is the truth, but their belief acts upon their minds, bringing them into subjection to their belief, and their troubles are a chemical change that follows.
Small-pox is a reality to all mankind. But I do not include myself, because I stand outside where I can see things real to the world and real with Wisdom. I know that I can distinguish a lie from a truth in religion, or in disease. To me disease is always a lie, but to those who believe it it is a truth, and religion the same. Until the world is shaken by investigation so that the rocks and mountains of religious error are removed and the medical Babylon destroyed, sickness and sorrow will prevail. Feeling as I do and seeing so many young people go the broad road to destruction, I can say from the bottom of my soul, “Oh priestcraft! fill up the measure of your cups of iniquity, for on your head will come sooner or later the sneers and taunts of the people.” Your theory will be overthrown by the voice of Wisdom that will rouse the men of Science, who will battle your error and drive you utterly from the face of the earth. Then there will arise a new science, followed by a new mode of reasoning, which shall teach man that to be wise is to unlearn his errors. Wisdom cannot learn, but it can destroy.
The introduction of Science is like engrafting. Every graft does not live, for some have no life except what they derive from error. When you believe a lie in the form of some disease, and the doctor comes, he does not engraft into your wisdom, but into your belief. Each must have graft of its kind. Small-pox is a lie, and so is kine-pox. It is the offspring of the former, and the senses becoming separated from the one, cling to the other. Wisdom shows that they are both false, and that they are the inventions of superstition. Thus the world is vaccinated from one lie into another, and this is called progress. But the time must come when this false mode of reasoning shall give way to a higher wisdom by which all things are proved.
I tell you a lie which you believe and an effect follows: this does not prove that I told the truth because the effect is seen. For instance, I tell you that you have small-pox. This shocks you and you are really frightened. A phenomenon attends or follows the fright. The physicians are consulted and they pronounce the disease small-pox. To you and to the world this is proof that it is small-pox. But to me it is only proof that you believed a lie.
