“Physiology, Fear and Faith”
THE mental influences that flow from lofty purposes and from a clear conscience are also beneficial to the body, just as surely as sunshine and showers are healthful to vegetation. Not all the drug medicines in the world can antidote in one human body the depressing and undermining influence of a guilty conscience, or the unnerving power of anxiety or fear. There is nowhere in the world a drug or a combination of drugs that can overcome the physical damage one individual may do himself by the habit of fretting and worrying, of fault-finding and opposition to beneficent law. A clear conscience, a cheerful and confident hope, a rational, practical trust in God, a merry-hearted contentment, will dissipate more disease than can be cured by all the drugs in the universe. There are to-day thousands of men and women who are frequenting doctors’ offices, consulting quacks, and pouring down patent medicine who might better be consulting their pastor, an intelligent teacher, or Christian friend for advice and direction concerning their mental habits and their moral character. Each one needs to settle his accounts with the conscience and his God, before his stomach will help him to make good blood, or his brain permit him to think clearly. On the other hand, people are trying formal, superficial, conventional, superstitious “piety,” “faith cure,” “divine healing,” “Christian science,” “will power,” etc., who might better be learning of some competent teacher or physician how wisely to use the stomach, the lungs, the muscles, the brain, and the nerves.— Selected.