Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/399

Rh Anciently the apostles, who were Jesus' students, — and Paul, who was not one of his students, — healed the sick and reformed the sinner by their religion. Alas for the error that allows words, rather than works, to follow such examples! To-day, whoever meekly and conscientiously presses along the line of gospel-healing is accounted a heretic.

Had my critic understood that Truth heals the sickness which error causes, he might in mercy have spared the invalid these misrepresentations.

Why should one refuse to investigate my method of treating disease? Why support the popular systems of medicine, when perchance the doctor is an infidel — when he loses the ninety-and-nine patients, while I cure the hundred? Is it because allopathy and homœopathy are more fashionable, and less spiritual?

My critic complains: “She professes to have God for her Life, or Soul, and to be His idea;” but he should have added, that I claim this to be the normal and healthy condition of mankind; and that I so claim because the Scriptures say that God made man in His own image, and after His likeness. I therefore venture to think that God's likeness is not found in matter, sin, sickness, or death. I have the authority of the English language, and of Scripture, for saying that Spirit and God mean the same; and it is evident that the likeness of Spirit cannot be material. When the omnipotence of God is preached, — His absolute government, and no other, — our sermons will heal the sick.

My critic says, “The mind that contradicts itself neither knows itself, nor what it is saying.” It is no small matter to know one's self; but in my publications