“Then,” with a note of banter in his voice, “I take it that you do not expect to die.”
“I do not!” she replied emphatically. “I expect good, nothing but good, ever! Don’t you know that physiologists themselves admit that the human body is composed of eighty-five per cent water and fifteen per cent ordinary salts? Can such a combination have intelligence and sensation? Do you still believe that life is dependent upon lungs, stomach, or liver? Why, the so-called ‘unit cell’ breathes, digests, and manifests life-functions, and yet it has no lungs, no mouth, no stomach, no organs. It is the human mind, assuming knowledge and power which it does not possess, that says the sense of life shall depend upon such organs in the one case and not in the other. And the human mind could be utterly refuted if men would only learn to use the Christ-principle. Jesus and Paul used it, and proved material laws to be only false beliefs.”
“Well,” he replied meditatively, “if you are correct, then the preachers are way off the track. And I have long since come to the conclusion that––Well,” changing abruptly back to the previous topic, “so you refute the microbe theory, eh?”
“I said I did and did not,” she laughed. “Listen: fear, worry, hatred, malice, murder, all of which are mental things in themselves, manifest to the human mind as microbes. These are the hurtful microbes, and they produce toxins, which poison the system. What is the cure? Antitoxins? No, indeed! Jesus gave the real and permanent cure. It is the Christ-principle. Now you can learn that principle, and how to apply it. But if you don’t care to, why, then you must go on with your material microbes and poisons, and with your diseases and death, until you are ready to leave them and turn to that which is real. For all human-mind activity and manifestation, whether in microbes, death, or life, is mental, and is but the counterfeit of the real activity of divine mind, God.
“Do you know,” she pursued earnestly, “I heard a lecture the other day in which it was said that life is a sort of fermentation in the body. Well, as regards human life, I guess that is so. For the human body is only a manifestation of the human 37 mind; and the human mind surely is in a continuous state of ferment!”
She paused and laughed. “The lecturer,” she continued, “said that the range of life was from ultra-microbe to man, and that Shakespeare began as a single cell. Think of it! The mundane concept of Shakespeare’s body may have unfolded from a cell-concept; but Shakespeare was a manifestation of mind! And that mind was an interpretation, though very imperfect, of the mind that is God. Why can’t you materialists raise your eyes above the dust? Why, you would choke the very avenues of the spirit with mud!”
“H’m! Well, your education seems to be––”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “my education is beyond the vagaries that are so generally taught in the name of knowledge. Intellectual education is a farce. It does nothing for mankind, except to give them a false culture. Were the so-called great men of the past really educated? Here is an extract which I copied this afternoon from Hawthorne.” She opened her note book and read:
“‘Ah, but there is a half-acknowledged melancholy like to this when we stand in the perfected vigor of our life and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers, and that the next work of his never-idle fingers must be to steal them one by one away.’
“Now,” she asked, “was that man really educated? In current theology, yes. But that theology could not solve his least earthly problem, nor meet his slightest need! Oh, what inexpressibly sad lives so many of your greatest men have lived! Your Hawthorne, your Longfellow, they yearned for the rest which they were taught was to follow death. They were the victims of false theology. They were mesmerized. If they believed in the Christ––and they thought they did––why, then, did they not rise up and do as he bade them do, put death out? He taught no such resignation to human beliefs as they practiced! He showed men how to overcome the world. Why do we not try to overcome it? Has the time not come? Is the world not sufficiently weary of dying?”