|
Science and
Health
with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter 15
— Genesis
Key to the Scriptures
These things saith He that
is holy, He that is true, He that
hath the key of David, He that
openeth, and no man shutteth; and
shutteth, and no man openeth; I
know thy works: behold, I have
set before thee an open door, and
no man can shut it. —
REVELATION.
And I appeared unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto
Jacob by the name of God
Almighty; but by My name Jehovah
was I not known to them.
— EXODUS.
All things were made by
Him; and without Him was not
anything made that was made. In
Him was life; and the life was
the light of men. —
JOHN.
Scientific interpretation of
the Scriptures properly starts
with the beginning of the Old
Testament, chiefly because the
spiritual import of the Word, in
its earliest articulations, often
seems so smothered by the
immediate context as to require
explication; whereas the New
Testament narratives are clearer
and come nearer the heart. Jesus
illumines them, showing the
poverty of mortal existence, but
richly recompensing human want
and woe with spiritual gain. The
incarnation of Truth, that
amplification of wonder and glory
which angels could only whisper
and which God illustrated by
light and harmony, is consonant
with ever-present Love. So-called
mystery and miracle, which
subserve the end of natural good,
are explained by that Love for
whose rest the weary ones sigh
when needing something more
native to their immortal cravings
than the history of perpetual
evil.
A second necessity for
beginning with Genesis is that
the living and real prelude of
the older Scriptures is so brief
that it would almost seem, from
the preponderance of unreality in
the entire narrative, as if
reality did not predominate over
unreality, the light over the
dark, the straight line of Spirit
over the mortal deviations and
inverted images of the creator
and His creation.
Spiritually followed, the book
of Genesis is the history of the
untrue image of God, named a
sinful mortal. This deflection of
being, rightly viewed, serves to
suggest the proper reflection of
God and the spiritual actuality
of man, as given in the first
chapter of Genesis. Even thus the
crude forms of human thought take
on higher symbols and
significations, when
scientifically Christian views of
the universe appear, illuminating
time with the glory of
eternity.
In the following exegesis,
each text is followed by its
spiritual interpretation
according to the teachings of
Christian Science.
EXEGESIS
Genesis i. 1. In the
beginning God created the heaven
and the earth.
The infinite has no beginning.
This word beginning is
employed to signify the
only, — that is, the
eternal verity and unity of God
and man, including the universe.
The creative Principle —
Life, Truth, and Love — is
God. The universe reflects God.
There is but one creator and one
creation. This creation consists
of the unfolding of spiritual
ideas and their identities, which
are embraced in the infinite Mind
and forever reflected. These
ideas range from the
infinitesimal to infinity, and
the highest ideas are the sons
and daughters of God.
Genesis i. 2. And the earth
was without form, and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the
deep. And the spirit of God moved
upon the face of the
waters.
The divine Principle and idea
constitute spiritual harmony,
— heaven and eternity. In
the universe of Truth, matter is
unknown. No supposition of error
enters there. Divine Science, the
Word of God, saith to the
darkness upon the face of error,
"God is All-in-all," and the
light of ever-present Love
illumines the universe. Hence the
eternal wonder, — that
infinite space is peopled with
God's ideas, reflecting Him in
countless spiritual forms.
Genesis i. 3. And God said,
Let there be light: and there was
light.
Immortal and divine Mind
presents the idea of God:
first, in light;
second, in reflection;
third, in spiritual and
immortal forms of beauty and
goodness. But this Mind creates
no element nor symbol of discord
and decay. God creates neither
erring thought, mortal life,
mutable truth, nor variable
love.
Genesis i. 4. And God saw
the light, that it was good: and
God divided the light from the
darkness.
God, Spirit, dwelling in
infinite light and harmony from
which emanates the true idea, is
never reflected by aught but the
good.
Genesis i. 5. And God
called the light Day, and the
darkness He called Night. And the
evening and the morning were the
first day.
All questions as to the divine
creation being both spiritual and
material are answered in this
passage, for though solar beams
are not yet included in the
record of creation, still there
is light. This light is not from
the sun nor from volcanic flames,
but it is the revelation of Truth
and of spiritual ideas. This also
shows that there is no place
where God's light is not seen,
since Truth, Life, and Love fill
immensity and are ever-present.
Was not this a revelation instead
of a creation?
The successive appearing of
God's ideas is represented as
taking place on so many
evenings and
mornings, — words
which indicate, in the absence of
solar time, spiritually clearer
views of Him, views which are not
implied by material darkness and
dawn. Here we have the
explanation of another passage of
Scripture, that "one day is with
the Lord as a thousand years."
The rays of infinite Truth, when
gathered into the focus of ideas,
bring light instantaneously,
whereas a thousand years of human
doctrines, hypotheses, and vague
conjectures emit no such
effulgence.
Did infinite Mind create
matter, and call it light?
Spirit is light, and the
contradiction of Spirit is
matter, darkness, and darkness
obscures light. Material sense is
nothing but a supposition of the
absence of Spirit. No solar rays
nor planetary revolutions form
the day of Spirit. Immortal Mind
makes its own record, but mortal
mind, sleep, dreams, sin,
disease, and death have no record
in the first chapter of
Genesis.
Genesis i. 6. And God said,
Let there be a firmament in the
midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the
waters.
Spiritual understanding, by
which human conception, material
sense, is separated from Truth,
is the firmament. The divine
Mind, not matter, creates all
identities, and they are forms of
Mind, the ideas of Spirit
apparent only as Mind, never as
mindless matter nor the so-called
material senses.
Genesis i. 7. And God made
the firmament, and divided the
waters which were under the
firmament from the waters which
were above the firmament: and it
was so.
Spirit imparts the
understanding which uplifts
consciousness and leads into all
truth. The Psalmist saith: "The
Lord on high is mightier than the
noise of many waters, yea, than
the mighty waves of the sea."
Spiritual sense is the
discernment of spiritual good.
Understanding is the line of
demarcation between the real and
unreal. Spiritual understanding
unfolds Mind, — Life, Truth,
and Love, — and demonstrates
the divine sense, giving the
spiritual proof of the universe
in Christian Science.
This understanding is not
intellectual, is not the result
of scholarly attainments; it is
the reality of all things brought
to light. God's ideas reflect the
immortal, unerring, and infinite.
The mortal, erring, and finite
are human beliefs, which
apportion to themselves a task
impossible for them, that of
distinguishing between the false
and the true. Objects utterly
unlike the original do not
reflect that original. Therefore
matter, not being the reflection
of Spirit, has no real entity.
Understanding is a quality of
God, a quality which separates
Christian Science from
supposition and makes Truth
final.
Genesis i. 8. And God
called the firmament Heaven. And
the evening and the morning were
the second day.
Through divine Science,
Spirit, God, unites understanding
to eternal harmony. The calm and
exalted thought or spiritual
apprehension is at peace. Thus
the dawn of ideas goes on,
forming each successive stage of
progress.
Genesis i. 9. And God said,
Let the waters under the heaven
be gathered together unto one
place, and let the dry land
appear: and it was so.
Spirit, God, gathers unformed
thoughts into their proper
channels, and unfolds these
thoughts, even as He opens the
petals of a holy purpose in order
that the purpose may appear.
Genesis i. 10. And God
called the dry land Earth; and
the gathering together of the
waters called He Seas: and God
saw that it was good.
Here the human concept and
divine idea seem confused by the
translator, but they are not so
in the scientifically Christian
meaning of the text. Upon Adam
devolved the pleasurable task of
finding names for all material
things, but Adam has not yet
appeared in the narrative. In
metaphor, the dry land
illustrates the absolute
formations instituted by Mind,
while water symbolizes the
elements of Mind. Spirit duly
feeds and clothes every object,
as it appears in the line of
spiritual creation, thus tenderly
expressing the fatherhood and
motherhood of God. Spirit names
and blesses all. Without natures
particularly defined, objects and
subjects would be obscure, and
creation would be full of
nameless offspring, —
wanderers from the parent Mind,
strangers in a tangled
wilderness.
Genesis i. 11. And God
said, Let the earth bring forth
grass, the herb yielding seed,
and the fruit tree yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in
itself, upon the earth: and it
was so.
The universe of Spirit
reflects the creative power of
the divine Principle, or Life,
which reproduces the
multitudinous forms of Mind and
governs the multiplication of the
compound idea man. The tree and
herb do not yield fruit because
of any propagating power of their
own, but because they reflect the
Mind which includes all. A
material world implies a mortal
mind and man a creator. The
scientific divine creation
declares immortal Mind and the
universe created by God.
Infinite Mind creates and
governs all, from the mental
molecule to infinity. This divine
Principle of all expresses
Science and art throughout His
creation, and the immortality of
man and the universe. Creation is
ever appearing, and must ever
continue to appear from the
nature of its inexhaustible
source. Mortal sense inverts this
appearing and calls ideas
material. Thus misinterpreted,
the divine idea seems to fall to
the level of a human or material
belief, called mortal man. But
the seed is in itself, only as
the divine Mind is All and
reproduces all — as Mind is
the multiplier, and Mind's
infinite idea, man and the
universe, is the product. The
only intelligence or substance of
a thought, a seed, or a flower is
God, the creator of it. Mind is
the Soul of all. Mind is Life,
Truth, and Love which governs
all.
Genesis i. 12. And the
earth brought forth grass, and
herb yielding seed after his
kind, and the tree yielding
fruit, whose seed was in itself,
after his kind: and God saw that
it was good.
