The Text - Section 10
Science, Woman, the Spiritual Rib
BU 31:27, LC 3:111
[orig. untitled]
I have shown that there is no matter independent of mind or life. It is proved by
geologists that matter is going through a process of change which is called life.
Then life is in the atmosphere or space. And if life is in a state invisible to matter,
it may fill all space. Now in this space there must be a diversity of matter or life,
viz. the life of minerals, and the life of vegetables and the life of animals. And all
these lives are in the atmosphere, like the mist that went up from the earth at the
creation. Thus matter or life is in an invisible state to the visible matter but
governed by the same God. This makes the material earth or natural world. God
made matter and condensed it into certain forms and elements so that it should
contain all of the elements that were necessary for man. And to be a combination
of these, it was necessary that there should be a chemical union of all matter
dissolved into space before man could be formed. For man is made of the dust of
this living matter. Now as man contains all the elements of this material world or
life, he is a miniature world of himself and contains all the elements of the original
world or matter. This matter or life, under the wisdom of God, forms the identity of
what is called the natural man. So that man, spoken into being, was made up of
all the elements of the old world. Now you have an identity of matter, or life,
formed from the mist or dust of all material life, in the form of a man. Thus the
natural man partakes of those elements of life of which he is largely composed.
He is a sort of phenomenon to the natural world or life, and he commences his
life in a higher state of matter. The field or garden in which he is placed is with all
the creation of animal forms, and he is liable to all the evils that his life is capable
of knowing. This makes man composed of all combinations of living life, thrown
together in human form. It is not strange that queer forms and characters should
be in the world, which can be traced to the animal creation with which he is most
identified.
All phenomena or diseases are the effect of the life that man receives from this
atmosphere of animal life, and as man is like all other living matter, a chemical
change or progression is constantly going on and he embraces what is called
annihilation. And as his life is a life of destruction, he is at war all the time. So
with man as with beast, might is right. As man's life is a sort of purifying process,
it has to contend with all the grosser life or matter of the animal. So with life,
might is right with man and beast, but as man is the rib or purest part of animal
life, it contains more of the element thought, for this the lower life does not
contain. Thought is one step higher than life, yet even in this state science is a
stranger. Man, like the earth, is throwing off a vapor or life, and that contains all
the life, or matter, of his perfection. Out of that vapor or life comes a more perfect
identity of living matter, more rarefied than the former, but being in danger of
being devoured by the former; the latter life is less gross but more spiritual. So
that what it loses in gross life or its physical strength, it receives from a higher
power, called God or science. This science is the wisdom of God that controls
this pure life that is subject to the lower or grosser life. This is another
phenomenon of wisdom.
As the earth is composed of different kinds of soil adapted for certain kinds of
vegetable life, the rest of the earth is wanted for some other use. So as man is of
that kind of earth that bears more of the food to sustain the lower lives, he must
not find fault with a more pure soil or life that can produce a higher kind of living
food that gives man more pleasure than he receives from the lower lives, and this
life or soil is the spiritual rib or lives that arise from man. This is a more perfect
matter or soil. This is the soil called woman. This is that pure soil that has gone
through all the changes of life from the mineral kingdom to the spiritual or
scientific world, or the kingdom of heaven, where God or science is.
Now I do not mean that woman means every female, nor do I pretend to say that
man means everything of the animal, but that the life or matter of a female
contains more of that life of love that is required to receive the higher
development of God's wisdom than the life of man; for this soil or life is pure love
or life, which has been purified by this chemical change that life has gone
through. No intermediate space has ever been where this soil was rich enough to
bear the fruits of science to satisfy the natural man. Phenomena have always
occurred in the form of science, as though man had once been far advanced
beyond his present condition, but it cannot be so from the fact that science is
wisdom, and wisdom is superior to error. As error has more physical strength, it
is counteracted by a higher power called science. These two elements are the
life of man. The male creation feeds on the lower order of life. It makes the higher
order a sort of pet for a while, as the cat plays with the bird for a while, then in a
sort of playful way devours it. Thus all life in the lower animals sports and plays
with its prey. So the natural man sports and plays with the female; at the same
time his weapons of destruction he concealed in his breast, ready to be used at
his own pleasure; and while the purer part of his nature is sympathizing with its
own love in a higher life or soil, the animal life is prowling around to devour the
little pleasure that is striving to grow in this barren soil. This keeps science down
and regards it as an enemy, for it is not known to the natural man.
Now, put this science into the life or soul of the female, and then she is safe from
the lower animal life, and it puts her in possession of a science that the natural
man knows not of. It separates her from matter and brings her into that spiritual
state that rises from all animal life with a knowledge of its character. She then
stands as a chemist among all sorts of matter or life which are under her control
and which she has the power or knowledge of changing. Then she becomes a
teacher of that science which puts man in possession of a wisdom that can
subject all animal life to his own control and separate the wisdom of this world
from the wisdom of God. Then woman becomes a teacher of the young and man
stands to woman as a servant to his Lord, ready to investigate all phenomena by
a science. The woman is the very one who gives all the impressions to the child.
The female is always the most respected among the animal or feathered race.
But man, from some cause, probably having more physical strength and looking
upon all things as inferior to his own wisdom, is not content to subject all the
brute creation to submission to his will but must subject the very creature that his
best life or nature adores to submission, and in this way woman is deprived of
carrying out the science that God intended. By this physical force woman is kept
down and does not have the stand in the world that God intended. But I do say
that at the time that matter or life becomes pure enough for the science to reign
over ignorance, then science will become the master and ignorance the servant.
This will as surely take place as that there is a chemical change going on in
matter.
Mind is only another state of matter called life. Life is only a state of matter that is
purifying itself to receive a higher life that will never end; that is science. And as
man is nothing but a living animal, he lives on such living life as his appetite
craves, and as he separates the animal from the spiritual, his appetite or
passions change till he is completely carried away by the spiritual life. Here is just
as much a phenomenon as any of the rest of the world's phenomena, for science
teaches man that although he is not of this world, he is a teacher in it and, being
a teacher, he is a soldier in the hands of science. To fight the error of life like a
soldier and contend for the truth or science requires more courage than it does to
fight for your own bread. Like the deist, the beast's courage is for what it can eat.
It fights for that, but man ought to have a higher motive than the brute. I am sorry
to say that, give man all his beastly appetite craves, he, like the lion, would lie
down and sleep till roused by hunger. Then look out for his teeth; but the female
is more wide awake and like the hen who scratches for worms to feed her
chickens, while her husband is either fighting some political battle or strutting
round like the rooster. I do not mean to say that every man is a rooster, or every
female a hen. There are some hens that care nothing for their young, and if it
were not for their mates, the chickens would starve. So it is with male and female
of the human species. There are exceptions to all rules, and as science and error
are so combined, it is impossible to draw the line of distinction.
As the mind of man is like the soil, it is composed of all sorts of soil or earth. So
as California is the place the minds are directed for gold, so the wisdom of God
or science is more abundant in the soil or life of the females, but it does not
follow that their life is all the soil that is capable of producing science, but it
contains more of the spiritual wisdom than is found in man. This is as it should
be, and if it could be admitted by man so that woman could have her place in the
life of man, the world would in a short time be rid of the scourges that infest the
land, that is, the medical faculty and priests. Women are religious from science,
naturally, and if man had not instructed them, the world would have been now
free from superstition and evils that follow our belief. Woman is not one half so
superstitious as man. They have three times as much courage and endurance as
men. Their sympathy is almost inexhaustible. While men get out of patience and
would leave the sick, woman will cling to the sick as much as to say to death,
You shall not have the life. Now where is woman placed? Just where man puts
her to satisfy himself. She has nothing to do with her situation, but she must be
content with what man chooses to assign her. In wisdom he, of course, is to be
the great center of attraction, and although he has no light only as it is thrown
from the sun or higher part of his wisdom, the woman, he never thinks while he is
surveying the solar system of his wisdom that the very light enabling him to
distinguish between light and darkness or error and science is derived from a
higher power superior to himself. You may infer from what I have said that I want
to place the female above the male. This is not the case, for a female coming
forward in public to advocate man's ideas is as much below the male as the
male, who leaves his standing and takes the character of a brute for the
gratification of a set of men and women, is below the brute itself. Neither is in the
place designed by their creator. The woman lowers herself, and the man
becomes worse than a brute.
Then it may be asked, Where is woman's true position? I answer, As a teacher of
the science of health and happiness. This is what man does not want to do. It is
too much like labor to toil over the little children and sit by the sick and take their
sufferings upon yourself. This man will not do, but he is very willing to bind
burdens on his neighbors which they will not lift one finger to remove. You may
ask how they bind burdens? By teaching false doctrines whose effect on the
people they do not know, therefore keeping alive errors which keep the people in
bondage and all their lives subject to death.
I will now tell what these are that we fight and where science steps in and puts an
end to the war. I have shown that life is matter and this matter belongs to the
three kingdoms: animal, vegetable and mineral. These all have life. This life is
thrown off like the mist that went up from the earth, and the life is itself and it
makes war with its own father and lives on itself. Now as man is that combination
of matter or life that is condensed to form an idea, in his natural life he is the life
of all living life before him. He becomes a sort of living matter and is subject to all
the living laws of life or matter, so that man lives on life just the same as all other
living things who slay and eat each other. Thus, might is right. Man throws off
from himself a more perfect life or matter. It at last becomes more refined and
becomes the medium of a higher life, the life of science or everlasting life where
there is no death but where all things are tried by science. As science grows in
this matter, its life is its wisdom, and to get wisdom is to make war with its
enemy. So its weapons are the wisdom of God in science.
The war is the evils of the world. These are the old superstititions of the world,
and as they are the life of the old heathen idolatry, the priest and doctors
cultivate these ideas and feed the multitudes so that they get so raving for some
spiritual food that they attack each other. Therefore everyone's hand is against
his neighbor. We live on each other's lives, for our ideas are life. Now when the
science comes, this life or error makes war against it, for science is its
destruction, and sometimes a hard battle is fought before the enemy is
destroyed.
