Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/313

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Science of Being
297

think they are so; and nothing can change this state, until the belief changes. Mortal belief says, “You are happy!” Belief an autocrat and mortals are so; and no circumstance can alter the situation, until the belief on this subject changes. Human belief says to mortals, “You are sick!” and this testimony manifests itself on the body as sickness. It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the physical condition.

Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real Self-improvement to this false belief, and the human consciousness rises higher. Thus the reality of being is attained and man found to be immortal. The only fact concerning any material concept is, that it is neither scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and dissolution.

Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual Faith higher than belief evidence, contradicting the testimony of material sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the ever-present, is becoming understood. Human thoughts have their degrees of comparison. Some thoughts are better than others. A belief in Truth is better than a belief in error, but no mortal testimony is founded on the divine rock. Mortal testimony can be shaken. Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual understanding, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine.

A mortal belief fulfils its own conditions. Sickness,