God determines the gender of
His own ideas. Gender is mental,
not material. The seed within
itself is the pure thought
emanating from divine Mind. The
feminine gender is not yet
expressed in the text.
Gender means simply
kind or sort, and
does not necessarily refer either
to masculinity or femininity. The
word is not confined to
sexuality, and grammars always
recognize a neuter gender,
neither male nor female. The Mind
or intelligence of production
names the female gender last in
the ascending order of creation.
The intelligent individual idea,
be it male or female, rising from
the lesser to the greater,
unfolds the infinitude of
Love.
Genesis i. 13. And the
evening and the morning were the
third day.
The third stage in the order
of Christian Science is an
important one to the human
thought, letting in the light of
spiritual understanding. This
period corresponds to the
resurrection, when Spirit is
discerned to be the Life of all,
and the deathless Life, or Mind,
dependent upon no material
organization. Our Master
reappeared to his students,
— to their apprehension he
rose from the grave, — on
the third day of his ascending
thought, and so presented to them
the certain sense of eternal
Life.
Genesis i. 14. And God
said, Let there be lights in the
firmament of the heaven, to
divide the day from the night;
and let them be for signs, and
for seasons, and for days, and
years.
Spirit creates no other than
heavenly or celestial bodies, but
the stellar universe is no more
celestial than our earth. This
text gives the idea of the
rarefaction of thought as it
ascends higher. God forms and
peoples the universe. The light
of spiritual understanding gives
gleams of the infinite only, even
as nebulae indicate the immensity
of space.
So-called mineral, vegetable,
and animal substances are no more
contingent now on time or
material structure than they were
when "the morning stars sang
together." Mind made the "plant
of the field before it was in the
earth." The periods of spiritual
ascension are the days and
seasons of Mind's creation, in
which beauty, sublimity, purity,
and holiness — yea, the
divine nature — appear in
man and the universe never to
disappear.
Knowing the Science of
creation, in which all is Mind
and its ideas, Jesus rebuked the
material thought of his
fellow-countrymen: "Ye can
discern the face of the sky; but
can ye not discern the signs of
the times?" How much more should
we seek to apprehend the
spiritual ideas of God, than to
dwell on the objects of sense! To
discern the rhythm of Spirit and
to be holy, thought must be
purely spiritual.
Genesis i. 15. And let them
be for lights in the firmament of
the heaven, to give light upon
the earth: and it was so.
Truth and Love enlighten the
understanding, in whose "light
shall we see light;" and this
illumination is reflected
spiritually by all who walk in
the light and turn away from a
false material sense.
Genesis i. 16. And God made
two great lights; the greater
light to rule the day, and the
lesser light to rule the night:
He made the stars also.
The sun is a metaphorical
representation of Soul outside
the body, giving existence and
intelligence to the universe.
Love alone can impart the
limitless idea of infinite Mind.
Geology has never explained the
earth's formations; it cannot
explain them. There is no
Scriptural allusion to solar
light until time has been already
divided into evening and morning;
and the allusion to fluids
(Genesis i. 2) indicates a
supposed formation of matter by
the resolving of fluids into
solids, analogous to the
suppositional resolving of
thoughts into material
things.
Light is a symbol of Mind, of
Life, Truth, and Love, and not a
vitalizing property of matter.
Science reveals only one Mind,
and this one shining by its own
light and governing the universe,
including man, in perfect
harmony. This Mind forms ideas,
its own images, subdivides and
radiates their borrowed light,
intelligence, and so explains the
Scripture phrase, "whose seed is
in itself." Thus God's ideas
"multiply and replenish the
earth." The divine Mind supports
the sublimity, magnitude, and
infinitude of spiritual
creation.
Genesis i. 17, 18. And God
set them in the firmament of the
heaven, to give light upon the
earth, and to rule over the day
and over the night, and to divide
the light from the darkness: and
God saw that it was good.
In divine Science, which is
the seal of Deity and has the
impress of heaven, God is
revealed as infinite light. In
the eternal Mind, no night is
there.
Genesis i. 19. And the
evening and the morning were the
fourth day.
The changing glow and full
effulgence of God's infinite
ideas, images, mark the periods
of progress.
Genesis i. 20. And God
said, Let the waters bring forth
abundantly the moving creature
that hath life, and fowl that may
fly above the earth in the open
firmament of heaven.
To mortal mind, the universe
is liquid, solid, and aeriform.
Spiritually interpreted, rocks
and mountains stand for solid and
grand ideas. Animals and mortals
metaphorically present the
gradation of mortal thought,
rising in the scale of
intelligence, taking form in
masculine, feminine, or neuter
gender. The fowls, which fly
above the earth in the open
firmament of heaven, correspond
to aspirations soaring beyond and
above corporeality to the
understanding of the incorporeal
and divine Principle, Love.
Genesis i. 21. And God
created great whales, and every
living creature that moveth,
which the waters brought forth
abundantly, after their kind, and
every winged fowl after his kind:
and God saw that it was
good.
Spirit is symbolized by
strength, presence, and power,
and also by holy thoughts, winged
with Love. These angels of His
presence, which have the holiest
charge, abound in the spiritual
atmosphere of Mind, and
consequently reproduce their own
characteristics. Their individual
forms we know not, but we do know
that their natures are allied to
God's nature; and spiritual
blessings, thus typified, are the
externalized, yet subjective,
states of faith and spiritual
understanding.
Genesis i. 22. And God
blessed them, saying, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and fill
the waters in the seas; and let
fowl multiply in the
earth.
Spirit blesses the
multiplication of its own pure
and perfect ideas. From the
infinite elements of the one Mind
emanate all form, color, quality,
and quantity, and these are
mental, both primarily and
secondarily. Their spiritual
nature is discerned only through
the spiritual senses. Mortal mind
inverts the true likeness, and
confers animal names and natures
upon its own misconceptions.
Ignorant of the origin and
operations of mortal mind, —
that is, ignorant of itself,
— this so-called mind puts
forth its own qualities, and
claims God as their author;
albeit God is ignorant of the
existence of both this mortal
mentality, so-called, and its
claim, for the claim usurps the
deific prerogatives and is an
attempted infringement on
infinity.
Genesis i. 23. And the
evening and the morning were the
fifth day.
Advancing spiritual steps in
the teeming universe of Mind lead
on to spiritual spheres and
exalted beings. To material
sense, this divine universe is
dim and distant, gray in the
sombre hues of twilight; but anon
the veil is lifted, and the scene
shifts into light. In the record,
time is not yet measured by solar
revolutions, and the motions and
reflections of deific power
cannot be apprehended until
divine Science becomes the
interpreter.
Genesis i. 24. And God
said, Let the earth bring forth
the living creature after his
kind, cattle, and creeping thing,
and beast of the earth after his
kind: and it was so.
Spirit diversifies,
classifies, and individualizes
all thoughts, which are as
eternal as the Mind conceiving
them; but the intelligence,
existence, and continuity of all
individuality remain in God, who
is the divinely creative
Principle thereof.
Genesis i. 25. And God made
the beast of the earth after his
kind, and cattle after their
kind, and everything that
creepeth upon the earth after his
kind: and God saw that it was
good.
God creates all forms of
reality. His thoughts are
spiritual realities. So-called
mortal mind — being
nonexistent and consequently not
within the range of immortal
existence — could not by
simulating deific power invert
the divine creation, and
afterwards recreate persons or
things upon its own plane, since
nothing exists beyond the range
of all-inclusive infinity, in
which and of which God is the
sole creator. Mind, joyous in
strength, dwells in the realm of
Mind. Mind's infinite ideas run
and disport themselves. In
humility they climb the heights
of holiness.
Moral courage is "the lion of
the tribe of Juda," the king of
the mental realm. Free and
fearless it roams in the forest.
Undisturbed it lies in the open
field, or rests in "green
pastures, . . . beside the still
waters." In the figurative
transmission from the divine
thought to the human, diligence,
promptness, and perseverance are
likened to "the cattle upon a
thousand hills." They carry the
baggage of stern resolve, and
keep pace with highest purpose.
Tenderness accompanies all the
might imparted by Spirit. The
individuality created by God is
not carnivorous, as witness the
millennial estate pictured by
Isaiah: —
The wolf also shall dwell with
the lamb, And the leopard shall
lie down with the kid; And the
calf and the young lion, and the
fatling together; And a little
child shall lead them.
Understanding the control
which Love held over all, Daniel
felt safe in the lions' den, and
Paul proved the viper to be
harmless. All of God's creatures,
moving in the harmony of Science,
are harmless, useful,
indestructible. A realization of
this grand verity was a source of
strength to the ancient worthies.
It supports Christian healing,
and enables its possessor to
emulate the example of Jesus.
"And God saw that it was
good."
Patience is symbolized by the
tireless worm, creeping over
lofty summits, persevering in its
intent. The serpent of God's
creating is neither subtle nor
poisonous, but is a wise idea,
charming in its adroitness, for
Love's ideas are subject to the
Mind which forms them, — the
power which changeth the serpent
into a staff.
Genesis i. 26. And God
said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness; and
let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the
fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth,
and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the
earth.
The eternal Elohim includes
the forever universe. The name
Elohim is in the plural, but this
plurality of Spirit does not
imply more than one God, nor does
it imply three persons in one. It
relates to the oneness, the
tri-unity of Life, Truth, and
Love. "Let them have
dominion." Man is the family name
for all ideas, — the sons
and daughters of God. All that
God imparts moves in accord with
Him, reflecting goodness and
power.
