Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/421

Rh no breakage or dislocation can really occur. You say that accidents, injuries, and disease kill man; but this is not true. The life of the man is Mind. The material body manifests only what mortal mind admits, whether it be a broken bone, disease, or sin.

We say that one mortal mind can influence another, and thereby affect the body; but we rarely remember

that we govern our own bodies. The social error of mesmerism — or hypnotism, to use the recent term — illustrates the fact just stated. The operator makes his subjects believe they cannot act voluntarily and handle themselves as they are accustomed to; and they may yield to this influence unless their belief is better instructed and emancipated by understanding. Hence the proof that hypnotism is not scientific. Science cannot produce both disorder and order. Here inaction is proven to be a belief without an adequate cause.

So the sick, through belief, have induced their own stiff joints and cramped muscles. The great difference

between a wrong intention and a mistake in practice is that one should and does cause the perpetrator to suffer, and the other carefully instructs him. In the one case it is understood that the deformity or disease is a mental illusion; while in the other, it is believed that the misfortune is a material effect. Mortal mind is employed to remove the illusion in one case, but matter is appealed to in the other. Really, both have their origin in mortal mind, and are healed by immortal Mind.

You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception, and not the Truth of Being. Mortal mind is constantly producing