I have said that there is a visible as well as an invisible fair and good, and that both are therefore so far real, however insignificant [?] Unclear or illegible  may be the visible compared with the invisible. All reality is Mind and all good is Mind; and all action is mental, [?] Unclear or illegible  or spiritual. It is only the spiritual which can discern the spiritual, the truly fair, the good, the harmonious and real. This I claim includes some visible phenomena as well as the invisible Substance and Principle.

Next, the good brother above mentioned oraculates that men cannot be improved, though all our wit and strength are expended in efforts to improve them. He affirms that they are so perfect that they are eternally unimproveableCorrected:unimprovable, and yet that they are so blind that they do not know it, and that we are to open their eyes; and yet that this would be no improvement of their condition. I Good Lord deliver us from such manifest inconsistentcy! Dear Teacher and friend, if your system is not better expounded, if brains are not allowed among your followers, your personal life here will be the limit of your influence. I hold that while men as God's ideas each and intrinsically perfect they can become forever more nobly and postively Corrected: positively developed and avdvanced in degree, rising from one degree of perfection to higher degrees of perfection, always flawless, but never individually infinite; and therefore always capable of further progress. This is the only way I can consistently and intelligently construe "Science and Health."Editorial Note: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy— If this is not true, then I can never make another move in ChrnExpanded:Christian Science either in teaching, preaching or healing. Here I am too clear for doubt, too firm for change. If I am wrong cast me out at once.

Oh! dear Mrs. Eddy, I thought I had found my great work as your disciple! Was it all a dream, or is there a sphere for intelleigence among your disciples?

Your Distracted Disciple

Wm. I Gill

The Perfect knows only the Perfect

1) If our thoughts are ourselves or projections of ourselves, then it seems to follow, that they express our character and show us to be good or evil according as they are good or evil. According to this, to have evil thoughts or knowledges is to be ourselves evil; and these therefore must both be utterly e [?] Unclear or illegible xcluded from our conception of the God as the infinitely perfect.

The same applies to all his perfect creation; and all his creation must be conceived as perfect.

2) Hence the necessity, from the experience of evil, of making of making a distinction between mortal mind and immortal Mind. One knows and thinks evil, and the other does not.

One Mortal thought mind is error throughout and nothing else, and so it will perish with the destru destruction of error in thought and knowledge. belief.

3) This is all that is to be said of mortal mind. If asked what it is, we can only repeat this, though it may be repeated in various phrases. It is the absence of truth and life and substance – a nothing. It is the absence of intellectual light, the light of understanding; and so it cannot be illuminated but only dissippated or destroyed by that light. It admits of no explanation, since there is nothing to explain, and nothing rational and real to be understood. and explained.

[*]Archival Note: Two horizontal lines are drawn across the page here.

4) But to this I have a psychological difficulty. I seem to be the same one self-conscious individual who feels and knows both good and evil. How is that? Am I both mortal and immortal mind?

5) Then, I find myself [?] Unclear or illegible  hampered in my application of it to the Scriptures where they speak of God's pity and mercy and redeeming work. He must If he knows that error must be shown to us to be unreal, and so he knows that we dont Corrected: don't know it this, knows that we are thus in error, and so knows error.

If you can relieve me on numbers 4 and 5 I shall be happy.

Your blind disciple

Wm I Gill.

P.S.— I am sorry to give so much trouble; but "Science" is not mere belief, nor a blind assent to uncomprehended words; but an understanding of them and of their mutual harmony.

G.

P.P.S. If you are not too rigid and exacting here, if, as in all the other points, I can feel at home with you here, then I shall feel that I have a free a happy scope to serve the you in the Cause of ChrnExpanded:Christian Science to the utmost of my powers, whatever they may be. It seems to me that I should enjoy this indefinitely better than anything else, because according best with all my strongest feelings and convictions. This is my hope. So mote it be!

Friday (26th.)

I have slept, and I have awaked in the same mental condition. Oh how I wish my mental necessities could here be met.

Dec Nov. 26— 86Expanded:1886

I still indulge the hope that I have not properly understood you. The dogma you have seemed to propound, goes apparently against all my best thinking and confounds all intelligence. I therefore conclude that I must have misunderstood you. I have been led along step by step to an appreciative and delighted knowledge of your views up to this last and only remaining question; and it seems unnatural that here I must be forever wide as the poles from you.

I am all the more anxious, because if you are here misunderstood and represented in an absurd light, or if you have yourself misstated the point, it will so far turn out disastrously for the cCause of Christian Science. For I am very certain that Christian Science as it now in this mat point [?] Unclear or illegible appears to me will never be accepted as such by intelligent men, ne [?] Unclear or illegible ver rank as "Science." I want it to live and spread. I have given myself to it; and I want to do you the fullest and highest justice in this connection; and I want the world to do the same. I want the movement to be connected forever with your name in its the proper and highest place in that connection. I want to see no more breaking off, but rather a regathering of the better elements, or else such a growth of the true and ma [?] Unclear or illegible in tree that it will overshadow and atrophize into death all else. I am in earnest here. My convictions anre strong and my feelings intense

As you know, and are glad to know, the time has gone bye Corrected: by when men can conceive it a religious duty to accept uncomprehended and apparently incomprehensible dogmas. But I think some of your disciples have some howCorrected:somehow diffused the impression that liberty of thinking is alien to Christian Science; and I am told that this is one of the chief causes of divisions in the ranks, and the cause of the defection of your ablest and most earnest students. This is deplorable; and I am sure you are able to rectify this.

It is clear that God cannot know (by experience, impression, acquisition) evil; but He must be able to understand it as the logically [?] Unclear or illegible  contrasted opposite of himself, as a falsity, a claim to be what it is not. I have all along thought that this must be what you mean. If it is not, I am in deep distress. I cannot connect it with my highest thinking and moral action. All the story of God's work in Christ becomes nullified. Christ knows nothing, and God knows nothing, of any work ever done for me, and I owe no gratitude to any oneCorrected:anyone, and if I had gratitude no one could understand it.— Oh! it is utter confusion. It can notCorrected:cannot be that you have justly described yourself, or else that I have fatally mis-conceivedCorrected:misconceived you.— Oh for light, is the prayer of—

Your Sincere Disciple,

Wm. I Gill