thening
presence.

"It is the negative or mortal thought that produces disease. See how
grief bends and breaks the strongest constitutions, furrows the cheek,
dims the eye, takes the appetite, impairs the mind. See how anger
cankers everything it touches, how jealousy corrodes the thoughts with
poisoned arrows, until the body is written over with letters of
unmistakable meaning.

"The body is what we may call the thermometer of the mind and registers
the quality of thought. Universal beliefs in error find their common
expression on the body. Every thought of sickness, sin or discouragement
is recorded or bodied forth.

"With all our belief in and fear of evil, sickness and death, we are
continually subjecting ourselves to false and undesirable conditions,
until, as Job said, 'Lo, the thing that I feared has come upon me.'

"Fear is more quickly productive of disease pictures than any other kind
of thought. Some one has aptly said, 'if the human race were freed from
fear, it would be free from sickness,' which is verily true. Even the
most learned doctors of medicine admit that an epidemic takes hold of
those first who are most afraid, and frequently leaves the absolutely
fearless unmolested.

"Why is this so? Because fear weakens the power of mental control, and
consequently weakens the body. To leave the doors unlocked, and then
watch for the thief, is almost equal to having the thief in the house.

"The material scientist says an epidemic has a material cause; the
Christian healer says it has a mental cause. Before there is an object
to fear there must be the sentiment of fear. Let scarlet fever appear in
a community, and every parent will immediately send out the most
agonizing thoughts of fear. Where will they go? Everywhere, because
thoughts can not be restrained. Their influence goes out in every
direction. To the tender children especially, because particularly
directed to them. All who have left the door open to fear, though they
may be sleeping in their unconsciousness of danger, will be liable to
receive these uncontrolled thoughts, and some day when they least expect
or fear sickness, it may be upon them.

"So the children, to whom have been directed such thoughts, only prove
their susceptibility to them, by picturing forth fear in the form of
scarlet fever, or whatever may have been the naming of the error.
Anybody manifesting sickness without consciousness of fear proves
passive or unconscious fear