Your mirrored reflection is
your own image or likeness. If
you lift a weight, your
reflection does this also. If you
speak, the lips of this likeness
move in accord with yours. Now
compare man before the mirror to
his divine Principle, God. Call
the mirror divine Science, and
call man the reflection. Then
note how true, according to
Christian Science, is the
reflection to its original. As
the reflection of yourself
appears in the mirror, so you,
being spiritual, are the
reflection of God. The substance,
Life, intelligence, Truth, and
Love, which constitute Deity, are
reflected by His creation; and
when we subordinate the false
testimony of the corporeal senses
to the facts of Science, we shall
see this true likeness and
reflection everywhere.
God fashions all things, after
His own likeness. Life is
reflected in existence, Truth in
truthfulness, God in goodness,
which impart their own peace and
permanence. Love, redolent with
unselfishness, bathes all in
beauty and light. The grass
beneath our feet silently
exclaims, "The meek shall inherit
the earth." The modest arbutus
sends her sweet breath to heaven.
The great rock gives shadow and
shelter. The sunlight glints from
the church-dome, glances into the
prison-cell, glides into the
sick-chamber, brightens the
flower, beautifies the landscape,
blesses the earth. Man, made in
His likeness, possesses and
reflects God's dominion over all
the earth. Man and woman as
coexistent and eternal with God
forever reflect, in glorified
quality, the infinite
Father-Mother God.
Genesis i. 27. So God
created man in His own image, in
the image of God created He him;
male and female created He
them.
To emphasize this momentous
thought, it is repeated that God
made man in His own image, to
reflect the divine Spirit. It
follows that man is a
generic term. Masculine,
feminine, and neuter genders are
human concepts. In one of the
ancient languages the word for
man is used also as the
synonym of mind. This
definition has been weakened by
anthropomorphism, or a
humanization of Deity. The word
anthropomorphic, in such a
phrase as "an anthropomorphic
God," is derived from two Greek
words, signifying man and
form, and may be defined
as a mortally mental attempt to
reduce Deity to corporeality. The
life-giving quality of Mind is
Spirit, not matter. The ideal man
corresponds to creation, to
intelligence, and to Truth. The
ideal woman corresponds to Life
and to Love. In divine Science,
we have not as much authority for
considering God masculine, as we
have for considering Him
feminine, for Love imparts the
clearest idea of Deity.
The world believes in many
persons; but if God is personal,
there is but one person, because
there is but one God. His
personality can only be
reflected, not transmitted. God
has countless ideas, and they all
have one Principle and parentage.
The only proper symbol of God as
person is Mind's infinite ideal.
What is this ideal? Who shall
behold it? This ideal is God's
own image, spiritual and
infinite. Even eternity can never
reveal the whole of God, since
there is no limit to infinitude
or to its reflections.
Genesis i. 28. And God
blessed them, and God said unto
them, Be fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the earth, and
subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the
fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the
earth.
Divine Love blesses its own
ideas, and causes them to
multiply, — to manifest His
power. Man is not made to till
the soil. His birthright is
dominion, not subjection. He is
lord of the belief in earth and
heaven, — himself
subordinate alone to his Maker.
This is the Science of being.
Genesis i. 29, 30. And God
said, Behold, I have given you
every herb bearing seed, which is
upon the face of all the earth,
and every tree, in the which is
the fruit of a tree yielding
seed; to you it shall be for
meat. And to every beast of the
earth, and to every fowl of the
air, and to everything that
creepeth upon the earth, wherein
there is life, I have given every
green herb for meat: and it was
so.
God gives the lesser idea of
Himself for a link to the
greater, and in return, the
higher always protects the lower.
The rich in spirit help the poor
in one grand brotherhood, all
having the same Principle, or
Father; and blessed is that man
who seeth his brother's need and
supplieth it, seeking his own in
another's good. Love giveth to
the least spiritual idea might,
immortality, and goodness, which
shine through all as the blossom
shines through the bud. All the
varied expressions of God reflect
health, holiness, immortality
— infinite Life, Truth, and
Love.
Genesis i. 31. And God saw
everything that He had made, and,
behold, it was very good. And the
evening and the morning were the
sixth day.
The divine Principle, or
Spirit, comprehends and expresses
all, and all must therefore be as
perfect as the divine Principle
is perfect. Nothing is new to
Spirit. Nothing can be novel to
eternal Mind, the author of all
things, who from all eternity
knoweth His own ideas. Deity was
satisfied with His work. How
could He be otherwise, since the
spiritual creation was the
outgrowth, the emanation, of His
infinite self-containment and
immortal wisdom?
Genesis ii. 1. Thus the
heavens and the earth were
finished, and all the host of
them.
Thus the ideas of God in
universal being are complete and
forever expressed, for Science
reveals infinity and the
fatherhood and motherhood of
Love. Human capacity is slow to
discern and to grasp God's
creation and the divine power and
presence which go with it,
demonstrating its spiritual
origin. Mortals can never know
the infinite, until they throw
off the old man and reach the
spiritual image and likeness.
What can fathom infinity! How
shall we declare Him, till, in
the language of the apostle, "we
all come in the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, unto a perfect
man, unto the measure of the
stature of the fulness of
Christ"?
Genesis ii. 2. And on the
seventh day God ended His work
which He had made; and He rested
on the seventh day from all His
work which He had made.
God rests in action. Imparting
has not impoverished, can never
impoverish, the divine Mind. No
exhaustion follows the action of
this Mind, according to the
apprehension of divine Science.
The highest and sweetest rest,
even from a human standpoint, is
in holy work.
Unfathomable Mind is
expressed. The depth, breadth,
height, might, majesty, and glory
of infinite Love fill all space.
That is enough! Human language
can repeat only an infinitesimal
part of what exists. The absolute
ideal, man, is no more seen nor
comprehended by mortals, than is
his infinite Principle, Love.
Principle and its idea, man, are
coexistent and eternal. The
numerals of infinity, called
seven days, can never be
reckoned according to the
calendar of time. These days will
appear as mortality disappears,
and they will reveal eternity,
newness of Life, in which all
sense of error forever disappears
and thought accepts the divine
infinite calculus.
Genesis ii. 4, 5. These are
the generations of the heavens
and of the earth when they were
created, in the day that the Lord
God [Jehovah] made the
earth and the heavens, and every
plant of the field before it was
in the earth, and every herb of
the field before it grew: for the
Lord God [Jehovah] had
not caused it to rain upon the
earth, and there was not a man to
till the ground.
Here is the emphatic
declaration that God creates all
through Mind, not through matter,
— that the plant grows, not
because of seed or soil, but
because growth is the eternal
mandate of Mind. Mortal thought
drops into the ground, but the
immortal creating thought is from
above, not from beneath. Because
Mind makes all, there is nothing
left to be made by a lower power.
Spirit acts through the Science
of Mind, never causing man to
till the ground, but making him
superior to the soil. Knowledge
of this lifts man above the sod,
above earth and its environments,
to conscious spiritual harmony
and eternal being.
Here the inspired record
closes its narrative of being
that is without beginning or end.
All that is made is the work of
God, and all is good. We leave
this brief, glorious history of
spiritual creation (as stated in
the first chapter of Genesis) in
the hands of God, not of man, in
the keeping of Spirit, not
matter, — joyfully
acknowledging now and forever
God's supremacy, omnipotence, and
omnipresence.
The harmony and immortality of
man are intact. We should look
away from the opposite
supposition that man is created
materially, and turn our gaze to
the spiritual record of creation,
to that which should be engraved
on the understanding and heart
"with the point of a diamond" and
the pen of an angel.
The reader will naturally ask
if there is nothing more about
creation in the book of Genesis.
Indeed there is, but the
continued account is mortal and
material.
Genesis ii. 6. But there
went up a mist from the earth,
and watered the whole face of the
ground.
The Science and truth of the
divine creation have been
presented in the verses already
considered, and now the opposite
error, a material view of
creation, is to be set forth. The
second chapter of Genesis
contains a statement of this
material view of God and the
universe, a statement which is
the exact opposite of scientific
truth as before recorded. The
history of error or matter, if
veritable, would set aside the
omnipotence of Spirit; but it is
the false history in
contradistinction to the
true.
The Science of the first
record proves the falsity of the
second. If one is true, the other
is false, for they are
antagonistic. The first record
assigns all might and government
to God, and endows man out of
God's perfection and power. The
second record chronicles man as
mutable and mortal, — as
having broken away from Deity and
as revolving in an orbit of his
own. Existence, separate from
divinity, Science explains as
impossible.
This second record
unmistakably gives the history of
error in its externalized forms,
called life and intelligence in
matter. It records pantheism,
opposed to the supremacy of
divine Spirit; but this state of
things is declared to be
temporary and this man to be
mortal, — dust returning to
dust.
In this erroneous theory,
matter takes the place of Spirit.
Matter is represented as the
life-giving principle of the
earth. Spirit is represented as
entering matter in order to
create man. God's glowing
denunciations of man when not
found in His image, the likeness
of Spirit, convince reason and
coincide with revelation in
declaring this material creation
false.
This latter part of the second
chapter of Genesis, which
portrays Spirit as supposedly
cooperating with matter in
constructing the universe, is
based on some hypothesis of
error, for the Scripture just
preceding declares God's work to
be finished. Does Life, Truth,
and Love produce death, error,
and hatred? Does the creator
condemn His own creation? Does
the unerring Principle of divine
law change or repent? It cannot
be so. Yet one might so judge
from an unintelligent perusal of
the Scriptural account now under
comment.