I will illustrate one battle. Take the Devil. He was just as much a terror to his
generation as Robert Kidd was to the mariners of his day. Now science was the
only enemy he had to fear and all who dared to attack him were in danger of their
lives. What crippled him? Science, not known, has chained him to the earth, but
his power is not stopped. His voice is yet heard in the darkness of bigotry. But
when the true science that can show the true answer to all the inquiries in regard
to him shall come, then the error will be annihilated, and life eternal will take the
place of this life or belief in the Devil.
August 1860
Spiritual Truth or Wisdom
BU 3:54, LC 3:23
[orig. PARABLES II]
How shall I illustrate this spiritual truth or wisdom? I will call it a king, who made a
great feast or science for man his son. So he sends wisdom into the minds to call
or reason about this great feast or science. They, that is their errors, prevented
them from understanding, so he sent other ideas or arguments to convince the
error so that it could understand. But the error made light of the truth and went
their way and would not reason so that it could not get any foothold as yet. So
the error ridiculed any idea that would rise in the minds that this truth ever could
be reduced to a science. They discarded from their minds all idea of a science
but admitted it as a gift or power. So when the king had failed to reduce this truth
to a science because of the errors of the age, it was wroth and it sent forth its
power and destroyed these errors that were murdering its science, and by its
truth burnt up their old theory or society. Then said he, the wedding or science is
ready to be understood by man (or the son).
August 1860
Why Are Females More Sickly than Males?
BU 31:37, LC 11:66
This question is often asked. The answer comes; they have nothing to employ
themselves about so they sit down and talk over their aches and pains, and in
this way they make themselves sick. Now if sickness is a thing independent of
talk, why should talking about it make it? Suppose a farmer sits down and talks
about commencing haying. Would the grass be mowed by talking about it? There
is more in talking than people think, for if disease is independent of the mind,
then talking can't affect anything. Now everyone knows and acknowledges that
by talking or thinking about a disease they can make it, or at least aggravate it
and to aggravate a disease, it must be something connected with the mind or the
mind cannot make it. Everyone knows that females have more inquisitiveness
than men; they want to see more, they have more curiosity than men. If you do
not believe it, go with an intelligent female into a carpet factory or any
manufactory. Or go to Saratoga or any other place, and if you do not find that you
cannot gratify all their inquiries, then I will give it up.
I know from experience that females think and bring more to pass in one week
than men do in four. There is a difference in the word thinking but not difference
in the acts. If I think of a horse, that is all; so it is all if it is not accompanied with
some knowledge of this world or science. Here is the difference between the
male and the female. Not one man in ten thinks mechanically. To think
mechanically is to analyze the thing thought of. To hear a thing named and not
investigate it is the wisdom of this world, but to think from the wisdom of science
is to investigate and understand. A person cannot think without having some
curiosity to be gratified. Thinking mechanically so that the world can be put in
possession of something new requires labor, and the person who puts another's
thought into practice is an operator, but to repeat another's thought requires no
thought but memory. The mocking bird or parrot can do that, but to build a belief
from another's thought requires as much labor as to discover a science.
So you see, man never has as yet been able to establish Jesus' science. In
Jesus' day, he never got anyone to teach it. False Christs have appeared and
have deceived many as he foretold that they should and we see it fulfilled to the
letter. Now Jesus warned the people against these false guides, for they contract
the understanding and imprison the senses or knowledge in theories and beliefs
which are of their own invention. In regard to disease, the wisdom of these
guides accounts for all bodily aches and pains as arising from some local
disease. So when women feel badly, they have a curiosity to analyze their
sufferings for themselves and they have a fear of coming under the law of
disease. Between both of these feelings, they are much excited and disturbed. If
they are unfortunate enough to make a disease, then they have proved man's
theory of disease and are delivered up to man to be cured. If they do not succeed
in making any local disease, they must be encouraged that they can or will be
called nervous, spleeny or hypochrondriacal and receive no sympathy from
anyone. If they had less intelligence, they would follow in the wake of public
opinion and make a disease accordingly. But having some knowledge that they
have nothing to thank the men for, they hold on to it sometimes with great
tenacity, even when the law of disease threatens them on every hand. Now when
some person comes to them and attempts to claim this intelligence and release it
from its imprisonment where man's wisdom has enclosed it, sometimes they
recognize it as a superior wisdom and receive it with joy and thanksgiving. And
sometimes they are so wedded to their opinions of disease that they will not
recognize any intelligence or even virtue, except as coming through some
advocate of disease. In such a case, the disease is long and intricate. The little
wisdom that has fought against the various approaches of disease has been
overcome and fails to recognize its true friend at first.
August 1860
Another World III
BU 4:6, LC 2:24
[orig. DID ST. PAUL TEACH ANOTHER WORLD AS IT IS TAUGHT BY
CHRISTIANS?]
Did St Paul teach another world as it is taught by Christians? I answer, No, and
shall prove that Paul preached and taught this very science that I am trying to
teach and that he put it into practice as far as he was able; but he taught it more
than he put it into practice, from the fact that it was necessary that the theory
should be acknowledged. The world believed in religion and their religion taught
another world. This was Paul's belief before he was converted to this science.
But this science taught him that the wisdom or religion of this world was
foolishness with the wisdom or science of God. Paul admitted Jesus as his
teacher and Christ, the God or science; therefore, when he spoke of Christ, he
meant something more than the natural man or Jesus. When Paul tried to make
the Corinthians understand this difference, he said that he came not to teach the
wisdom of this world so that their faith should stand on the wisdom of man in the
power or science of God. What was the use to speak of the wisdom of this world
that was perfect, as they thought, for all of this comes to an end. But he spake of
the wisdom of God or science, in a mystery to them, even in a hidden mystery,
that was with God before the world or man was formed, which none of the
princes of this world knew; for if they had known this science, they would not
have crucified the man that taught it.
This science was foretold and expressed in these words: the natural man's or
error's eye had not seen nor ear heard; neither had it entered into their hearts
that to be good was a science that God had prepared for those that could
understand, but Jesus had taught and acknowledged it as the true science or
Christ. The word science was not used in those days so that some other word
must be used to convey the idea of this truth. As there was no settled opinion in
regard to the word but all acknowledge the power, each person was left to
himself to express it in his own way. So it was, as Paul says, a mystery to the
wisdom of the world and even to this day it is not admitted by the Christian
churches except as a mystery. And still they stand, as they always have stood,
looking for it to come. When it is come, even in their mouth and they know it not,
but eat and drink with the wisdom of this world as they did in the old world, till the
flood came and swept them all away. So it will be with this science. The world will
oppose it. It will be crucified by the church and priest, hated by the doctors,
despised by the crowd, laughed at by fools and received by the foolish of this
world. For as science to the natural man is foolishness, they cannot understand
it. To the wise of this world it is a stumbling block.
Now Paul labored to reduce this something to a science in order that it might be
understood; so it was necessary to separate it from the wisdom of this world and
the way to do it has always been a mystery, from the fact that you can't introduce
any science except by some proof. For to talk of a science is talking an opinion of
something you cannot prove and to show the phenomena without any scientific
explanation leaves it as much a mystery and the world is none the wiser. So to
teach a science is to put it into practice so that the world can be put in
possession of a truth that shall be acknowledged to be above the natural man.
Now if you will read all Paul's writings, you will see that this science was what he
was trying to make the people understand, for if they could understand it, it
changed their motives of action and made them act from a higher principle. This
principle was a science and proved itself; but to make it understood was not an
easy task. I have been twenty years trying to learn and teach it and am at times
nearly worn out, but when I think of Moses teaching it, or trying to, for forty years
and then only seeing for other generations what he could never enjoy, it makes
me almost sink to the earth. Even Jesus as a man thought that it would become
a science in his generation but he was not sure, for he says, No man knoweth
not the angels of heaven or the men wise in God's wisdom, but God alone. He
knew that it would be established on earth as it is in heaven. So eighteen-
hundred years have passed and yet the same angel is sounding with a loud
trumpet saying, "How long shall it be till the wisdom of this world shall become
reduced to a science so that it can be taught for the healing of the nations, so
that man will cease from teaching lies and learn to speak the truth?" Then an
opinion will be looked upon as an opinion, and science will judge the correctness
of it. Then all kinds of opinions will be weighed in the balance of science and the
wisdom of this world will come to naught. Then will arise a new heaven or
science and a new earth of man, free from disease or error, for his old world or
belief shall be burnt up with the fire of science, and the new heaven or science
shall arise, wherein shall not be found all these old superstitions, bigotry and
disease, but where there is no more death nor sighing from some ache or pain
which arises from superstitions of the old world. Then shall come to pass that
saying, "Oh! Death or error where is thy sting! Oh! Grave or misery where is thy
victory!" For the sting or belief in death was sin or ignorance but the gift of
science is of God which is eternal life.
This life was taught to man by Jesus and called Christ instead of science, and to
know this science or Christ is to know eternal life which is eternal progression in
the science of God. This science teaches man how to break off from all errors or
bad habits that lead to disease; for as disease is in his belief, to be good is to be
wise. But health does not always show itself in science for the fool in his heart
says there is no Science or God. Therefore the fool is happy in his knowledge.
So are a great many persons happy, according to Paul's idea, who are wise in
their own conceit and are puffed up with the flattery of the world. But their
wisdom comes to an end. They come up like the flowers of the field and flourish
as a politician or in some other way for a time, but the dew or wisdom of science
passes over them and they wither for the want of something to sustain them.
Seeing themselves behind the times as scientific men, all their wisdom taken
from them and turned out with the ox to eat this world's food or grass, they then
see themselves as a man sees himself in a glass and then turns round, walks off,
and forgets what manner of man he was. Then his friend who once knew him will
know him no more; for his wisdom is numbered with the dead ideas that never
had any life except of the animal life or wisdom of this world. So here end the
lives of the small and great, the earthly prince or the ignorant beggar; both find
their level in the grave of their belief. Their hope is in their belief and their belief is
in their error, and all must yield to science, for science will reign till all error is put
out of existence; and when this great science is established in this world, as it is
in wisdom, then to be great is to be wise in science.
