Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/401

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Christian Science Practice
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human system will be acknowledged. It is proverbial that Florence Nightingale and other philanthropists Benefit of philanthropy engaged in humane labors have been able to undergo without sinking fatigues and exposures which ordinary people could not endure. The explanation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and endurance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the penalty which our beliefs would attach to our best deeds. Let us remember that the eternal law of right, though it can never annul the law which makes sin its own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but those due for wrong-doing.

Constant toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, if without sin, can be experienced Honest toil has no penalty without suffering. Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed.

You say that you have not slept well or have overeaten. You are a law unto yourself. Saying this and believing Our sleep and food it, you will suffer in proportion to your belief and fear. Your sufferings are not the penalty for having broken a law of matter, for it is a law of mortal mind which you have disobeyed. You say or think, because you have partaken of salt fish, that you must be thirsty, and you are thirsty accordingly, while the opposite belief would produce the opposite result.

Any supposed information, coming from the body or from inert matter as if either were intelligent, is an illu-