Because of its false basis,
the mist of obscurity evolved by
error deepens the false claim,
and finally declares that God
knows error and that error can
improve His creation. Although
presenting the exact opposite of
Truth, the lie claims to be
truth. The creations of matter
arise from a mist or false claim,
or from mystification, and not
from the firmament, or
understanding, which God erects
between the true and false. In
error everything comes from
beneath, not from above. All is
material myth, instead of the
reflection of Spirit.
It may be worth while here to
remark that, according to the
best scholars, there are clear
evidences of two distinct
documents in the early part of
the book of Genesis. One is
called the Elohistic, because the
Supreme Being is therein called
Elohim. The other document is
called the Jehovistic, because
Deity therein is always called
Jehovah, — or Lord God, as
our common version translates
it.
Throughout the first chapter
of Genesis and in three verses of
the second, — in what we
understand to be the spiritually
scientific account of creation,
— it is Elohim (God) who
creates. From the fourth verse of
chapter two to chapter five, the
creator is called Jehovah, or the
Lord. The different accounts
become more and more closely
intertwined to the end of chapter
twelve, after which the
distinction is not definitely
traceable. In the historic parts
of the Old Testament, it is
usually Jehovah, peculiarly the
divine sovereign of the Hebrew
people, who is referred to.
The idolatry which followed
this material mythology is seen
in the Phoenician worship of
Baal, in the Moabitish god
Chemosh, in the Moloch of the
Amorites, in the Hindoo Vishnu,
in the Greek Aphrodite, and in a
thousand other so-called
deities.
It was also found among the
Israelites, who constantly went
after "strange gods." They called
the Supreme Being by the national
name of Jehovah. In that name of
Jehovah, the true idea of God
seems almost lost. God becomes "a
man of war," a tribal god to be
worshipped, rather than Love, the
divine Principle to be lived and
loved.
Genesis ii. 7. And the Lord
God [Jehovah] formed man
of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a
living soul.
Did the divine and infinite
Principle become a finite deity,
that He should now be called
Jehovah? With a single command,
Mind had made man, both male and
female. How then could a material
organization become the basis of
man? How could the
non-intelligent become the medium
of Mind, and error be the
enunciator of Truth? Matter is
not the reflection of Spirit, yet
God is reflected in all His
creation. Is this addition to His
creation real or unreal? Is it
the truth, or is it a lie
concerning man and God?
It must be a lie, for God
presently curses the ground.
Could Spirit evolve its opposite,
matter, and give matter ability
to sin and suffer? Is Spirit,
God, injected into dust, and
eventually ejected at the demand
of matter? Does Spirit enter
dust, and lose therein the divine
nature and omnipotence? Does
Mind, God, enter matter to become
there a mortal sinner, animated
by the breath of God? In this
narrative, the validity of matter
is opposed, not the validity of
Spirit or Spirit's creations. Man
reflects God; mankind
represents the Adamic race, and
is a human, not a divine,
creation.
The following are some of the
equivalents of the term
man in different
languages. In the Saxon,
mankind, a woman, any
one; in the Welsh, that
which rises up, —
the primary sense being image,
form; in the Hebrew,
image, similitude; in the
Icelandic, mind. The
following translation is from the
Icelandic: —
And God said, Let us make man
after our mind and our likeness;
and God shaped man after His
mind; after God's mind shaped He
him; and He shaped them male and
female.
In the Gospel of John, it is
declared that all things were
made through the Word of God,
"and without Him [the
logos, or word]
was not anything made that was
made." Everything good or worthy,
God made. Whatever is valueless
or baneful, He did not make,
— hence its unreality. In
the Science of Genesis we read
that He saw everything which He
had made, "and, behold, it was
very good." The corporeal senses
declare otherwise; and if we give
the same heed to the history of
error as to the records of truth,
the Scriptural record of sin and
death favors the false conclusion
of the material senses. Sin,
sickness, and death must be
deemed as devoid of reality as
they are of good, God.
Genesis ii. 9. And out of
the ground made the Lord God
[Jehovah] to grow every
tree that is pleasant to the
sight, and good for food; the
tree of life also, in the midst
of the garden, and the tree of
knowledge of good and
evil.
The previous and more
scientific record of creation
declares that God made "every
plant of the field before it was
in the earth." This opposite
declaration, this statement that
life issues from matter,
contradicts the teaching of the
first chapter, — namely,
that all Life is God. Belief is
less than understanding. Belief
involves theories of material
hearing, sight, touch, taste, and
smell, termed the five senses.
The appetites and passions, sin,
sickness, and death, follow in
the train of this error of a
belief in intelligent matter.
The first mention of evil is
in the legendary Scriptural text
in the second chapter of Genesis.
God pronounced good all that He
created, and the Scriptures
declare that He created all. The
"tree of life" stands for the
idea of Truth, and the sword
which guards it is the type of
divine Science. The "tree of
knowledge" stands for the
erroneous doctrine that the
knowledge of evil is as real,
hence as God-bestowed, as the
knowledge of good. Was evil
instituted through God, Love? Did
He create this fruit-bearer of
sin in contradiction of the first
creation? This second biblical
account is a picture of error
throughout.
Genesis ii. 15. And the
Lord God [Jehovah] took
the man, and put him into the
garden of Eden, to dress it and
to keep it.
The name Eden, according to
Cruden, means pleasure,
delight. In this text Eden
stands for the mortal, material
body. God could not put Mind into
matter nor infinite Spirit into
finite form to dress it and keep
it, — to make it beautiful
or to cause it to live and grow.
Man is God's reflection, needing
no cultivation, but ever
beautiful and complete.
Genesis ii. 16, 17. And the
Lord God [Jehovah]
commanded the man, saying, Of
every tree of the garden thou
mayest freely eat: but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it:
for in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely
die.
Here the metaphor represents
God, Love, as tempting man, but
the Apostle James says: "God
cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempteth He any man." It
is true that a knowledge of evil
would make man mortal. It is
plain also that material
perception, gathered from the
corporeal senses, constitutes
evil and mortal knowledge. But is
it true that God, good, made "the
tree of life" to be the tree of
death to His own creation? Has
evil the reality of good? Evil is
unreal because it is a lie,
— false in every
statement.
Genesis ii. 19. And out of
the ground the Lord God
[Jehovah] formed every
beast of the field, and every
fowl of the air; and brought them
unto Adam to see what he would
call them: and whatsoever Adam
called every living creature,
that was the name
thereof.
Here the lie represents God as
repeating creation, but doing so
materially, not spiritually, and
asking a prospective sinner to
help Him. Is the Supreme Being
retrograding, and is man giving
up his dignity? Was it requisite
for the formation of man that
dust should become sentient, when
all being is the reflection of
the eternal Mind, and the record
declares that God has already
created man, both male and
female? That Adam gave the name
and nature of animals, is solely
mythological and material. It
cannot be true that man was
ordered to create man anew in
partnership with God; this
supposition was a dream, a
myth.
Genesis ii. 21, 22. And the
Lord God [Jehovah, Yawah]
caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam, and he slept: and He took
one of his ribs, and closed up
the flesh instead thereof; and
the rib, which the Lord God
[Jehovah] had taken from
man, made He a woman, and brought
her unto the man.
Here falsity, error, credits
Truth, God, with inducing a sleep
or hypnotic state in Adam in
order to perform a surgical
operation on him and thereby
create woman. This is the first
record of magnetism. Beginning
creation with darkness instead of
light, — materially rather
than spiritually, — error
now simulates the work of Truth,
mocking Love and declaring what
great things error has done.
Beholding the creations of his
own dream and calling them real
and God-given, Adam —
alias error — gives
them names. Afterwards he is
supposed to become the basis of
the creation of woman and of his
own kind, calling them
mankind, — that is, a
kind of man.
But according to this
narrative, surgery was first
performed mentally and without
instruments; and this may be a
useful hint to the medical
faculty. Later in human history,
when the forbidden fruit was
bringing forth fruit of its own
kind, there came a suggestion of
change in the modus
operandi, — that man
should be born of woman, not
woman again taken from man. It
came about, also, that
instruments were needed to assist
the birth of mortals. The first
system of suggestive obstetrics
has changed. Another change will
come as to the nature and origin
of man, and this revelation will
destroy the dream of
existence, reinstate reality,
usher in Science and the glorious
fact of creation, that both man
and woman proceed from God and
are His eternal children,
belonging to no lesser
parent.
Genesis iii. 1-3. Now the
serpent was more subtle than any
beast of the field which the Lord
God [Jehovah] had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea,
hath God said, Ye shall not eat
of every tree of the garden? And
the woman said unto the serpent,
We may eat of the fruit of the
trees of the garden: but of the
fruit of the tree which is in the
midst of the garden, God hath
said, Ye shall not eat of it,
neither shall ye touch it, lest
ye die.
Whence comes a talking, lying
serpent to tempt the children of
divine Love? The serpent enters
into the metaphor only as evil.
We have nothing in the animal
kingdom which represents the
species described, — a
talking serpent, — and
should rejoice that evil, by
whatever figure presented,
contradicts itself and has
neither origin nor support in
Truth and good. Seeing this, we
should have faith to fight all
claims of evil, because we know
that they are worthless and
unreal.
Adam, the synonym for error,
stands for a belief of material
mind. He begins his reign over
man somewhat mildly, but he
increases in falsehood and his
days become shorter. In this
development, the immortal,
spiritual law of Truth is made
manifest as forever opposed to
mortal, material sense.
