# Science and Health/4 Creation

CHAPTER IV.
CREATION.
The evermore of Truth is changing the universe; thought is expanding beyond words; we are losing our swaddling clothes, asking for more light; yea, reaching forth to the stature of Soul outside the body. “Let there be light,” is the demand of Life and Love, changing chaos to order and discord to the music of the spheres. Progress takes off all shackles, and the finite yields to the Infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought grows new, and rises from the personal to the Impersonal; from the mortal to the Immortal, which is from the material to the spiritual idea of God. We have the authority of holy writ that God is Spirit, therefore it is not personality that demands our ignorant worship, and holds sway over man and the universe. There is but one God: yet there are many persons, and to worship personality would be to have “gods” many. That three persons are united in one body suggests a heathen Deity more than Jehovah; integral molecules are no portions of Wisdom and Love, “that spake and it was done;” and whose “word was God.” Life, Truth, and Love, are the triune Principle of man and of the universe; they are the great Jehovah, and these three are one, and our Father, which art in heaven. What is the person of God? He has no personality, for this would imply Intelligence in matter; the body ​of God is the idea given of him in the harmonious universe, and the male and female formed by Him. The reflection of an object is by no means the opposite of that object, and we cannot fail to see material man does not reflect Spirit, nor the finite, the Infinite; therefore material and finite man is not the image and reflex shadow of God. Intelligence is Substance, and nothing can hold or embrace Intelligence, because it embraces in itself all things. Soul is outside of matter, and not a person but Principle; unlimited and infinite, beyond all boundaries, it is not pent up in person or man. Intelligence repels error and attracts Truth; holds the universe in space; is diffusive, and extends through all extent. There is but one Principle and its idea, hence, the oneness of God and Soul, and the brotherhood of man; this idea is named man, it has infinite expressions, all of which are members of the body of Christ, Truth, the Intelligence outside of matter. Principle is expressed in one entirety or full idea. Take the microscope of Spirit to discern animism, and then only can you comprehend the generic term, man. The compound idea named man, is unintelligent; it is a lifeless image and reflection of Principle, or Soul, which is the Life, Intelligence, and Substance of this idea. A belief of matter separates man from God, and from his fellow-man. The science of being gives harmony to man. Loving God supremely is simply admitting Soul above sense in all things, and loving our neighbor as ourself, because, all have but one Soul, and should recognize themselves Soul, and not personal sense. Understanding ourself and neighbor one in Principle, we shall hold no divided interests, and find it good to ​keep the two commandments that our Master said outweighed all sacrifices and burnt offerings, religious rites and ceremonies, and fulfilled the prophecies, ushering in the reign of harmony that is to come on earth, even as in heaven. To love God supremely is to hold no Intelligence in matter, neither pleasure nor pain in the body. Truth, Life, and Love, are not in their idea, but are the Principle of this idea; are not in man, but are God, outside of man. This science of being alone enables us to love God with all the heart, and our neighbor as ourself. To reach its harmony, we must look away from the supposed Life of matter, and find happiness in Soul and not sense. Man is not distorted into shocking dimensions, because he is the infinite idea, nor is he but a solitary thought, disembodied and alone. When realizing Life as it is, namely, Soul, not sense, or the personal man, we shall expand into Truth and self-completeness that embrace all things, and need communion with nothing more than itself, to find them all. But this statement of Soul and body, or God and man, we shall understand, only in proportion as we lay up our treasures in heaven, and not on earth; that is, in Spirit, and not matter, and approach the broader interpretation of being, where we gain the glorious consciousness and proof of Life and happiness. The sensuous and material man is slow to gather this meaning. Constantly looking away from the body to the good and true, we shall gravitate towards Spirit and immortality; but ever referring to the body, talking and supposing incessantly, some pain or pleasures there, we shall never become harmonious, but return, “like the sow to her wallowing,” and “the dog to his vomit.” The freedom or ​blessedness of the sons of God, is not communing with the body, but away from it with the impersonal Life, Truth, and Love. Regarding the body as the seat of Intelligence, Life, etc., is to hold one's self liable to be annihilated; and believing God a person, robs Omnipotence, clothing it with vestments of mortality. If Deity is personality, the forever “I am,” or God with us, is not Spirit, but matter, bounded by and narrowed into six feet of stature. If God is a person he dwells in a body, in which case matter and Spirit are God; this is impossible, for Spirit and matter are opposites. It is of little consequence what our educated views are on this subject; it is morally impossible for Principle to dwell in its idea; for Soul to inhabit a body; the unchanging to dwell in change, and the undying with death, or the Infinite with the finite, the perfect with the imperfect; yea, for Spirit and matter to unite, and Soul and personal sense to join hands. Soul cannot exist both within and without the body, else matter is gone, and all is found Principle and idea, in which case personality disappears. There is a wider difference between Spirit and matter than between light and darkness, that surely are not mingled into one. We know better than to say Deity is the shadow of matter, but if matter is Substance, God is shadow, and shadow never produced Substance; hence, matter must have created itself. The body of Spirit is spiritual and not material; but Principle, or Soul, cannot be compressed into one of its ideas, into what it has made. If God is in a body He is person, and not Principle, hence man is not his likeness or reflection. Again, the discord that comes from the belief of Soul in body, and ​intelligent matter, at once proves this theory of being a belief only, and error. Mortal man is a very unnatural image and likeness of God, immortality. Turning from the contemplation of Soul in matter, we shall not call on drugs, laws of health, etc., for health or happiness, but obtain these by losing sickness, sin and death; in the science of being Soul meets all wants spiritually, giving not a stone for bread. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh,” hence the natural antagonism between Spirit and matter. St. Paul called the body of Soul a spiritual body, and the flesh a “natural body”; or what is more probable, some one else translated it thus, when he longed to “lay off this body,” i. e., to destroy this belief, he must have thought it a very unnatural body, as he gained life, that is God, Spirit; the personal man and woman is neither “us” nor our local habitation. Who is safe leaning on man, or the body, or finds sufficient Life or Love in man to make him happy? we feel this lack, and the great need of resting on something higher. There is no lack in God, but we do not avail ourself of Spirit, but of personality or matter. Joint heirs with God are the partakers of an inheritance where there is no division of estate; we are Spirit, but, knowing this not, we go on to vainly suppose ourself body, and not Soul. God is not a personality, and Soul is not in body; the immortal is not within the mortal, nor Life in death. This belief has hidden the glorious Truth of man's being, and turned him away from his original self-hood; hence the great need we feel for something better, higher, and holier, than personal man. The material man depends for happiness ​and Life, on sense instead of Soul; on matter, rather than Spirit, hence the insufficiency he finds in himself, or personal man. But looking away from sense to Soul, and taking the Principle of Life to demonstrate man, we regain the understanding of our God-being, and instead of vain repetitions, such as heathen use, made to a far-off, personal Deity to aid this hour, we must put our finger to our lips, remembering that Spirit knoweth, while personal sense knoweth not, what man hath need of. “The Father of the rain, who hath begotten the dew, and bringeth Mazzaroth in his season, and guides Arcturus with his sons,” knows the wants of every one of its ideas, and controls man and the universe in harmony and immortality. If only we realized this glorious Truth, it would silence sense, and leave the body in the hands of Soul, where all would be well with it. Man has no Intelligence wherewith to govern man, however much he may say, “I have made a covenant with my eyes” etc. Personal views of the Supreme Intelligence are so bigoted, or narrow and inverted, they neither reach Principle nor represent it, but appeal to a personal God of whom we have heard through the hearing of the ear. Eye hath not seen Spirit, nor hath ear heard its voice. Reverse this order of things, and above the appeal to a man-God, lift thyself to the Wisdom and Love that maketh the God-man, and you will at length reach Christianity. Denying sense, and holding no Intelligence in matter, we have the guidance of Spirit leading in the way everlasting, where the belief of supreme being changes from person to Principle. Job said, after the withdrawal of all his matter-treasures, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing ​of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee.” Personal man is only an atom in immensity, therefore the impersonal Life and Love, that embrace all things, cannot be found in him; we must look outside of man for Life and Love, for, “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” Reckoning ourself from the standpoint of Soul, instead of personal sense, we progress as spontaneously as light emits light: but reversing this order of science, in which man begins in the body, and looks there for both pain and pleasure, yea, for Life and for death, he retrogrades hourly, until he finally disappears in what is termed death. The evidence of personal sense, or Life in matter, is utterly reversed in science, wherein we learn there is neither a personal God nor a personal man. But here do you say, you “have taken away my Lord,” and “I know not where you have laid him,” I have lost my Maker and my own identity? Look away then from your body, and you will find them; let go the belief you live in matter, and you will grow as the bird that bursts from the ovum; personality will be swallowed up in the boundless Love that shadows forth man; and beauty, immortality, and blessedness, be the glorious proof of existence you recognize. This is not losing man nor robbing God, but finding yourself more blessed, as Principle than person, as God than man, as Soul than sense, and yourself and neighbor one. This science of being lessens not the dependence of man on God, but heightens it; neither does it diminish the high obligations of man towards God, but greatly increases them; it deteriorates not in the least from every possible perfection in God, because ascribing all to the impersonal Life, Love, and Truth. ​Personal love is little better than personal hate; both bringeth a snare, for their foundations are error, viz., Intelligence in matter, and we cling to them, only because we have not reached higher; not that God is found in them, but that we are groping darkly for Him where He is not, when there is no place where His voice is not to be heard. Is there one individual putting off the “old man” and “putting on the new,” who has not felt the loss of personal pleasures and pains? yea, and of personal friends, before he found what belongs not to person, namely, the enlargement of his being in Love and Wisdom that reaches beyond personal pain or pleasure. The loss of a friend has, perhaps, given you the explanation of this. Pain quickly informs us that personal pleasure is mortal, and that both are error.