August 1860
Life
BU 31:25, LC 3:72
When we speak of life, we speak of it as though it was a thing. Now there are as
many kinds of life as there are birds or fish or anything that grows. The life of a
plant is not the same as that of a tree. Neither is the life of man the same as that
of a beast. All life is matter and it lives on life or matter. Therefore man is made
up of life and death. This life is all the time changing, so that we live on life that
we get from others. Ideas are matter and of course they contain life. We eat or
receive life in the wrong sense. For instance, the Jews, when they ate pork,
thought that they ate life, for their belief was that it would produce a disease. So
that although the pork was dead, yet its life would rise again in the form of
scrofula. So, not to have that life in them, they would not eat pork. Now, as
absurd as this idea is, it is the basis of all our knowledge. How often are we
reminded not to eat or drink such things. Now just look at our beliefs. We all
admit that animal food has life in it. So we eat it as life, for when we say it is so
far decayed that it is not good, then we look upon it as poison. So we receive into
our stomach life, as though it really added to our life or strength. How often do we
talk about fat making us warmer, etc. Now all these ideas are the result of error
and the fruits of disease. Does the dog eat meat as though it had life? No. He
eats it as though it was dead and expects no bad effect from it. So it is with all
living life but man.
Man has reasoned himself into a belief that all he eats and drinks contains life,
and this life is his enemy if he does not look out for it. So it keeps him on the
lookout what kind of life is in him. Although his life is death, yet his belief is life,
and he is affected by his belief. Now when I eat or drink, the life that was in the
substance eaten is dead to me and has no life in it. So I am not afraid in eating
pork that I shall become a swine, or in eating turkey that I shall become one. Nor
am I afraid if I listen and take a person's feelings of scrofula and any other
disease that I shall have it, for the life of the disease is in the person who
believes it.
Now, what is the weapon that destroys this life or disease? Science! This is
eternal, and to have that destroys all other life. This is to the animal life, death.
So life, or science, to the natural man is nothing that contains life. It is a sort of
principle, but this is the only living and true life. This was what rose from the dead
or natural life. Man in his natural state was no more liable to disease than the
beast. But as soon as he began to reason, he became diseased, for his disease
was in his reason; therefore his reason was his life, which made him afraid of his
reason. This, the doctors call nervousness and to prevent this nervous life, they
introduce this enemy in everything we eat and drink. Now let man get rid of these
blind guides and follow the command of God, to take no thought of what you
shall eat or drink as having anything to do with your health. Look first for the
science of every phenomenon and pay no attention to your food, any more than
the rest of God's creatures. If man was as wise in regard to what goes into his
stomach as the beast, he would be much better off. Let the health alone. Seek
how to enlighten man in science, and as science is developed, man becomes
wise and happy. His life is in his knowledge, and his knowledge is a science. So
to put his science into practice for his own happiness is to correct some error that
man has embraced, and to prove the science is to take something that man is
troubled about, in the form of disease, and correct his opinion so that it changes
his health.
August 1860
My Use of the Word Mind
BU 99:13, LC 1:75
You know I have tried to prove that mind is matter; and if I have proved that, I will
now show you that matter is life. This you all will admit so far as vegetation is
concerned. Now see if animal matter is not life. If so, you see that man is made
up of life. His body is particles of animal life condensed into a form or idea called
man, or a living being of life, not science, but life governed by science. Now what
is man when he is not man, for you say man dies? So what is he when he is not
man? He is science for there is no animal life in science. Then what is science? It
is that wisdom which controls life. Is it not life? If it is, then there is no word to
define it, for life is matter and matter is life. Animal life is in flesh and blood, so
flesh and blood is not science, but science controls it. If science is wisdom, what
are wisdom's attributes? Has it an identity? The wisdom of man has an identity of
matter in a living form. Can you give any definite idea of what persons mean by
soul? The person that invented the word soul must have applied it to an idea that
never had an existence, for soul is always applied to life. We read of fat souls
and lean souls and saving souls and losing souls, so you see that word cannot
explain man when he is not man. For when he is not man, he is not soul so we
must get some other word to define what man is when he ceases to be matter.
I will now try to explain what man is and what he is not, and show that what he is,
he is not, and what he is not, he is. I will illustrate the two men so that each shall
be a separate and distinct identity. I will take for my illustration the man as we
see him and science as the man we cannot see through the natural man, for
science cannot be seen, only its effects, and show how they differ. The natural
man is made of flesh and blood. Science is not. Man has life. Science is life. Man
has sight. Science is sight. Man has feeling. Science is feeling. Man has all of the
five senses. Science is all of the five senses. Man of himself cannot do anything.
Science can do all things. Man is of matter. Science is not. Then what is man,
independent of science? Nothing but an idea of life and death. Then where does
he differ from the brute? In the idea of science. Where does science make the
distinction? It makes no distinction. Who does? The first cause or God. How? In
attaching science to the identity called man. Then does science have an identity?
Yes. What is it? Wisdom of God. Has it senses? It is senses. Has it soul? No. It
creates and destroys the soul. Has it death? No. It destroys death by its own
development. When you give it all its qualities, what kind of a creature or person
is it? It is the scientific man, not of flesh and blood but of that world where error
never comes. It speaks through man. What does? Its life or the wisdom of God.
How does it get its food? By the sweat of its brow or the development of itself.
Where does it differ from the natural man? In everything. Show by illustration.
The natural man is nothing but an idea which science uses to illustrate some fact
or problem that is for the development of science. Then what does man gain or
lose by death as it is called? Just as much as any matter that is always changing.
August 1860
Science Is One Character of God
BU 99:11
[orig. untitled]
Science is one character of God. Error is another character, not of God. Science
or God applied to man or beast is perfect in its own sphere. Wisdom of God is
that which feels the error of this world. To illustrate how the two are connected
together as the vegetable and animal are connected together: this discord of
science is divided into two classes. Matter is under the wisdom of God, not
known to itself. Matter to God is an idea that contains no science but is like fire or
water. Air is another idea. The earth is an idea differing from the sea or water; the
air or fire has the same difference. So the wisdom that governs the sea attaches
the identity of life to the fish, but it does not attach wisdom or science to it. It is
like a machine or automaton that moves by its own power. That power is a part of
the wisdom of God that is perfect in the thing made, but subject to a higher
organization, so that the higher contains more of the wisdom of itself than the
lesser.
So by degrees, matter is changed till it is capable of receiving its author or
creator, or wisdom of science. Then man stands in the world of matter, in perfect
form and perfect combination of matter, arranged like a perfect instrument ready
to be placed in the hands of science or ignorance. Each can play, but one is the
natural development of the matter; the other is the author of matter or idea. Now
when man is ready to receive this science, he then becomes equal with his
father, or science, in every error that he corrects scientifically.
I will try to give an illustration. A lady called on me who had been paralyzed. Now
if she had been born so, the matter of the body would have been part animal and
part vegetable, or some sort of matter that would not have been perfect, but as
she was not born so, her body was subject to the science of God's wisdom. Now
becoming one half paralyzed, she is in discord with the other side, but as the
other contains no science nor ear for correcting the discord, it wants an
instrument that can receive the wisdom of science so that it can disturb the dead
or deranged state of the paralytic side and bring it in tone with the well side. This
wisdom is not of man but of God, and when applied to man is not his servant but
his master, and its kingdom is not of this world of matter but is a world of itself. Its
father is the author of its own existence and mankind are its sons and daughters.
So as this son of God is in man, its growth is its wisdom, its happiness is its
knowledge. Its mission into this world of matter is to govern and control all the
developments that matter is liable to pass through; its happiness is in the
chemical changes that it produces in the human mind, for the that are corrected
in the two kingdoms of error and science. The wisdom is to be able to correct any
error that man's matter may go through so as to restore it to harmony. This is the
science of God, not of man.
August 1860
Right and Wrong
BU 99:22, LC 3:93
PART 2
What is right and wrong? The question involves more thought than a person at
first would suppose. We often hear persons using this expression: this or that is
right or wrong. When asked to define the word wrong, they use some comparison
admitted by some old superstitious opinion, all without any authority. All persons
claiming to be Christians always appeal to the Bible for the proof of all goodness,
believing that the Bible is the foundation of all truth. I am willing to abide by the
decision of this great book, believing it is the best authority to decide all
questions in dispute, but I am not willing to take any person's opinion on a
subject where he cannot show any wisdom above his followers, only that he has
read and studied more than his neighbors. The Bible is in the hands of the
people just as much as the science of mathematics is in the hands of the people
and all will admit that this wisdom is known by its works. So it is with the Bible.
The Bible is in the hands of the people and they will give their verdict just
according to the evidence that is placed before them.
Now what idea does the Bible give us in regard to right and wrong? All will admit
that God has no use for such a word as right, for he never made anything wrong.
So he is not the author of right and wrong; for when he had made all things and
finished them, he pronounced them good so that there was no wrong at any time.
But there was not a man to till the ground, so that right and wrong commenced
after the formation of man and good and evil was of man, not of God. To create
evil was to deviate from good, so that right and wrong were the invention of man;
for one man cannot make right and wrong -there must be two to be in opposition
to each other. The natural man knows no right and wrong, for he is but little
above the brute creation. The brutes cannot do wrong according to their
organization for might is right with them. The natural man is on the same platform
with the brute, neither is responsible for their acts, but both are governed by two
powers superior to themselves. These powers are might and science. Might is
law, science is sympathy or charity or a knowledge of both. Science is not
expected from the brute, so that they being ignorant of science, it holds them in
subjection. Man, who is a little above the brutes, shows his wisdom or power in
the same way that the brutes do, by enslaving his fellow man. All of this is the
natural man and belongs to this world. It does not come under any law except the
law of might. It has never heard of science in its acts.
Man is made up of these two characters: might and science, so that all laws to
the natural man are arbitrary and overbearing, but as might or law is right man
must submit. Although he may see the error, he cannot correct the evil. Now
what is right and wrong and how came such a standard in the world and is it
needed for the happiness of man? This was the question in the days of Jesus.
He called these two powers the law and the gospel. The law was might and the
gospel was Christ or Science, so that what the law failed to do was left for
science to accomplish. Science or Christ in Jesus entered into the world of might
and introduced a higher law that put an end to the law of might.
