Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/414

398 Sometimes Jesus called a disease by name, as when he said to the epileptic boy, “Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I

charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.” It is added that “the spirit [error] cried, and rent him sore and came out of him, and he was as one dead,” — clear evidence that the malady was not material. These instances show the concessions which Jesus was willing to make to the popular ignorance of spiritual Life-laws. Often he gave no name to the distemper he cured. To the synagogue ruler's daughter, whom they called dead but of whom he said, “she is not dead, but sleepeth,” he simply said, “Damsel, I say unto thee, arise!” To the sufferer with the withered hand he said, “Stretch forth thine hand,” and it “was restored whole, like as the other.”

Homœopathic remedies, sometimes not containing a particle of medicine, are known to relieve the symptoms

of disease. What produces the change? It is the faith of the doctor and the patient, which reduces self-inflicted sufferings and produces a new effect upon the body. In like manner destroy the illusion of pleasure in intoxication, and the desire for strong drink is gone. Appetite and disease reside in mortal mind, not in matter.

So also faith, cooperating with a belief in the healing effects of time and medication, will soothe fear and change the belief of disease to a belief of health. Even a blind faith removes bodily ailments for a season, but hypnotism changes such ills into new and more difficult forms of disease. The Science of Mind must come to the rescue, to work a radical cure. Then we understand the process. The great fact remains that evil is not mind. Evil has