A sinner believes, momentarily, he is happier for wrong-doing, and another man that he suffers for doing right; the one is a belief of personal pleasure, and the other of pain, but both are false. God is not the author of personal sense, or discord. Would existence seem blank without a personal friend? then the time cometh when you will feel this solitariness, and when this vacuum must be filled with Principle, instead of person, and with the Love that is God. When this hour for development arrives, you will suffer from personal enemies so severely it will cause you to approach more readily the science that destroys all personal trust and gives you higher joys, even as pain is salutary in taking away a belief of pleasure in sense. These are the footsteps of science, by which Truth amputates error. Our individuality is never lost; but the belief ​of Life, Intelligence and Substance in person is lost. Universal Love is individual also, embracing every idea from infinitesimal to infinity. And so of joy that issues from Spirit, it is both individual and collective; you cannot be alone, for God and man are inseparable, and eternal, and the rich blessing of understanding your individuality in Spirit and not matter, as Soul, and not sense, is that you may learn how to follow Jesus in this saying, “I and the Father are one.” This spiritual understanding of man tends not in the least to humanize Jehovah, but to turn man from the human to the divine, from the belief of Life in matter, to the Life that is truth; to raise the understanding above frailty, and to pass the barriers of sense into the impersonal evermore of being. That man epitomizes the universe, and is the body of God, is apparent to me not only from the logic of Truth, but in the phenomenon, that is sometimes before my spiritual senses, and which the late celebrated naturalist, Agassiz, saw in his microscopic examinations of a vulture's egg. We had made the discovery through spiritual sense, that the body of Soul embraces the universe, and that man is the full idea of Life, Substance and Intelligence, before seeing this corroborative evidence of Professor Agassiz's discoveries, in which he saw the atmosphere, sun, moon and stars, represented in the ovum of a bird; the point where the so-called embryotic life is formed appearing as the sun. Intelligence outside of matter, embraces every idea of man and of the universe; this Intelligence is Soul, and man borrows all Life and intelligence from this, his Principle, even as the earth borrows light and heat from the sun. Water corresponds in figurative ​purity, to Love, out of which Wisdom produced the “dry land,” that is, the condensed idea of creation. “And God divided the light from the darkness.” Truth and error were distinct in the beginning, and never mingled.
The idea which reflects most Life and Intelligence is man, and corresponds to the meridian light; that of lesser effulgence to dawn and twilight, which are named the morning and evening of our day. All calculations of a solar day were out of the question in the record of first Genesis; the sun was not then created, and Wisdom measured not time by matter; therefore morning and evening were figurative of the ideas of God; faintly appearing and then disappearing in belief, but soon to be symbolized by greater light, corresponding to the solar sun, or the meridian idea representing the Principle of man, and man this idea. “And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, to divide them.” The firmament was the understanding, that divided the waters into those “above,” and those “below,” into the spiritual and material, that we learn are separated forever; identity was given the idea, representing immortal man; the material, or mortal man, was belief. Firmament, or understanding, united Principle to its idea. Life and Intelligence this Principle; idea, the universe and man. “And God made the firmament.” This shows that Life, Truth and Love produced the understanding, and separated it from belief, and all was “good” that God made. Also, that understanding interpreted God, and was the dividing line between Truth and error; to separate the waters which were under the firmament from those above it; ​to hold Life and Intelligence that made all things, distinct from what it made, and superior to them, controlling and preserving them, not through laws of matter, but the law of Spirit. In this arrangement, “all was good;” it being the order of science. “And God called the firmament heaven,” that is, harmony, even the result of understanding. The first day in Spirit, is when “He whom to know aright, is Life eternal,” i. e., Life, Love and Truth, bring forth their idea. The second day, is to perceive, and the third to understand this idea, viz., heaven, earth, and man.
“And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb, yielding seed,” etc.
Let the idea of creative Wisdom reflect its Principle of creation, showing that the seed yields not an herb, because of a propagating Principle in itself; for there is none, insomuch as Intelligence made all that was made; the idea was only to shadow forth what Intelligence had made. Science not only reveals this, but the Scripture repeats it, that God made every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. Mathematically speaking, ten multiplied by ten produces one hundred; but the science of being assures us Intelligence produces the units, and multiplies them. Hereby we learn creations of Wisdom are not dependent on laws of matter, but on Intelligence alone; it was Spirit that moved upon the face of the deep, and brought out of chaos, order, a universe and man, as the infinite idea of God. Unfathomable mind had expressed itself.
“The earth brought forth grass, and yielded fruit,” in obedience to Intelligence, and not matter; even as ​a picture is produced by the artist. The idea of creative Wisdom and Love was given its identity; but it was mind, first and last. The grass and tree grew from out the infinite thought that embraced, and expressed them. The artist transfers a landscape from Soul, to sense; but its only immortality is in the Intelligence that forms it. This most important idea of creation constituted the “third day,” and was the third epoch; a number corresponding to the resurrection; the third and seventh periods reveal the advanced ideas, whereby Intelligence is seen the Life of the grass, the herb, the tree, etc., and every manifestation of Life understood not Substance but the idea of the creative Life and Intelligence, in no way contingent on organization or matter. This is manifestly the science of being brought to light in our Master's reappearing on the third day, when the idea named man, appeared to his students, independent of matter-conditions. And also the finished figure of creation on the seventh day.
“And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens, to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years.” Hereby we learn the continuance of vegetation, and the years or age of man are not contingent on seasons, measured by our solar years, or governed in the least by the so-called laws of matter, for the light of understanding was to govern every idea of Intelligence. There was but one law-giver, when the stars first sang together, and harmony was the anthem of creation.
“And God made two great lights, the greater to rule the day, and the lesser the night; he made the ​stars also.” The sun is figurative of Soul, of the Principle of man, and the universe; of the Life and Intelligence outside of matter, that governs the entire creation. Stars represent scintillations of Truth, that appear in the twilight of understanding, or darkness of belief. Matter never represented God; geology cannot explain the earth, nor one of its formations, for these formations are dependent alone on Spirit, that gave them forth the eternal heavens, earth and man. Intelligence formed and peopled the universe. The scripture gives no record of solar light, until after time had been divided into day and night, and vegetation was formed; showing you light was the symbol of the Life-giving creator, and not a source of Life to the vegetable kingdom.
| “ | All are but parts of one stupendous whole, |
| | Whose body nature is, and God the Soul.” |
Spirit is inseparable from its idea, but never in it; one cannot exist without the other. Principle would be nonentity without its idea, and idea could not be without its entity, or Principle. Soul exists not without man and the universe, for it is never separated from the complex and reflex shadow of itself; but God, the Soul of all, is not in man or matter.
“And God said, let the waters bring forth the moving creatures that hath life”; the ideas of God that represent Life outside of matter; “and God blessed them, saying, be fruitful, multiply,” etc. Here the difference is shown between Wisdom's approval of those things created by Spirit and the command for them to multiply, and the curse upon Adam's race that sprang from ​dust, matter. So far, Life, Truth, and Love, had “made all that was made” and pronounced it “good”; but we have no record of their creating sin, sickness, or death; all was good that was created by God. The same Truth that made man harmonious, will destroy, at length, the belief of Life in matter, or mortal man, and reveal man the forever idea of God; but this Truth is met with the malignancy of error in return for Love, shedding its blessings unsparingly on all. Malice pursues the reformer through every avenue of society, and the evil that persecutes, and the pride that refuses aid, binds the hands and feet of philanthropy, and then calls for stronger proofs of active limbs.
“And God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and saw that it was good.” The beast and reptile made by Love and Wisdom were neither carnivorous nor poisonous; Love never created hatred, nor Truth error. In the science of being, man preys not on his fellow-man, and his neighbor is as himself. One beast shall not devour another, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the little child shall lead them. The Wisdom that handled serpents unharmed, and that made a staff as a serpent, held dominion over reptiles and over all the earth; this dominion was illustrated by Moses and the prophets, and afterwards by Jesus and his disciples, the very best examples to elucidate the Truth of being. Understanding this science, Daniel was safe amid the hungry lions, well knowing the Intelligence that formed the lion was superior to him; therefore he took refuge from the belief of Life in matter ready to perish, in Life that was God, where safety and refuge lay, and thus ​demonstrated his control “over the beasts of the field.” Understanding Life not at the mercy of death, and Spirit superior to matter, saved the prophet from the hungry lions. To conclude an animal is superior to man, that matter is power, and Life in the body, leaves man in the hour of danger a Samson with eyes plucked out: his strength a spectacle of weakness. When immortality is better understood, there will follow an exercise of capacity unknown to mortals; man will become a hundred fold more a man, when he holds himself in the science of being, starting from the basis of Spirit. In Truth there is endless strength and immortality.