I will now show how naturally the idea of right and wrong came into the world. As
man and beast were in the world together, the beast having more physical
strength than man would overpower him unless the strength of the beast were
counteracted by some shrewdness of man for his protection. So in the course of
human progression it became necessary for man to establish some sort of
agreement that would bind them together for the protection of their lives. This
agreement, if made in good faith, with the full knowledge of the good that would
follow, and admitted by all, was the introduction of the wisdom of God into the
hearts of all those who acknowledged it good. Now to them this was binding, for
it produced a chemical change that made man different from the beast. Thus
they introduced the wisdom of God into man and called it right and to vary from
this agreement was wrong. This was the origin of right and wrong. This
agreement contained no law, for it was of God. It contained no punishment, for it
knew no fear.
As wisdom in man is science, it is progression, so that the development of this
wisdom is progression. As man progressed, it would not be strange for him to
violate this agreement, which violation was not a violation of law but a breach of
honor. They were a law to themselves. But other men were not bound to their
agreement; so as people multiplied, it became necessary, so they thought, to
introduce laws. As laws have penalties they are burdens to all who are under the
law. So as the law entered, the love of God or Science grew cold. At last the
wisdom of man took the place of science and science was not known in the
hearts of men. Then man set up a standard of right and wrong according to his
wisdom and attached a penalty to each act according to his best judgment. To
disobey the laws that man set up, they had to suffer the penalties.
Now as the world became populated, the laws took cognizance of the people's
acts, and as they knew no law, to them these laws were arbitrary and
overbearing and they murmured for they had no voice in the making of the laws.
Thus man invented the words, right and wrong. This wisdom has been kept up
and has been placed in the hands of the priests and doctors. They bind on the
people their opinions and call them laws of God and to disobey them is a sin.
These laws have placed man in bondage and kept him ignorant of himself. God
never made a law. Might is right with the beast and when man wants to govern
his fellow men he has just as much right to do it as any other beast. Both are
under no law but man and if they are sincere, they have no more feeling than any
other brute and it becomes the duty of Science to make some law for it. ,own
safety until a higher law can be introduced within their heart that will teach them
that action and reaction are equal and to injure another, we injure ourselves; to
teach them that man and beast are born equal and that the natural man has no
preeminence over the brute, but all were of the dust and must return to the dust
again.
So man when he was first introduced into the world was on a level with the brute
and as a tree is known by its fruits, so is man know: by his acts. Now as science
has proved to all persons understanding it, that the true wisdom of Science is
progression, to oppose progression is to oppose science. As disease is an
enemy to truth or science it is a hard master and the sick person is a slave, and
while I pity the sick person or slave, I detest the law which holds them in
bondage. I would not destroy the evil by killing the master, but persuade the sick
not to believe in him, as Jesus did when he told the people to do all that the law
compelled them to do but not to believe in the doctrines. For their doctrines are of
this world's opinions and are not binding on strangers. And to admit them as truth
is to acknowledge their punishments just. There are two kinds of punishments.
Every one is either punished by the laws of agreement or the condemnation of
their own free will.
I will now try to separate these two agreements or laws, for all laws are made by
man and in all I say I do not allude to God at all for God is not known in the
natural man, while the scientific man is a part of God and to talk about God is to
talk about something you do not know, while to talk science, is God. Now science
talks or applies itself to the errors of the world. Error talks about itself and talks
about God or science as a stranger or a being to whom they pay tribute. So they
think it is necessary for the happiness of mankind to keep up a sort of form or
ceremony to promote his kingdom. Therefore, certain laws are established,
accompanied with penalties for the good of the community. These laws were for
those who were strangers, while those who agreed to the contract and
understood it were free. I will give you one illustration of the truth of this contract
called law and show where the injustice is. Suppose that the state of Maine
should vote that murder was wrong and pray that the legislature should abolish
the law for murder. The legislature comes together and takes up the petition
giving it a thorough investigation. It comes to the conclusion to send it to the
petitioners to see if they in their wisdom are prepared to adopt it as their rule of
action.
Here is the contract. "We, the science of God or the representatives of Him and
you, after a full and deliberate investigation of the wisdom of this world, have
come to the conclusion that the time has arrived when man shall throw off this
old law of this world and substitute a higher and better law that shall be set up in
everyone's heart, to do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.
Therefore, we, as well as you, do hereby agree and bind ourselves, not strangers
but ourselves, the people of Maine, that we will respect each other as far as your
petition goes and call science to witness that if we violate this contract we shall
be judged guilty of one of the most disgraceful acts ever done by man. This law
shall be placed' in the forehead of all those who come into this contract, and the
punishment for murder, according to this act, shall not be binding; on anyone
who signs or comes into this agreement. So that every one who commits murder
according to this act is judged of himself' and the world as a murderer, having
forfeited all claims to honor r and is looked upon as a murderer and outcast by
the world and by' the signers of this contract. The old law shall be kept in force
for strangers or persons coming among us, but we shall not be punished by the
old law of this world. All persons who see fit to murder one of the signers of this
contract shall be punished as a murderer and shall be delivered up to the
authority of the old laws to be dealt with according to their laws. But if a murder is
committed by one of the signers of this contract, he shall not be punished by the
old law. But if he escapes from the state or is protected by strangers, his name
shall be published to all the world as a murderer and outcast from the state of
Maine and of course is liable to the laws of any other state and his membership
shall not be introduced as proof of good character."
Belfast, September 1860
Spiritual Communications from the Dead
BU 17:17
(B) Good evening. Are you ready to go with me? (A) Yes, but I tell you frankly I
am a perfect skeptic in all this sort of humbug. If there is anything after death, I
do not believe our friends can come back on earth and communicate with the
living, but I am willing to go just out of curiosity. (B) That is right. Here is the
house, let us go in.
We enter and are seated by a table. The medium tears up some pieces of paper
in small strips and requests us to write the name of some of our friends who have
died. He then leaves the room. We both write a few names. The medium comes
in and says, I see the spirit of your grandmother. A starts and says, what is her
Christian name? The medium answers, She seems to say it is Jane. Is that her
name? (A) I believe not. Other communications followed to A which were correct.
The medium says to B, I see a spirit who wishes to communicate with you. Will
you please to ask him what his name is. I ask the name and my mother comes
through the raps. The medium asks if it is right. I say, yes. Another comes and
another, till four or five have made themselves known. All spell out their names
by the raps. Finally some one raps that they will write their name on the
medium's arm, and the name of my mother appears. Then comes another spirit
who seems very glad to communicate with me and spells out the name of G. Q. I
ask if it is my son and receive the answer yes. The medium says, Your son wants
to give you a test. He hands me a piece of paper and a pencil and requests me
to place them under the table. I do as I am requested but with the privilege of
looking at the paper. But the medium would not grant it. So I sit up to the table
and lose sight of the paper for some seconds and when I look again the paper
was gone. The medium says, Perhaps it is in your hat or pocket. This diverts my
mind from the floor and when I look there again I see a piece of paper folded up.
I examine it and the name of my son was written on the paper. We then leave.
After leaving I say to A, What do you think of that? (A) I can't say. It upsets all my
philosophy. (B) How? (A) I never believe in anything after the death of the body,
but this looks mysterious. (B) Why? (A) Because there are some things which I
cannot account for. No one knew what was told through the medium except
myself and my friend who is dead. (B) Well, because you can't account for it, it
must be spirits. (A) No, I won't say it is spirits, but there are the facts that I cannot
get over. (B) Can you get over my telling you about your knee? (A) No, but that is
a different case. I never told anyone what was communicated to me. (B) Did you
ever tell anyone that you had a pain in your knee? (A) But I cannot see the
similarity of the two cases. (B) Suppose I explain. (A) I do not see how it can be
explained. I went in, a perfect skeptic, and had not the least idea or thought of my
friend, for I had not thought of him for years, and when he rapped out his name
and told me of a fact that no living person besides myself and him knew, how
could I doubt it? The fact speaks for itself. (B) Yes I know that, but the accounting
for it is the thing we are after. (A) I don't care how you account for it. There is the
fact. Call it spirits or works of the devil. I don't care. The fact is all I want. (B) You
get excited and run after the shadow and forget the substance. If you will listen
and not get too much excited I think I can explain the phenomenon on a principle
of truth that you will admit. (A) I can't see any principle that explains a fact that
explains itself. Here you sit and the raps come, and you hear from your friend
who is dead. This you know and it needs no explanation. Your explanation only
makes it darker. I know I had a friend who died so, and so here come the raps
telling the whole story. (B) Then, why deny the fact that the spirit came back and
told the story? (A) I cannot account for it on any other grounds. (B) So I thought.
(A) Can you? (B) Yes, but you cannot understand any more than you could about
the pain in your knee. You know just about as much about one as the other, and
when you understand one you will the other. (A) Well, make me understand how
these raps come. (B) If you cannot understand how I can tell your thoughts, it
would be impossible to make you understand any physical experiment, from the
fact that the power which makes the thoughts makes the raps. (A) I can't see how
it is done. (B) I will try to explain. You know I told your thoughts? Well, thought is
nothing but rarefied velocity. When I say "nothing" I do not mean it exactly, but
the weight is so light of itself that it comes next to nothing, like electricity. What is
lost in weight is supplied by velocity. You bring thought into velocity, for every
person knows that they do think. If thought is a chemical action, it is set in motion
by the will or belief, and you can see how by the belief it can be formed under a
certain wisdom for good or bad results, for man is like clay in the hands of the
potter to be worked according to his own will. When a man thinks, he shows
mechanical skill in putting his thoughts to some account. So an idea is formed.
This is the effect of thought governed by some will superior to the thought or
idea. To illustrate. Take a rich man of ordinary talent but selfish. Such a man can
create a great many small minds from the fact that his power is in his money, but
his motive governs his power, although everything seems to give the appearance
of disinterestedness. Still everything acts for his own benefit. This is done by the
knowledge of human nature. He sees that man, like dough, can be molded into
anything; for when it gets a little dry, all that is necessary is to moisten it by that
substance that can be taken up and absorbed. This puts the clay in good working
order.
Now spiritualism, religion, and politics and every kind of phenomenon are
brought about upon this one fact that one person acts on another for good or evil.
