Then are students and teachers of these laws never ill, never run down, “nervous,” or prostrated?  Yes, they are sometimes ill, sometimes run down and overworked, and suffer the many evil effects ensuing; but the work which has produced these results is much greater and more laborious than would have been possible without the practice of the principles.  At the same time their states of illness occur because they only partially obey the laws.  In the degree which they obey they will be preserved from the effects of tensity, overstrung nerves, and generally worn-out bodies; and in sickness coming from other causes—­mechanical, hereditary, etc.—­again, according to their obedience, they will be held in all possible physical and mental peace, so that the disease may wither and drop like the decayed leaf of a plant.

As well might we ask of the wisest clergyman in the land, Do his truths never fail him?  Is he always held in harmony and nobility by their power?  However great and good the man may be, this state of perfection will never be reached in this world.

In exact parallel to the spiritual laws upon which all universal truth, of all religions, is founded, are the truths of this teaching of physical peace and equilibrium.  As religion applies to all the needs of the soul, so this applies to all the needs of the body.  As a man may be continually progressing in nobility of thought and action, and yet find himself under peculiar circumstances tried even to the stumbling point,—­so may the student of bodily quiet and equilibrium, who appears even to a very careful observer to be in surprising possession of his forces, under a similar test stumble and fall into some form of the evil effects out of which he has had power to lead others.

It is important that this parallelism should be recognized, that the unity of these truths may be finally accomplished in the living; therefore we repeat, Is this any more possible than that the full control of the soul should be at once possessed?

Think of the marvellous construction of the human body,—­the exquisite adjustment of its economy.  Could a power of control sufficient to apply to its every detail be fully acquired at once, or even in a life-time?

But when one does fall who has made himself even partially at one with Nature’s way of living, the power of patient waiting for relief is very different.  He separates himself from his ailments in a way which without the preparation would be to him unknown.  He has, without drug or other external assistance, an anodyne always within himself which he can use at pleasure.  He positively experiences that “underneath are the everlasting arms,” and the power to experience this gives him much respite from pain.

Pain is so often prolonged and accentuated by dwelling in its memory, living in a self-pity of the time when it shall come again!  The patient who comes to his test with the bodily and mental repose already acquired, cuts off each day from the last, each hour from the last, one might almost say each breath from the last, so strong is his confidence in the renewal of forces possible to those who give themselves quite trustfully into Nature’s hands.