“And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowls of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth.” The “Us” used in this quotation referred to Intelligence, the creative Wisdom, and expressed plurality; therefore if God is a person it plainly implied more than one God; but to gain the right interpretation, which is the spiritual sense of this saying, is to admit the “Us” referred to, Life, Truth and Love; even the triune Principle that reveals the Life that is Truth, and the Truth that is Life, and both God, and God, Love. “Let them have dominion,” also signifies plurality, for man was the generic name of mankind; in contradistinction to the belief that God made one man, and man made the rest of his kind, science reveals the fact that He made all. The photographer transfers the likeness of one or more objects, according to the number present, and we admit the likeness of three is not one, and vice versa; therefore, as man is the likeness of God, the plain ​expression, “let us make man,” and “let them have dominion,” is conclusive evidence that God made man the idea of infinite mind, and was the plural, Life, Love and Truth; not a plural person, but Principle that gave the infinite idea. There could be no second creation after “all was made that was made,” nor ever a man formed since the full idea of God was given. “So God created man in His own image, male and female created He them.” Hereby we learn, man was a generic name; also that he reflected the Principle of male and female, was the likeness of “Us,” the compound Principle that made man. Male and female cannot be one in person, but are one in Principle, and if God is a person his gender would be both male and female, these being the likenesses of Him, as the Scripture informs us; but for these different personalities or sexes to be found in one person, would be deemed monstrous; hence, male and female being the likeness and representation of God, we learn that person is not the image of Him; much less can He be in person, inasmuch as he is Principle embracing the masculine, feminine, and neuter, represented by the universe and man. Gender is embraced in Spirit, else God could never have shadowed forth from out Himself, the idea of male and female; this idea comes from Soul and not body, from Principle and not person. Which, again, furnishes the proof that an egg is not the origin of man, that seed never produced a plant, etc. Intelligence “made all that was made,” and every plant, before it was in the ground; every mineral, vegetable, and animal, were ideas of the eternal thought. Supreme and universal mind embraced every ​form of the universe and gave it forth, as Spirit and not matter, and nothing was left for man or for matter to create, after Spirit had created all. This is science, and it underlies the harmony of God and man. The Scriptures declare “God is Love;” that “God is Spirit, Life, and Truth;” now these are not person; also there are many persons, and but one God; hence Deity is not person but Principle. Judging from Paul's rule, to learn the “invisible by the things He hath made,” the ideas that express God, render it impossible for that to be one person which produces feminine, masculine, and neuter. The expression of God's gender is Principle and not person; the entire universe and man represent God as Principle, and not person; the infinite “Us” that embraced every idea of the universe, shadowing forth each from out itself; the unavoidable result of Intelligence that said, “Let there be light,” that is, let the Infinite be expressed.
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God; all things were made by Him, and without Him there was nothing made that was made.” “In Him was Life,” etc., and then to conclude in the face of this infinite logic, that an egg is the starting point of Life, that seed produces germination, etc., is to forget this is mythical, and a belief that usurped the prerogative of understanding, starting an Adam from dust, calling itself Life in matter, and resulting in mortality, the very opposite of Truth.
After “all was made that was made,” nothing could be added to the infinite expression of infinite Intelligence, and person is not the image and likeness of Intelligence, or matter of Spirit; therefore, these do ​not represent the plural “Us” in one Principle, nor the generic man, or male and female, created by Principle. We have not as much authority in science, for calling God masculine as feminine, the latter being the last, therefore the highest idea given of Him. The belief that the form of man is the body of the supreme Being, or that He is in a body, is the error of supposed Life and Intelligence in matter, that bore the fruit of sickness, sin, and death; even the “tree of knowledge” reversing the science of being, by supposing Soul in body, Spirit in matter, and substituting personal sense for Soul, having dominion over man, instead of man's dominion over matter. This belief embraces all that is finite, sinful, and mortal; but recollect it is Adam, the error, that sprang from dust, nothingness, and by edict of Wisdom, will return to it. Man originated in God; he is the product of Spirit; hence, he is idea, and not Substance, even the body of Soul; his Intelligence is Spirit, not brains; mind not in matter, God not in person. Love is spiritual, joy-giving and eternal, a forever assurance that “God is Love;” personal attractions that originate in the body are fraught with change and death, impure, transient and mortal. The curse causeless came not to Adam, the original sin or error, in other words, to this belief of Life and Intelligence in matter. Spirit originating in matter, and Intelligence inserted afterwards, Soul pushed into a body, matter intelligent, and the body named man where personal sense takes the lead of Soul, is a myth. God was and is; and man was and is, His reflex shadow. In Genesis, the spiritual record of the universe and man is lost sight of, it was so materialized by uninspired ​writers; the creations of Spirit are spiritual; for they cannot be material; they are ideas of Principle thrown off from Soul, instead of sense, and their Substance is their Principle. The bride of Spirit is the idea of Love, the lamb revealed to John in spiritual vision, not a mere belief or personal attachment; this idea came down from the New Jerusalem, the exaltation of Spirit over matter; it was the unselfish, pure and immortal. “We worship we know not what,” when we “worship in temples made with hands,” even our bodies, and from the stand-point of matter, instead of Spirit. “God is Love,” and man the idea image and likeness of Him. Love's ideas are spiritual; its male and female are ideas of Soul instead of sense, expressed by the flower as well as man and woman, even those that God hath joined together, and mortal belief cannot put asunder. “And God blessed them, and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth.” All blessings and power came with the creations of Spirit, and as such they were to multiply and replenish the earth on this basis of being, and subdue it, making matter subservient to Spirit, and all would be harmonious and immortal; in contradistinction to the generations of Adam, or the belief that matter subdues Spirit. In this science of being, man “held dominion over the earth, and every living thing that moveth on the earth”; he knew neither Life nor power outside of Spirit, the governing Principle of the universe and man; and this Truth of all being, namely, that Intelligence is the only Life and Principle of all, ​brings to light the harmony and immortality of man. Error claims Life in matter, hence the creator a propagating vitality in vegetable and animal; and this error was the original sin, it being a belief of God in matter, or matter without God. This was the Adam, so totally depraved, insomuch as it claimed Life, Intelligence and Truth, that alone was God. Thinking to put Intelligence and Life in matter reversed the order of science, giving matter dominion over man. Intelligence multiplies the ideas of God only by destroying the belief of vitalized matter, for one is science and the other sense; one the Truth of being, the other its error; creative Intelligence was never transferred from Soul to sense, or from God to man.
We learn from the science of being that Spirit, independent of the so-called laws of matter, throws off its idea in every formation that is real or immortal. There is no material law that creates and governs man, or that man should obey; obedience to spiritual law is all that God requires, and this law abrogates matter, and makes the body idea, and as such harmonious and immortal.
“And God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed,” (the good fruit was not Substance but the idea of God,) “to you it shall be for meat.” To understand that Life is Spirit, is this idea, and it consisteth not in the things man eateth; it is the Truth of man that makes man immortal. But the poor belief that Life is supported by bread or meat, makes matter his master, and man mortal, however much he may eat. Truth is the immortality of man, and error the only mortality; ​immortality is Soul, and not sense; matter can neither give nor take away Life. The Scripture saith, “Man liveth by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” and this is not material bread, but that which comes from heaven, harmony, giving its idea, immortality. We know the belief of Life in matter is sustained by eating, drinking, etc., because it reverses the order of creation, and predicates Life on matter instead of Spirit.
“And every herb bearing seed, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree, was given man.” The idea of God (and this was man) was superior to earth, because it was the supreme idea, that embraced the entire universe in itself, and to which all others were subordinate. In this science of being, the herb bore seed and the tree fruit, not because of root, seed, or blossom, but because their Principle sustained these ideas, not as Substance, but idea, for Intelligence held dominion over matter. Reproduction is the result not of seed or soil, but the Principle of man and the universe, that produces through Intelligence. “And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, etc., wherein is Life, was given every green herb for meat.” Unto every belief of Life in matter, the green herb symbolizing the immature and imperfect was apportioned, for this belief was error and must draw its nutriment from the “tree of knowledge,” whereof if a man eat he should die.
“And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold it was very good.” Mark the distinction between the things produced by Spirit, and those supposed to be material products. Adam was sinful and ​mortal; in other words, he was error, and this error the belief that Life and Intelligence are in matter. The first product of this belief was Cain, a murderer, and earth brought forth thorns and thistles according to error, Adam; and man must live by bread, and earn it by the sweat of his brow. The belief of Life in matter entailed nothing but discord; therefore this belief was error, and error illusion; science says man has neither birth, growth, decay nor death; man is idea and not Substance, and spiritual instead of material. God “saw all that He had made,” inasmuch as Intelligence understands all; hence the harmony and immortality of its ideas and of man as idea, and not Substance, and governed by mind instead of matter; mind that comprehends and sustains man, not as matter, but idea. Soul understands this science of being, but sense does not, and the less sense and the more Soul is brought out will man appear the glorious idea of immortality. Soul alone comprehends immortality; personal sense says, when the eye loses sight of him forever, man is dead.
“Thus the heavens and earth were finished, and all the hosts of them.” Here the Scripture repeats again the science of creation, namely, that all was complete and finished, therefore that nothing has since been made; that Intelligence embraced all from the forever, and that all is perfect, infinite and eternal. This assurance, even, is self-sustaining, but to understand it, is to gain our harmony and immortality; no geological speculation can change or mar the fact that Intelligence, the Soul of man, embraces the universe and man in idea, and holds them thus, forever. As matter-substance, all is lost, but as Principle and idea, all is eternal. Never ​a mineral, vegetable or animal, was formed of dust; Spirit alone fashions all things. Birth, decay and death, are a personal sense of things, not their idea; man and the universe are complete and eternal in Intelligence, and nothing can exist out of that.
“And on the seventh day God ended His work, which He had made.” This corroborates the statement in science, that Truth, Life and Love had fully wrought out the infinite and eternal idea named the universe and man; also, that error the opposite of Truth, was about to claim a work independent of God, in which matter instead of Spirit should be the creator. The Truth, and science of being were already recorded, but error was now to make a reversed statement of man and the universe, viz., that Life, Intelligence, and Substance belong to matter, that Soul is in body, God a person, man a second Intelligence, and evil a third. This error was belief, and belief not mind, but a supposition of mind, not Soul, but what is termed personal sense, not Spirit, but intelligent matter, all of which is a myth. “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and heavens,” in other words, when Spirit was the creator. Generations signified the manifold ideas of Intelligence, and Life.
“And God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.” Here, again, is the undeniable statement that Intelligence is the only creator; also, that it produces vegetation, not through processes of culture or in obedience to what are ​termed laws of nature, but in obedience to Spirit; God made the plant before it grew; no partnership with matter is here acknowledged, and man was the idea of Spirit, and this idea tilled not the ground for bread; the Life of idea was its Principle; hence man could not die of starvation, or dyspepsia. The time cometh when we must all learn this science of being, in order to gain its harmony and immortality, even as we have already learned that the opposite belief of Life and Intelligence in matter, produces mortality, it being a belief of sin, Sickness and death.