(A) Suppose you are right. How can it be helped? It has always been and always
will be. (B) I will admit it always has been and that it always will be until men's
true motives are known. (A) Well, neither you nor I can change man. (B) That is a
fact, but there is another fact that man is not aware of that is working in the world
of man's mind that will bring about the very thing I am talking about. It is not an
opinion, so I shall only show the principle and the problem works itself out, not by
any supreme wisdom but by a chemical change that is taking place in the minds
all the time. So changes must take place. Men's minds will run to and fro and
knowledge will increase, but wisdom is not known. Parties and theories spring
up, but these are the beginning. Men attach their senses to the change, and their
lives being in their senses, principle is not known. To illustrate the change of
mind, I will take this rebellion. Before it broke out, the minds of men '-ad been
worked up by the leaders to this pitch that the South were set against the
administration party. This was brought about by the leading men, North and
South, belonging to the democratic party, for sake of the loaves and fishes. To
bring this to perfection, the North must set the people to quarreling about slavery
and the South would make a handle of their arguments to convince the people
that the North wanted to destroy their "peculiar institution"; this would unite the
South and divide the North. Of course a fire cannot be kindled without some
kindling and that was supplied by a few fanatics at the North and South, so the
fire burned till all the country or mind was on fire. Meanwhile the democratic party
was kept in power by these two elements: a united South, held by the false idea
of slavery, and a divided North. Finally the North applied reason or water, cooling
the flame of the northern masses and Lincoln came in president. Here is the
state of the public mind. All the above is past and now the end cometh. Yet in all
that has passed there has not been any wisdom and neither will there be in what
is to take place, but there is a law of action and reaction and upon this ground I
have my belief. So I will predict as the country now stands, it is, so far as
observation goes, just where it was when Lincoln was elected, only to the natural
eye it looks a little darker. But I see the light and it seems to me it will come in
this way. The democratic party will split at the North and assume a new name,
perhaps the Union or people's party, and out of this party a child must come
which will devour the republican party almost. It will try to hold out the olive of
peace to the South, but the republicans won't agree. The South will grow wroth
and a hatred will spring up and the democracy will unite with the republicans
under a new name. So the North will be united with the exception of a small
party, and their word will go forth, Union forever. And if slavery stand in the way it
must come down, and it will, for the North in their zeal will employ every means
available to accomplish its end. So slavery dies without even a watcher to close
its dying eyes, but its death must come through the elements of the democratic
party, and if Mr. Lincoln is not the one, then another will rise up. But I think it will
sprout from Abraham, for in him and in his seed shall all the earth be blest.
Sept. 4th, 1860
The King's English
BU 93:22
[orig. LANGUAGE]
How often you hear these words used: Such a person murders the King's
English. This I admit is true if you apply language to the things in this natural
world, but if it is applied to the spiritual world or ideas that cannot be seen by the
natural man, then I beg leave to differ from the knowledge of this world, for I
know it is false. In the first place, a healthy person is not a judge of a sick
person's feelings. Therefore, if anyone gives a name to a feeling which a sick
person has, he names a sensation that he knows nothing of, except as described
by the sick. In this there is no standard of right and wrong that the people can
agree upon, so everyone sets up his standard of E right and wrong, and if a
person is ever so sensitive to another's feelings, he must use such terms as the
world sets up or he is ignorant of the King's English. So the invisible things must
be judged by the visible. Here is the great mistake, for if the learned had to prove
to the unlearned everything they said, it would be as hard as for those who are
sensitive to feelings of the sick to prove them to the learned. Who is to say what
God is? Webster, Worcester or any author, unless he can give some evidence
that comes within a person's feeling or senses? Here is where the trouble
commences with this idea of God. What is God? This is the question, and let the
man come forward and show who and what God is.
The word God is the name of something material or immaterial. If He is material,
then God can be seen by material eyes; and if He is immaterial, the natural man
cannot see Him. So that if His name sprang from the natural man, he gives a
name of something that he knows nothing of, only as is seen in matter or that
comes within his feelings. Therefore, one man's opinion is as good as another's
till someone can give the substance or impression that caused that word to be
applied. Now suppose that man calls wisdom the first cause and that from this
wisdom there issues forth an essence that fills all space, like the odor of a rose.
This essence, like the odor, contains the character and wisdom of its father or
author and your wisdom wants man to give it a name; so man calls this essence,
God. Then you have wisdom manifest in this God or essence. Then this essence
would be called the son of wisdom. Let wisdom say to God or the son: Let us
create matter or mind or man in our own image, or in the likeness of this essence
or God. So they formed man out of the odor called matter or dust that rises from
the grosser matter and breathed into him the living essence or God, and the
matter took the form of man.
October 1860
About Patients I
BU 93:24, LC 11:81
[part of orig. ABOUT PATIENTS]
I will give you the symptoms of a patient whom I just examined. He was a man
about fifty years old and his symptoms affected me in this way. I felt a trembling
sensation that went down to my head and a tightness across my chest with a
tendency to sigh. This made me melancholy; then my thoughts left my body and I
seemed to be in space creating places and attaching my senses to the ideas I
created, while my happiness and misery was in the scenes of my own creation. I
could see a sort of another world like the city of New York and it seemed so plain
that I really felt the difference in the society of the city. This amazed me for it was
a disease and although the man's thoughts had different localities, they affected
me like a disease located in the body. Here I could see how we are affected by
our opinions. His mind or belief was in matter of this world and was as plain to be
seen by me as my thoughts are to a mesmerized subject. To him they were
spiritual and although they were the imitation of some other's ideas, they were
real truth to him. He attached his senses to the things or places he had made
and in them was his happiness and misery. All the above was matter except the
happiness and misery-this is always what follows a belief. All the rest I say was
matter and belonged to the wisdom of this world.
By the spiritualist it would be called spiritualism; so it is, but it is of this world and
confined to matter. That wisdom from above is not in this but can see through it
and is not seen by the wisdom of this world at all. Now as I was out of his wisdom
or this world and in the essence that flows from the higher wisdom, I was in a
clairvoyant state, with my senses attached to an identity in this essence. This
essence is light and is capable of penetrating this matter or mind, so that to it
matter is annihilated. If a person's senses are in this light he sees all ideas as
matter in the dark to those who are in them. One state is thought-reading or the
wisdom of matter or spiritualism and the other is clairvoyance or the wisdom held
in solution in this ocean of essence. The wisdom of this world is spiritual like an
odor that arises from the earthly man. In this odor, all sorts of forms are made of
a spiritual nature, governed by the same laws as their father. Thus the spiritual
world is the son of its father. Jesus called it the devil, and its believers the
children of their father, and as he was of matter he must be destroyed. Now the
kingdom of God was not of matter but wisdom, so God called it father; as God is
the son of wisdom wisdom made man out of this essence or life. So that when he
formed man out of the dust of this earth and breathed into him this breath of life,
he then became a living progressive wisdom or man.
This life is the light or clairvoyant state that sees no matter independent of itself
or mind and all matter is subject to this essence. Disease is the offspring of error
or the devil, and wisdom in this essence acting through man can break the bars
of death or error and set life free. For death is the name of something that error
wants to destroy and this something is life. So the warfare is between life and
death. Life cannot be destroyed but death can. The senses are attached to the
identity of our belief and we are affected according to the fear that we associate
with our senses. Death and disease are matter and when the senses or essence
are attached to this body, it becomes subject to the laws of matter, and as mind
is matter, it makes laws for strangers; as life is a stranger, it looks upon it as an
enemy to death. All the happiness which death has is trying to destroy life, so for
this effect it invents all sorts of diseases. This death is the king of terrors and is
the worst enemy life has to contend with. Now man is the battlefield of these two
powers: life and death.
If life is imprisoned in death's prison it is hard work to get clear. The only way is
to destroy death or error and set life free. Our senses are the enemy of death
and when they are attached to disease, disease holds them in its jaws and
nothing but a direct revelation of wisdom can break the jaws of death. This truth
is destruction to death and freedom from error and superstition. Then life rises to
that state of light which is the essence called God-there to be free from matter,
except as a medium to communicate through. Now all persons who can take
another's feelings are in this state, but their senses may not all be attached to the
same idea. For instance, a person may feel another's pain; this comes with the
sense of feeling, but this feeling contains no wisdom. This is the case of
mesmerism. One subject feels the aches and pains of another; this is called
thought-reading. Another sees the deranged state of the body; this is called sight,
but sight is not knowledge. All this is called the wisdom of the dead. So it is, but it
is not the living, for it is confined to the wisdom of error or this world. The senses
may be in this light, so far as to see and describe all that is asked, but that is
from the father or God. His wisdom sees the effect, feels the aches and pains,
sees the cause and sees the senses imprisoned in matter, steps forward and
runs the risk of being imprisoned for the sake of his friends. He sees all the
causes, stands and pleads their cases, gets the verdict and sets the captive free.
This is the difference in the two. One is a power without knowledge. The other is
knowledge applied t to an idea that it can break up and scatter to the four winds
of heaven.
I will try and show the two theories. I will say to you as Jesus said, Except you
become as a little child you cannot understand and apply these sayings to the
curing of disease. The Christian idea of the above parable, I have no sympathy
with, for it contains no wisdom. Everyone knows that a little child is of all things
the most ignorant and helpless. It has no wisdom at all. It will creep into the fire
or water or anything else because it knows no fear. Now it is of all living
creatures the very foundation on which to erect wisdom or error. Its senses are
attached to its ideas, so as it creeps to the fire, the wisdom of its mother takes it
from the fire. If the mother whips the child it shows fright, not wisdom. If the
mother's wisdom is of this world, she reasons in this way. If you go near the fire I
will whip you. This at first is Greek to the child, for it does not understand. So the
child tries it again and the mother repeats the same sound, accompanied with
her hand on the child's ear. The child puts wisdom in his senses, which he
applies to his ears and keeps away from the fire, not because the fire will box his
ears or harm him. His fear is in his idea of what will follow his mother's hand. But
he is not at rest. His curiosity is excited and the more the mother whips the child
the more earnest he is to know why he must not go near the fire. So at last when
alone it creeps towards the fire and its little hand feels the heat. This frightens it
and it holds on to whatever it touches till some one takes it away. The child
remembers this and looks at its enemy with grief, as it does when its mother
whips it. The mother is alarmed and changes her tone. She now tries to soothe
the child by caressing him and showing some sympathy, and reasons with the
child that the fire does not mean to burn it, that it was hot and that if it went up to
the fire, it must be burned. This is the wisdom of God.