In divine Science, man is
sustained by God, the divine
Principle of being. The earth, at
God's command, brings forth food
for man's use. Knowing this,
Jesus once said, "Take no thought
for your life, what ye shall eat,
or what ye shall drink," —
presuming not on the prerogative
of his creator, but recognizing
God, the Father and Mother of
all, as able to feed and clothe
man as He doth the lilies.
Genesis iii. 4, 5. And the
serpent said unto the woman, Ye
shall not surely die: for God
doth know that in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes shall be
opened; and ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil.
This myth represents error as
always asserting its superiority
over truth, giving the lie to
divine Science and saying,
through the material senses: "I
can open your eyes. I can do what
God has not done for you. Bow
down to me and have another god.
Only admit that I am real, that
sin and sense are more pleasant
to the eyes than spiritual Life,
more to be desired than Truth,
and I shall know you, and you
will be mine." Thus Spirit and
flesh war.
The history of error is a
dream-narrative. The dream has no
reality, no intelligence, no
mind; therefore the dreamer and
dream are one, for neither is
true nor real. First, this
narrative supposes that something
springs from nothing, that matter
precedes mind. Second, it
supposes that mind enters matter,
and matter becomes living,
substantial, and intelligent. The
order of this allegory — the
belief that everything springs
from dust instead of from Deity
— has been maintained in all
the subsequent forms of belief.
This is the error, — that
mortal man starts materially,
that non-intelligence becomes
intelligence, that mind and soul
are both right and wrong.
It is well that the upper
portions of the brain represent
the higher moral sentiments, as
if hope were ever prophesying
thus: The human mind will
sometime rise above all material
and physical sense, exchanging it
for spiritual perception, and
exchanging human concepts for the
divine consciousness. Then man
will recognize his God-given
dominion and being.
If, in the beginning, man's
body originated in
non-intelligent dust, and mind
was afterwards put into body by
the creator, why is not this
divine order still maintained by
God in perpetuating the species?
Who will say that minerals,
vegetables, and animals have a
propagating property of their
own? Who dares to say either that
God is in matter or that matter
exists without God? Has man
sought out other creative
inventions, and so changed the
method of his Maker?
Which institutes Life, —
matter or Mind? Does Life begin
with Mind or with matter? Is Life
sustained by matter or by Spirit?
Certainly not by both, since
flesh wars against Spirit and the
corporeal senses can take no
cognizance of Spirit. The
mythologic theory of material
life at no point resembles the
scientifically Christian record
of man as created by Mind in the
image and likeness of God and
having dominion over all the
earth. Did God at first create
one man unaided, — that is,
Adam, — but afterwards
require the union of the two
sexes in order to create the rest
of the human family? No! God
makes and governs all.
All human knowledge and
material sense must be gained
from the five corporeal senses.
Is this knowledge safe, when
eating its first fruits brought
death? "In the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die," was the prediction in the
story under consideration. Adam
and his progeny were cursed, not
blessed; and this indicates that
the divine Spirit, or Father,
condemns material man and remands
him to dust.
Genesis iii. 9, 10. And the
Lord God [Jehovah] called
unto Adam, and said unto him,
Where art thou? And he said, I
heard Thy voice in the garden,
and I was afraid, because I was
naked; and I hid myself.
Knowledge and pleasure,
evolved through material sense,
produced the immediate fruits of
fear and shame. Ashamed before
Truth, error shrank abashed from
the divine voice calling out to
the corporeal senses. Its summons
may be thus paraphrased: "Where
art thou, man? Is Mind in matter?
Is Mind capable of error as well
as of truth, of evil as well as
of good, when God is All and He
is Mind and there is but one God,
hence one Mind?"
Fear was the first
manifestation of the error of
material sense. Thus error began
and will end the dream of matter.
In the allegory the body had been
naked, and Adam knew it not; but
now error demands that
mind shall see and feel
through matter, the five senses.
The first impression material man
had of himself was one of
nakedness and shame. Had he lost
man's rich inheritance and God's
behest, dominion over all the
earth? No! This had never been
bestowed on Adam.
Genesis iii. 11, 12. And He
said, Who told thee that thou
wast naked? Hast thou eaten of
the tree, whereof I commanded
thee that thou shouldst not eat?
And the man said, The woman whom
Thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me of the tree, and I did
eat.
Here there is an attempt to
trace all human errors directly
or indirectly to God, or good, as
if He were the creator of evil.
The allegory shows that the
snake-talker utters the first
voluble lie, which beguiles the
woman and demoralizes the man.
Adam, alias mortal error,
charges God and woman with his
own dereliction, saying, "The
woman, whom Thou gavest me, is
responsible." According to this
belief, the rib taken from Adam's
side has grown into an evil mind,
named woman, who aids man
to make sinners more rapidly than
he can alone. Is this an help
meet for man?
Materiality, so obnoxious to
God, is already found in the
rapid deterioration of the bone
and flesh which came from Adam to
form Eve. The belief in material
life and intelligence is growing
worse at every step, but error
has its suppositional day and
multiplies until the end
thereof.
Truth, cross-questioning man
as to his knowledge of error,
finds woman the first to confess
her fault. She says, "The serpent
beguiled me, and I did eat;" as
much as to say in meek penitence,
"Neither man nor God shall father
my fault." She has already
learned that corporeal sense is
the serpent. Hence she is first
to abandon the belief in the
material origin of man and to
discern spiritual creation. This
hereafter enabled woman to be the
mother of Jesus and to behold at
the sepulchre the risen Saviour,
who was soon to manifest the
deathless man of God's creating.
This enabled woman to be first to
interpret the Scriptures in their
true sense, which reveals the
spiritual origin of man.
Genesis iii. 14, 15. And
the Lord God [Jehovah]
said unto the serpent, . . . I
will put enmity between thee and
the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed; it shall bruise thy
head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel.
This prophecy has been
fulfilled. The Son of the
Virgin-mother unfolded the remedy
for Adam, or error; and the
Apostle Paul explains this
warfare between the idea of
divine power, which Jesus
presented, and mythological
material intelligence called
energy and opposed to
Spirit.
Paul says in his epistle to
the Romans: "The carnal mind is
enmity against God; for it is not
subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be. So then
they that are in the flesh cannot
please God. But ye are not in the
flesh, but in the Spirit, if so
be that the spirit of God dwell
in you."
There will be greater mental
opposition to the spiritual,
scientific meaning of the
Scriptures than there has ever
been since the Christian era
began. The serpent, material
sense, will bite the heel of the
woman, — will struggle to
destroy the spiritual idea of
Love; and the woman, this idea,
will bruise the head of lust. The
spiritual idea has given the
understanding a foothold in
Christian Science. The seed of
Truth and the seed of error, of
belief and of understanding,
— yea, the seed of Spirit
and the seed of matter, —
are the wheat and tares which
time will separate, the one to be
burned, the other to be garnered
into heavenly places.
Genesis iii. 16. Unto the
woman He said, I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception: in sorrow thou shalt
bring forth children; and thy
desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over
thee.
Divine Science deals its chief
blow at the supposed material
foundations of life and
intelligence. It dooms idolatry.
A belief in other gods, other
creators, and other creations
must go down before Christian
Science. It unveils the results
of sin as shown in sickness and
death. When will man pass through
the open gate of Christian
Science into the heaven of Soul,
into the heritage of the first
born among men? Truth is indeed
"the way."
Genesis iii. 17-19. And
unto Adam He said, Because thou
hast hearkened unto the voice of
thy wife, and hast eaten of the
tree of which I commanded thee,
saying, Thou shalt not eat of it:
cursed is the ground for thy
sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of
it all the days of thy life:
thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee; and thou
shalt eat the herb of the field:
in the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread, till thou return
unto the ground; for out of it
wast thou taken: for dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou
return.
In the first chapter of
Genesis we read: "And God called
the dry land Earth; and the
gathering together of the waters
called He Seas." In the
Apocalypse it is written: "And I
saw a new heaven and a new earth:
for the first heaven and the
first earth were passed away; and
there was no more sea." In St.
John's vision, heaven and earth
stand for spiritual ideas, and
the sea, as a symbol of
tempest-tossed human concepts
advancing and receding, is
represented as having passed
away. The divine understanding
reigns, is all, and there
is no other consciousness.
The way of error is awful to
contemplate. The illusion of sin
is without hope or God. If man's
spiritual gravitation and
attraction to one Father, in whom
we "live, and move, and have our
being," should be lost, and if
man should be governed by
corporeality instead of divine
Principle, by body instead of by
Soul, man would be annihilated.
Created by flesh instead of by
Spirit, starting from matter
instead of from God, mortal man
would be governed by himself. The
blind leading the blind, both
would fall.
Passions and appetites must
end in pain. They are "of few
days, and full of trouble." Their
supposed joys are cheats. Their
narrow limits belittle their
gratifications, and hedge about
their achievements with
thorns.
Mortal mind accepts the
erroneous, material conception of
life and joy, but the true idea
is gained from the immortal side.
Through toil, struggle, and
sorrow, what do mortals attain?
They give up their belief in
perishable life and happiness;
the mortal and material return to
dust, and the immortal is
reached.
Genesis iii. 22-24. And the
Lord God [Jehovah] said,
Behold, the man is become as one
of us, to know good and evil: and
now, lest he put forth his hand,
and take also of the tree of
life, and eat, and live forever;
therefore the Lord God
[Jehovah] sent him forth
from the garden of Eden, to till
the ground from whence he was
taken. So He drove out the man:
and He placed at the east of the
garden of Eden Cherubims, and a
flaming sword which turned every
way, to keep the way of the tree
of life.