The record of creation in Genesis repeats three times, “In the day that the Lord God made them,” indicating there was a time coming when another creation should declare itself the author of man. That creation was the history of Adam and his progeny, or mythological life in matter. After God created man, “there was not a man to till the ground,” because there was no necessity of it; the earth brought forth spontaneously, and man lived not because of matter, and earth was blessed for his sake, so unlike the curse that came with Adam, error. Spirit was the producer of harmony only, and Life self-sustained; therefore man was not to live because he ate much or little, giving no opportunity for gluttony or poverty, to mar the work of Wisdom. Man needed not to cultivate the soil, that matter might produce itself, nor to presume himself on the prerogative of creator. Spirit was the Life and creator of all, and its work was complete, and beyond the power of matter to destroy; all things were made when comprehended by Intelligence. Soul had all in its own possession, and there was no personal sense to do the work ​of Wisdom. Life was not in matter, and there was no existence except to Spirit. Nothing is new to Intelligence; the infinite understanding is not creating the universe or man anew; these ideas were forever, without beginning and without end. Matter has neither capacity, right nor power to create or to destroy; all is in the hands of Spirit, that hitherto hath wrought independently before belief claimed, through material law, to create and govern mineral, vegetable and animal. Intelligence made all that was made, and was not in the things it had made. Spirit never passed into matter to produce a world; heaven, earth and seas, and all things therein came from the eternal thought, and mind no more produces matter than matter produces mind. This is science, that God governs the universe and man. That matter propagates itself through seed and germination is error, a belief only, and not the Truth of being, and belief has its penalty, for, admitting mineral, vegetable and animal things of sense, instead of Soul, and dependent on matter for their ephemeral existence, makes them mortal. Not so with the universe and man, born of Spirit; they are harmonious and eternal.
“But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.”
Truth created through the understanding, saying, “let there be light,” but error came through darkness or belief, the figurative mist of earth, that which started from a matter basis; Adam was the belief of Life in matter that rose from the dust, saying man depends on material structure, and vegetation on the rain and dew. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of ​life, and man became a living Soul.” This statement of a second creation contradicts the first one, in which Spirit said, “Let ‘Us’ make man.” The first record was science; the second was metaphorical, and mythical, even the supposed utterances of matter; the scripture not being understood by its translators, was misinterpreted. After God had declared “all was made,” and the creation “good,” Wisdom never repented, or repeated what it had done; there was no second creation, and on a new plan. Had the record divided the first statement of creation from the fabulous second, by saying, after Truth's creation we will name the opposite belief of error, regarding the origin of the universe and man, it would have separated the tares from wheat, and we should have reached sooner the spiritual significance of the Bible. We are repeatedly assured in the second chapter of Genesis, that God had finished His work before Adam was created; that male and female, together with all the hosts of heaven and earth, were already made; therefore we have the authority of scripture for denying a second creation, or a single formation by matter. The harmonious creation was ended, and all was “good” that God created. Life, Truth and Love never made inharmonious man.
“God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Admitting He created Adam, Cain, and every other mortal error, He was the author of evil as well as good; but this is contradicted by the prophet Jeremiah, who saith, “Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good”; and what did the Evangelist mean when he said, “All things were made by Him, and without Him there was nothing made that ​was made,” “In Him was Life,” etc.? Simply this, that Life never created death, nor Truth error; it is error alone, that produces error. The belief of Life in matter, named Adam, brought sickness, sin and death into the world, and God denounced this error, or Adam, and said it was mortal; “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” This was not spoken of Soul, nor of man created by God; Life which is God, never entered into sin and death. Spirit was not the component part of Adam, or mortal man. The history of Adam is allegorical throughout, a description of error and its results, opposed to the Truth of being, and contradicting the divine economy; it makes Intelligence, Life, and Substance, matter instead of Spirit, saying, “Believe in me and I will make ye as gods;” more than one God was its starting point. Truth gives the immortal idea or man from Spirit, but error, the mortal belief from matter. The express image and likeness of God was immortal man, and there is none other, or ever a man since created. Through a belief of pain and sorrow, error claimed to create man, but Truth gave its idea of God in joy, blessing, and dominion. Error's process of creating, bases Intelligence on matter, or would put Intelligence in matter; either of which is impossible, insomuch as it would make Intelligence both God and devil; i. e., both good and evil; this belief is proved error, in that it produces sickness, sin and death, hence the sentence of Wisdom, “Thou shalt die.” The science of being never produced sickness, sin, or death, but destroys them. The symbol of error was the “tree of knowledge” which God, the Truth of being, forbade man; it symbolized the belief ​of Life and Intelligence in matter, of which Truth said, partake not, lest ye die; but error replied, Truth is at fault, if you acquire knowledge, “your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as Gods, knowing good from evil,” i. e., men shall be intelligences, Gods! and these Gods, matter, called men, to distinguish them from another personal God. Is not this Idolatry, and walking over the spiritual law, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me?” Spirit in matter and Soul in sense, makes “lords many and Gods many”; theology, materia medica, mesmerism, and every other 'ology and 'ism under the sun, originated in this very error. Intelligence and Life is God, omnipotent and eternal, and God never in matter, but producing spiritual, harmonious, and immortal man. There is but one God, one Life and Intelligence, one Principle of being, and this heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, destroys error instead of creating it, preaches the gospel to the poor, and is measurably explained in this science of being; the followers of Christ, Truth, were not the Rabbis, for it came to its own and was not received. Knowledge never enabled man to judge between good and evil, therefore it was a falsehood from the beginning, as Jesus said, “You were a liar from the beginning, and Truth, Life, abode not in you,” for Truth was never in matter, and mortal man is matter, and knowledge was his projenitor; mortal man is a belief of Life and death, of pain and pleasure, sickness and health, good and evil, mixed in one mass, called intelligent matter or personal sense. Adam impersonated this error, and Adam illustrated simply a belief, which we have endeavored to explain in its nothingness, ​together with the reality it would falsely make of the impossibility of Life and Intelligence in matter. This error, or belief, shrinks from the voice of Truth calling to man, “where, or what, art thou, Soul or personal sense? art thou Spirit or matter? and belief replied, “I heard thy voice and was afraid.” Fear was the first manifestation of the belief of Life in matter, for “the wicked flee when no man pursueth”; fear founded sickness and death. Error was naked, but it could not hide from the eye of Wisdom; and Truth replied, who told thee thou art naked? and error fell back on personality, saying, “She gave me of the fruit of knowledge,” (a medical work, perhaps.) Woman, that was taken from my rib, (as if man was less the origin of her fault because she was not back again under that rib); told me I was in my body, and that Life and sensation are in matter. But when Truth questioned woman regarding the “knowledge” that said matter is intelligent, and personal sense is man, she replied, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” Woman was the first to see out of the difficulty, owning this knowledge a serpent; as she is the first to lay down the belief that Life originates materially. A serpent hung on the “tree of knowledge,” metaphorically, to show its subtilty, and the Master bade his students be wise as the serpent, i. e., never allow the belief of Life and sensation in matter to put to silence the opposite, science of being. Woman was a higher idea of God than man, insomuch as she was the final one in the scale of being; but because our beliefs reverse every position of Truth, we name supreme being masculine, instead of feminine. Woman first perceived reason was beguiled by ​knowledge. Truth's question to Adam, error, viz., “Is Life and Intelligence in matter?” rebuked and exposed this would-be material consciousness.
“The Lord formed man of the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life, and he became a living Soul,” put Truth in error! Intelligence in matter! made the body mortal embrace the Principle of being that embraces man! Did the Infinite enter matter through man's nostrils? did God, the Truth and Life, enter the sick, sinning, and dying body? then Deity would be man, or man Deity, and Life mortal! this absurd belief is atheism. “When God, who is our Life, shall appear, then shall we be like Him.” Man will be perfect, sinless, and eternal, when Spirit permeates man. Principle never entered its idea, nor Spirit matter. We have no record in Genesis that God gave Adam, error, dominion over the earth, and yet, to belief, error holds this sway. Adam was a product of belief, and Eve, of Adam, and both were beliefs of Life in matter; we say beliefs because that is not the Truth of being. Principle, and not person, Spirit and not matter, Truth and not error, God and not man, made male and female.
