OWING to the fact that mankind have been reared with and into the belief that man's life is in the physical body, it is small wonder that selfishness and fear have been engendered in human experience. While one looks to the physical body as the seat and circumference of his life, health, and strength, he naturally feels that these are just as limited as is the body; and whenever any sense of limitation is entertained, then the thought of fear is also one's guest.
Very naturally, then, men have toiled and struggled, have studied and experimented, that they might prolong and happify their sense of life in the body. All too many, however, have been like the man digging in the ditch, who said he was working there to earn money with which to buy food to make him strong, so that he could dig in the ditch. But in every age there have been some whose thought of life has been lifted in a degree above this sordid grind, in whom higher aspirations have been awakened, an upward reaching toward man's true estate of freedom and dominion.
To remedy, or at least to improve, the discordant and unsatisfactory conditions of humanity, has long been the aim and effort of mankind, in which laudable purpose medicine and theology have taken the lead. Both have worked from the basis of man as material, either wholly or in part, and the results of their endeavors have not proven this premise to be correct, for until a comparatively few years ago the average age of mankind was constantly diminishing, while the teachings of scholastic theology have not brought the peace and comfort promised in the Scriptures. When results or conclusions are incorrect, it is certainly proved that a false premise exists.
