Text, Jeremiah viii. 22: "Is there no balm in Gilead?" Medicines for diverse ails are called specifies, as if each were a bullet sure to hit the mark in some enemy of health. One of these very famous in Judea, was the balm of Gilead. But Jeremiah found the root of disease in uncleanness, in falsehood and fraud, which derange the human mind till death cuts off the children of men, who fall as the handful after the harvestman. What to cure or hinder the outward disorder is this more searching balsam of the soul? Something in the way of its own working it must be. We say a prescribed drug operates in a particular way. It is not enough to say mind cure, till we show that on the fleshly system the mental specific acts. There are plenty of facts to this point. The idea that the new practice lays stress upon is, "As a man thinketh, so is he," well or ill. Mark and Luke tell us that Jesus suffered not the devils — errors, diseases, he was casting out to speak, but dismissed them silently from the human theatre on which they would have established themselves to enact their parts as diseases and symptoms of diseases.
As you ignore or pass without speaking one whose relations are unsatisfactory, he will not make dispute or quarrel, so cut disorders, bid them go. My friend Thomas Starr King came into the house and said, "I am sick." He sat down at the table, and said, laughing, "I am only hungry." Had he been told to eat only oat meal, and treated to drugs and tonics by an apprehensive physician, he would have had a fever. Such is the power of fear in the mind to bring on the condition apprehended.
The apostle Paul tells us to think only whatsoever things are "pure, lovely, and of good report." Some men and women are what bad conjurors and experts of trouble! Fear is distrust and unbelief, sickness and pain. Love thinketh not evil. To think evil of one is to create evil for or in that one. Fear itself is evil, but love casteth out fear ; then where love is, and trust, there is no evil. The ominous words, typhus, bronchitis, meningitis, cancer, may be good enough among dusty books, but should never be passed to and fro among friends. Several young persons agreed, as a nice prank, to tell one of their mates as they should successively meet him on the street, how pale he looked. He became rapidly what they told him he was. Considering, calling, treating a person as if he were insane, will make him so. The harp of a thousand strings is easily untuned. A wrong thought disturbs right thinking. Rectify the system with right thoughts. That is the medicine to be taken internally.
