Favorable and Adverse Mental Conditions by GEO. D. BALLOU

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 17, 1915

Favorable and Adverse Mental Conditions

By GEO. D. BALLOU

Mind Cure — No. 1

Favorable and Adverse Mental Conditions

GEO. D. BALLOU

The first thing our parents lost in Eden was their confidence in God. The adversary told a lie about the Creator, and they believed it; and this destroyed confidence in him who alone can uphold and keep. If they had retained their confidence in God, they would have lived to all eternity, and all their posterity with them. The pivotal point on which everything balanced was confidence. This being destroyed, everything was disordered, and only ruin could result.

If sin had never entered, nothing but courage, hope, good will, and joyful expectation would ever have prevailed in the human mind. These states of mind help to conserve life in the human soul and body as truly as sun energy, air, and water generate plant life in the soil. Man does not live by bread alone, but by the words of confidence, hope, courage, good will, and joyful expectation found in the promises and precepts of God's Word.

A single thought can bring the crimson flush to the cheek; another thought can give it the pallor of death. Other thoughts can cause the body to shiver with a sudden chill, while others can produce the flush of fever. The whole being sometimes trembles under strong emotions. Many a soldier can testify to the cathartic and diuretic effects of the terror of the first battle he entered. The heart action is often greatly disturbed by powerful adverse emotions.

A thought will cause tears to flow. A thought will wreath the face with smiles. In the presence of danger, thought will cause superhuman feats of strength. Again, fear thoughts often leave the muscles and nerves limp and powerless. Every little while we hear of some surprise thoughts having relaxed the muscles and nerves so that severe hiccuping has instantly ceased.

Then may not thoughts cause vital organs to blush or blanch — to congest or become depleted of blood? May not the circulation be hastened or hindered so as to vitally interfere with the health of the body?

Unbelief, fear, hate, and anxiety are the fruit of doubt, as surely as courage, good will, and joyful expectation are the result of confidence. And these adverse moods work nothing but ruin and death.

He who goes forth with joy and gladness to the tasks of life, will return in the evening with little loss of energy. He who goes forth with agonizing fear and forebodings will return exhausted. Men and women often spend more energy in hating the tasks of life than they do in their actual physical performance. Care and worry corrode and weaken the delicate mechanism of the mind as truly as acids corrode and ruin the strongest metals. Worry brings sighs and groans, and lessens the capacity of the breathing organs. It destroys the appetite for food and water, and robs its victims of sleep, until they look haggard and pale. If they continue on this downward road, the entire vital machinery becomes disordered, and they fall victims to some dire malady, or end their days in a lunatic asylum.

If the agony of some terrible sorrow or disappointment suddenly overtakes the individual, collapse and prostration instantly follow, and sometimes sudden death. The entire supply of vitality has been exhausted, and no energy is left to keep the heart and lungs acting. In any of these cases, if courage and confidence can be restored before the final collapse, the body will rally and get well. A person who is a victim of a shock from the agony of disappointment or sorrow may be almost instantly restored by a hopeful telegram which brings what purports to be good news. After the restoration, it may be learned that the telegram had no shadow of truth in it. Yet the confidence and courage and hope it inspired worked curatively until the lie was unmasked and the confidence again destroyed. From this it may be seen that any assurance or doctrine, no matter how false or deceptive, may work curatively if it only seems to generate hope and confidence.

This enables us to see that there may be a system or many systems of mind cure which are absolutely godless. They cannot raise the dead nor secure permanent results, but they do get temporary results which sometimes appear very satisfactory, and to those who have given them little or no attention, the results may seem almost or quite miraculous. A sudden restoration of confidence and hope may almost as immediately restore as a sudden loss of confidence may prostrate. It takes only a fairly clever presentation to convert such into marvelous cases of so-called divine healing. But cures through confidence which rest on a false foundation will always be disappointing, because they can be only temporary. Any object of confidence may furnish temporary relief to those who rest on them. The coin may contain some gold, yet it is a counterfeit, because it is not what it professes to be. The genuine coin has real value.

Human assurances often fail. Doctrines prove false and unsatisfactory. The heathen god loses his power over the devotee once he is enlightened. The enchanted, mystified followers of Christian Science, after the blaze and glamour are gone, find in their hearts an aching void, and they seek yet again for something more substantial on which to pillow their disappointed hopes and rest their unsatisfied desires.

Los Angeles, Cal.