Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/147

Rh I hear you now for the first time asking me if I believe in another world. Yes, but not in the sense of the clergy. I will try to explain my two worlds. You live in Chicago and I in Portland, and if it will not be blasphemy to call your place heaven, we will suppose you are in heaven and I in Portland. Now, if I am here sitting and talking with you I must leave the earth and matter and come to you. If I am with you, what is it that has left the body? It cannot be matter in a visible form, yet it is something. Listen, and I will tell you.

You read that God made all living things that had life out of the earth, so that dead matter cannot produce living life nor anything else. As all matter decomposes, the dust or odor that arises from it was the matter that [the natural man] is formed of. As the child is of living matter, not wisdom, when it grows to a certain age it is ready to receive the breath of eternal life. The child was not eternal life. Eternal life is Wisdom as much above human life as Science is above ignorance. . . . Eternal life is Christ or Science, this teaches us that matter is a mere shadow of a substance which the natural man never saw nor can see, for it is never changed, is the same today and forever. This substance is the essence of Wisdom and is in every living form. Like a seed in the earth, it grows or develops in matter, and is as much under the control of the mother's Wisdom as the gold which is dissolved and held in solution is under that of the chemist. If the mother's Wisdom is of this world, the spiritual child is not under her earthly care. Nevertheless it is held in the bosom of its eternal Wisdom that will cherish it till it is developed to receive the science of Eternal Wisdom. Eternal Wisdom and eternal life are not the same. Eternal Wisdom cannot change but acts on eternal life, changes its form and identity. Eternal Wisdom teaches us that all matter is in itself a shadow and is no barrier. Matter is dense darkness. Spirit is light. If you are wise your body or wisdom is light, and just as you sink into error you become dense or dark. Therefore let your light shine, so that when this wind comes blowing round in the form of an opinion you may know it is merely the noise of a demagogue. Believe not, and you will live and flourish. If you can understand this you have the basis of my belief.

For fear I have not made my two worlds clear to your