who has taken poison for half a century, assures you it preserves his health; but does this assertion make it so, or establish the fact that tobacco is a good thing, or prevent the conclusion he would have been better without it? Such instances only prove the power of belief over the body, and fasten our conclusions in science, “as a man thinketh, so is he.” Mind decides the effect of drugs, regimen, physiology, etc., on the body; for man is governed by mind instead of matter. The only condition of health and happiness, is ignorance of the so-called laws of matter, and understanding God, hence more confidence in Soul governing sense, and rising above selfishness, or mere personal considerations, in which pleasure or pain of the body is taken so largely into account, into the atmosphere of Spirit instead of matter.
A highly opinionated man, booked in the old school systems, has little room for enlarged reasoning; metaphysical science being intangible to touch or taste, he casts it overboard. His treasures laid up in sects, pride, person, or popularity, are in earthen vessels, that yield little space to God. The man of avoirdupois is shocked at our small estimate of exquisite viands; the diminutive intellect, alarmed at our exclusive appeals to mind, and the man of sense, sad at the prospect of Soul only! thus, when the world is bidden come to the feast and Truth of being, one has a farm, another a merchandise, and another a wife, therefore they cannot come; but ere long Truth compels us to come in ways we least expect. When sickness overtakes man, he is weak with all his imaginary strong-holds of matter, having nothing but material law to lean upon, and this, he owns he has
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