Chapter III - Spirit and Matter
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solar years, that mars the face and form. I say the
solar years, that mars the face and form. I say the
belief, because science admits no reality in aught but
God and His idea. To Spirit a thousand years are as
one day; hence, a man of years and experience is ripen-
ing into higher beauty and excellence instead of grow-
ing old; mind is feeding the body with immortality, if
it supplies it with Truth, and taking away the error of
personal sense that says a day points to a nearer tomb;
our body neither suffers nor enjoys. When will it be
understood that "I" is impersonal, even mind and not
matter? Until this point is gained in the science of
being, man will go on in belief, a pendulum between
joy and sorrow, sickness and health, Life and death,
even as at present. Is man tottering and ready to per-
ish, or sick and sinning, the likeness of Omnipotence?
are Life and all our faculties measured by calendars,
and beauty a thing of decay? or is there a mortal man
that grows, matures and decays, out of which springs
the perfect and immortal man? Verily such admissions
leap headlong into error. Science proves a corrupt
fountain sendeth not forth pure streams, and the same
fountain both sweet and bitter water. Solar years,
that stamp the wrinkle on the brow, are the effect
of man's reckoning, and not God's; they are a belief
of personal sense and not the understanding of Soul.
Mortal man is old only by admitting he is thus; for it
is mind and not matter that makes the body what it is.
Intelligence without beginning and without end is the
data (if such it can be called), of Life; man is not
young or old; he is and was eternal as the idea of God.
Man has neither birth nor death; he is not a vegetable
animal, nor a transmigrating mind, passing first into a
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mortal body, and thence to the immortal; this belief
mortal body, and thence to the immortal; this belief
is a relic of heathenism; we have no beliefs that are
not. Personality is not man, therefore the body mor-
tal is but a belief of man, and not the reality of him.
Life, Truth, and harmony are the reality of being,
and man is the idea of these; hence the body mortal
is but belief and error, discord and death. Shakes-
peare's description of age presents a picture of mortal
man; our bodies are not the repositories of us, else all
would go down to dust. I is Spirit and not matter,
and Spirit never for a moment entered or animated
matter. If happiness is personal sense, joy is a trem-
bler and builds on sand; or if materiality is man the
very worms do rob us.
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To understand Intelligence nor Life are in the body,
To understand Intelligence nor Life are in the body,
is to conquer age and hold being forever fresh and im-
mortal. The error of growing old is seen in the history
of an English lady, as narrated in the London Lancet.
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In early life she was disappointed in love, became
In early life she was disappointed in love, became
insane, in which she lost the calculation of time, and
lived only in the hour that parted the lovers, never
afterward recognizing the lapse of years, and speaking
only from that sad hour. The effect of this was, she
literally grew no older, and when seen by some of our
American travellers at seventy-four years of age, pre-
sented the entire appearance of youth, not a wrinkle
or gray hair marred the picture, but youth sat gently on
cheek and brow. Before being informed of her history
the visitors were asked to judge of her age, and each
placed her under twenty. This instance of preserved
youth suggests a point in science not to be overlooked,
and which a Franklin might have built upon, or a New-