Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/376

372 Man is made up of thought and ideas. There is nothing about man unchangeable but his science, for Science embraces a principle [and the spirit] and principles are not matter or ideas but a knowledge of them. Life is an evidence of Science, so is feeling, taste, etc. All the senses are admitted by Science to exist independently of matter, and the senses are all there is of man that cannot be changed. They may be obstructed by error but not destroyed. To separate these two is to explain the true meaning of life and death.

All the people believed in death. Jesus did not; therefore His arguments were to prove that death was a false idea. So if we believe in death we are in our belief, if we know it as an error we are in life. Jesus had to prove that what we call death was only a separation of His Truth from the people's belief. But the crucifixion of Jesus was death according to their belief. Jesus never intended to allude to the natural body. So when He speaks of a resurrection it is from the dead; not that the dead rise, for that would go to show that He was still a believer in matter, and if He believed in matter [in that way] He must have believed it dies and then rises again. But if He believed it is nothing but a medium for the senses to use and control, then all that He meant was that His senses should rise from the dead or the error of the people who believed that the senses are a part of the idea called body. To prove His truth was to show Himself to the disciples, after they had seen Him as they supposed dead, alive again. To them this was a resurrection of the dead, or the same idea. But if Jesus' same idea or body rose it would have been a resurrection of the dead, not Christ's or Jesus' ideas. Jesus' teachings were to show that Christ was a truth of God, a higher knowledge that separated Science from ignorance, and this Christ was in Jesus.

When the people saw their idea of form destroyed their hope was cut off. But when in the clouds of their ignorance they saw this same Christ or Truth take form again they were afraid, and as it became dense enough to be identified it was recognized as Jesus' body. But it was not the body or idea that they had believed in some days before. This is where the trouble was. The people's mind was changing but not scientifically, and they were left in a more nervous state than before. For now they thought Jesus' body rose