further than that we are in the dark. Christ is that revelation or Science of the spiritual world which is the knowledge and cure of all the ills flesh is heir to.
The people are divided into two classes, followers of Christ and followers of Jesus. To illustrate the difference between Jesus and Christ I will take myself. There are many persons who believe in my “power” of healing, as they call it, but they know nothing of the truth of it. So they make me as a man responsible for my acts or my belief in all things. Thus my private character as a man is brought into my belief, just as though I could not be a teacher of truth unless my character as a man were in harmony with the errors of the world. Now, I stand before the people judged according to my outward acts, by one class and by my Science by another; so if I should put on the cloak of hypocrisy, attend church and be very strict in all things pertaining to the wisdom of the world, I should be received by the wisdom of this world, but the scientific would look upon me as a hypocrite. Jesus' private character as a man had just as much to do with Christ as P. P. Quimby has to do with his cures. Jesus as a man knew nothing of Christ, neither does P. P. Quimby as a man know anything of this Wisdom or Truth, but when he feels it he speaks not as P. P. Q. but as the patient's troubles reveal it to him. This Science of P. P. Q. takes the sins or troubles and the answer is accompanied by the feelings. Thus P. P. Q. is the medium of the Truth to correct the errors of the world, just as Jesus was the medium of God or Science to convince man of his errors and lead him to Christ, health, or Truth.[1]
I will take myself as a figure. Suppose music had never been reduced to a science and I had discovered that it could be taught to others, and I undertook to teach it, and I called the Science, Christ. Then it would be P. P. Quimby's Christ or theory. Suppose you should try to learn it so as to teach it. Would my Christ or theory have anything to do with my character as a man? All will say, no. If I am a very good man, that has nothing to do with my science, only to make it more admired, or it might make persons give more heed to
- ↑ These statements show plainly why Quimby did not claim his Christian Science as a special “revelation,” and why he took no credit to himself as expounder of the spiritual meaning of the Bible. The Science or Christ is not dependent on persons, books, or organizations. It is demonstrable by its works or “fruits.”
