Pathos

“ Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease—Disease, sin, evil, death, deny Good, omnipotent God, Life."
"What is termed disease does not exist." "Matter has no being." "All is mind." "Matter is but the subjective state of what is here termed mortal mind." "All disease is the result of education, and can carry its ill effects no farther than mortal mind maps out the way." ”

“ But, whatever be the precise manner in which the effect is produced, the fact is certain; for every day's experience bears witness to its truth. As that which caused the Fall in the beginning—namely, self-love and disobedience to the Divine laws,—is still every day causing a yet deeper fall, or confirming the evil effects of the original fall, in man's mind,—so is that which produced disease at first, still and continually operating to produce disease. ”

“ Again, where plagues and mightiest woes have bred in certain families, owing to some ancient blood–guiltiness, there madness has entered with holy prayers and rites, and by inspired utterances found a way of deliverance for those who are in need; and he who has part in this gift, and is truly possessed and duly out of his mind, is by the use of purifications and mysteries made whole and exempt from evil, future as well as present, and has a release from the calamity which was afflicting him. ”

“ And yet what were my pupils doing ten minutes ago but making game of a far worse disease than the plague—the fatal disease of sin? Its spots are blacker, the pain it gives more terrible: often has it caused the death of the body, and, except where repented of and forsaken, the death, the endless death of the soul! Oh, my children! it may be your lot, as it was that mother’s, to be obliged to go out and meet the danger, 97for the Almighty may have seen good to place you in situations of great temptation ”

“ But illness, appearing to be but the ghastly vehicle of death, clothed in such fearful pain that no control, even of reason and strong will, can check its agonized expression, till at last, reason itself succumbs beneath it, and bears the mind from the tortured frame, this is a trial of no ordinary suffering, even when such illness has been brought about by what may be termed natural causes. ”

“ I have discerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, months before the so-called Disease foreseen disease made its appearance in the body. Disease being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal mind, the sensation would not appear if the error of belief was met and destroyed by truth. ”

“ Wretch, are you so blind, and do you so fail to see the road to which lack of the necessities of life leads? Where, indeed, does it lead? Where also fever, or a stone that drops on your head, lead,—to death. ”

“ There are four natures out of which the body is compacted, earth and fire and water and air, and the unnatural excess or defect of these, or the change of any of them from its own natural place into another, or—since there are more kinds than one of fire and of the other elements—the assumption by any of these of a wrong kind, or any similar irregularity, produces disorders and diseases ”

“ We know, Father and Mother of us all, that there is no such a thing as a really diseased stomach, that the disease is the CARNAL MORTAL MIND given over to the WORLD, the Flesh, and the Devil; that the mortal mind is a twist, a distortion, a false attitude, the HARMATIA of Thought, Shining and Glorious Verity, we recognize the great and splendid FACT that the moment we really believe the truth, disease ceases to trouble us, that the truth is, there is no disease in either real body or mind ”

“ Hesternis vitiis animum quoque praegravat una, with fear, sorrow, &c., which are ordinary symptoms of this disease: so on the other side, the mind most effectually works upon the body, producing by his passions and perturbations miraculous alterations, as melancholy, despair, cruel diseases, and sometimes death itself. Insomuch that it is most true which Plato saith in his Charmides, omnia corporis mala ab anima procedere ”

“ For the origins of diseases, in general, are intemperance, luxuries of various kinds, pleasures merely corporeal, also envyings, hatreds, revenges, lasciviousness, and, the like; which things destroy man's interiors, and when these are destroyed, the exteriors also suffer, and draw man into disease and, thus to death.—Sin is all that which is contrary to Divine order. ”

“ Let us then suppose that a man by some such mischance has contracted a disease. He may not be sure that it is caused by a spirit, but if he has reason to suspect that such is the case he will send to the home of a mudang, describing his symptoms and asking her what spirit it is that is causing it. She may reply by naming some spirit, or she may declare that she must see the patient first. ”

“ When we remove disease by addressing the mortal mind, giving no heed to the body, we prove that mortal Retina. mind creates the suffering. Mortal mind rules all that is mortal. We see in the body the images of this mind, even as, in optics, we see painted on the retina the image which becomes visible to the senses. The action of mortal mind needs to be controlled by the divine Mind, to bring out the harmony of Being. Without this control there is discord, — manifest as sin, sickness, and death. ”

“ Neither evil, disease, nor death can be discerned spiritually, and the mortal sense of them disappears in the ratio of our spiritual growth. Because matter has no consciousness, or Ego, its conditions are unreal, and these false conditions are the source of all sickness. Admit the existence of matter, and we admit that mortality (and therefore disease) has a foundation in fact. Deny the existence of matter, and we destroy the belief in these conditions, and with it disappears the foundation of disease. ”

“ The demon theory of disease, a prevalent feature in almost every popular creed, has some influence on the Hindoo writers of medicine, according to whom the malignant spirit, if wittingly or unwittingly provoked, enters the body of the offender, annoys him in various ways, and afflicts him with certain kinds of diseases. ”

“ Sin, like disease, is a vital process. It is a function, and not an entity. It must be studied as a section of anthropology. No preconceived idea must be allowed to interfere with our investigation of the deranged spiritual function, any more than the old ideas of demoniacal possession must be allowed to interfere with our study of epilepsy. Spiritual pathology is a proper subject for direct observation and analysis, like any other subject involving a series of living actions. ”

“ They shall know every man the plague of his own heart, what it is that pains him, and (as we say) where the shoe pinches, and shall spread their hands, that is, spread their case, as Hezekiah spread the letter, in prayer, towards this house; whether the trouble be of body or mind, they shall represent it before God. Inward burdens seem especially meant. Sin is the plague of our own heart; our indwelling corruptions are our spiritual diseases. ”

