“Yes. And now a word further about the so-called mortal mind. For, when we have collected and arranged all our data regarding it, we will find ourselves in a position to begin to work out of it, and thereby truly work out our salvation, even if with fear and trembling. I have said in a previous talk that, judging by the deductions of the physical scientists, everything seems about to leave the material basis and turn into vibrations, and ‘man changes with velocity’ of these. They tell us that all life depends upon water; that life began, eons ago, in the primeval sea. True, the human sense of existence, as I have said, began in the dark, primeval sea of mist, the deep and fluid mortal mind, so-called. And that sense of existence most 105 certainly is dependent upon the fluid of mortal mind. Bichât has said that ‘life is the sum of the forces that resist death.’ Spencer has defined life as the ‘continuous adjustment of internal to external relations.’ Very good, as applied to the human sense of life. The human mind makes multitudes of mental concepts, and then struggles incessantly to adjust itself to them, and at length gives up the struggle, hopelessly beaten. Scientists tell us that life is due to a continuous series of bodily ferments. The body is in a constant state of ferment, and that gives rise to life. Good! We know that the human mind is in a state of incessant ferment. The human mind is a self-centered mass of writhing, seething, fermenting material thought. And that fermentation is outwardly manifested in its concept of body, and its material environment. The scientists themselves are rapidly pushing matter back into the realm of the human mind. Bodily states are becoming recognized as manifestations of mental states––not vice versa, as has been ignorantly believed for ages. A prominent physician told me the other day that many a condition of nervous prostration now could be directly traced to selfishness. We know that hatred and anger produce fatal poisons. The rattlesnake is a splendid example of that. I am told that its poison and the white of an egg are formed of exactly the same amounts of the same elements. The difference in effect is the thought lying back of each.”
“Well!” exclaimed Doctor Siler. “You don’t pretend that the snake thinks and hates––”
“Doctor,” said Hitt, “for thousands upon thousands of years the human race has been directing hatred and fear-thoughts toward the snake. Is it any wonder that the snake is now poisonous? That it now reflects back that poisonous thought to mankind?”
“But some are not poisonous, you know.”
“Can we say how long they have not been so, or how soon our hatred will make them all poisonous? Do you know, moreover, that sorrow, remorse, all emotions, in fact, affect the perspiration that exudes from the human body? Do you know that hatred will render human perspiration the deadliest poison known to science? I am told that in a few minutes of murderous hatred enough of this poisonous perspiration is exuded from the human body to kill a man. And do you know that the thought which manifests upon the body in such deadly poison is just as deadly when sent into the mentality of a human being? Think what the Church’s deadly hatred of so-called heretics has done in the last nineteen hundred years! Why, millions have been killed by it alone! And in the name of Christ!
“But now,” he said, consulting his watch, “I must go. Even a newspaper man requires a little sleep. And I must make my apology for occupying the floor to-night to the exclusion of you all. I have gradually been filling up with these thoughts for some weeks, and I had to let them out. Besides––”
“Mr. Hitt,” interrupted Father Waite, “I shall soon be ready to report on those questions of Bible research which you assigned to me.”
“Ah, yes,” replied Hitt. “Well, have you found that Jesus really was an historical character, or not?”
“I think,” said Carmen, “that he has found that it really matters little whether there ever was such a person as the human man Jesus. The Christ has always lived; and the Christ-principle which the man Jesus is reported to have revealed to the world is with us, here, now, and always. It is the principle, rather than the man Jesus, that concerns us, is it not?”