Man would say it is a naughty fire and if it burns you again, I will whip it. As soon
as the mother gets over her fright, she sets the child down on the floor with a
bounce, accompanied with a threat like this: Now don't go near the fire again; if
you do I will take your skin off. So the child sits trembling, once in a while drawing
a long sigh and a tear drops from its eyes. In all this the child has sinned not. It
has been punished for the sins or errors of its mother. Now the wisdom from
above, acting through Jesus, called Christ, reasons to the child in this way. It
makes the child acquainted with the effects of the fire. It has forbearance with the
little ideas the child has formed and tries to breathe into this little earth the seed
of wisdom so that it grows like the grain of mustard seed. It would see and learn
that fire was not its enemy or its friend but a servant, ready to be used at the will
of the master. These two modes of reasoning embrace man and beast; neither
embraces true wisdom. One is God's reasoning and the other is man's. But there
is something beyond all this that man is destined to reach, which is creation and
formation, destruction and eternal life. True wisdom is eternal and its knowledge
is the destruction of all the above. Even the son of God was to be subject to this
wisdom. Now just as a person understands this wisdom he can put it into
practice. It is not confined to any particular branch but applies to all science for
the healing of the nations from error and superstition.
It is not everyone who says he understands that does, but he who can teach the
same understandingly to others. Every one knows that in the natural world, some
persons are good mechanics, but it is not absolutely necessary that every artist
should be a chemist, nor every chemist an artist. But if a man should undertake
to teach chemistry with no knowledge except what he obtained from books, his
wisdom is like sounding brass and tinkling cymbals; it was already known. Look
at the professors of chemistry; they never have the sick or anything else in their
philosophy. The object of chemistry when first discovered was not to apply any
theory, but it was the discovery of a new process. It was intended to analyze all
sorts of substances and separate one element from another and not to apply
them to any particular theory or science. The person who discovered the art of
making whiskey from corn never thought of it to cure consumption or any other
disease. There was a phenomenon produced and to apply it to something was
another matter. Franklin discovered electricity, but he never found out that it had
any curative qualities. That was left to those who knew just as much about it as
they did before Franklin made this discovery.
The fact is that all kinds of drugs were discovered by chemists, not with any idea
that they contain any curative qualities. Iodine is used now to cure half the
diseases there are and its good qualities set forth by physicians. All these second
hand ideas are applied by the medical faculty and not one out of a hundred
knows how to make the medicines he uses. Yet they talk of the medical science!
Here is the great mistake. To produce a phenomenon is one thing and to know
how you produce it is another and to destroy it is still another. To cure an error
intelligently is to know how to produce it. It will show that the doctors are not only
ignorant of what they do when they make a cure, but by the very means they use
to make it, they bring about the phenomenon they are trying to cure. To show
how this is brought about I must illustrate it in some way, showing how the mind
is affected through the ignorance of the physician.
Suppose you have a fine piano which you place a great value upon and you feel
annoyed because everyone who comes in thumps on the keys. Finally you get so
nervous that you cannot rest when anyone is near it. At last you grow sick and
send for a physician. He comes in, as ignorant of music as the rest, goes to the
piano and begins to look at it, you meanwhile growing nervous as he fusses over
the piano. Then he turns toward you and says, "You look sick and your blood is
low; you need some little tonic. Your head is a little affected; I think your music is
hurting you. I will leave you some powders." As he leaves he strikes the piano
again and you remain just where you were when he came, only a little worse. In
a day or two he calls again and inquires, How are you. You say, "No better." The
sight of the doctor reminds you of the instrument and you grow nervous. So he
alters the medicine and gives some different directions and leaves without
touching the piano. You are left alone and no one comes in to disturb you and in
a short time you are out of doors. The doctor meets you and inquires how you
are getting along. You reply, "Very well." "Continue the medicine as I directed.
You are doing very well." So driven off you return home, and the neighbors begin
to come in. The idea of the piano comes up again, making your heart beat and
you feel faint as the piano is thumped.
At last you are left alone and you feel very weak, so you take some whiskey. This
excites the brain and a flush comes over you and you sneeze. Now comes up the
idea of a cold; you grow nervous and the doctor is sent for. He comes in, takes
off his hat and overcoat and very deliberately sits down by the piano. This makes
you nervous so he feels your pulse and looks at your tongue, then "hems" and
says, You have taken a slight cold. He reminds you of what he said the other
day, and he makes another alteration in the medicine. This process is kept up till
the doctor is dismissed for another of the same kind. And so on, till they have run
through the medical faculty and wind up with spiritualism and if the patient lives it
is only by accident. In all this you get the whole of the medical knowledge and not
one particle of wisdom. You can see by this illustration, when I apply the piano to
your body, that the doctors make nine-tenths of all the diseases through
ignorance and when a cure is effected it is through the same medium. Take the
piano as your body and yourself as No. 2 and then you will understand the
illustration. Your body is the property of No. 2; No. 2 sets a great value on it and
tries to keep it in order. Just return to the piano again. You will admit there is no
wisdom or music in the piano of itself, nor in those you are afraid of. For if they
knew how to execute music, it would be a pleasure to listen, but to have
experiments tried on your instrument annoys you.
Your doctor may be a very clever fellow in his way, but having no ear for music,
his honesty towards you does not compensate for your fears about your
instrument. On the whole you are no better off for his wisdom. You see then no
wisdom in the doctor and all the noise he made evinced an entire ignorance for
the science of music. You turn him away and send for another physician. This
one has more sagacity and less science, if you call making a disease science.
And having more natural ear for music, he sits down to the piano and does not
touch the music, so he shows more sagacity than the other. He commences
running over the keys and strikes some very musical chords. As you listen you
grow more calm. He says nothing about music or disease but leaves you some
little homeopathic pills. Mother comes in and asks what the doctor thinks. You
say, "He thinks I shall do very well." "What does he recommend?" "Nothing but
pure air and says that since I have been confined to this room so long, so
associated with my disease, I had better travel." "How would you like that?" "Very
much." "Did he say where you had better go, North or South, or in foreign parts,
or to some springs?" "No, but I will ask him the next time he comes." "Well, what
do you think of your new doctor." "I think that he is a very intelligent physician."
"But you know he is not an educated man." "Yes, but I like him and he has some
ear for music, for when he sat down by the piano, he did not make me so
nervous as the other doctor did." "But he is no musician." "Well, I do not know as
he is, but he does not make me so nervous." "Well, if he can cure you I do not
care if he is a quack for this learned science I am tired of. But what will doctor A
say?" "I do not know or care. I want to get well and if Dr. B is a quack, I don't
care." "We had better send for Dr. A and see what he thinks of it. You know it will
not be polite to dismiss an old doctor and employ a quack." "I don't believe he is
a quack." "Why, you know that all those who have not received diplomas are
quacks." "Yes, and some who have." "We will send for Dr. A."
The doctor arrives a little nervous, removes his coat and seats himself by the
piano. This disturbs the patient a little, which the doctor observes. Like all the rest
of his wisdom he shows his ignorance in this; he looks very wise as though he
had just discovered a gold mine, says, You seem a little disturbed. I understand
the cause. You have had that young quack here and feel a little guilty I suppose,
but you need not be alarmed. Persons as sick and weak as you are are very
easily thrown off their guard, so cheer up and saying, What did the fellow say?,
commences rapping the keys of the piano. Mary, sick from the fear of the
instrument being injured, is silent. The doctor stops rapping and turning around to
Mary says, "Do not be afraid; tell what he said." As soon as the doctor leaves the
instrument, Mary becomes more calm and says that he did not say much of
anything. The doctor sneeringly smiles and says, That is where he shows his
wisdom. Did you know Mary that this fellow is a quack and one of the worst
impudent imposters that ever lived?
(Mary)
Did you ever meet him?
(Dr.)
Meet him? Do you suppose that I would so degrade my honorable profession as to consult with
a quack? Why Mary you must be insane and your mother too. If this kind of humbug is kept up,
the medical science will pass into the hands of these quacks and any educated physician will be
ashamed to be seen among such fellows. You have no idea of employing this fellow, have you?
(Mary)
Mother seems to be inclined to let him try. I do not have anything to say. I want to get well.
(Dr.)
Won't you ask your mother to step in? I want to see her alone a few minutes.
(Exit Mary and enter Mrs. H.)
(Mrs. H.)
Why Mary thinks she is not getting along as fast as she would like and seeing her running
down, I thought I would do anything to please her.
(Dr.)
Oh, then it is Mary's plan.
(Mrs.
H.)
Yes.
(Dr.)
I thought you were a woman of more sense. I always considered you a woman of superior mind
and when Mary told me that it was your move, I must say I was a little surprised, but it is all right
now. The world is getting into a dangerous way, even our clergy are attacked. These
spiritualists make war with the church and even pretend to cure disease. It is blasphemy to
suppose that Christ cured as these fanatics do. It is astonishing that sensible men and women
will run after such things. I should think the church ought to call a meeting and excommunicate
any who countenanced such imposters in religion or in doctoring. For if things go on in this way,
my practice will be ruined and then Parson W. will lose one of his best parishioners.
I suppose you do not know what I pay him every year, besides his doctor's bill, which is always
large as he has had two or three sick in his family ever since I have been in this town. You know
I came here about the time when the first parson first settled. I was the first member admitted
into his church after he came and was very friendly to his family which at that time consisted of
three young ladies from fifteen to nineteen years old. They were pretty and in good health and
would probably have been alive and well if they had followed my advice. I took the utmost pains
to give them the best of Christian advice. You remember when they first came to town, they
attended that great ball given by Mrs. D. and that the church did not approve of their attending
it. If it had not been for me, those three young ladies who I now trust are in heaven, would
doubtless have continued going to such places now if they had lived.