“ Disease was looked upon as due to the agency of evil spirits, or of those that controlled them, and though many potions were doubtless drunk of a curative nature, they were taken at the instance of the magician, not of the doctor, and to the accompaniment of magical rites and incantations. ”

“ So disease among the lower races is accounted for by possession by demons, who are often themselves human souls, and who enter the bodies of their victims, causing all kinds of illness, and especially those phenomena of convulsion and delirium in which the patient seems actually animated by a spirit not his own. ”

“ But waving these ideas, and viewing these knives as the instruments of the death of our dear Lord, may they not be typical of our sins—and may we not enumerate twenty-nine of the most awful sins mentioned in the scriptures, and which include all the rest that are mentioned. The Spirit has borrowed many metaphors to point out the nature of sin to us—hence in scripture it is called, 1, a Plague ”

“ If you mentally and silently call Naming diseases. the disease by name, as you argue against it, as a general rule the body will respond more quickly, — just as a person replies more readily when his name is spoken; but this is because you are not perfectly attuned to Divine Science, and need the arguments of Truth for reminders. To let Spirit, through the power of divine Love, bear witness, without arguments, to the healing Truth, is the more excellent way. ”

“ We know that every disease was looked upon as an infliction from some angry god; on the other hand, we know also that for each disease there was some god, in later days some saint, to whom the afflicted might appeal ”

“ With them, when a person was afflicted with a disease of any kind, especially disease affecting the mind, it was a disembodied spirit, or, as it would now be called by their disciples, an "immortal soul", had entered the body of the person to punish him. ”

“ I have done with minute pathology: as there are however two diseases, epilepsy and insanity, which may be the result of catalepsy, I may offer a precept on the point. The propensity to trance cannot suddenly be averted, but the state of the body and mind are important studies for our treatment. Melancholy and apathy are the features of the mind of the cataleptic, and languor and faulty secretions the symptoms of the body. ”

“ Thus the natural history of doubt, viewed as a chapter of human history, like the chapter of physiology which studies a disease, will point indirectly to the cure, or at least to the mode of avoiding the causes which induce the disease ”

“ Christian Science.—This method of healing rests upon the assumption of the unreality of matter. This assumed as a major premise, it follows that our bodies are unreal, and, consequently, there is no such thing as disease, the latter existing only in the mind, which is the only real thing in existence. ”

“ Because mortal mind acts unconsciously as well as consciously, the sick say, How can mind have caused the disease that I never thought of, and knew nothing of until it appeared on my body? We have answered this question in our explanation of disease originating in the unconscious mortal mind, or the body that this mind names matter. ”

“ Now, does the fact of the ditch, the fall, and the broken leg, being unseen and unknown, make them a spiritual ditch, a spiritual fall, a spiritual broken leg? And does the fact of the demon and his doings, being as yet unseen and unknown, make them spiritual, or the harm that he may do, a spiritual harm? ”

“ Of such character will I show myself to you—faithful, reverent, noble, unperturbed. You do not mean, therefore, immortal, or ageless, or exempt from disease? No, but one who dies like a god, who bears disease like a god. ”

“ But things which are changed all of a sudden, and only gradually and with difficulty return to their own nature, have effects in every way opposite to the former, as is evident in the case of burnings and cuttings of the body. ”

“ Physical disease is often rooted in moral disorder, and for such troubled, tainted souls, with hereditary poison in vein and nerve, the bright cheerfulness, the orderly calm and confidence of the ritual, which had such a charm for the soul of Plutarch, may have exorcised, for the time, many an evil spirit, and wiped out the memory of old sins. ”

“ All these manifestations, formerly held to be supernatural, are now recognised as morbid phenomena, of which mental pathology describes the physiological causes, the natural course, the fatal issue. Even in frightful disorders order has been discovered ”

“ In any painful illness, especially when the sick man is tossing and shaking in fever, or [354] writhing in convulsions on the ground, or when in delirium or delusion he no longer thinks his own thoughts or speaks with his own voice, but with distorted features and strange, unearthly tones breaks into wild raving, then the explanation which naturally suggests itself is that another spirit has entered into or possessed him. ”

“ The Babylonian doctrine of disease was that the hosts of evil spirits in the air entered man’s body, and could only be expelled by the incantations of the exorcist. These disease-demons were addressed as “the noxious neck spirit,” “the burning spirit of the entrails which devours the man.” ”

“ Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise; the disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelligence ”

“ The demon theory of disease, which began before the age of history, and continued down through the savage ages and religions, through the early civilizations, through the gospel history, and dominated early Christianity, was finally, in the sixteenth century, to be vigorously assailed and largely overcome. ”

“ XIII. Even as there may be, with respect to the body, a disease, a sickness, and a defect, so it is with the mind. They call that a disease where the whole body is corrupted; they call that sickness where a disease is attended with a weakness, and that a defect where the parts of the body are not well compacted together ”

“ Original corruptions are the diseases of the soul, actual transgressions are its wounds, or the eruptions of the disease. It is deforming, weakening, disquieting, wasting, killing, but, blessed be God, not incurable. [2.] Jesus Christ is the great Physician of souls. ”

“ IV. A. My opinion is, that a wise man is subject to grief.
M. What, and to the other perturbations of mind, as fears, lusts, anger? For these are pretty much like what the Greeks call πάθη. I might call them diseases, and that would be a literal translation, but it is not agreeable to our way of speaking. For envy, delight, and pleasure are all called by the Greeks diseases, being affections of the mind not in subordination to reason; but we, I think, are right in calling the same motions of a disturbed soul perturbations, and in very seldom using the term diseases ”