Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/417

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PRACTICE.
397

rance of spiritual Life-laws. Often he gave no name to the distemper he cured. To the Synagogue Ruler's daughter, not dead but sleeping, he simply said, “Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise!” To the sufferer with the withered hand he only said, “Stretch forth thy 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 The action of faith. of disease. What produces the change? It is the faith of mortal mind, which reduces its own 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 resides in mortal mind, not in matter. So also faith, co-operating with time and medicine, will soothe fear and change belief. Faith removes bodily ailments for a season; or else it changes those ills into new and more difficult forms of disease, until at length the Science of Mind comes to the rescue and works a radical cure, and then we understand the mystery. Not only does belief seem to bring on disease, but to remove it temporarily, or change its location and form.

You say that certain material combinations produce disease; but if the material body causes disease, can Corporeal combinations. matter cure what matter itself causes? Mortal mind prescribes the drug, and administers it. Mortal mind plans the exercise, and puts the body through certain motions. No gastric gas accumulates, not a secretion or combination can operate, apart from the action of mortal thought.

Mortal mind sends its despatches over its body; but this so-called mind is both the service and message of