Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/68

48 The law of mortal mind, and her own fears, govern her child, more than the child's mind governs itself,

and produce the very results which might have been prevented through the opposite understanding. Then it is believed that the exposure to the contagion wrought the mischief.

That mother is not a Christian Scientist, and her affections need better guidance, who says to her child: “You look sick,” “You look tired,” “You need rest,” or “You need medicine.” Such a mother runs to her little one, who has hurt her face by falling on the carpet, and says, moaning more childishly than her child, “Mamma knows you are hurt.” The more successful method of treatment is to say: “Oh, nonsense [no-sense material]! You're not hurt, so don't think you are.” Presently the child forgets all about the accident, and is at play again.

When the sick recover, by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith,

which heals; and according to this faith will the effect be. Even when you take away the individual confidence in the drug, you have not yet divorced it from the general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the druggist, the doctor, and the nurse equip the medicine with their faith, and the majority of beliefs rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate drug as doing this or that, individual dissent or faith, unless it rests on Science, is but a minority belief, governed by the majority.

The universal belief in physics weighs against the high and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This erroneous general belief — which sustains medicine, and