Page:Christian Healing.djvu/32

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
18
SERMON

mind to destroy their effects upon the body, that both mortal mind and mortal body shall yield to the government of God, immortal Mind? In the words of Paul, that “the old man” shall be “put off,” mortality shall disappear and immortality be brought to light. People are willing to put new wine into old bottles; but if this be done, the bottle will break and the wine be spilled.

There is no connection between Spirit and matter. Spirit never entered and it never escaped from matter; good and evil never dwelt together. There is in reality but the good: Truth is the real; error, the unreal. We cannot put the new wine into old bottles. If that could be done, the world would accept our sentiments; it would willingly adopt the new idea, if that idea could be reconciled with the old belief; it would put the new wine into the old bottle if it could prevent its effervescing and keep it from popping out until it became popular.

The doctrine of atonement never did anything for sickness or claimed to reach that woe; but Jesus' mission extended to the sick as much as to the sinner: he established his Messiahship on the basis that Christ, Truth, heals the sick. Pride, appetites, passions, envy, and malice will cease to assert their Cæsar sway when metaphysics is understood; and religion at the sick-bed will be no blind Samson shorn of his locks. You must admit that what is termed death has been produced by a belief alone. The Oxford students proved this: they killed a man by no other means than making him believe he was bleeding to death.