The power of mind over matter, or, Thoughts suggested on reading Nichols' confession of the Parramatta River murders / by Andrew Ross.
- Ross, Andrew, 1829-1910.
- Date:
- 1872
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The power of mind over matter, or, Thoughts suggested on reading Nichols' confession of the Parramatta River murders / by Andrew Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![THE j^OWER OF yVllND OVEPx J\]lAT1 ER J Thoughts suggested on reading Nichols’ Confession of the Parramatta River Murders. Money is a useful friend and servant, but tbe want of it often proves a rather cruel, villainous, and mischievous enemy. ’Tis further said, where there is gold or money that there there is generally, also, an abundance of sin, disease, misery, crime, and wickedness. By this it is implied that all evils and crimes, less or more, take their root, in some way or other, in money. Be this as it may, there is invariably always some kind of premonitory warning or symptom to denote the beginning of every motive and action in life. If an original impulse be wrong, it naturally and inevitably follows, a prion, that the act itself must likewise be wrong. When our reasoning or guiding faculties, therefore, are sound, healthy, natural, and true, no sin or temptation, however great, can ever befall, derange, or drive us to do wrong. Let mind once, however, give way to a wrong thought, or a single false act, anything, in fact, that is contrary to reason’ truth, or the statutes of the moral law, then the false thought and act’ or what is commonly termed “devil,” sooner or later, leadeth to destruc- tion m an endless variety of ways. Not by this that there is any reality or truth in the existence of a devil, or that the devil tempts people to commit sin, for I hold that the term “ devil” is but a mere myth or at least, representing nothing more or less than the act of an upright spirit or mind when it first, begins to fall away from the ordinary0or accepted path of truth and moral rectitude. Were people to first reason honestly and fairly on every act and thing that’s to be done in place of, as too frequently happens, jumping to rash, ill-digested conclusions, probably derived from erroneous inferences, or to °meet perhaps, the demand of some present or urgent want, then rivlit would always rule wrong-and good, likewise, would predominate over evil in many cases crime, and criminal acts, however, too frequently take their first origin or root from a total disregard to some of the orimnal laws which are intended to regulate mind and nature, viz., that right and truth must ever rule. When error or falsehood, however, pre- ^ /3 ./V &Vfr. * z f - -ZoSk KXcj-3 v %r<x *«««* /](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22443149_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
