Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/215

Rh of action, and if muscles, without volition of mortal mind, could lift the hammer and strike the anvil, it might be thought true that hammering would enlarge the muscles. The trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron? Because nobody believes that mind is producing such a result on the hammer.

Muscles are not self-acting. If mind does not move them, they are motionless. Hence the great fact that Mind alone enlarges and empowers man through its mandate, — by reason of its demand for and supply of power. Not because of muscular exercise, but by reason of the blacksmith's faith in exercise, his arm becomes stronger.

Mortals develop their own bodies or make them sick, according as they influence them through mortal mind.

To know whether this development is produced consciously or unconsciously, is of less importance than a knowledge of the fact. The feats of the gymnast prove that latent mental fears are subdued by him. The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible. Exceptions only confirm this rule, proving that failure is occasioned by a too feeble faith.

Had Blondin believed it impossible to walk the rope over Niagara's abyss of waters, he could never have done it. His belief that he could do it gave his thought-forces, called muscles, their flexibility and power which the unscientific might attribute to a lubricating oil. His fear must have disappeared before his power of putting resolve into action could appear.

When Homer sang of the Grecian gods, Olympus was