A knowledge of evil was never
the essence of divinity or
manhood. In the first chapter of
Genesis, evil has no local
habitation nor name. Creation is
there represented as spiritual,
entire, and good. "Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also
reap." Error excludes itself from
harmony. Sin is its own
punishment. Truth guards the
gateway to harmony. Error tills
its own barren soil and buries
itself in the ground, since
ground and dust stand for
nothingness.
No one can reasonably doubt
that the purpose of this allegory
— this second account in
Genesis — is to depict the
falsity of error and the effects
of error. Subsequent Bible
revelation is coordinate with the
Science of creation recorded in
the first chapter of Genesis.
Inspired writers interpret the
Word spiritually, while the
ordinary historian interprets it
literally. Literally taken, the
text is made to appear
contradictory in some places, and
divine Love, which blessed the
earth and gave it to man for a
possession, is represented as
changeable. The literal meaning
would imply that God withheld
from man the opportunity to
reform, lest man should improve
it and become better; but this is
not the nature of God, who is
Love always, — Love
infinitely wise and altogether
lovely, who "seeketh not her
own."
Truth should, and does, drive
error out of all selfhood. Truth
is a two-edged sword, guarding
and guiding. Truth places the
cherub wisdom at the gate of
understanding to note the proper
guests. Radiant with mercy and
justice, the sword of Truth
gleams afar and indicates the
infinite distance between Truth
and error, between the material
and spiritual, — the unreal
and the real.
The sun, giving light and heat
to the earth, is a figure of
divine Life and Love,
enlightening and sustaining the
universe. The "tree of life" is
significant of eternal reality or
being. The "tree of knowledge"
typifies unreality. The testimony
of the serpent is significant of
the illusion of error, of the
false claims that misrepresent
God, good. Sin, sickness, and
death have no record in the
Elohistic introduction of
Genesis, in which God creates the
heavens, earth, and man. Until
that which contradicts the truth
of being enters into the arena,
evil has no history, and evil is
brought into view only as the
unreal in contradistinction to
the real and eternal.
Genesis iv. 1. And Adam
knew Eve his wife; and she
conceived, and bare Cain, and
said, I have gotten a man from
the Lord
[Jehovah].
This account is given, not of
immortal man, but of mortal man,
and of sin which is temporal. As
both mortal man and sin have a
beginning, they must consequently
have an end, while the sinless,
real man is eternal. Eve's
declaration, "I have gotten a man
from the Lord," supposes God to
be the author of sin and sin's
progeny. This false sense of
existence is fratricidal. In the
words of Jesus, it (evil, devil)
is "a murderer from the
beginning." Error begins by
reckoning life as separate from
Spirit, thus sapping the
foundations of immortality, as if
life and immortality were
something which matter can both
give and take away.
What can be the standard of
good, of Spirit, of Life, or of
Truth, if they produce their
opposites, such as evil, matter,
error, and death? God could never
impart an element of evil, and
man possesses nothing which he
has not derived from God. How
then has man a basis for
wrong-doing? Whence does he
obtain the propensity or power to
do evil? Has Spirit resigned to
matter the government of the
universe?
The Scriptures declare that
God condemned this lie as to
man's origin and character by
condemning its symbol, the
serpent, to grovel beneath all
the beasts of the field. It is
false to say that Truth and error
commingle in creation. In parable
and argument, this falsity is
exposed by our Master as
self-evidently wrong. Disputing
these points with the Pharisees
and arguing for the Science of
creation, Jesus said: "Do men
gather grapes of thorns?" Paul
asked: "What communion hath light
with darkness? And what concord
hath Christ with Belial?"
The divine origin of Jesus
gave him more than human power to
expound the facts of creation,
and demonstrate the one Mind
which makes and governs man and
the universe. The Science of
creation, so conspicuous in the
birth of Jesus, inspired his
wisest and least-understood
sayings, and was the basis of his
marvellous demonstrations. Christ
is the offspring of Spirit, and
spiritual existence shows that
Spirit creates neither a wicked
nor a mortal man, lapsing into
sin, sickness, and death.
In Isaiah we read: "I make
peace, and create evil. I the
Lord do all these things;" but
the prophet referred to divine
law as stirring up the belief in
evil to its utmost, when bringing
it to the surface and reducing it
to its common denominator,
nothingness. The muddy river-bed
must be stirred in order to
purify the stream. In moral
chemicalization, when the
symptoms of evil, illusion, are
aggravated, we may think in our
ignorance that the Lord hath
wrought an evil; but we ought to
know that God's law uncovers
so-called sin and its effects,
only that Truth may annihilate
all sense of evil and all power
to sin.
Science renders "unto Caesar
the things which are Caesar's;
and unto God the things that are
God's." It saith to the human
sense of sin, sickness, and
death, "God never made you, and
you are a false sense which hath
no knowledge of God." The purpose
of the Hebrew allegory,
representing error as assuming a
divine character, is to teach
mortals never to believe a
lie.
Genesis iv. 3, 4. Cain
brought of the fruit of the
ground an offering unto the Lord
[Jehovah]. And Abel, he
also brought of the firstlings of
his flock, and of the fat
thereof.
Cain is the type of mortal and
material man, conceived in sin
and "shapen in iniquity;" he is
not the type of Truth and Love.
Material in origin and sense, he
brings a material offering to
God. Abel takes his offering from
the firstlings of the flock. A
lamb is a more animate form of
existence, and more nearly
resembles a mind-offering than
does Cain's fruit. Jealous of his
brother's gift, Cain seeks Abel's
life, instead of making his own
gift a higher tribute to the Most
High.
Genesis iv. 4, 5. And the
Lord [Jehovah] had
respect unto Abel, and to his
offering: but unto Cain, and to
his offering, He had not
respect.
Had God more respect for the
homage bestowed through a gentle
animal than for the worship
expressed by Cain's fruit? No;
but the lamb was a more spiritual
type of even the human concept of
Love than the herbs of the ground
could be.
Genesis iv. 8. Cain rose up
against Abel his brother, and
slew him.
The erroneous belief that
life, substance, and intelligence
can be material ruptures the life
and brotherhood of man at the
very outset.
Genesis iv. 9. And the Lord
[Jehovah] said unto Cain,
Where is Abel thy brother? And he
said, I know not: Am I my
brother's keeper?
Here the serpentine lie
invents new forms. At first it
usurps divine power. It is
supposed to say in the first
instance, "Ye shall be as gods."
Now it repudiates even the human
duty of man towards his
brother.
Genesis iv. 10, 11. And He
[Jehovah] said, . . . The
voice of thy brother's blood
crieth unto Me from the ground.
And now art thou cursed from the
earth.
The belief of life in matter
sins at every step. It incurs
divine displeasure, and it would
kill Jesus that it might be rid
of troublesome Truth. Material
beliefs would slay the spiritual
idea whenever and wherever it
appears. Though error hides
behind a lie and excuses guilt,
error cannot forever be
concealed. Truth, through her
eternal laws, unveils error.
Truth causes sin to betray
itself, and sets upon error the
mark of the beast. Even the
disposition to excuse guilt or to
conceal it is punished. The
avoidance of justice and the
denial of truth tend to
perpetuate sin, invoke crime,
jeopardize self-control, and mock
divine mercy.
Genesis iv. 15. And the
Lord [Jehovah] said unto
him, Therefore whosoever slayeth
Cain, vengeance shall be taken on
him sevenfold. And the Lord
[Jehovah] set a mark upon
Cain, lest any finding him should
kill him.
"They that take the sword
shall perish with the sword." Let
Truth uncover and destroy error
in God's own way, and let human
justice pattern the divine. Sin
will receive its full penalty,
both for what it is and for what
it does. Justice marks the
sinner, and teaches mortals not
to remove the waymarks of God. To
envy's own hell, justice consigns
the lie which, to advance itself,
breaks God's commandments.
Genesis iv. 16. And Cain
went out from the presence of the
Lord [Jehovah], and dwelt
in the land of Nod.
The sinful misconception of
Life as something less than God,
having no truth to support it,
falls back upon itself. This
error, after reaching the climax
of suffering, yields to Truth and
returns to dust; but it is only
mortal man and not the real man,
who dies. The image of Spirit
cannot be effaced, since it is
the idea of Truth and changes
not, but becomes more beautifully
apparent at error's demise.
In divine Science, the
material man is shut out from the
presence of God. The five
corporeal senses cannot take
cognizance of Spirit. They cannot
come into His presence, and must
dwell in dreamland, until mortals
arrive at the understanding that
material life, with all its sin,
sickness, and death, is an
illusion, against which divine
Science is engaged in a warfare
of extermination. The great
verities of existence are never
excluded by falsity.
All error proceeds from the
evidence before the material
senses. If man is material and
originates in an egg, who shall
say that he is not primarily
dust? May not Darwin be right in
thinking that apehood preceded
mortal manhood? Minerals and
vegetables are found, according
to divine Science, to be the
creations of erroneous thought,
not of matter. Did man, whom God
created with a word, originate in
an egg? When Spirit made all, did
it leave aught for matter to
create? Ideas of Truth alone are
reflected in the myriad
manifestations of Life, and thus
it is seen that man springs
solely from Mind. The belief that
matter supports life would make
Life, or God, mortal.
