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Knowledge and Belief.
Knowledge is comprehension of facts or phenomena derived through observation and reason, or experience. Belief is acceptance in the mind of concepts which have not been proven by actual observation and reason. Perfect knowledge cannot be attained without correct observation of all phenomena, on which is based correct reasoning, ultimating in truthful conclusion. Hence a person cannot say that he has arrived at the state of living entirely by knowledge, until he has experienced (lived) all the facts of the universe, both good and bad. Until he has passed through sufficient cycles of different embodiments to give him all this experience, his life must necessarily run largely in the lines of faith or belief.
Facts correctly observed in all their relations and bearings to other facts, are knowledges. The great trouble is that people do not, usually, more than half comprehend facts, or they observe them dimly, or inverted, or sidewise. The mental eye is at fault. From these various observations, men (often called great men) reason and build up theories concerning things where they have no means of obtaining the underlying facts. From such falsely based reasoning there inevitably follow fallacious conclusions, and the life influenced by such must be full of error and evil. And so we find, during the ages, people having every imaginable concept of facts, an endless variety of theories, and lives false and corrupt to correspond.
Yet the universe, however variously conceived in the immature mind of man, has an absolute arrangement or system. This is a point that all rational minds must agree upon. The problem is to correctly interpret that arrangement. The man who can correctly observe facts through his senses, and can from this observation reason to things unseen, must have all the truths of the universe, for all truth is related and correspondential. He is the true man of science. Do we see many able to do this today? We do see many men, however, who say, "I cannot accept things on belief. I must have proof, knowledge. I want facts, not theories. I cannot live in beliefs." Examine into the actual lives of such persons and none are worse deluded than themselves as to what occupies their mental store-house. It is almost filled with the beliefs and fancies and superstitions in which they have been brought up, which they do not recognize that they have; while their knowledges are as the few grains of wheat in the bushel of chaff. Of course they won't admit it; but how can it be otherwise when we consider what a conglomeration of factors goes to make up even the most advanced minds. No one of them claims to have the full truth, or to be able to absolutely know truth when he sees it.
Yet the mind of man, when he gets above the mere animal existence of the barbarian, must form opinions of things he observes (vague and indefinite and incorrect according to his mental scope); he must have beliefs and doubts and theories, of all kinds and qualities, until he has gone through enough observation and experience to derive the full truth or knowledge. But while he is passing through these periods of beliefs and faiths they form part of his life, enter into the very corpuscles of his brain and body. Not until knowledge absolute is reached in every line wherein human thought can extend, is man free from belief and able to walk by knowledge or science. When does that time or state come to man? Well, it hasn't come yet very extensively to mankind.
Eighteen hundred years ago a man lived in this earth who said, "The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son." A person to whom God would entrust all judgment must needs have all knowledge. He must have reached perfection. This he did indeed claim, when he said to his followers, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as I am perfect." This man was made perfect through involving in mind and body all experiences and disciplines through a long line of embodiments which culminated in the perfection of mind and body in the Christ. He said, "Before Abraham was, I am," showing that his generation through humanity commenced further back than Abraham, and was counted through the line of Abraham. His perfection was manifest, not so much in explaining in truths to his followers, as in simply giving those truths and living them, making his life their example. His life and power showed more his comprehension of the laws of the universe than did his words. His work or mission was to operate the will of God, not to give the scientific explanation of that will, or of the working of the universe in general. That was not the age for scientific exposition of truth. Men were not then developed to receive that degree of knowledge, nor did the Christ come anointed for that purpose. He was prepared to, and did, give them, both by his words and baptism, the truth in its interior or spiritual degree. The exterior mind must live by faith or belief in the promises and injunctions of the Lord until the end of the dispensation, when the Lord will descend and, through another baptism, bring the truth into the outermost or rational degree of the mind, thus perfecting the mind of man. When man attains the perfect mind, he then comes into the perfect body.
The world is now impulsed unconsciously to seek scientific truth; considering the various degrees of development men are in, it is not surprising that most are seeking science in the lines of fallacy. They are unconscious that the real science has come into the world. They are so blinded by their own conceit that they cannot perceive the light when manifest.
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." There is no other way of reaching absolute truth (science) and immortal life, except the way pointed out by his life and his baptism. Are those who think they are achieving great scientific victories marching along the straight and narrow way of the Christ? Is Christ the leader of modern scientific thought? If Christ was truly the way, the truth, and the life, and people are really seeking truth, then Christ should stand as head, an authority on truth above every one else. And people in this, the end of the age, should be looking for the Spirit of Truth who, when he comes, will lead into all truth.
The fact that Jesus upheld the testimony of the Old Testament and pointed to the Mosaic law as the one thing needful to obey (fully) to bring men eventually unto eternal life, the divine life (wherein alone is to be found all knowledge), and the fact that modern science builds none of its structures on either Jesus, the Mosaic law, or the Bible, shows plainly that people are not seeking knowledge through the appointed Way. Rather are they seeking it through other ways which oppose the Way. Whatever opposes the Christ, is antichrist and of the workings of the Devil. Jesus said the Devil is a liar. That we do not doubt. He is the most subtle and consummate liar, making people believe that blackest error is radiant truth.
At the end of an age there is a separation of truth and fallacy, and the forces of each are gathered in concentrated and opposing array. This separation is the judgment which God institutes at its proper time; until the separation is fully completed, truth cannot shine forth victorious and lead the world to freedom.
Who hath wisdom? Who hath the Spirit of Truth? He who has completed his cycle of experiences; who has passed through all phases of the sensual life of humanity; who has become the tree of knowledge of good and evil; who through such knowledge has the power to discriminate between good and evil, and who, through the purification of much suffering, chooses the good and rejects the evil. Those who have not ripened on this tree cannot tell good from evil, hence cannot purify their lives.
The one to whom Jesus gave the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and made Shepherd of his flock, is the one who will first ripen on this tree. Having the keys of knowledge, he is first to open the store-house of wisdom. He is the first ripened fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and he is the one whom people desiring science should be looking for as their leader. But professed scientists are all looking the other way, because they are not of Christ's flock. They are antichrist.
This Shepherd, who is to perform all of God's pleasure—and that, according to promise and prophecy, is to establish God's kingdom in earth and restore mankind to happiness—is commanded by the Lord, "When thou art converted, strengthen the brethren." By the application of science, he is enabled to convert or perfect his own life; and by the transmission of his perfected life through his translation, he baptizes the brethren with the strength of the science that enables them to reach perfection.
Nothing less than the real science of the law as imparted by the Shepherd can make it possible for people to keep the law in their hearts, and there is no salvation or restoration of man except through obedience to the law. It takes not only belief, but the right sort of belief and the most implicit trust in the right person to lead into the fulness of true science;—but when one follows the right Way, he reaches knowledge the opposite from that of atheistic science; and instead of death, life eternal.
—Alice Fox Miller.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 7, No. 6 · Mar 24, 1894 · PDF pp. 4-5