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GOD AND MAN
343

LOVE

What is the element that receives all sensation? Love for ourselves. This is the groundwork or foundation of all our acts. It is the mortar or dough in which all sensation is made. Of itself it contains no knowledge, it is perfect harmony; its elements or language is its perfection. It embraces all the senses; it is not Wisdom but the power Wisdom uses to bring all things into harmony with itself. To this world of ignorance it is not known but admitted and the matter or ideas of this world is put into this element. Like the ocean it can hold all sorts of ideas, be disturbed to its lowest depths and then calmed by Wisdom so that not a ripple on the surface can be seen. But in the depth of this ocean of love lie all sorts of evil spirits that are gnawing the life of the soul and are identified with it; this is the disease in the mind.

When the storm of ignorance and superstition was raging and all the ships or minds were tossing to and fro, even Jesus' disciples were in danger of being swamped by the errors of the age: when their bark or belief was just going down into heathen idolatry and their enemies disturbed their water or belief, in the darkness of the night of error, when there was no eye to see nor heart to feel, no arm to reach out nor voice to be heard, Christ or Truth was seen walking upon their waters or belief, saying to the waves “Be still!” And the wind and waves obeyed Him and there was a great calm.

This was the state of their minds in the days of Jesus, the people's belief was the disease and to embrace their error was taking their disease. Their misery was what followed their belief, and their happiness was the unlearning of their errors. The ships were their theories, the water was their mind, and their ideas were the danger. Their wisdom was of this world of matter, but the wisdom of God could say to their wisdom, “Be thou still,” and their ideas or mind and matter would obey. The introduction of Jesus' ideas was a new heaven or wisdom and a new earth or belief. The new heaven under the wisdom of God or Science could create a new belief wherein could be peace and happiness that the old heaven or wisdom knew nothing of where there should be peace and joy in the Holy Ghost or explanation of this new world, where no error, selfishness, or jealousy dwells, so that all ignorance and superstition shall be cast out into outer darkness, never to return.