I have waded through the mire of ignorance, crossed the ruin of superstition, have walked on the water of my belief and at last landed on the shores of Wisdom, where I have found the other branch of truth that tells me that the water or error had dried up so that the dry land of reason is ready to receive the seed of Wisdom into the earth, or mind of man. As I have passed through the fire of superstition and been baptized in the water of error and belief, I have come up out of the water and the heavens or Wisdom are open to me and I see Wisdom in the form of a dove or sympathy saying to every one: “Behold, the truth hath prevailed to open the book of superstition; it hath broken the seal and introduced a new form of reasoning.”
I have no belief in regard to religion of any kind, neither have I any belief in another world of any kind.[1] I have no belief in what is called death. In fact I am a total disbeliever in any wisdom that ever taught any religion outside of man's belief. Then you may ask what kind of a man are you without a belief? I have a belief like all men but it does not apply to what I have been talking about. I have a belief on all subjects that are agitating the country.
I believe there was one person who had these same ideas and to that person I give all the credit of introducing this truth into the world, and that was Jesus. I have no doubt of His being the only true prophet that ever lived who had ideas entirely superior to the rest of the world. Not that He as a man was any better, but He was the embodiment of a higher Wisdom, more so than any man who has ever lived.
Perhaps you do not understand my meaning. Take the discovery of electricity. There were men who had conceived some of the ideas of Franklin,—not that Franklin was of himself the discoverer or the person who reduced it to a science, but his mind was the medium that brought the wisdom of the wise into focus, so that an experiment might be made to prove the principle. The wisdom of the world is not confined to any person, but when it begins to condense into a truth it must exhibit itself through some medium. This great truth called Christ was exhibited through the man Jesus, the same as a great truth was exhibited through the man Franklin and called “electricity.” There was a belief
- ↑ Quimby sincerely believed in the real spiritual world of the living, in contrast with “the other world” of the dead.