The text, "In the day that the
Lord God [Jehovah God]
made the earth and the heavens,"
introduces the record of a
material creation which followed
the spiritual, — a creation
so wholly apart from God's, that
Spirit had no participation in
it. In God's creation ideas
became productive, obedient to
Mind. There was no rain and "not
a man to till the ground." Mind,
instead of matter, being the
producer, Life was
self-sustained. Birth, decay, and
death arise from the material
sense of things, not from the
spiritual, for in the latter Life
consisteth not of the things
which a man eateth. Matter cannot
change the eternal fact that man
exists because God exists.
Nothing is new to the infinite
Mind.
In Science, Mind neither
produces matter nor does matter
produce mind. No mortal mind has
the might or right or wisdom to
create or to destroy. All is
under the control of the one
Mind, even God. The first
statement about evil, — the
first suggestion of more than the
one Mind, — is in the fable
of the serpent. The facts of
creation, as previously recorded,
include nothing of the kind.
The serpent is supposed to
say, "Ye shall be as gods," but
these gods must be evolved from
materiality and be the very
antipodes of immortal and
spiritual being. Man is the
likeness of Spirit, but a
material personality is not this
likeness. Therefore man, in this
allegory, is neither a lesser god
nor the image and likeness of the
one God.
Material, erroneous belief
reverses understanding and truth.
It declares mind to be in and of
matter, so-called mortal life to
be Life, infinity to enter man's
nostrils so that matter becomes
spiritual. Error begins with
corporeality as the producer
instead of divine Principle, and
explains Deity through mortal and
finite conceptions.
"Behold, the man is become as
one of us." This could not be the
utterance of Truth or Science,
for according to the record,
material man was fast
degenerating and never had been
divinely conceived.
The condemnation of mortals to
till the ground means this,
— that mortals should so
improve material belief by
thought tending spiritually
upward as to destroy materiality.
Man, created by God, was given
dominion over the whole earth.
The notion of a material universe
is utterly opposed to the theory
of man as evolved from Mind. Such
fundamental errors send falsity
into all human doctrines and
conclusions, and do not accord
infinity to Deity. Error tills
the whole ground in this material
theory, which is entirely a false
view, destructive to existence
and happiness. Outside of
Christian Science all is vague
and hypothetical, the opposite of
Truth; yet this opposite, in its
false view of God and man,
impudently demands a
blessing.
The translators of this record
of scientific creation
entertained a false sense of
being. They believed in the
existence of matter, its
propagation and power. From that
standpoint of error, they could
not apprehend the nature and
operation of Spirit. Hence the
seeming contradiction in that
Scripture, which is so glorious
in its spiritual signification.
Truth has but one reply to all
error, — to sin, sickness,
and death: "Dust
[nothingness] thou art,
and unto dust
[nothingness] shalt thou
return."
"As in Adam [error]
all die, even so in Christ
[Truth] shall all be made
alive." The mortality of man is a
myth, for man is immortal. The
false belief that spirit is now
submerged in matter, at some
future time to be emancipated
from it, — this belief alone
is mortal. Spirit, God, never
germinates, but is "the same
yesterday, and to-day, and
forever." If Mind, God, creates
error, that error must exist in
the divine Mind, and this
assumption of error would
dethrone the perfection of
Deity.
Is Christian Science
contradictory? Is the divine
Principle of creation misstated?
Has God no Science to declare
Mind, while matter is governed by
unerring intelligence? "There
went up a mist from the earth."
This represents error as starting
from an idea of good on a
material basis. It supposes God
and man to be manifested only
through the corporeal senses,
although the material senses can
take no cognizance of Spirit or
the spiritual idea.
Genesis and the Apocalypse
seem more obscure than other
portions of the Scripture,
because they cannot possibly be
interpreted from a material
standpoint. To the author, they
are transparent, for they contain
the deep divinity of the
Bible.
Christian Science is dawning
upon a material age. The great
spiritual facts of being, like
rays of light, shine in the
darkness, though the darkness,
comprehending them not, may deny
their reality. The proof that the
system stated in this book is
Christianly scientific resides in
the good this system
accomplishes, for it cures on a
divine demonstrable Principle
which all may understand.
If mathematics should present
a thousand different examples of
one rule, the proving of one
example would authenticate all
the others. A simple statement of
Christian Science, if
demonstrated by healing, contains
the proof of all here said of
Christian Science. If one of the
statements in this book is true,
every one must be true, for not
one departs from the stated
system and rule. You can prove
for yourself, dear reader, the
Science of healing, and so
ascertain if the author has given
you the correct interpretation of
Scripture.
The late Louis Agassiz, by his
microscopic examination of a
vulture's ovum, strengthens the
thinker's conclusions as to the
scientific theory of creation.
Agassiz was able to see in the
egg the earth's atmosphere, the
gathering clouds, the moon and
stars, while the germinating
speck of so-called embryonic life
seemed a small sun. In its
history of mortality, Darwin's
theory of evolution from a
material basis is more consistent
than most theories. Briefly, this
is Darwin's theory, — that
Mind produces its opposite,
matter, and endues matter with
power to recreate the universe,
including man. Material evolution
implies that the great First
Cause must become material, and
afterwards must either return to
Mind or go down into dust and
nothingness.
The Scriptures are very
sacred. Our aim must be to have
them understood spiritually, for
only by this understanding can
truth be gained. The true theory
of the universe, including man,
is not in material history but in
spiritual development. Inspired
thought relinquishes a material,
sensual, and mortal theory of the
universe, and adopts the
spiritual and immortal.
It is this spiritual
perception of Scripture, which
lifts humanity out of disease and
death and inspires faith. "The
Spirit and the bride say, Come! .
. . and whosoever will, let him
take the water of life freely."
Christian Science separates error
from truth, and breathes through
the sacred pages the spiritual
sense of life, substance, and
intelligence. In this Science, we
discover man in the image and
likeness of God. We see that man
has never lost his spiritual
estate and his eternal
harmony.
How little light or heat reach
our earth when clouds cover the
sun's face! So Christian Science
can be seen only as the clouds of
corporeal sense roll away. Earth
has little light or joy for
mortals before Life is
spiritually learned. Every agony
of mortal error helps error to
destroy error, and so aids the
apprehension of immortal Truth.
This is the new birth going on
hourly, by which men may
entertain angels, the true ideas
of God, the spiritual sense of
being.
Speaking of the origin of
mortals, a famous naturalist
says: "It is very possible that
many general statements now
current, about birth and
generation, will be changed with
the progress of information." Had
the naturalist, through his
tireless researches, gained the
diviner side in Christian
Science, — so far apart from
his material sense of animal
growth and organization, —
he would have blessed the human
race more abundantly.
Natural history is richly
endowed by the labors and genius
of great men. Modern discoveries
have brought to light important
facts in regard to so-called
embryonic life. Agassiz declares
("Methods of Study in Natural
History," page 275): "Certain
animals, besides the ordinary
process of generation, also
increase their numbers naturally
and constantly by self-division."
This discovery is corroborative
of the Science of Mind, for this
discovery shows that the
multiplication of certain animals
takes place apart from sexual
conditions. The supposition that
life germinates in eggs and must
decay after it has grown to
maturity, if not before, is shown
by divine metaphysics to be a
mistake, — a blunder which
will finally give place to higher
theories and demonstrations.
Creatures of lower forms of
organism are supposed to have, as
classes, three different methods
of reproduction and to multiply
their species sometimes through
eggs, sometimes through buds, and
sometimes through self-division.
According to recent lore,
successive generations do not
begin with the birth of
new individuals, or
personalities, but with the
formation of the nucleus, or egg,
from which one or more
individualities subsequently
emerge; and we must therefore
look upon the simple ovum as the
germ, the starting-point, of the
most complicated corporeal
structures, including those which
we call human. Here these
material researches culminate in
such vague hypotheses as must
necessarily attend false systems,
which rely upon physics and are
devoid of metaphysics.
In one instance a celebrated
naturalist, Agassiz, discovers
the pathway leading to divine
Science, and beards the lion of
materialism in its den. At that
point, however, even this great
observer mistakes nature,
forsakes Spirit as the divine
origin of creative Truth, and
allows matter and material law to
usurp the prerogatives of
omnipotence. He absolutely drops
from his summit, coming down to a
belief in the material origin of
man, for he virtually affirms
that the germ of humanity is in a
circumscribed and non-intelligent
egg.
If this be so, whence cometh
Life, or Mind, to the human race?
Matter surely does not possess
Mind. God is the Life, or
intelligence, which forms and
preserves the individuality and
identity of animals as well as of
men. God cannot become finite,
and be limited within material
bounds. Spirit cannot become
matter, nor can Spirit be
developed through its opposite.
Of what avail is it to
investigate what is miscalled
material life, which ends, even
as it begins, in nameless
nothingness? The true sense of
being and its eternal perfection
should appear now, even as it
will hereafter.
Error of thought is reflected
in error of action. The continual
contemplation of existence as
material and corporeal — as
beginning and ending, and with
birth, decay, and dissolution as
its component stages — hides
the true and spiritual Life, and
causes our standard to trail in
the dust. If Life has any
starting-point whatsoever, then
the great I AM is a myth. If Life
is God, as the Scriptures imply,
then Life is not embryonic, it is
infinite. An egg is an impossible
enclosure for Deity.
Embryology supplies no
instance of one species producing
its opposite. A serpent never
begets a bird, nor does a lion
bring forth a lamb. Amalgamation
is deemed monstrous and is seldom
fruitful, but it is not so
hideous and absurd as the
supposition that Spirit —
the pure and holy, the immutable
and immortal — can originate
the impure and mortal and dwell
in it. As Christian Science
repudiates self-evident
impossibilities, the material
senses must father these
absurdities, for both the
material senses and their reports
are unnatural, impossible, and
unreal.
