by our belief. If anything disturbs our happiness we fly to some one for protection and in our trouble create a form of something in the mind to locate it in some place in the body. We suffer ourselves to be tormented to get rid of the enemy or disease, as those who believed themselves bewitched would suffer being whipped to drive out the devils. I could name hundreds of cases where persons have called in physicians and between them both they have made an enemy, the patient suffering himself to be poulticed and blistered almost to death to get rid of the bronchitis or spinal disease or white swelling or some other devil supposed to exist independent of the mind. The doctors who use these means show about as much knowledge as the people in Connecticut did who beat the beer barrel if it worked on Sunday. It is the relic of heathen superstition that wisdom will some time eradicate from the mind by explaining it on scientific principles. Till then the knife, the lance and calomel and such things that are only introduced by a show of truth not much in advance of nailing a horse shoe over the door, or sleeping with the Bible under you to keep off the witches, must govern the people. Jesus knew that all the foregoing belief was founded in ignorance, therefore He was not afraid of these beliefs and said these words: “Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends.”
CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE DEAD
The religious world has always been in a controversy in regard to the dead. Before Jesus taught a resurrection from the dead, the Pharisees believed the dead rose at the end of the world. Others believed spirits came back and entered the living, but there was no idea that was satisfactory to the thinking classes. The Sadducces disbelieved in everything but admitted one living God. This was the state of man's belief at the time Jesus appeared before the people. He spake as never man spake for He spoke the Truth and gave the lie to all the opinions of mankind. I will take the liberty of putting my own construction on Jesus' truth and leave it to the common sense of the people to decide which is consistent with Science. You see that at the time Jesus spoke the idea [the persistence] of an identity after death was never taught, and to teach that was to the Jews blasphemy. So Jesus admitted their various beliefs, but attached a spiritual meaning to them. Jesus spoke to the people in parables,
