Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/387

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SCIENCE, LIFE, DEATH
383

may know what science is. Science embraces something spiritual or a revelation from a higher state of being. Science is the name of that wisdom that accounts for all phenomena that the natural man or beast cannot understand.

To illustrate. You throw a ball into the air, every child will soon learn that the ball will return. This is not science. But to know understandingly that it will return with just as much energy as it received, is science. Science is in the act, although the person knows it not, and God is in the world and the world knows Him not. This principle Jesus tried to teach to man. The acts of man were sometimes according to this law, but the actors knew it not. So they being ignorant of Science were a science unto themselves. As they did not know the motive, they could not teach it to others.

Paul, speaking of this Science, says some have not even heard of it, and how shall they believe in what they have not heard of as a science; how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach a science unless they be sent? So he says, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace (or the words of that person who can teach Science). He uses the word “charity” for the same wisdom, and goes on to tell that although we give all our money to the poor, and suffer our bodies to be burned, and do not understand Science or charity, it is of no use. To understand wisdom or charity so as to put it into practice, so that it becomes a science, is not an easy task. Well might the disciples say this is a hard saying, and how can a man believe or understand? Therefore, if they cannot understand, must the wisdom of God be of no effect? Wisdom says, “No! Let God (Science) be true, but every man a liar.”

This Science was in the minds of the people, but the priests and doctors led the people and explained it according to their own notions, so when Jesus came to establish this truth as a science, to them it was a stumbling-block. The wisdom of this world never had put science into goodness, but thought goodness was a dispensation. This wisdom or charity was known by some to have an identity, but was never admtted as anything independent of the natural man. So goodness was considered by the priests as a sort of subjection to the rulers. A good person was like a good dog,