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352 may pray that God may remove him. Each army prays that God will direct the weapons that will slay their enemies. In biblical times did not God answer the prayer of those who wished to destroy their enemies and did they not die? The facts prove that what we believe may follow. We really believe in disease, hence it is the result of our belief. People never seem to have thought that they are responsible for their belief. To analyze their beliefs is to know themselves, which is the greatest study of man. All theories for the happiness of man contain more misery than happiness, either directly or indirectly. To destroy the beliefs of man is to leave him where God left him: to work out happiness by His own wisdom. One half of the diseases arise from a false belief in the Bible. It may seem strange that the belief in the Bible affects us, yet every belief affects us more or less, directly or indirectly.

I will relate a case where the religious belief affected the patient and caused the disease. The lady was aged. She was so lame and bound down that she could hardly rise from her chair, and could take only a step by the aid of her crutches, feeling so heavy that she dare not step. In this condition she had lived some years, and all the happiness she had was in reading and thinking on the Bible. She was a Calvinist Baptist and by her belief she had imprisoned her senses [consciousness] in a creed so small and contracted that she could not stand upright or move ahead. Here in this tomb of Calvin her senses were laid, wrapt in her creed. Yet in this tomb was Christ or Science, trying to burst the bars and break through the bands and rise from the dead. She labored to be free from the bands and no one came to her relief. When she would ask for an explanation of some passage the answer would be a stone, and then she would hunger for the bread of life. At last in her misery she called upon me and I found her as I have stated. I knew not what caused her trouble. She thought it was from a fall. After explaining how she felt, I told her her trouble was caused by a series of excitements from studying upon what she could not reconcile. She thought upon religious subjects and not seeing the Scriptures clearly her mind became cloudy and stagnated. This showed itself on the body by her heavy and sluggish feeling which would terminate in paralysis. She said she could not understand how her belief could make her so numb.

I said to her, you will admit I have described your feelings.