Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/177

Rh action. Look away from the body, into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and

immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.

The effect of mortal minds on health and happiness is seen in this: if one turns away from the body with such absorbed interest as to forget it, the body experiences no pain. Under the strong impulse of a desire to fill his part, a noted actor used, night after night, to go upon the stage and sustain his appointed task, walking about as spry as the youngest member of the company. This old man was so lame that every day he hobbled to the theatre, and sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken, — a signal which made him as oblivious of physical infirmity as if he had inhaled chloroform, though he was in the full possession of his senses.

Detach sense from the body, or matter, which is only a form of human belief, and you may learn the meaning

of God, or Good, and the nature of the immutable and immortal. Breaking away from the mutations of time and sense, you will neither lose the solid objects and ends of Life nor your own identity. Fixing your gaze on the realities supernal, you may rise to the spiritual consciousness of Being, even as the bird which has burst from the egg, and preens its wings for a skyward flight.

We should forget our bodies, in remembering God and the human race. Good demands of man every hour, wherein to work out the problem of Being.