Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/399

Rh but mental, and I was cured when I learned my way in Christian Science.”

We need a clean body and a clean mind, — a body rendered pure by Mind as well as washed by water.

One says: “I take good care of my body.” To do this, the pure and exalting influence of the divine Mind on the body is requisite, and the Christian Scientist takes the best care of his body when he leaves it most out of his thought, and, like the Apostle Paul, is “willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”

A hint may be taken from the emigrant, whose filth does not affect his happiness, because mind and body rest on the same basis. To the mind equally gross, dirt gives no uneasiness. It is the native element of such a mind, which is symbolized, and not chafed, by its surroundings; but impurity and uncleanliness, which do not trouble the gross, could not be borne by the refined. This shows that the mind must be clean to keep the body in proper condition.

The tobacco-user, eating or smoking poison for half a century, sometimes tells you that the weed preserves

his health, but does this make it so? Does his assertion prove the use of tobacco to be a salubrious habit, and man to be the better for it? Such instances only prove the illusive physical effect of a false belief, confirming the Scriptural conclusion concerning a man, “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

The movement-cure — pinching and pounding the poor body, to make it sensibly well when it ought to be insensibly so — is another medical mistake, resulting from the common notion that health depends on inert matter