Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/404

384 ordinary people could not endure. The explanation lies in the support they derive from divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and endurance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the penalty our beliefs would attach to our best deeds. Let us remember that the eternal law of right, though it can never annul the law which makes sin its own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but those due to wrongdoing.

Unremitting toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, if without sin, can be relieved without

suffering. Whatever it is your duty to do, can be done without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed.

You say you have not slept well, or have overeaten. You are a law unto yourself. Saying this, and believing

it, you will suffer in proportion to your belief and fear. Your sufferings are not the penalty for having broken a material law, for it was a law of mortal mind which you disobeyed. You say, or think, because you have partaken of salt fish, that you must be thirsty, and you are thirsty accordingly; while the opposite belief would produce the opposite result.

Any supposed information, coming from the body or from inert matter, as if they were intelligent, is an illusion

of mortal mind, — one of its dreams. Realize that the evidence of the senses is not to be accepted in the case of sickness, any more than it is in the case of sin.

Expose the body to certain temperatures, and belief