I will now take a rose for an illustration. You are like a rose. You throw from yourself an atmosphere or vapor. When the rose is dead all outside of it is darkness to the germ of the bud. This is the child. As the rose opens it expands and unfolds itself to the world, the same as a child's brain expands and opens the folds of its understanding. As the rose comes before the world of roses it takes its stand with the rest of its kind. So it is with man. As he unfolds his knowledge, he is classed with others of his kind. As the rose throws off its peculiarities to the air, the world judges of its odor. So as man throws off his peculiar character or life, health or disease, the world is to judge of his happiness or misery by the fruits of his belief.
Take a person with consumption. The idea consumption decomposes and throws off an odor that contains all the ideas of the person affected. This is true of every idea or thought. Now I come in contact with this odor thrown from you, and being well I have found by twenty years experience that these odors affect me, and also that they contain the identity of the patient whom this odor surrounds. This called my attention to it, and I found that it was as easy to tell the feelings or thoughts of a person sick as to detect the odor of spirits from that of tobacco. I at first thought I inhaled it, but at last found that my spiritual senses could be affected by it when my body was at a distance of many miles from the patient. This led to a new discovery, and I found my [real] senses were not in my body, but that my body was in my senses, and my knowledge located my senses according to my wisdom. If a man's knowledge is in matter all there is of him (to him) is contained in matter. But if his knowledge is in Wisdom, then his senses and all there is of him are outside of matter. To know this is a truth, and the effect is life in this truth, and this truth is in Wisdom. So the man who knows all this is in Wisdom with all his senses and life.
Then where do I differ from you? In this respect. My wisdom is my health, and your wisdom is your disease; for your wisdom is in your belief, and my wisdom is my life and senses, and my senses teach me that your trouble is the effect of your belief. What is light to me is darkness to you. You being in the dark stumble and are afraid of your own shadow. I with the eye of Truth see in your darkness or belief, and you seem to me blind. Or, like the rose, you cannot see the