Chapter III - Spirit and Matter
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the voice of Soul; therefore science reveals the so‑
the voice of Soul; therefore science reveals the so‑
called pleasures or pains of personal sense, illusion, and
that there is no sensation in matter; the opposite belief
that denies this is not the utterance of man's Principle,
not the true tone, but the discord. Spirit is concord,
matter discord. If it was understood that Life is
Wisdom, Truth and Love, and not sickness, sin, and
death, things of sense, man would be immortal, and
spared the experience of sin. We find the so-called
pleasures of sense nearly unknown in infancy, and well
nigh lost in age; showing us at both extremities they
are nothingness – things of belief alone. Nutriment,
one of the parent's beliefs of personal sense, that is first
transmitted to their offspring, is nothing but instinct in
infancy, instead of pleasure, for appetites and their grat-
ification grow through education into many demands,
that instinct forbids. In both biped and quadruped
we find belief develops only error, and that instinct is
better than reason misguided. Birds, governed by in-
stinct, sing and soar; drenched with the shower, they
dry their plumage without having catarrhs, or wetting
their feet, are not victims of pulmonary disease; instinct
procures them summer residences, even with less diffi-
culty than wealth affords.
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Every pleasure we lay up in the storehouse of per-
Every pleasure we lay up in the storehouse of per-
sonal sense, is lost; sickness, sin, or death, destroys it;
but joys of Soul are laid up in the immortal storehouse
of spiritual sense, where thieves cannot break through
and steal. A happy Spirit (and there is none other,)
is independent of circumstances, accident, or age; optic
nerves never robbed it of light, nor a broken bone of
limbs, nor disease of a sound body. Matter may break
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through sense and steal, but it cannot through Soul, nor
through sense and steal, but it cannot through Soul, nor
take away joys that are spiritual. A sick, crippled, or
dying man is not the image of God, of Life, and Truth.
Nerves have nothing to do with pain or pleasure;
nerves may be destroyed, and pain be left. We suffer
physically in dreams, but nerves are not the occasion of
this pain. Sometimes a tooth that has been extracted,
aches again, in belief. After a limb has been amputated
a sense of pain is felt in the old spot; and we find a
limb lost, according to one belief, and aching accord-
ing to another; we have seen an unwitting attempt to
scratch the end of a finger that had been cut off for
months. When the nerve is gone that we say occa-
sioned pain, but the pain is left, we naturally conclude
sensation is mind and not matter; now reverse the case
and let mind be absent from the body, or lulled by an
opiate, and sensation is lost and nerves are of no avail.
The so-called pleasures, or pains, of personal sense, are
beliefs only, instead of nerves. Learning the nothing-
ness of personal sense, is the basis of science; this point
proved, was our scientific standpoint for healing the
sick through mind instead of matter; physical effects,
we learned, are not the result of physical causes; that
diseases are beliefs, that, ruled out of mind, are ruled
out of the body.
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Most forms, or stages of disease that the body mani-
Most forms, or stages of disease that the body mani-
fests, are remedied on this scientific mental basis; we
have tested this in too many instances to doubt it.
When medicine is taken and the sick recover, faith and
not the medicine, has done this, whereas the almost
universal belief is that medicine, or laws of health heal
the sick; and because doctor, nurse, patient, and people