of good. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something; and it is error, because it presupposes the absence of Truth, when really Truth is omnipresent. That there is no power in evil, we all need to learn.
Error is self-assertive, saying, “I am an Ego, overmastering good.” This falsehood exposes its falsity, and should strip it of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It can never destroy an iota of good. Every attempt of evil to do that has been a failure, and only aids in the final destruction of error.
There is no involuntary action. Mind includes all action and volition. But the human mind tries to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary action. Take away this erring mind, and the body loses all appearance of life or action, and the human mind then calls it dead.
Still this human mind has a body, acting and appearing to itself to live, like the one that it had before death, and that we see. Mortals comprehend not even mortal existence. This proves their ignorance of the all-knowing Mind and His creation.
If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, the patient dies, while physician and patient are expecting favorable results. Did belief cause this death? Even so, and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken.
In the allegory of material creation, Adam, alias the belief of Life and Intelligence in matter, had the naming of all material animals. These names indicated their properties, qualities, and forms. Error, the opposite of Truth, names the qualities and effects of what it terms matter, and so rouses the law of belief that holds the preponderance of power in human opinions against Spirit and Truth.
The few who think a drug harmless, where a mistake has been made in the prescription, are unequal to the many who have named it poison, and so the majority opinion governs the result.
The remote cause, or belief, is stronger than the predisposing and exciting cause, because of its priority, and the connection of past mortal thoughts with present. The adult has a deformity, produced, thirty years ago, by the terror of his mother. That chronic error is more difficult of cure than an acute injury, unless we wrest it from mortal mind, and base the cure on Science, or Immortal Mind, to whom all things are possible.
What is termed disease is formed unconsciously, until fear awakes consciousness. The belief of sin, grown terrible in strength and control, was an unconscious error in the beginning, — an embryotic thought, without motive, — that afterwards governed the so-called man. Passion, appetite, dishonesty, envy, and malice ripen into action, to pass on from shame and woe to their next stage, self-destruction.
When darkness comes over the earth the senses have no evidence of a sun. The human mind knows not where the orb of day is, or if it exists. Astronomy, the interpreter of the solar system, decides that question. The human senses yield to this opposite evidence, willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of the sun and its influence on the earth. If the personal senses see no sun for a week, we still believe there is solar light and heat.
Science, so far, has beaten illusion out of its crude theory, and established its own theory. Mortals should no more deny the effect of mortal mind on the body, when the cause is not seen, — and when the belief producing the effect is unconscious of its effects, — than it should deny the sunlight when the orb disappears.
The valves of the heart, opening and closing on the blood, obey the mandate of mortal mind, as directly as does the hand moved by the will; though anatomy admits the mental cause of the latter action, but not of the former.
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be self-deceived. If it knew how to be better, it would be better. The inanimate, unconscious substratum of the human mind, that we call the body, is the seedling that starts thought, and sends it to the brain for consciousness.
We call the body matter, but it is as much mortal mind, according to its degree, as the brains that furnish the evolution of all mortal things, — which, strange to say, start from the lowest instead of the highest mortal thought. The reverse is the case with all the formations of the Divine, Immortal Mind. They proceed from the highest source, and constantly ascend the scale of infinite being.
In the lower, basal thought of mortals begin the formations of embryotic mind. Next we have brains, matter, the formation of beliefs. From belief comes the reproduction of the species — first inanimate, and then animate mind. But brain is ignorant of thought, ignorant of what it produces in its circle upon the body.
Thought fills the man with beliefs of pain or pleasure, of life and death, arranging matter into five so-called senses, that presently judge a man by the size of his brain and the bulk of matter gathered about him.
The birth, growth, maturity, and decay of mortals are as the grasses that spring from the dark and dirty soil to become beautiful green blades, — then to wither and return to their native nothingness.
The Hebrew bard swept his lyre with saddening strains about mortal existence: —
As for man, his days are as grass.
As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth;
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone,
And the place thereof shall know it no more.
When hope rose higher in his heart, and he grasped the realities of Divine Being, the Psalmist wrote: —
As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.
. . . . . . .
For with Thee is the fountain of Life;
In Thy light shall we see light.
Brains can give no idea of God's man. They can take no cognizance of Mind. They are not the organ of the Infinite. As mortals give up their delusion that there is more than one Mind, they will gain the likeness of God, the eternal good, and include in it no other mental element.
As a material life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man will dawn upon human thought, and lead to “where the young child lies,” even to the spiritual idea of Life and what it includes.
The human mind must escape from its own barriers. It should no longer ask of the head, heart, or lungs, What is man's prospect for life? Mind is not helpless. Intelligence is not mute before non-intelligence.
Whatsoever is incompetent to explain Soul, had better not undertake the explanation of body. Life is, was, and ever will be independent of matter; for Life is God, and man is the idea of God, that dust can neither make nor unmake.
Mortality causes sickness, and then, to cure it, recommends a double dose. It is like a physical irritation, which we falsely attribute to the quantity, rather than the quality, of some drug which has been taken. The Science of Being reveals man and immortality as based on Spirit. Personal sense defines mortal man as based on matter; and thence infers the mortality of the body.
Every method of medicine has its advocates. The preference of mortal mind for any method creates a demand for it, and the body seems to require it. You can even educate a healthy horse so far in physiology that he will take cold without his blanket; whereas the wild animal, left to his instincts, sniffs the wind with delight. Epizoötic is an evolved ailment, that a natural horse never has.
I have discerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, many weeks before the so-called disease made its appearance in the body.
