Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/425

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PRACTICE.
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Resist evil — error, of whatever sort — and it will flee from you. Error is opposed to Life. We can and Resistance. ultimately shall, so rise as to avail ourselves of the supremacy of Truth over error. Life over death, and Good over evil, in every direction; and this growth will go on until we no more fear that we shall be sick and die, than that we shall steal, murder, or commit suicide. Sickness, as well as sin, involves weakness, temptation, and fall, — a loss of control over the body.

The depraved appetite for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, is destroyed only by the mastery of Morbid craving. Mind over body. This normal control is gained through divine strength and understanding. There is no enjoyment in getting drunk, in becoming a fool or an object of loathing; but there is a very sharp remembrance of it, a suffering inconceivably terrible to man's self-respect. Puffing the obnoxious fumes of tobacco, or chewing a leaf naturally attractive to no animal except a loathsome worm, is at least disgusting.

Man's enslavement to the most relentless masters — passion, appetite, and hatred — is conquered only by a Panacea. mighty struggle. Every hour of delay makes the struggle more severe. If man is not victorious over them, they crush out happiness, health, and manhood. Here Christian Science is the sovereign panacea, giving strength to the weakness of mortal mind, — strength from the immortal and omnipotent Mind, — and lifting humanity above itself, into purer desires, even into spiritual power and good-will to man.

Let the slave of wrong desire learn the lessons of