“And the Lord said, behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good from evil, and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of Life and live forever, therefore the Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground whence he was taken.” No one can doubt this scripture is allegorical, pointing out the results of a belief of God in man, or Intelligence in matter; we cannot accept it in a literal sense without impugning the Love that made man, and gave him earth for a possession, and blessed it for his sake. A ​literal acceptation of this quotation implies malice, withholding from man the opportunity to reform, lest he should become better; but this is not our God, and so contrary to Love and Wisdom, we must accept it only as the pagan opinions of those re-writing the inspired word. The true interpretation of this scripture is its spiritual sense. Beginning in person instead of Principle, to explain God, we express him after the manner of man, the nature of personal sense and on the basis of error instead of Truth, drawing all our conclusions from a material, instead of a spiritual standpoint, hence the discord, theoretically and practically, that follows the belief of intelligent matter. “Behold, the man is become as one of us.” Error and not the Truth of being, said that; man is not God, therefore he did not become as one of “Us.” Intelligence is not in matter, therefore it is not personal sense; Spirit in matter would make God mortal man, and Intelligence and Life, person instead of Principle, and body instead of Soul. That this error be not reckoned Truth, or as one of “Us,” and claim the prerogative of Intelligence, God said, let all that produces sickness, sin, and death, “till the ground;” i. e., be understood as proceeding from a material, and not a spiritual basis, and therefore an error that returns to dust, primitive nothingness. Let material things be understood forever, as apart from the spiritual; think not to blend matter and Spirit, for this is not the science of being, and will result in discord and death. From the sweat of the brow to derive Life or happiness, started with Adam, error; it was from the “tree of knowledge,” so unlike the harmony and immortality of man created by Spirit. Lay not up ​for yourselves treasures on earth, is the better understanding of Life. Whatsoever proceedeth from Spirit, is harmonious and immortal, deriving all it is from God; but what cometh from matter, is mortal, dependent on sense instead of Soul. Material man, and a world of matter, reverse the science of being, and are utterly false; nothing is right about them; their starting point is error, illusion, therefore sin and sense are at home in this world, and mortal error stalks boldly forth on firm footing until the waiting hand of science shall strike it down. Truth has literally no foothold on such an earth, and with such views, for they accord neither place nor privilege to God. Error “tills” the entire ground here, working on a material platform, therefore Wisdom said, let Adam, error, that is not the image and likeness of God, not the immortal mind reflecting harmonious Intelligence, but a belief of Life and Intelligence in matter, be set apart from the immortal, i. e., the idea of Truth, for this is the science of being, that Spirit and matter, which is Truth and error, never blend. Instead of the Life, Truth, etc., that make man harmonious and immortal, the belief or error, named Adam, depends on personality and pardon, like a vain child that demands to be blessed when it must be punished, because it knows not the terms on which a blessing is gained, but in its blindness expects from matter and personality the good that comes from Spirit and Truth. If God had made Adam and sin, they must have been “good,” for “all was good that He made.” The translators of that record, wrote it in the error of being, to wit, the belief of Life and Intelligence in matter, hence their misinterpretations; they ​spake from error, of error, and from the standpoint of matter attempted to define Spirit, which accounts for the contradictions in that glorious old record of creation. Science in no instance has a material basis; matter and personality are not man, neither God, Intelligence. Belief is all that claims Spirit in matter, and would make personalities of error, and Truth, naming one mortal man, and the other God. That God is a person, or Intelligence in matter, and man another Intelligence of evil, is “knowledge, prohibited by Wisdom;” it was not the tree of Life. Truth had but one reply to all this error, “Thou shalt surely die;” therefore mortality attends every phase of this supposed Life in matter, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal. Whatever germinates after the manner of matter, will meet the fate of error, namely, sickness, sin and death, until every vestige of this belief is self-destroyed, and man understood, shadow and not Substance, whose only Life or Intelligence is God.
“So he drove out the man, and placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of Life.” Here is a clear and distinct separation of Adam, error, from harmony and Truth, wherein Soul and sense, person and Principle, Spirit and matter, are forever separate. The figure used in the New Testament, of the wise men coming from the East, was employed here, also, and prefigured the sun that symbolized Soul, even the Principle of man, therefore the Wisdom of man. The sword of Truth is represented as two-edged, cutting each way to protect from error, or the belief of Life in matter. Also, the “tree of Life,” symbolized the Truth ​of being, and the “tree of knowledge,” error or personal man. Truth also guarded Eden, harmony, and the science of being pointed the way of happiness and Life. Error alone was sickness, sin, and death, because it was a belief that matter is intelligent, and evil a person, named Satan, working in and against man. The “tree of Life” was guarded from the touch of mortality, because it symbolized the Truth of man, and between this Truth and the opposite error, was placed the metaphorical sword, or flaming warning to hold them forever apart; showing that Truth and error, or Spirit and matter never mingle. The great point in the science of being is to learn that Spirit and matter never unite, or dwell together; but are the wheat and tares that grow side by side, until the harvest, when matter is destroyed, and God learned our only real being.
The infancy of this science is lisping to an unconscious age the great Truth of being; and perceiving one idea, and not its correlative one, many will call that science which is only a portion of it; and again, it is difficult in this evil world to do as well as we know. If mathematics present a thousand different examples, and one of them proves the rule laid down for the others, are not all equally authenticated? When a single statement of this science is proved, it settles the question for the others; all are dependent on one, and vice versa, one cannot be disapproved without disuniting the general chain through which the Principle is reached; hence, the command not to add or diminish one word to that which is inspired, and demonstrable; but which personal sense cannot explain.
“And Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and ​brought forth Cain, and said, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." This record implies a new creation commenced, after God had finished His work; that Wisdom was entering into partnership with man, to create anew the whole human family; but the beauty, sublimity and science of the record is lost sight of here, if we enter this labyrinth of inconsistencies, unconscious it is the record of error opposed to the Truth of being. Adam was a metaphor, showing the opposite of God's creation, and the original texts were written metaphorically at first, the only method of reaching the science of the scripture, hence, the Truth of the Bible is to rise to its spiritual interpretation, then compare its sayings, and gain their general tenor, which enables us to reach the ascending scale of being through demonstration; as did prophet and apostle.
The scripture seems more obscure in Genesis and Revelations than other portions, solely because the original texts were not understood by those re-writing them. Three hundred years after the apostles, there was not a written text of the New Testament; it had to be taken up at first, orally. The record of creation given in the first chapter of Genesis, is the science and Truth of being; but the opposite statement in the second chapter, where man sprang from dust, instead of Deity, is error's statement, even personal sense speaking in sin, sickness, and death, that would confine Life to matter-conditions, and limit Omnipotence. In this error and belief, the herb is not created without seed and soil, and man is the product of an egg. The first record embraces the Principle of harmonious man, even the Truth of being; and the second, the origin of the ​belief of Life in matter, which belief embraces also, sickness, sin and death,—all that is mortal. To admit God made man of dust, and afterwards breathed Intelligence into matter, and it became a living Soul, is rank atheism, that would submerge supreme Wisdom in the things it creates; this statement of man and God, makes both mortal. “In Adam, (error,) all died,” “and in Christ,” (Truth,) “shall all be made alive.” The Truth of being casts out error, heals the sick, and raises the dead; understanding Life exempt from mortality, and no sensation, or Intelligence in the body, is the ultimatum of being; the way, the Truth and Life, that points out the footsteps of science. Life is not in matter, unless Truth is in matter; Life is God, as the scriptures declare, and God never germinated. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; outside of all He creates, and the creator of all. If God breathed into the body, into matter, Wisdom, then matter became Spirit, and the stronger rules out the weaker and matter is God; error claimed this when it said, “I will make you as Gods”; but Truth replied to this belief, “Thou shalt die.” Life, Truth, and Love never formed their image and likeness of dust, nor breathed into dust, (matter), Truth and Love. We should naturally shrink from the error and belief, (if it were only understood) error presupposing another God, or that the Supreme Being entered man that He had made, or that matter embraces God. The statement that God made man of matter, and then put Himself, into personal sense and sin, should be understood the very opposite of the Truth of being; and if this was so understood, sin, sickness, and death would disappear.
​Error makes man a slave to matter, but this error came from “knowledge,” and was mortal. Truth gave man immortality and dominion over matter. The mist that went up from the ground, causing it to produce, was figurative of the belief that matter germinates, and man's Life is matter instead of Spirit. This belief takes the explanation of man out of the hands of science, wherein man is the product of Spirit, and gives it to personal sense; denying the express declarations of God, that man was made the image and likeness of Spirit. Truth said, partake not of this knowledge, it is error, denouncing it as fatal; but error replied oppositely, “In the day ye eat thereof ye shall become as Gods;” that is, there shall be more than one intelligence, for matter shall be permeated with Spirit, brains, nerves, etc., shall be intelligent of good and evil, and pain and pleasure, Life and death shall be mixed and named personal sense.
We cannot fail to see the great contradiction between the spiritual creation of the universe and man; and the so-called material creation of these through Darwinian evolution or propagation. Mortal and material man is purely mythical; this man started from what? “the ground,” i. e., his basis was matter; and woman was evolved from this man; mythologically stated, she came from his rib. Afterwards male and female physically were made the foundations of man, making races and an egg the author of being. But this evolution or Darwin theory is false; there is no Life and Intelligence in matter, passing alike from vegetable, mineral and animal, bearing the while Wisdom's denunciation, so unlike the blessings and honor bestowed on man's ​origin in Spirit, and the offspring of God. Immortal man was sustained by Spirit, the mortal by matter and the sweat of his brow.
One held Life in Soul, the other in sense; one was “good” and blessed, the other accursed. A misconception of man pervades the whole statement of mortal, or material man, from his origin in dust, until he returns thither; his entire history is the origin and end of error, and not man.
“I have gotten a man from the Lord,” was a falsehood, from the beginning; for this man was a foul murderer, and Truth and Love never created hatred and sin; supreme harmony never produced the Adam and his progeny; that which is not God, or His idea, is not only evil and mortal, but unreal, yea illusion. A wrong version of the scriptures, has hidden their Truth. The Prophet Isaiah is recorded to have said, “God creates peace and he makes evil”; but turn to Jeremiah, and you find this contradicted. Jesus, also, takes the opposite grounds for the basis of his demonstration, showing that God casts out sin, sickness, and death, instead of creating them.
What would we say of the musician whose harmony produced discord? Science sets right these knotty points, and renders to God the things that are His. We learn error by its results. Sickness, sin and death are the fruits of error; Truth gives harmony and immortality; thus Wisdom adjusted it, and “Thou shalt die” was not spoken in vain of what purports to be Life, Substance and Intelligence in matter, God in man, and Soul in body. Adam, made of dust, was not the image or likeness of God, Spirit; therefore partaking of ​“knowledge” never lost his first estate, but was the result of it. Man, originating in God, never fell into sin or death; he is forever happy, harmonious, and immortal, inheriting this birthright alone from Spirit. The so-called man that is sinning, sick, and dying, is not man, but a dream of Life, and Intelligence in matter; “dust to dust,” nothingness.
“And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, and Cain knew his wife,” etc. This second fabulous creation originated man first in dust, woman in a rib, and the rest of humanity in an egg. Up to that no mention was made of another woman save Eve, the mother of Cain. Eve, in the Hebrew, signifies beginning, and the question is naturally suggested, whence came the wife of Cain? This, however, is unimportant in the evolution of matter whereby Intelligence and man are supposed to be developed, subject to propagation, growth, and depth. This false theory or Adamic error, was ruled out from the presence of God, Truth, to dwell in the land of Nod, the land of dreams and illusion. Error, named Adam, was the foundation of this mythical creation, and the belief still continues, namely, that man is matter, hence the image of God mortal. Spirit created all things. Man created from matter is mythological; with dust, a rib, and Cain's mother for his wife, alas! who shall say that a monkey was not our great-great-grand-father?