Either Mind produces, or it is
produced. If Mind is first, it
cannot produce its opposite in
quality and quantity, called
matter. If matter is first, it
cannot produce Mind. Like
produces like. In natural
history, the bird is not the
product of a beast. In spiritual
history, matter is not the
progenitor of Mind.
One distinguished naturalist
argues that mortals spring from
eggs and in races. Mr. Darwin
admits this, but he adds that
mankind has ascended through all
the lower grades of existence.
Evolution describes the
gradations of human belief, but
it does not acknowledge the
method of divine Mind, nor see
that material methods are
impossible in divine Science and
that all Science is of God, not
of man.
Naturalists ask: "What can
there be, of a material nature,
transmitted through these bodies
called eggs, — themselves
composed of the simplest material
elements, — by which all
peculiarities of ancestry,
belonging to either sex, are
brought down from generation to
generation?" The question of the
naturalist amounts to this: How
can matter originate or transmit
mind? We answer that it cannot.
Darkness and doubt encompass
thought, so long as it bases
creation on materiality. From a
material standpoint, "Canst thou
by searching find out God?" All
must be Mind, or else all must be
matter. Neither can produce the
other. Mind is immortal; but
error declares that the material
seed must decay in order to
propagate its species, and the
resulting germ is doomed to the
same routine.
The ancient and hypothetical
question, Which is first, the egg
or the bird? is answered, if the
egg produces the parent. But we
cannot stop here. Another
question follows: Who or what
produces the parent of the egg?
That the earth was hatched from
the "egg of night" was once an
accepted theory. Heathen
philosophy, modern geology, and
all other material hypotheses
deal with causation as contingent
on matter and as necessarily
apparent to the corporeal senses,
even where the proof requisite to
sustain this assumption is
undiscovered. Mortal theories
make friends of sin, sickness,
and death; whereas the spiritual
scientific facts of existence
include no member of this
dolorous and fatal triad.
Human experience in mortal
life, which starts from an egg,
corresponds with that of Job,
when he says, "Man that is born
of a woman is of few days, and
full of trouble." Mortals must
emerge from this notion of
material life as all-in-all. They
must peck open their shells with
Christian Science, and look
outward and upward. But thought,
loosened from a material basis
but not yet instructed by
Science, may become wild with
freedom and so be
self-contradictory.
From a material source flows
no remedy for sorrow, sin, and
death, for the redeeming power,
from the ills they occasion, is
not in egg nor in dust. The
blending tints of leaf and flower
show the order of matter to be
the order of mortal mind. The
intermixture of different
species, urged to its utmost
limits, results in a return to
the original species. Thus it is
learned that matter is a
manifestation of mortal mind, and
that matter always surrenders its
claims when the perfect and
eternal Mind is understood.
Naturalists describe the
origin of mortal and material
existence in the various forms of
embryology, and accompany their
descriptions with important
observations, which should awaken
thought to a higher and purer
contemplation of man's origin.
This clearer consciousness must
precede an understanding of the
harmony of being. Mortal thought
must obtain a better basis, get
nearer the truth of being, or
health will never be universal,
and harmony will never become the
standard of man.
One of our ablest naturalists
has said: "We have no right to
assume that individuals have
grown or been formed under
circumstances which made material
conditions essential to their
maintenance and reproduction, or
important to their origin and
first introduction." Why, then,
is the naturalist's basis so
materialistic, and why are his
deductions generally
material?
Adam was created before Eve.
In this instance, it is seen that
the maternal egg never brought
forth Adam. Eve was formed from
Adam's rib, not from a foetal
ovum. Whatever theory may be
adopted by general mortal thought
to account for human origin, that
theory is sure to become the
signal for the appearance of its
method in finite forms and
operations. If consentaneous
human belief agrees upon an ovum
as the point of emergence for the
human race, this potent belief
will immediately supersede the
more ancient superstition about
the creation from dust or from
the rib of our primeval
father.
You may say that mortals are
formed before they think or know
aught of their origin, and you
may also ask how belief can
affect a result which precedes
the development of that belief.
It can only be replied, that
Christian Science reveals what
"eye hath not seen," — even
the cause of all that exists,
— for the universe,
inclusive of man, is as eternal
as God, who is its divine
immortal Principle. There is no
such thing as mortality, nor are
there properly any mortal beings,
because being is immortal, like
Deity, — or, rather, being
and Deity are inseparable.
Error is always error. It is
no thing. Any statement of
life, following from a
misconception of life, is
erroneous, because it is
destitute of any knowledge of the
so-called selfhood of life,
destitute of any knowledge of its
origin or existence. The mortal
is unconscious of his foetal and
infantile existence; but as he
grows up into another false
claim, that of self-conscious
matter, he learns to say, "I am
somebody; but who made me?" Error
replies, "God made you." The
first effort of error has been
and is to impute to God the
creation of whatever is sinful
and mortal; but infinite Mind
sets at naught such a mistaken
belief.
Jesus defined this opposite of
God and His creation better than
we can, when he said, "He is a
liar, and the father of it."
Jesus also said, "Have not I
chosen you twelve, and one of you
is a devil?" This he said of
Judas, one of Adam's race. Jesus
never intimated that God made a
devil, but he did say, "Ye are of
your father, the devil." All
these sayings were to show that
mind in matter is the author of
itself, and is simply a falsity
and illusion.
It is the general belief that
the lower animals are less sickly
than those possessing higher
organizations, especially those
of the human form. This would
indicate that there is less
disease in proportion as the
force of mortal mind is less
pungent or sensitive, and that
health attends the absence of
mortal mind. A fair conclusion
from this might be, that it is
the human belief, and not the
divine arbitrament, which brings
the physical organism under the
yoke of disease.
An inquirer once said to the
discoverer of Christian Science:
"I like your explanations of
truth, but I do not comprehend
what you say about error." This
is the nature of error. The mark
of ignorance is on its forehead,
for it neither understands nor
can be understood. Error would
have itself received as mind, as
if it were as real and
God-created as truth; but
Christian Science attributes to
error neither entity nor power,
because error is neither mind nor
the outcome of Mind.
Searching for the origin of
man, who is the reflection of
God, is like inquiring into the
origin of God, the self-existent
and eternal. Only impotent error
would seek to unite Spirit with
matter, good with evil,
immortality with mortality, and
call this sham unity man,
as if man were the offspring of
both Mind and matter, of both
Deity and humanity. Creation
rests on a spiritual basis. We
lose our standard of perfection
and set aside the proper
conception of Deity, when we
admit that the perfect is the
author of aught that can become
imperfect, that God bestows the
power to sin, or that Truth
confers the ability to err. Our
great example, Jesus, could
restore the individualized
manifestation of existence, which
seemed to vanish in death.
Knowing that God was the Life of
man, Jesus was able to present
himself unchanged after the
crucifixion. Truth fosters the
idea of Truth, and not the belief
in illusion or error. That which
is real, is sustained by
Spirit.
Vertebrata, articulata,
mollusca, and radiata are mortal
and material concepts classified,
and are supposed to possess life
and mind. These false beliefs
will disappear, when the
radiation of Spirit destroys
forever all belief in intelligent
matter. Then will the new heaven
and new earth appear, for the
former things will have passed
away.
Mortal belief infolds the
conditions of sin. Mortal belief
dies to live again in renewed
forms, only to go out at last
forever; for life everlasting is
not to be gained by dying.
Christian Science may absorb the
attention of sage and
philosopher, but the Christian
alone can fathom it. It is made
known most fully to him who
understands best the divine Life.
Did the origin and the
enlightenment of the race come
from the deep sleep which fell
upon Adam? Sleep is darkness, but
God's creative mandate was, "Let
there be light." In sleep, cause
and effect are mere illusions.
They seem to be something, but
are not. Oblivion and dreams, not
realities, come with sleep. Even
so goes on the Adam-belief, of
which mortal and material life is
the dream.
Ontology receives less
attention than physiology. Why?
Because mortal mind must waken to
spiritual life before it cares to
solve the problem of being, hence
the author's experience; but when
that awakening comes, existence
will be on a new standpoint.
It is related that a father
plunged his infant babe, only a
few hours old, into the water for
several minutes, and repeated
this operation daily, until the
child could remain under water
twenty minutes, moving and
playing without harm, like a
fish. Parents should remember
this, and learn how to develop
their children properly on dry
land.
Mind controls the birth-throes
in the lower realms of nature,
where parturition is without
suffering. Vegetables, minerals,
and many animals suffer no pain
in multiplying; but human
propagation has its suffering
because it is a false belief.
Christian Science reveals harmony
as proportionately increasing as
the line of creation rises
towards spiritual man, —
towards enlarged understanding
and intelligence; but in the line
of the corporeal senses, the less
a mortal knows of sin, disease,
and mortality, the better for
him, — the less pain and
sorrow are his. When the mist of
mortal mind evaporates, the curse
will be removed which says to
woman, "In sorrow thou shalt
bring forth children." Divine
Science rolls back the clouds of
error with the light of Truth,
and lifts the curtain on man as
never born and as never dying,
but as coexistent with his
creator.
Popular theology takes up the
history of man as if he began
materially right, but immediately
fell into mental sin; whereas
revealed religion proclaims the
Science of Mind and its
formations as being in accordance
with the first chapter of the Old
Testament, when God, Mind, spake
and it was done.
Go
to Chapter 16: The
Apocalypse
|
