Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/431

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Christian Science Practice
415

excited state of mortals which is not normal. Immortal Mind is the only cause; therefore disease is neither a Matter is not inflamed cause nor an effect. Mind in every case is the eternal God, good. Sin, disease, and death have no foundations in Truth. Inflammation as a mortal belief quickens or impedes the action of the system, because thought moves quickly or slowly, leaps or halts when it contemplates unpleasant things, or when the individual looks upon some object which he dreads. Inflammation never appears in a part which mortal thought does not reach. That is why opiates relieve inflammation. They quiet the thought by inducing stupefaction and by resorting to matter instead of to Mind. Opiates do not remove the pain in any scientific sense. They only render mortal mind temporarily less fearful, till it can master an erroneous belief.

Note how thought makes the face pallid. It either retards the circulation or quickens it, causing a pale or Truth calms the thought flushed cheek. In the same way thought increases or diminishes the secretions, the action of the lungs, of the bowels, and of the heart. The muscles, moving quickly or slowly and impelled or palsied by thought, represent the action of all the organs of the human system, including brain and viscera. To remove the error producing disorder, you must calm and instruct mortal mind with immortal Truth.

Etherization will apparently cause the body to disappear. Before the thoughts are fully at rest, the limbs Effects of etherization will vanish from consciousness. Indeed, the whole frame will sink from sight along with surrounding objects, leaving the pain standing forth as distinctly as a mountain-peak, as if it were a separate