Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/46

26 The Pharisees of old thrust the spiritual idea, and the man who lived it, out of their synagogues, and retained their materialistic beliefs about God. Jesus' system of healing received no aid or approval from other sanitary or religious systems, from doctrines of physics or divinity; and it has not yet been generally accepted. To-day, as of yore, unconscious of the reappearing of the spiritual idea, ecclesiasticism shuts the door upon it, and condemns the cure of the sick and sinful, if it be wrought on any but a material and a doctrinal theory. Anticipating this rejection of the true idea of God, — this salvation from all error, physical and mental, — Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man Cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”

Did the doctrines of John the Baptist confer healing power upon him, or endow him with the truest conception

of the Christ? This righteous preacher once pointed his disciples to Jesus as “the Lamb of God;” yet afterwards he seriously questioned the signs of the Messianic appearing, and sent the inquiry to Jesus, “Art thou he that should come?”

Was John's faith any greater than that of the Samaritan woman, who said, “Is not this the Christ?”

There was also a certain centurion, who had, as Jesus himself declared, more faith than could be found elsewhere in Israel.

In Egypt it was Mind which saved the Israelites from belief in the plagues. In the wilderness, streams flowed

from the rock, and manna fell from the sky. They looked upon the brazen serpent, and were straightway healed of the poisonous stings of vipers. In national prosperity, miracles attended the