Far be it from us, with thought or expression, to touch profanely the glorious record of the Bible, where alone we may gain the understanding of man's immortal basis; and meager were all earth's possessions, ​disinherited of the inspired page. But the understanding of scripture is what we need, to restore the harmony of being and gain its Principle, the Father's house, where the prodigal returns, and the perfection of man appears. Christ said, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, else believe me for my works' sake,” i. e., understand that I am Intelligence, and not matter, and that Intelligence is God, (there is no evil Intelligence) else believe this for the demonstration it brings, healing the sick, and casting out error. We cannot doubt the inspiration that opened to us the spiritual sense of the Bible, when it lifted us from disease and death, giving us triumph over the body. Standing at the threshold of scientific being, and there beholding the falsity of earthly things, “the Spirit and bride say, come, and whosoever will, let him drink of the waters of Life, freely.” Humbly, as fervently, we join grateful issue with the Truth of being, that separates Adam, error, forever from the presence of God, and says to the body, no personal sense, no Life, Intelligence or Substance in matter. In the atmosphere or mind of Soul, man is seen the image and likeness of goodness and perfection, and cannot lose this estate, he being the only heir to the abundant affluence of Life, Truth, and Love, that said, “Let us make man in our own image.” Mortal, and material man, is simply a belief of Life in matter; we say a belief, because he is not the reality of man, and never can reach Life that is outside of matter, where alone is our real, because our harmonious being. Looking and thinking from a material point only, we never shall gain the science of being. In the dark ourselves, how can we ​see the darkness or the light even. The belief of sin and sickness, or of death, or Life in matter, hides man's Life in harmony, that is Soul and not sense; but who will “believe our report, to whom the arm of the Lord hath not been revealed.” The sun, that is light and heat, gives little warmth or brightness until the clouds pass from before it; thus the science of being is seen only as sense is hushed, and Life is learned spiritually. Every agony of mortal man wafts him onward over the billows until error is finally destroyed, and “There is no more sea.” This is the new birth, the travail of error before it is self-destroyed, and man is born of Spirit and not matter. In the allegory in Genesis, error said, “Believe me, I will make you as Gods.” But Truth replied, to this belief “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth, and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” The first intimation of sickness, sorrow, and man's tyranny, came with the belief of Life and Intelligence in matter. “My son, give me thy heart,” restores concord to all the dependencies and relations of being. Our Master's impotent foes, were the world of sense; but he feared them not; that which killed the body but was not able to destroy Soul, the Life and Principle of man, had no terrors for him.
Treating of the growth of eggs, Prof. Agassiz said, “It is very possible that many general statements current now, about birth and generation, will be changed with the progress of information.” Had the great naturalist gained through his tireless researches the scientific basis of being independent of growth and organization, the blessing of that ardent mind would have ​continued longer with us; history is greatly indebted to his labors and genius, for facts relating to the belief of Life in matter. His discoveries brought to light important points in what is termed embryotic life; the butterfly, bee, etc., propagating their species without the male element; and this corroborates science, proving plainly that the origin of the universe and man depends not on material conditions. The spiritual understanding of Life, embraces neither sensuous formations nor conditions of matter. All that has a beginning has an end; what we name life germinating in an egg, and expanding thence to adult being, will finally go out, which proves it never was Life, and nothing, in fact, but a belief of Life, and this belief, mesmerism and not man. Animals of lower organisms combine three methods of reproduction; they multiply by eggs, buds, and self-division, proving the conditions of Life become less imperative in lower organisms, or where there is less mind and belief on this subject. Prof. Agassiz says, “Successive generations do not begin with the birth of new individuals, but with the formation of the egg whence these individuals proceed; and we must look upon the egg as the starting point of the complicated structure of man.” His deep researches into material structure culminate here in logical conclusion, and with less hypothesis and more observation than generally attend such theorems. His discovery aids the science of Life; he has bearded error in its den, proved clearly the origin of mortal man to be matter, and not Spirit; the product of an egg, instead of God, and that a belief of structural life is the sole progenitor of what is termed mortal man; even as Truth is the origin of immortal ​man and the universe. But what availeth it to investigate this so-called life, that germinates, matures, and decays; that is found to end even as it began, a nameless nothing, starting in dust, or an egg, and ending in dust. This belief and error the source of sickness, sin and death, hides the real harmony of Life. When it is learned that God is our Life, man will be immortal, sinless, and perfect, and never until then. Spirit is without beginning and without end; but admitting the false premises of Life in matter, whence to draw our conclusions of man, we may infer the discord and confusion consequent on this error and belief with but one signification, viz., “dust to dust.” Error of thought leads to error of action; a constant contemplation of sin will produce it, and the ever-present belief of existence in matter, drops the standard of man in dust. Contemplate life as it is, neither man nor matter, but God, that which is Intelligence, purity and harmony, and we gain its happiness. If Life has a starting point, immortality is a myth; commencing at a given point, signifies a terminus. If Life has a beginning, it has an end also, and there is no immortality. Life is spherical, without beginning or end; the form of the globe typifies it, and the Principle of the universe is Life, Truth, and Love. Life is cause and not effect, universal, infinite, omnipotent, producing all that really is, and never inside its productions. An egg were a narrow boundary for God! and matter cannot produce matter, much less can it produce Spirit, or Spirit permeate matter. For Spirit to enter matter would be to destroy it, and all would be found Spirit; the immortal destroys mortality, and death would be swallowed up in Life. That like ​produces like, is not only true in homœopathy, but holds good in the science of being. Embryology affords no instances of one specie producing another; of a serpent germinating a bird, or a lion a lamb; this would be gathering grapes of thorns, and figs of thistles. Such amalgamation would be deemed monstrous, and out of the order of things. A pure fountain sendeth not forth impure streams, and vice versa. Then how can Spirit germinate matter, the holy the unholy, and the immortal, mortality. The difference is not as great between the opposite species, as between matter and Spirit, so utterly unlike in substance and Intelligence. That Spirit propagates matter, or matter Spirit, is morally impossible; science repudiates the thought, and personal sense alone, must father it, because it is unnatural, unreal, and impossible. Germinating Intelligence is germinating God; how very absurd! Intelligence in matter would make matter the circumference of mind. Intelligence produces, or is produced, which is it? Is matter first and mind afterward? matter the primogenitor of mind, or does Intelligence germinate non-Intelligence? Like produces like; Intelligence is Spirit that germinates idea, and not matter; therefore matter is neither effect nor cause. All is mind; matter is but a belief, and error. Natural history shows that each specie produces its like only; the bird is not the father of the beast; the egg germinates the parent stock, and the seed the original plant; hybrids are rapes upon nature, and not the common order. Harmonious and immortal man is the offspring of Intelligence, of the unerring and infinite understanding that said, “Let us make man,” hence the scientific certainty ​of his continuance. All that is discordant is mortal, and without Principle or understanding. Mind produces mind; Intelligence produces the idea of Intelligence; and the mortal and material, the beliefs of belief. One is Truth, the other error; one real, the other unreal; the material produces only the mortal, its basis is belief, and not Truth.
Professor Agassiz argues, “man springs from races.” Mr. Darwin has it, he comes up through all the lower grades of being, and must be a monkey before he can be a man. Mr. Darwin is right with regard to mortal man or matter, but should have made a distinction between these and the immortal, whose basis is Spirit. Animality produces animals, and what is good and pure mingles not with evil or the impure; these are two diametrically opposite sources and results; the good comes from God, from Spirit outside of matter, the evil is a belief of matter; hence, the less material the belief, the more transparent mind is for God to shine through, for all that is pure is harmonious and eternal; and the more is God, the Intelligence outside of matter, seen through man, but not from him. Matter cannot produce Spirit, and vice versa. Truth cannot produce error, therefore it never made a mortal, sick or sinful man, nor error a spiritual, harmonious or immortal man. Error reflects error, and Truth is reflected only by Truth. Spirit gives forth only the image and likeness of itself, therefore the idea of God, pure and undefiled; a mortal and sinful man is the product of mortality and not of God, of error and not Truth; hence the scripture's statement of him, that he sprang from the ground, i. e., from a material basis; and ours, ​that he is a belief only, and error; and Mr. Darwin's that his primogenitors are beasts; and Prof. Agassiz's, that he germinates from an egg. Our views will be accepted later than the others, only because they are more spiritual. Prof. Agassiz asked, “What can there be of a material nature, transmitted through these bodies, called eggs, themselves composed of the simplest material elements, by which all peculiarities of ancestry belonging to either sex, are brought down from generation to generation.” Here we see the darkness and doubt creeping into the great mind of the great naturalist, because of the material base of his reasoning; starting from matter instead of God, for the basis of immortal man, who by searching can find out God?
