Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/90

70 Mortal mind and body are one. Neither exists with out the other, and both must be changed by immortal

Mind. Mortal matter, or body, is but a false concept of mortal mind. It builds its own superstructure, of which the material body is the grosser and more basal portion; but from first to last, this body is only a material and sensuous belief.

In the Scriptural allegory of material creation, Adam, error, which represents the erroneous theory of Life

and intelligence in matter — had the naming of all material animals. These names indicated their properties, qualities, and forms. Thus error, the opposite of Truth, names the qualities and effects of what it terms matter, and so creates the law of belief, which holds the preponderance of power in human opinions, against Spirit and Truth.

If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and the patient dies, even though physician and patient are

expecting favorable results, does belief, you ask, cause this death? Even so, and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken. In such cases a few persons believe the potion swallowed by the patient to be harmless; but the vast majority of mankind, though they know nothing of this particular case and this special person, believe the arsenic, the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to be poisonous, for it has been set down as a poison by mortal mind. The consequence is that the result is controlled by the majority of opinions outside, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick-chamber.