Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/191

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CHRIST OR SCIENCE
187

is composed of matter, not mind, but when agitated, that part which is called heat, and is thrown off, is mind or spirit. It is not intelligence, but a medium to be used according to the direction given it, by a power independent of itself,—like that direction given to mechanical power. The effect of this direction (call it what you please) on the body, is to destroy itself, for its life is its own destruction.—Dec. 1859.

LOVE, 1

What is the strongest feeling in man or woman? Love for the sake of love for others. For this love they will lay down their lives, when directed by knowledge, for no passion can follow true love. What makes what is called animal passion? Ignorance of ourselves, not understanding the truth. Love contains no fear; ignorance puts a false construction on love. Here lies all the trouble. Love and ignorance are the mother and father of all error or disease. Now to know ourselves is to know the truth of this problem. Love is an element of itself, without any form; it has no length or breadth, or height or depth; it neither comes nor goes, it fills all space, and melts all error down that comes within its power. Its power is its heat, its heat is its love, it is heaven. For this love Christ laid down His animal life or passions for mankind, that they might understand themselves and be saved from the endless hell of misery that follows our ignorance of this power or love. On these two powers, love and ignorance, hang all the law and the prophets. The gospel is love, the law is error; therefore when you are under the law, you become subject to the laws and penalties. When you are freed from that law, it has no power over you. This law of love is that love in mankind that is working in us or our error to bring us to truth and set us free from the law of sin or death. The laws of love are the destruction of the laws of error, and they make us a law to ourselves. This law of love has no penalties or prisons; but, like the bird that flies in the sky, is not troubled with earthly laws, but is a law to itself. Its purity is its buoyancy, its ignorance is its weight or stupidity. Each is governed by a sort of intelligence, like science and ignorance. As ignorance and superstition are what are under the law of error, Science and Truth are their opponents, and