A student said to us, “I understand your explanations of Truth, but I cannot understand error;” and why? because he made it something, and we, nothing; he gave to error a local habitation and a name, making it what it is not, even an entity and power. There is no mortal man, or reality to error; first, because man is immortal, and error is not the Truth, or reality of being; secondly, that these are neither God nor His idea; all that is real, is eternal. Pains or pleasures of personal sense are unreal, and the so-called life of mortal man is a myth. The belief of Life in matter is the so-called mind of man, that suffers because it is a belief of suffering, and dies because it is an error of belief. Searching into the origin of Life is vain; no beginning or end hath Life, for it is from everlasting unto everlasting. Life is Truth, and Truth is Life, not brought to light through error or sickness, sin, and death; Truth is immortality, not in mortality, for it is Soul, ​not in sense and sin. If Life starts in an egg, it is matter, and mortal; but matter cannot produce Intelligence; whence then is mind? All is mind; there is no matter. Spirit destroys the belief of matter, as Truth destroys error. If possible for Spirit, God, to enter into a body of sin and death, then harmony enters discord, and discord destroys harmony; can good dwell in evil, or evil represent good? The poor logic and lack of Truth that would blend Spirit and matter, immortality and mortality, sin and goodness in one body, and call it man, was the error Jesus argued against as the foundation of all discord, showing its falsity by parable and proof; Christ, Truth, casts out this error and heals the sick, beginning at once to destroy mortality with its own immortality. The wicked often return evil for good, when the Truth of being comes in contact with their error to destroy it; therefore the followers of Christ, Truth, must love their enemies and go forth as lambs among wolves. The sick sometimes pass through severe sufferings in the changes Truth produces, before it destroys the error or disease; and the chronic sinner, or hidden hypocrite suffers from the introduction into his mind of the science of being, and often hates its teacher. Man's immortality rests on a spiritual, and not a material basis, and his health on Soul and not sense. We have no foundation for man's immortality, if the perfect is not distinct from the imperfect; and what evidence have we of God, or perfection, where we admit imperfection germinates from God? The good we are, the order, beauty, and loveliness we behold, all assure us God is Life, Truth, and Love, and that matter embraces all error, while ​Spirit is perfect. Spiritual science reveals all matter inanimate, while personal sense would make it both animate and evil; but which is the standard of Truth, personal sense, or science?
That harmony, Intelligence and Life, are outside of matter, wholly apart and distinct from error, and mortality, even the leaf and flower, too beautiful to die, declare. A consciousness of Truth, Life, and Love, is Soul, not body. The Psalmist saith, “When I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him? thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.” Matter is as clouds, and Spirit the sun, that appears to us only as the clouds disappear. The sun is not in the cloud, but shines beyond it; thus it is with the Soul of man; when the belief of Substance, or Life in matter disappears, we take up existence as Spirit, end our body is transparent to Soul, and no longer a belief of substance-matter, or personal sense, but the idea of Intelligence, harmony, and Life. Truth separated Jesus, its idea, from the world of error, and the world of sense felt the effect of Truth, because it was tearing away the foundations of error, that could not understand the need there was of this; hence the unappreciated labor and love of Jesus, the great demonstrator of the science of Life. Had Jesus defended error, admitted its positions, and justified them, he would have been the world's favorite. But this was impossible to him who chose his master of Spirit. He could not destroy sickness with the Truth, that Life is God, and be a stickler for personal sense, ​and Life in matter. Had he believed with them on this point, he would have mingled amicably with hypocrites and the sensuous man, and not rebuked them, and been hated for it; but hypocrisy was more repugnant to goodness and Truth, than other forms of evil. The fact that Christ was Truth, error soon found out, and the world of personal sense hated Jesus, for he rebuked it, and chose not an 'ism, or 'ology, to define Christianity, or to aid him in its practice. Had he believed as others did, he would not have so suffered from the world, or had he preached better than he practiced, he would have mixed error with error, and no chemical change, or separation from the world would have followed his preaching; but he could not and would not cast out devils with Beelzebub; he might have been a popular man, on this common basis, but then he could not have been a Christian; he might have talked well, and not been good enough for that goodness to prove itself, by making war on error, and he would have passed for a good man. The world of sense and error felt him, for he was destroying it; those whom he blessed, cursed him, yet he loved his enemies, and while they thought of him only to condemn, his better thoughts answered theirs, healing them of sickness and casting out their errors. Such was the effect of his mind on all it touched, whether enemy or friend, and such will be the effect on mankind, of every real follower of Christ. His mind, pure and spiritual, touched theirs to higher issues, and restored harmony to the body. He knew that like produces like, that his higher being in contact with others, changed and lifted them higher, that Truth germinates Truth, and Spirit ​imparts spirituality, and not materiality; this was the science and the Principle of his consistent demonstration, that healed the sick, and cast out error. Any hypothesis of birth and death, is unworthy Intelligence. What is real is eternal, eliminated and sustained by Spirit alone, that matter cannot express, and much less control or destroy. All the formations of God are based on Spirit and immortality, and that which is formed by Soul, and not sense, is harmless, harmonious and eternal.
Heaven and earth, together with every animal, mineral, and vegetable that God hath made, are harmonious and eternal. The belief of Life in matter, produces its own kind, for it is predicated on error, that brings forth that which is sinful, ferocious, impure, and mortal. Vertebrates, articulates, mollusks and radiates are simply what mind makes them. They are technicalized mortality, that will disappear when the radiates of Spirit illumine sense, and destroy forever the belief of Life and Intelligence in matter.
The voice of Christian science crieth in the wilderness to-day, with scarcely an adherent on earth, but we also know, it is preparing the way for the Principle of being to be understood, and its demonstration given that casts out error and heals the sick. Death brings not at once spiritualization, nor is it the stepping stone to a distant day of final judgment, when a personal God shall pass sentence on man. The sentence of Truth against error is already passed; every loss and experience of the falsity of earthly things, pronounce it. Truth sentences error, now and forever, and the final judgment to which olden tenets pointed, ​is when the belief of Life or death in matter is destroyed. When the strong fetters of personal sense are broken, man will be free to do God's will, and then will we behold the “new heaven and new earth, for the former things shall have passed away;” and the material given place to the spiritual; Spirit destroys matter. The harmonious and immortal heavens, earth, and man, will be revealed and understood when science shall take the place of personal sense, and error yield to Truth. The sharp experiences of earth, and the tender Wisdom that take away idols, help to hasten this hour, and to destroy the belief of happiness in personal sense. Why the pleasure-loving world cannot discern the science of Life, is “because carnal man cannot discern spiritual things.” When personal sense yields up the ghost, and Life is found, Soul understood, it will be the resurrection of man in Truth; but Spirit can never be apprehended until matter is understood a myth. Life, that is Spirit, is not reached until all error is destroyed.
The belief that death is the door to spirituality and Life, is the error that prevents a better understanding and improvement of being, by which alone, immortality is won. We gain immortality through the footsteps of science that reveal Truth, Life, and Love, to our understanding, in which we learn there are no physical laws, no necessary fulfillment of material conditions, no sin, sickness, or death, in Life that is Soul. That death is a step towards Life, is error that begets mortality; for belief fulfills the conditions of a belief, and therefore will continue to die until the falsehood and error of Life or death in matter, is destroyed. Death is but ​the stepping stone to other mortal conditions of belief; it never procured Life, for this is God, and God must become our practical Life, before man is found immortal. We see in the vegetable kingdom that the seed must rot to propagate anew, and the poor germ is doomed to this same experience also; it must rot again, according to material law. The answer to the ancient question, which is first, the egg, or the parent that takes care of the egg? is given when you admit the parent is developed from an egg, for that is first which produced the parent; but an egg never propagated man.
“We have no right to assume that individuals have grown, or been formed under circumstances that made matter conditions essential to their maintenance and reproduction, or important to their origin and first introduction, unless we dismiss reason and revelation utterly. That earth was hatched from the egg of night was anciently argued, and this absurdity is less than to conclude Spirit produces matter, or that it is in matter. Pursuing the varied hypotheses of man, we think as a child, but putting away childish things and asking more earnestly after God, we shall be answered from Soul, and not sense, and Spirit, instead of matter, will guide our conclusions. Heathen philosophy, modern geology, zoology, physiology, anatomy, etc., deal with other or different phenomena from those proceeding from the Supreme Being. The first proceed from belief only, but the latter are reflections of Spirit; these are the ideas of God coming to the understanding, but the former are beliefs of matter. The proof requisite to sustain assumptions diametrically opposed to personal sense, ​is just what Jesus taught, namely, the fruit they bear, otherwise the demonstration they bring; if you contradict sense with science and abide by the rules of the latter, you will demonstrate harmony, and prove your position the right one. Our experience of what is called Life germinating from an egg, corresponds with that of Job, that it is of “few days and full of trouble.” From this material source flow all sorrow, sin, and death, and the power is not in its origin to “deliver us from the body of this death,” consequently our next appeal is to something higher that to matter, drugs, 'ologies, or 'isms. We may call on God to heal our sicknesses, and though we pray seven times a day, and our clergyman and physician pray for us, we may not gain the blessing; not faith, but understanding, brings the blessing. To know that God is not the author of sin or suffering, and that “his hand is not shortened, or ear heavy,” but that error produces error, is to learn what error is, and how destroyed; then shall we find our remedy for sickness and sin, is to “work out our own salvation.” On this point mankind need much enlightenment, for the science of being alone solves the problem of man harmoniously. God giveth not a stone for bread; when we ask earnestly and strive for health to be useful, able to do good to ourself and others, why does he withhold it? These are unanswerable questions, irreconcilable with Wisdom until we learn God is not person, but Principle, and that we must understand this Principle, to direct our being in harmony with it; and then shall we be able to govern the physical and mental. All depends on mind; matter holds no power over man to create or to destroy him. Sickness and death are errors of belief arising ​from an ignorance of our origin and immortal being, and to be harmonious and immortal we must understand the science of Life, that changes our reckonings of Life from body to Soul, and from matter to Spirit. Knowing we are Intelligence, and not intelligent matter; Soul and not sense, is the Truth that destroys all sickness, sin, and death. Once perceiving the mental hallucination that embitters existence, we shall unmake what mind has made. God sends not one of our diseases, and matter cannot create sensation, nor can it govern mind. Error alone, produces error, and all sickness, and every discord of earth is error.
