Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/170

154 error in any form, and certainly we should not be error's advocate.

Disease arises, like other mental conditions, from association. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association, — calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body.

This fact in metaphysics is illustrated by the following incident: A man was made to believe that he occupied a

bed where a cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared, and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed.

If a child is exposed to contagion or infection, the mother is frightened and says, “My child will be sick.” The law of mortal mind and her own fears govern her child more than the child's mind governs itself, and they produce the very results which might have been prevented through the opposite understanding. Then it is believed that 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 thinks she has hurt her face by falling on the carpet, and says, moaning so more childishly than her child, “Mamma knows you are hurt.” The better and more successful method for any mother to adopt is to say: “Oh, never mind! You're not