At this time Mary came in and said, Perhaps if they had continued going to balls and parties and had
done as they wanted to, they would be alive now.
(Mrs. H.)
Hush Mary, you do not know what you are talking about.
(Dr.)
Mary, you are young and I was just relating the sad case of our parson's family.
I had the care of these three young ladies and they place entire confidence in my medical skill
as well as in my Christian character. These qualities they appreciated and 1 still continue to
practice in the family. I have seen six out of their eight children borne from this world of trouble
to the world of spirits. All went just as 1 foretold and their mother will tell you if you ask her of
the good advice I gave the eldest, when to all appearance she was as well as any one. Yet I
saw where the destroyer worked and warned her of her danger, but she could not or would not
see it till it was too late. Then I had the comfort of reconciling them to Christ and soothing them
till the Redeemer came and took them. So I have cared for six of their children till the Lord took
them home. Mary, I am your friend and if you know when you are well off, take my advice, do
not risk your life in the hands of a quack, for it is of more value than gold.
(Mary)
I want to get well. You have been attending me for a year and when you began, I could go
about and attend balls and enjoy myself; now I can scarcely sit up two hours a day.
(Dr.)
Yes. I have seen all that and have been trying to counteract the disease which has been
preying upon your system. I will be frank with you Mary. You have the seeds of consumption in
your frame which I detected long ago. I noticed it when I first came and used to play your piano;
I could see the real hectic come into your face.
(Mary)
Did you call that hectic?
(Dr.)
Certainly.
(Mary)
Well, then you made it, for you used to make me so nervous that it seemed as though I should
fly.
(Exit the doctor)
(Mary)
(Alone)
Now I begin to understand myself, I can see that neither of the two knows anything about me,
not half as much as I do myself. This physician has convinced me that he knows nothing, for he
saw the hectic on my cheek while he was drumming on the piano, which was merely my
nervous hatred of him. And if that is hectic I know what produced it. All this I can trace to the
piano, for when I was left alone I was better and went out. But on my return some friends came
in and I became very nervous for fear they would injure my piano -this acted upon me like a
cold. When the new doctor came he could play and this made me calmer, for I was not afraid of
his injuring the instrument. So between them both I have come to this conclusion: if my old
physician was honest in his practice, he is ignorant of its effect and the world is no wiser for his
knowledge. As for the young man he showed more good sense, if not knowledge, than the
other, for his qualities of mind are more agreeable to me. I know this one thing; it requires no
science to make a disease, nor cure it, if the patient can find where he has been deceived. I
know how my disease came, so all I have to do is to give up all opinions and try to understand,
so as not to be deceived by any person's opinion, when no proof is offered.
Now let us sum up the evidence in this case and see how much is science and
how much science and wisdom and how much disease have been envinced. All
will admit that the piano contained no intelligence and the doctor showed no
knowledge. The lady was the victim of the doctor's opinion. Now as a judge,
judging from the evidence, it is a case of pure malpractice. And as the law
stands, it is right to murder if you have a diploma from a medical school. But we,
as a judge and reporter of cases, have a right to suggest a more perfect law by
which the people can correct their own evils without employing either of the two
professions, as we believe them both in error. We will show what needs to be
done for the benefit of mankind. You see the world is no wiser for the theories of
either priest or doctor, if it is not a disgrace to science to call the practice of
medicine a theory. Where can science stand to have a foothold on this humbug?
It is between the cure and the disease. To stand there you must know what is to
be done. Now I am going to show what is not generally understood, if at all.
Everyone knows that we can all agree on everything made by hand. For
instance, if you go into a machine shop, you have no controversy about what the
articles there are called: a sleigh for instance, or anything else. So if there is any
controversy, it is in regard to where there is an opinion and the trouble lies in the
understanding, not in the thing known. So it is with disease. The idea that matter
and mind make the man prevents man from understanding himself.
I will give my ideas of man. When we see man we look at him as a whole, not
seeing anything separate and apart. So when he is dead as it is called, this ends
his life. Whatever opinions we may have of what follows, we have no positive
proof that anything remains. If there is any proof that man is anything after what
is called death, the natural man has never been able to give that proof to the
world. Now is there any proof of a wisdom higher than the natural man? All
Christians will admit that there is, but when asked for proof, they quote the Bible
as such. If you will not take this, then they can give no proof. So if the Bible is
proof, then man's opinion is of no use, for to the Bible, he can add no force. Let
us go to the Bible. It lies on my table. It does not speak if I open it. It gives me no
proof. 1 find that there is an account of the creation of the world and a great deal
of other matter. So not getting there an answer to my inquiry, I turn to Mr. A. He
tells me that it contains certain great truths and finally explains it according to his
creed. I call on Mr. B and he gives his creed and so on to Mr. W. All are very sure
it contains an account of another world and each one is sure that his own creed
is right.
I sit down and look at the whole and come to this conclusion: that if the Bible
contains anything, the explanations must be false, for they are at war with each
other. They are like the man and his wife, never at peace, except when someone
comes in to separate them. So it is with the churches; they will fight with each
other like animals, but let someone step in and call religion a humbug and they
will all be down on that person as though he was the greatest infidel in the world.
So you cannot get any proof in that way.
I will give you my investigations for belief I have none, but I will tell you what I do
not believe. This is what Jesus did; he told not what he believed but what he
knew was false. When I sit by a patient, I do not try to electioneer for any creed.
If I made war with a Baptist, it is not to make him a Universalist, nor anything
else. And if I made war with a Methodist, or any other religious sect, or an infidel,
as I often do, it is not to convert them to my creed or belief for I have none.
You may ask what is my religious belief. I answer none. I know I am sitting here
now and I know I was here yesterday and I expect to be here tomorrow. This last
is my belief, founded on the knowledge that I am here now and was here
yesterday. My senses can act upon a person at a distance without that person
knowing it. This I know. I also know that the Bible never spoke of itself. I know
that God never made anything that is attributed to man's wisdom. I know that all
language is the invention of man. I know that God never made happiness or
misery. I know that man makes both. I know that with God, might is not right, that
God never spoke to one being more than to another. I know that no priest ever
went into another world and never came from one. I know that all their talk is but
the invention of man. I believe in no priest's opinion. I know that all their doctrines
are all the invention of men and the cause of nine-tenths of the misery in the
world. I know that the profession of doctor, like that of priest, is all the invention of
this world and causes nine-tenths of the diseases. Both together make more
misery than all other evils. I will tell you why I am opposed to all the above. It is
because I know that all disease is what follows our belief and happiness is the
result of getting rid of our belief. Every man is a part of God, just so far as he is
Wisdom. So I will tell you what I know, not what I believe. I said I knew I was
here. I worship no God except my own and I will tell you what He teaches me. In
the first place He puts no restrictions on me, in fact He is in me and just as I
know myself I know Him; so that I and God are one, just as my children and I are
one. To please myself I please God and to injure myself is to injure my God. So
all I have to do is to please myself. As God and I are one so you and I are one
and to please myself is to please you and to injure myself is to injure you, so just
as I measure out to you I measure out to myself. As you and I are one, you and
your neighbor are one and to love your neighbor as yourself is more than all the
prayers made by all the priests in the world. I know that if I do by another as I
would be done by in like circumstances I feel right, so I judge no man. I do not
judge of myself, for my knowledge of this Wisdom is as plain to me as my
senses.
To the world it is a belief but to me it is wisdom that the religious world knows not
of. If they did they would never crucify me as they do in their ignorance. So my
religion is my wisdom which is not of this world, but of that Wisdom that will break
in pieces the wisdom of men. Man's wisdom is the superstition of heathen
idolatry; all Science is at variance with it. I stand alone, not believing in anything
independent of Science; so you can put me down as having no sympathy with
any belief of religion concerning another world or in anything after the Christian
death. Neither have I any belief in the resurrection of the body. My death is this-
ignorance; life is Wisdom, death is darkness or matter. All men have wandered
from light and believed in darkness. To destroy matter you introduce light or life.
I will illustrate. Suppose you are sitting in the dark, call that this world. Now as the
light springs up where is the darkness? All will say, the darkness is gone. The
light is the resurrection of this body or darkness. But what becomes of it when the
light rises? So it is with man. Man is an idea of matter or darkness, and as his
mind becomes lit up or clairvoyant the darkness of the idea of matter is gone and
he is in light that the wisdom of this world or darkness has not. So light into
darkness and darkness comprehends it not. When I sit down by a patient, I come
out of this matter or darkness and stand by the patient's senses which are
attached to some idea of the wisdom of this world which troubles them. I retain
my former man or matter and its senses. I also have another identity independent
of matter and I (knowing what is the cause of his misery) stand by the matter or
belief of my patient and destroy his belief of the effect it has on his senses. Then
as the darkness or belief is lit up by the wisdom of Science, his darkness or belief
is lit up by the wisdom of Science, his darkness disappears and he rejoices in the
light. The light leads him back to his house or belief from which he had been
decoyed away by the blind guide spoken of in scripture. Here you have what I
believe and what I disbelieve-the tools are my law and gospel. By the law no one
can be saved but by the gospel of Truth; Science will have all men saved not
from the Christian world but from this world of superstition and ignorance, saved
for the greater truth that was prepared from the beginning of the world for all
those who search and try to find it.
You cannot go into the clouds to call it down nor into the sea to call it up but it is
in you, in your very thoughts. It is not of this world but of a higher state that can
penetrate this earthly matter as light through darkness. As the senses are of the
body they travel through the light as a man with a lamp travels in the dark. So it is
not everyone who has a lamp with oil nor is everyone wise who says he is so.
But he is wise who can come up to the one in the dark and lead him along
through his dark wilderness of disease into the light of reason and health, like the
good man who had the hundred sheep and one wandered away in the dark. He
left the ninety and nine that were in the light and found the lost one and restored
him to the fold. Now let those, who pretend to be shepherds of the sheep or of
sick persons starving to death, like the prodigal son for spiritual food, eating the
husks of science not the priest's food, go and guide them along to the father's of
health where they can eat and be glad and have music and dancing. This was
Christ's truth; he was the Good Shepherd; the people were his sheep and all who
looked to him and listened to the true wisdom were saved from the errors of the
priests and doctors. So Moses lifted up the serpents in the old Egyptian theology
or creed and explained them and all who looked on his explanation were healed
of their errors that made diseases. So Christ was lifted up and all who
understood were healed from the doctrines of the Scribes and Pharisees.
