Page:Science and Health.djvu/219

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SPIRIT AND MATTER.
215

ton, with more certainty than the falling apple; years had not made her old, and wherefore? because she did not believe she was growing old, but lived according to another belief in the hour of youth, the result of which was, time could not make her aged, for the body represented the belief. Mind must say she was growing old, or the body would not present the aspect of age. She was young because during all those years she had never believed she was becoming old, therefore time fell powerless at her feet. Impossibilities never occur, and one such instance as the above, proves it not impossible to be young at seventy-five years of age, but the Principle of this proof is worth more than the bare fact; it explains the cause of decrepit age, and how to avoid it. Never record years and keep time tables of births and deaths, if you would preserve the full faculties of womanhood and manhood. It is only because every hour of our years, mind is admitting we are growing old, that it is difficult to present three score years and ten unmarred by age. It is not the years but the belief that years make man infirm, that brings the infirmity of age; “as a man thinketh so is he.” A belief of acute disease — and all disease is belief — is more readily destroyed than the chronic, because mind has not settled the question so decidedly, nor admitted the belief as long; the mental force of habit is not as strong in one case as in the other. The belief that man has birth, maturity and decay, is simply saying he is a vegetable animal, the animal not fit to live, and the vegetable incapable of Life. Soul is Spirit, and Spirit Life; God, neither an infant, adult, nor decrepit; and man is “the image and likeness of God,” then what prece-