Thought, let loose somewhat from the old basic theories amalgamates with other forms of belief, and changes them; this we see prototyped in the floral kingdom, in blended tints of leaf and flower. The metaphysical, however, will end as the physical, when, according to Agassiz, “the intermixing of different species, urged to its final limits, results in the distinct original species.” Error must be destroyed at its fountain head, or it will resume its old proportions and relations. Mind must settle down on an improved basis, even the Truth of being, or health will never be universally established, and when this is done, harmonious and immortal man wild be the only man. Prof. Agassiz has given the origin of mortal and material man; he has traced what we term animal existence, through various stages of its embryology, and with most important observations that ought to awaken thought to the higher and purer contemplation of man's origin that must precede the understanding of being. Man is not the offspring of sense, but Soul, and ​coexistent with God. The fact that modern researches prove animal existence in some instances free from its lowest instinct, is worthy our philanthropy, and points to the future footsteps of the science of being. The great point, is to understand the Principle of being,—the Life that is eternal, without beginning and without end, and this study will absorb the attention of sage and philosopher at a not far-distant day; but the Christian alone will fathom it, for he it is that understands better the Life that is God. We cannot reach this Principle unless it be understood; man's immortality even, hangs on understanding the science of being. Because God is the only Life and Principle of man, that which is good is all that is immortal; but to prove our ignorance of this, we have only to point to the tenacity with which we cling to beliefs of sickness, sin and death. Had we the understanding of our God-being or the omnipotence of Truth, we should have no fear of matter, and having none, our bodies would become harmonious and immortal; a belief of Substance-matter would then give place to the understanding of Substance-Spirit; for the spiritual body is the only real one, and tangible as the material. Ontology receives but little attention from the working-day world, and the signification of psychology is shockingly perverted. The science of Soul is not mesmerism, by any means, and is less understood than all other questions; little justice is done metaphysics by a utilitarian people where the race is to the swift.
The domestic economy of the bee, and its method of multiplying, foreshadows the understanding of being yet to come. That mind produces mind, and our beliefs ​of matter re-produced beliefs only, is the conclusion that accords with natural history and the science of being. Again, we state, all is mind; there is no matter, and, this needs only to be understood to establish harmony perpetual. Mind is the only actor, and produces mind, viz., the Truth or error of man; matter is not an entity or reality. From the deep sleep that fell upon Adam, Eve was produced. In sleep, cause and effect are beliefs only, that which seems, and not that which really is. This was the advent of mortal and material man. Sickness, sin and death, had no real basis, for they originated not with God, Spirit, but were beliefs of matter, hence the very opposite of understanding, and without Principle or immortality, therefore they proceeded not from the creative Wisdom. All that originated in Adam (that supposed addenda to creation) was not “good,” it was illusion, the offspring of a dream; hence it was a belief only, and not the reality of being. Sin, sickness, and death were embraced in this belief of Life in matter, and are the dream, and not the reality of Life. We classify belief error, insomuch as it embraces all that is mortal discord; it changed the stand-point of being from Spirit to matter, from understanding to belief, yea, from God to man. Adam was the impersonation of error, but man was the type and image of Truth. Adam constituted matter and mortality; man represented immortality and Spirit; but the dream or belief of Life in matter is, that Adam is man, and that error is Truth. There was no more foundation for calling sin, sickness, and death, man, than for saying, “I will make man as God.” Should universal mind or belief ​adopt the appearing of a star as its formula of creation, the advent of mortal man would commence with a star. The belief regarding the origin of mortal man has changed since Adam produced Eve, and the only reason a rib is not the present mode of evolution, is because of this change, and more mortal opinions to contend against now, than when error first said, “Believe in me.” Conditions of matter are conditions of mind instead, therefore the supposed conditions becomes imperative as mind only. Error, named Adam, is the belief, or alpha and omega of what is termed Life in matter. When mortal belief says an egg produces man, this condition becomes as fixed and imperative as the original one of a rib. That we must breathe in order to live is another belief, whereas the reality of being is Life, and its phenomena not dependent on matter. Do you say man was formed before knowing his origin, then wherefore any belief on this subject? But Eve embodied the maternal egg, and was the offspring of Adam's dream, the germ of belief, and mortals since appearing are these beliefs. There is no mortal man; the sleep of Adam was what to-day we term mesmerism, in which belief creates, and controls all it creates. In mesmerism matter is made not to appear solid, and the harmless stick becomes a serpent; according to what mind says of matter, it appears, hence we learn all material things are formed by mind, first and last. Belief may adopt any condition whatever, and that will become its imperative mode of cause and effect. The infinite and all-wise Maker condemned this creation, but let it have its experience before the sentence of our God was executed upon it.
​A mortal body is but a belief of Life in matter, and controlled by this belief; its original requirements were less than its educated ones. Consciousness rises above the horizon of personal sense, starting first unconscious thought, and reaching what we falsely term conscious matter, before its demands proceed from the body. 'Tis safe to conclude man exists, though he has lost his lungs, or any other portion of organism; if he has reached the science of being, his existence is understood and eternal, and man is immortal only whose Life is Soul, and not sense, God and not matter. We must have the sense and consciousness of being that is independent of matter, self-existent, self-sustaining and eternal; for this is the Science of Life that casts out error and heals the sick. We know these statements jar on what is called personal sense; but we disregard that altogether; our only sorrow is not to be understood, or be thought irreverent of God, until Christendom learns how important what we say is to follow the rich example of our Master in healing the sick, preaching the gospel to the poor, etc. To-day our religions preach to the rich, and depend on matter, instead of God, to heal the sick.
The persecutions Truth met over eighteen centuries ago, and the demonstrations it gave in destroying sickness, sin, and death, and bringing to light immortality, it would be well to remember at this date; and if our readers understand what is written in this book, they will be able to prove to themselves, it reproduces, however faintly, the same proofs; shall it not then, be accepted, on the ground our Master said, “For the work's sake.” Every new idea of Truth, that comes ​out from the infinite Spirit, and touches the ragged shores of belief, has been met with derision and chains, scourged out of synagogues at first, but afterwards pardoned and received.
To the pulpit we appeal. Judge not this science until you prove whether it be Truth or error; test its Principle by the rules laid down, and then will you learn God is the life of man, and that materia medica, or theology, never can take the place of the science of God, in healing the sick, and casting out all error. The beliefs that form the body mortal are not destroyed at once; “it is not all of death to die.” After what is named death, the belief of sickness, sin and death continues, until the science of being is reached, and man's Life is found Soul, and not sense.
Adam being created before Eve, proves the maternal egg never propagated him, and Eve being formed of Adam's rib, shows her origin was not that; “knowledge” defined man falsely then, even as at present; although physiology has since been grafted into the forbidden “tree.” An infant a few hours old was said to be immersed in water, to test the possibility of making him amphibious; and this daily ablution continued until the infant could remain under water, and the ordinary functions of lungs be suspended twenty minutes at one time, playing the while and enjoying the bath. The infant is wholly controlled by its parents' belief; addressing the mother mentally, we have stopped the moaning and restlessness of her babe, but could not affect the child, except through its mother.
This should furnish a hint to parents to control their offspring mentally; beginning in the science of being ​to govern their bodies; employing mind instead of matter, to heal them, and also to prevent their being sick. We should be able at the bedside of a mother, without medicine or applications of any sort, to prevent the pangs of child-birth; labor should be painless, and this dreaded hour be without suffering and joyful, even as the opening of the buds, or the development of the flower. Mind controls embryology without pain to the universe, and why not the same with woman? The parent's mind develops the infant before and after birth, until the mother says, my child can take care of itself; at this period the human species, bird and beast, dismiss their offspring from their immediate maternal eye, and commence educating them to what is termed, self-dependence; but alas! on the ground that Life depends on matter, and this destroys the self-reliance that science would give.
Although the advancing stages of human development require the higher order of parental mind to guide their offspring aright, we regret to say, the human species make shocking work of it. The peculiar traits and characteristics of progenitors are transmitted from generation to generation; but this is a transfer of belief only, the parent's mind passing to their offspring. The poisonous reptile, bird of prey, beast carnivorous, and mortal man, are products of mortal belief, of error and not Truth, of sense instead of Soul. The belief that Life and Intelligence belong to the body, is the source of all wrong-thinking, and wrong-acting; it takes away from Soul and gives to sense, and is the fountain of sickness, sin, and death. All formations are shadows of being, and we their Soul and Substance; ​but this fact of science detracts nothing from God, the universal Intelligence; and because this statement, understood, brings forth good fruits, heals the sick and destroys error, we have the Master's rule for its correctness, insomuch as the tree is known by its fruit. Life is the forming and governing Principle of all things, and by no means the frailty that the foot of man crushes out. Soul is the immortal basis of man and the universe, the Truth of all things, and the Principle that holds the very winds in its fist.
Substance is Intelligence, yea, Spirit, not matter. “I am the resurrection and Life,” are the words of him who spake as never man spake; and knew all about it. But this understanding of Truth is to-day a voice crying in the wilderness of error. All is discord in mortal man; the good he would do is held back, by sickness, sin or death; if he works to benefit his race, he sinks into a premature grave, with softened brain, or something of this sort. Mental labor should strengthen man; mind is capable of endless action and immortal harmony; but incessant action will destroy matter. Searching into the science of being will never soften a man's brain, or produce disease of any kind, but is known to cure disease. And the only difficulty in proving this, is the utter ignorance of its principle. But taking an old belief by the throat is surely no small task; somehow like the phoenix, it rises from its own ashes. The influence one mind exerts involuntarily over another is little understood; all our thoughts are moulded more or less by others; the body is governed by mind, notwithstanding our utter ignorance of this, and involuntary submission to it. If to-day the general ​thought embraced the science of being, man's longevity would increase ten-fold, and immortality be brought to light; the years of man will be extended as the belief of intelligent matter is destroyed, until at length a full recognition of Truth shall destroy all sin, sickness, and death. Error will continue seven thousand years, from the time of Adam, its origin. At the expiration of this period Truth will be generally comprehended, and science roll back the darkness that now hides the eternal sunshine and lift the curtain on Paradise, where earth produces at the command of Intelligence, and Soul, instead of sense, govern man.