Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/431

Rh Then realize the presence of health, and the corporeal senses will respond, “So be it!”

If the case is that of a young child or an infant, it needs to be met mainly through the parent's thought,

silently or audibly, on the basis of Christian Science. The Scientist knows there can be no hereditary disease, since matter cannot transmit good or evil intelligence to man, and Mind produces no pain in matter. The act of yielding one's thoughts to the undue contemplation of physical wants induces those very desires. A single requirement, beyond what is necessary to meet the simplest needs of the babe, is hurtful. Mind regulates the condition of the stomach, bowels, food, and temperature of children and men, and matter does not. The views of parents and other people on these subjects produce their good or bad results in the health of children.

The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural or necessary, than would be the process of taking

a fish out of water every day, and covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive more vigorously thereafter in its native element. “Cleanliness is next to godliness;” but washing should be only for the purpose of keeping the body clean, and this can be effected without scrubbing the whole surface daily. Water is not the natural habitat of humanity.

Giving drugs to infants, noticing every symptom of flatulency, and constantly directing the mind to such

signs, — that mind being laden with illusions about disease, health-laws, and death, — these actions convey mental images to children's bodies, and often stamp them there, making it probable, at any