rse, greatly. Why
should anybody make such a silly statement as this? Everybody knew that
there had never been a flood. Why quote a myth as a fact? It irritated
and from a critical point of view amused him. Then he came upon what he
deemed to be a jumble of confusion in regard to matter and spirit. The
author talked of the evidences of the five physical senses as being
worthless, and yet was constantly referring to and using similes based
upon those evidences to illustrate her spiritual meanings. He threw the
book down a number of times, for the Biblical references irritated him.
He did not believe in the Bible. The very word Christianity was a
sickening jest, as sickening as it had been to the man in the church. To
say that the miracles of Christ could be repeated today could not be
serious. Still the man had testified. Wasn't that so? A certain vein of
sincerity running through it all--that profound evidence of
faith and sympathy which are the characteristics of all sincere
reformers--appealed to him. Some little thoughts here and there--a
profound acceptance of the spiritual understanding of Jesus, which he
himself accepted, stayed with him. One sentence or paragraph somehow
stuck in his mind, because he himself was of a metaphysical turn----

"Become conscious for a single moment that life and intelligence are
purely spiritual, neither in nor of matter, and the body will then utter
no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find
yourself suddenly well. Sorrow is turned into joy when the body is
controlled by spiritual life and love."

"God is a spirit," he recalled Jesus as saying. "They that worship Him
must worship in spirit and in truth."

"You will find yourself suddenly well," thought Eugene. "Sorrow is
turned into joy."

"Sorrow. What kind of sorrow? Love sorrow? This probably meant the end
of earthly love; that that too was mortal."

He read on, discovering that Scientists believed in the immaculate
conception of the Virgin Mary, which struck him as silly; also that they
believed in the ultimate abolition of marriage as representing a mortal
illusion of self-creation and perpetuation, and of course the having of
children through the agency of the sexes, also the dematerialization of
the body--its chemicalization into its native spirituality, wherein
there can be neither sin, sickness, disease, decay nor death, were a
part of their belief or understanding. It seemed to him to be a wil