There is but one Mind. The erring, sinful, sick, and dying, termed mortals, are not man and are not Mind; but to be understood we shall classify evil and error as mortal [ 15 ] mind, in contradistinction to good and Truth, the Mind which is immortal. What we term matter is one of the beliefs of mortals. Spirit is the only substance, and consciousness in science: the senses oppose this, but there are no senses material, for matter has no sensation. What we term the five personal senses are simply beliefs of mortal mind, that say Life, substance, and intelligence are matter instead of Spirit. These beliefs and their products constitute error, and this error opposes the Truth of being; hence the scripture, “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other.” There is nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter: it destroys it: to Spirit there is no matter, and as we approach it we shall lose all consciousness of matter. What is this “I” that is personality and not Spirit? It is a mortal belief that saith man is both mind and matter; but this is self-contradictory; for if man was that, the loss of a limb would take away a portion of manhood. There is nothing in God out of which to make a devil. The so-called personal senses afford no evidence of God. We can neither see through the eye, hear through the ear, feel through the senses, taste or smell Spirit; and that which affords no evidence of God gives but an incorrect testimony of Life, Truth, and Love; and God never created such false heralds of himself as a mortal man, sin, sickness, or death. Truth is real: error is the opposite of Truth; therefore error is unreal. Spirit and its formations are all that are real: no partnership or fellowship exists between those two opposites, Spirit and matter. They cannot co-exist or co-operate, and either one can no more create the other than Truth can create error, and vice versâ.
[ 16 ] The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real; the mutable and imperfect, the immutable and perfect; the inharmonious and self-destroying, the harmonious and self-existing. Those are the tares and wheat that never mingle: but to belief they appear to grow side by side, until science separates them through the understanding of God; for one is Truth, and the other error; and error is without the reality of Truth. When we understand Spirit, we shall yield the belief that Life, substance, or intelligence is aught but God. Nature and revelation inform us that like produces like. We classify matter as error, because it is a false claim to Life, substance, and intelligence; and ignored by Spirit, it is dust to dust.
Natural history presents mineral, vegetable, and animal, preserving their original species; a mineral is not produced by a vegetable, or the human by the animal. In the order of reproduction, throughout the entire round of universal nature, the rule relating to genus and species is preserved, and it indicates the spiritual fact of being. But error claims the opposite statement, namely that Spirit produces matter, that good is the author of evil, etc., which contradicts natural science. Metaphysical or divine science reveals the great facts that God is not the author of sin, sickness, or death; that Spirit is exempt from either one of those; that matter is a falsity—not the fact but the fable of existence, a belief and illusion, that nerves, brain, stomach, lungs, etc., have no intelligence, Life, substance, or sensation. That Mind is in matter, or that matter is the medium of Mind, is no more natural or real, than for a rock to embrace a tree in embryo and become the medium of its development [ 17 ]
and identification. The only excuse for entertaining such opinions is our ignorance of Spirit, that can yield only to the understanding of divine science, whereby we enter into the kingdom of Truth, and learn that Spirit is supreme, and matter but an error of belief, and they no more commingle than light and darkness; when one appears the other disappears. Harmony is real and immortal: discord is unreal and mortal. Belief and understanding never mingle; the latter destroys the former: discord is the nothingness of error; harmony is the somethingness of Truth.
The so-called mind beneath a skull-bone is a myth, a false statement of man; and we shall all learn that sin and mortality are without any actual origin or rightful existence, having neither Principle nor permanency; they are the native nothingness out of which error would simulate creation through dust instead of Deity. Error alone presupposes man both mind and matter, while divine science, contradicting the so-called personal senses, rebukes belief, and asks, What is the “I,” whence its origin, and what its destiny? The “I” is Spirit, Soul not sense, God and not man, Principle and not person: and there is but one I, but one Mind or Spirit, because there is but one God, and man reflects this one God; he is the image and likeness of Him, and is harmonious and immortal. Spirit or Soul, which is God, is not in man, else there would be but one, and no longer two, namely God and man, and man the reflection of Him. Man should have no other mind but God; and he has not in reality: it is only to belief that he seemeth to have, and this belief is the inverted image of Truth and intelligence; it is upsidedown in every thing, claiming Soul in body, Spirit in matter, [ 18 ] immortality in mortality, the infinite within the finite, and Principle in its idea.
To gain the reality and order of being, we must begin by reckoning God as the only Life, substance, and intelligence; leaving sin, sickness, and death out of our record, regarding them as they are, not the reality of being, but its counterfeit, and recognizing ourself in only what is good and true; for man is the offspring of Spirit of God, and not man.
The absence of Truth we name error. But did God create error? No; the same fountain sendeth not forth sweet and bitter waters; and God is never absent, being Omnipresence. Error is a belief without identity or Principle, and exists not except in belief. That Life, substance, or intelligence belongs to matter is a mistake; therefore, it is an error or belief that should not be defined as a person or thing, an agent or actor. The so-called senses of matter named the five personal senses will define error and Truth, as mingling until their false evidence yields to the understanding of Spirit and its creations. Belief is mesmerism. Change the belief, and that which before seemed real disappears as a reality, and whatever is accepted in its place becomes the real. That a belief is not true is the only fact it presents. Faith is something higher than belief: it is the chrysalis state, where the spiritual evidence, unseen to the senses material, begins to appear, and Truth that is taking the place of belief, is understood. Belief has its degrees of comparison. Some beliefs are better than others. But not one is founded on a rock; it can be shaken; and, until it becomes faith and faith becomes understanding, belief has no relation to the actual. [ 19 ] God is the divine Principle, the Life, Truth, and Love that Jesus taught and demonstrated; so that all are without excuse who arrive not at the understanding and demonstration of this Principle. Sickness, sin, or death, whatever is the opposite or absence of God, is a belief that is neither Mind nor one of its faculties, and is unreal because it is not begotten of the Father, Truth and Love.
Because sin brought sickness and death it proves them error, and because there is no death it proves death but a belief that Spirit destroys with the evidences of Truth and Life, showing you that death, or what appears that to the senses, comes from mortal belief instead of matter. Mortals are not intelligences, for there is but one intelligence, but one God or Mind. Mortal man is the belief that Life and intelligence are in and of matter, which belief disappears as the immortal appears whose only Life and intelligence is God—good. Spirit is only reached through the understanding and demonstration of Life, Truth, and Love.
God is not the author of error, inasmuch as Truth is not the origin of error, and error is not the result of intelligence. Belief is the author of error, and calls itself something when it is nothing; that saith I am man, but I am not the image and likeness of God. When Jesus explained the origin of what is termed mortal man, he said, “Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil [error], and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode