; for the agent of those laws is an interferer with Mortal Man's liberty and rights, and should be consigned to oblivion.

Watching beside the couch of pain, in the exercise of a Love that “fulfils the whole law,” — doing “unto others as ye would, that they should do unto you,” — is no infringement of law; for no demand, human or divine, renders it just to punish a man for doing right. If mortals sin, our Supreme Judge in equity decides what penalty is due for the sin, and Mortal Man