was to the people a mystery, and seemed to embrace a belief merely, for a truth to a person who cannot understand it is a belief. But Jesus labored to convince the people that it was a science, that the fruits of it were seen in His practice, and that it could be taught; for He made a difference between His cures and His disciples' cures, and the cures of the rest of the world.
The magicians and sorcerers cured by their belief. They thought their power came from a spirit-world, and they acted upon this belief. They believed that disease was sent into the world to torment mankind. The priests had the same belief. Each one's prayer was to his own God, to keep him clear of his enemy. The priest held up to the people the idea that they must do something different from living honestly and dealing with mankind as though we were one family, that a certain belief was necessary to keep us clear of hell, which itself had been invented to torment man. This doctrine kept the people in ignorance of themselves and made them nervous, giving rise to belief in evil spirits. As people are all the time inventing ideas for their own interest, it finally led to the introduction of the medical faculty. Now it seemed to cover all the ground that ignorance and superstition wanted, it put the masses into the power of the two classes, the priests and the doctors. The priests would offer up prayers to their God for the salvation of souls, and the doctors would offer up prayers for their business. The people are, in the mean time, in the condition that the prophet told of when he said, “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests can rule by their means, and the people love to have it so, but what will they do in the end thereof?”
Jesus wanted to introduce this Science, which He called Christ, which gave the lie to all the old opinions of Jesus' day. He had no heaven or hell out of man, no happiness, or misery outside of us. His God was in Him and in us, and His prayers were in Him and in us, and His life and ours was this Christ, the law which He put in all of us. If this law could be understood, it would rid us of all the evils that are bound on mankind. It would not keep man in ignorance of himself, but would exalt him in the natural world. It would rid him of the superstition of the world, would make men worship God, not as one who could be flattered by our hypocrisy, but as a God of science that gives to every man
