Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/488

476 he accompanies his descriptions with important observations, that should awaken thought to a higher and purer contemplation of man's origin. This consciousness must precede an understanding of the harmony of being. Mortal thought must obtain a better basis, get nearer the Truth of Being, or health will never be universal, nor harmony become the standard of man.

One of our ablest naturalists has said: “We have no right to assume that individuals have grown or been formed under circumstances that made material conditions essential to their maintenance and reproduction, or important to their origin and first introduction.” Why, then, is the naturalist's basis so materialistic, and his inference and deductions so universally material?

Adam was created before Eve. Herein it is seen that the maternal egg never brought forth Adam. Eve was formed from his rib, not from an egg. Whatever theory universal mortal thought may adopt to account for the origin of mortals, that thought will be the signal for the appearance of that method in finite forms. If human belief agrees upon an egg as the starting-point of the race, this potent belief will immediately supersede the more ancient superstition about dust and ribs.

You may say that mortals are formed before they know their origin, and ask, therefore, how their belief can affect the result. Belief constitutes what it does not understand. It is unconscious of its existence in infancy; but the babe grows up to self-consciousness, and then it says, “I am somebody, but who made me?” Mortal belief replies, “God made you.” The first effort of error was to impute to God the creation of all that is sinful and mortal; but the Infinite Understanding never