Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/161

Rh of assigning to man the everlasting grandeur and immortality of God's image.

The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the benefits of destroying that illusion, are illustrated in a sketch from the history of an English lady, published in the London medical magazine, called The Lancet.

Disappointed in love in her early years, she became insane, and lost all account of time. Believing that she

was still living in the same hour which parted her from her lover, taking no note of years, she stood daily before the window, watching for his coming. In this mental state she remained young. Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no older. Some American travellers saw her when she was seventy-four, and supposed her a young lady. She had not a wrinkle or gray hair, but youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that she must be under twenty.

This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful hint that a Franklin might work upon with more certainty than when he coaxed the enamoured lightning from the clouds. Years had not made her old, simply because she had taken no cognizance of the passing years, or thought of herself as growing old. Her belief that she was young proved the bodily results of such a belief. She could not age while believing herself young, for the mental state governed the physical.

Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four; and the Principle of that illustration makes it plain that decrepitude is not a law or necessity of nature, but an illusion which may be avoided.