Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/192

176 the English poet, and there is truth in his sentiment. The action of mortal mind on the body was not so injurious

before inquisitive modern Eves took up the study of medical works and unmanly Adams attributed their own downfall and the fate of their offspring to the weakness of their wives.

The primitive custom of taking no thought about food left the stomach and bowels free to act in obedience to nature, and gave the gospel a chance to be seen in its glorious effects upon the body. A ghastly array of diseases was not paraded before the imagination. There were fewer books on digestion and more “sermons in stones, and good in everything.” When the mechanism of the human mind gives place to the divine Mind, selfishness and sin, disease and death, will lose their foothold.

Human fear of miasma would load with disease the air of Eden, and weigh down mankind with superimposed and conjectural evils. Mortal mind is the worst foe of the body, while divine Mind is its best friend.

Should all cases of organic disease be treated by a regular practitioner, and the Christian Scientist try

truth only in cases of hysteria, hypochondria, and hallucination? One disease is no more real than another. All disease is the result of education, and disease can carry its ill-effects no farther than mortal mind maps out the way. The human mind, not matter, is supposed to feel, suffer, enjoy. Hence decided types of acute disease are quite as ready to yield to Truth as the less distinct type and chronic form of disease. Truth handles the most malignant contagion with perfect assurance.