So in our day I hold up the serpent of creeds and doctor's theories and show the
absurdity of their belief and all who understand are healed of their diseases.
November 1860
A Case: A Divorced Lady
BU 93:8, LC 3:135
[part of orig. ABOUT PATIENTS]
I will tell you how a patient whom I was sitting with affected me. It was a lady who
had been divorced from her husband because she said he was so ugly she could
not live with him. At the time I first saw her I told her of the fact and tried to
convince her it was a disease, that her husband really loved her and his fears for
her health made her nervous. This she could not believe for she said he ill
treated her and she knew he was bad. Now this was the fact. They both loved
each other at the time they were married; this she acknowledged and they
continued to love and respect each other till the lady was confined when, as she
said, she took cold and was very sick. Then her husband turned against her, tried
to kill her and reported all sorts of stories about her till she could bear it no
longer. At last she lost all patience, lost confidence in her husband, forsook his
bed and would not have anything to do with him. This story she believed to be
true and so it was. But the cause she knew not. Her husband, getting out of all
patience, forsook her and tried to get divorced; this was mutual.
Now all the above was real, but it was brought about from love and fear. Her
sickness caused her husband's fear for her life. His fear excited her love making
her nervous; she put a false construction on his fears thinking he did not love her,
for his love when she was well did not excite her fears and her trouble wanted
someone to relieve her. His fears for her health made her worse. So that the
more he would try to please her, the more he tormented her, till each one's love
turned to hatred. At last they were divorced; then she was happy she said. But as
she got rid of her husband, the disease or the insane idea attached itself to her
own identity in the form of disease of the eye. So that at the time I speak of, she
gave me to understand that she was then perfectly happy, with the exception of
her eye. But I saw the same idea of insanity that kept her nervous and always will
in some way or other. It was so plain to me that the idea took form and displayed
itself to me in so simple a way that no one would ever detect it by her
conversation. But it was so plain to me that I sat down and reduced the whole to
writing, so that it should not depart from me, for it gave me wisdom that may be
of value to mankind. It is to me and I will relate it.
Her love, she always considered as pure towards her husband. His love to her
was impure and although it was not pure, yet she always would admit that he
loved her a little, although she never wished him to but wanted to get clear and
never could. So her insane idea was in this discord and it showed itself in some
way, so that persons seeing and talking with her could not detect it in anything
she would say; but she would always produce some sort of an impression that
would excite those who talked with her. They never could know what it was, but
their feelings would affect her and keep her nervous, so that she carried the idea
of insanity all the time. At the time I am now speaking of, it showed itself in two
large roses: one white and the other red, both on one side of her bonnet, the
white above the red, showing her own love as pure white and the husband's as
red or bloody. This I could see and the impression made on me almost frightened
me for an instant, for I could see what was insanity and how it might be avoided.
Insanity consists in some little discord that might be corrected if the person knew
it; it is brought on by the disturbance of the world's opinion. I will tell you how it
comes. I have told you how this lady's came and I will tell you how to correct it.
But before I correct it, I must make it or show what it is made of. This puts me in
mind of two patients I had, both with symptoms alike as far as they knew. Both
belonged to the same church; both complained of the same feelings; one was a
farmer and the other was a doctor. Each admitted to a heaven and hell
independent of themselves. The farmer's ambition led him only to leading a life
so that he should get into heaven and his trouble was in steering his life and acts
so that he should not burn up in hell. And as his ambition was for this world's
goods, it acted like a current that he had to stem, so it made him nervous and
kept him all the time uneasy. This nervousness showed itself in his body and was
called by the doctors a trouble about the heart and congestion of the lungs. His
wisdom was directed to heaven with hell on the starboard bow. This engrossed
all his wisdom and talent to land safe in heaven when the storm of life was over.
The doctor was another character. He had more acquisitiveness and sagacity
and his wisdom was not directed so much to heaven or hell as the farmer's, but
he kept both in sight as though he would give his attention to that at a more
convenient time. He wanted to examine into all things of this world, so as he was
a doctor, he wanted to see how disease was made, what it was made of and how
it was put together. He was looking at the errors of the world as real things. But
the farmer had no curiosity to know how anything was made. He wanted to get
into heaven, so he was more likely to get off the globe first, for he did not stop to
examine anything as the doctor did. The doctor after examining all things here
would steer for foreign parts and as heaven is his last place of destination, he will
not be satisfied till he goes all through hell to see how that is constructed. And if
he is able to see out after he gets in, I have no doubt of his reaching heaven.
Now here are two characters: one ignorance and the other error. Ignorance
embraces the largest class of mankind. Error is more active but shows the
wisdom of this world and is called by the farmer or ignorance, very strong minded
men of great power.
Now there is another class not known by ignorance, called the inventive class.
This is not so numerous as the other two classes but has more sagacity than
both. This class creates and destroys. They can create a thing and present it to
the two above classes, who will think it as real as their own existence. They use
their powers of invention for their own benefit and make their money out of the
other two classes. There is still another class, just like the last, with this
exception: they show the error and ignorance how they are deceived, show them
how to tear down all their ideas and bring all things on a level. This is the class
that can create and destroy and teach others to do the same. This last class
cannot be insane, for insanity is the invention of the natural man and can be
destroyed by the scientific man.
November 1860
Character
BU 93:16, LC 3:148
I will give you the true position of your character. There are two characters.
Perhaps it will be necessary to state what I mean by a character. I mean the
position that one person stands in relation to another or to society. Society is the
standard by which to judge all acts or characters. If society is bad to one set of
persons, they set up their standard of character and judge the others. The good
set up their standard to judge the bad and each tries to gain the ascendency.
This keeps the world in a quarrel between the two elements of matter and under
the control of error and ignorance. Ignorance sees no reason for law and thinks
all persons are the same. Error sees the faults of ignorance and takes the
advantage and sets up standards of right and wrong to judge the world by. All
this is the wisdom of this world. Now there is another character not known by the
natural world and which is opposed by both these controlling elements. This
character is the child of science. It has no sympathy with the other two and does
not contain the elements of either. Its father is wisdom, its mother is science and
its character is in its acts. In the natural world it is not known to have an identity.
This character seeks not its own happiness independent of others, but its
happiness is in its acts and it lives on its knowledge. Now when this character is
known to a person so that it can be identified in them, then the wisdom of man is
looked upon as nothing in comparison to it. All man's wisdom is dross, compared
to this wisdom.
How shall a person know when he is guided by this wisdom? I will give you a
sign so that you cannot be deceived. Man of himself is a servant acted upon and
governed by two powers superior to himself. These two powers you may call God
and the devil, good and bad, or science and error. Now as the bodies of men are
a machine to be acted upon by one of these two powers, through the servant,
these bodies are like a vineyard under the guidance of the steward or master,
who is responsible to his lord. So when the lord of the vineyard calls the steward
to an account, if his acts do not harmonize with the agreement made with his lord
and master, then the steward is turned out and another takes his place. I will now
state the agreement between the steward and his lord. Whatever a person
agrees; to is binding on the steward and if you as a steward of your own vineyard
or body agree that the laws are right and just, then if you do anything contained
in the law according to your agreement, you; must be punished by this same law,
if not by the law of the land. For one is sanctioned by God and the other by man.
And wisdom: does not change but rewards everyone according to his agreement.
Now man had better look over his contract and see where he stands in regard to
himself, as he is answerable to himself, for his happiness or misery is in obeying
or disobeying his contract. Now suppose we name over some of the articles
contained in the agreement and see if we are guilty. I will call them over and you
may say under the knowledge of your agreement whether or not you agreed to
them as real existing things, which were bad or ought to be dealt with according
to law. I will begin with the first article in the agreement. Have you not agreed that
it is right for you to respect your parents as you would have them respect you?
You answer, Yes. Then this is one of the agreements entered into by you and
your master. Now this is binding on you, for it was your own free will, so just what
punishment the law has attached to breaking that contract is your punishment.
This is in the agreement and there is no escape, for everyone must give an
account to his lord of his stewardship. So that whatever you have acknowledged
as wrong or have given your sanction to as just and right, you are subject to.
You have acknowledged that to steal is wrong and to punish a person for stealing
is right. This is the law of man and you have given it your sanction as right, so
you have helped bind burdens on the people that you cannot remove. The
wisdom of man is not able to remove this burden, so men are under these laws
and the obeying of them makes one character and the disobeying of them the
other. So the world is in a quarrel to see which party shall rule. Ignorance finds
fault, though it does not wish to correct anything, but is willing everything should
remain just as God made it. The other character wants to change everything and
establish its own standard. In this way the science of wisdom finds no foothold in
either of these two characters. Jesus called them Scribes and Pharisees. Each of
these two characters often produce a phenomenon through a third person, as for
instance, when Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites. According to wisdom it was
necessary that such a mind as Joseph's should go into Egyptian darkness to lead
the people to a higher knowledge of a truth. Ignorance never would have carried
such an act into execution, neither would error. For error is never guided by
wisdom; therefore it must come from a higher power than either ignorance or
error. It was wisdom acting through error and error not knowing it. As the light
was in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. So wisdom acting
through error brought about a scientific benefit to mankind, but the world knew it
not scientifically and attributed it to some unknown law or wisdom of God and
they gave the power to an unknown God as they always do.
Paul said to the Athenians when he saw a monument or error with this
inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD, Whom you ignorantly worship, him
declare I unto you. This God was science or wisdom for the word science was
not used then, so that any truth that was governed by wisdom or science was a
miracle, for it could not be understood by the two characters, ignorance and
error. These two with the third character made up the trinity. Ignorance is the
weight or matter, error is the velocity or mind and wisdom is the direction or
intelligence. Each one is necessary for an effect and neither can act alone.
Wisdom must act on mind and mind on matter. As weight and velocity make
mechanical power, so mind and matter make spiritual power governed by a
wisdom superior to both. This last element, wisdom, is not known in the natural