Divine personality
517:15 The world believes in many persons; but if God is per-sonal, there is but one person, because there is but oneGod. His personality can only be reflected,517:18 not transmitted. God has countless ideas, andthey all have one Principle and parentage. The onlyproper symbol of God as person is Mind's infinite ideal.517:21 What is this ideal? Who shall behold it? This idealis God's own image, spiritual and infinite. Even eternitycan never reveal the whole of God, since there is no limit517:24 to infinitude or to its reflections.
/Genesis/ i. 28. And God blessed them, and God said untothem, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,517:27 and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea,and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thingthat moveth upon the earth.
Birthright of man
517:30 Divine Love blesses its own ideas, and causes them tomultiply, - to manifest His power. Man is not made518:1 to till the soil. His birthright is dominion, not sub-jection. He is lord of the belief in earth518:3 and heaven, - himself subordinate alone tohis Maker. This is the Science of being.
/Genesis/ i. 29, 30. And God said, Behold, I have given518:6 you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of allthe earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a treeyielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every518:9 beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and toeverything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there islife, I have given every green herb for meat: and it518:12 was so.
Assistance in brotherhood
God gives the lesser idea of Himself for a link to thegreater, and in return, the higher always protects the518:15 lower. The rich in spirit help the poor inone grand brotherhood, all leaving the samePrinciple, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth518:18 his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own inanother's good. Love giveth to the least spiritual ideamight, immortality, and goodness, which shine through518:21 all as the blossom shines through the bud. All the variedexpressions of God reflect health, holiness, immortality -infinite Life, Truth, and Love.
518:24 /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.
Perfection of creation
518:27 The divine Principle, or Spirit, comprehends and ex-presses all, and all must therefore be as perfect is thedivine Principle is perfect. Nothing is new to Spirit.519:1 Nothing can be novel to eternal Mind, the author of allthings, who from all eternity knoweth His own ideas.519:3 Deity was satisfied with His work. How couldHe be otherwise, since the spiritual creationwas the outgrowth, the emanation, of His infinite self-519:6 containment and immortal wisdom?
/Genesis/ ii. 1. Thus the heavens and the earth werefinished, and all the host of them.
Infinity measureless
519:9 Thus the ideas of God in universal being are completeand forever expressed, for Science reveals infinity andthe fatherhood and motherhood of Love. Hu-519:12 man capacity is slow to discern and to graspGod's creation and the divine power and presence whichgo with it, demonstrating its spiritual origin. Mortals519:15 can never know the infinite, until they throw off the oldman and reach the spiritual image and likeness. Whatcan fathom infinity! How shall we declare Him, till,519:18 in the language of the apostle, "we all come in the unityof the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, untoa perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the ful-519:21 ness of Christ"?
/Genesis/ ii. 2. And on the seventh day God ended Hiswork which He had made; and He rested on the seventh519:24 day from all His work which He had made.
Resting in holy work
God rests in action. Imparting has not impoverished,can never impoverish, the divine Mind. No519:27 exhaustion follows the action of this Mind,according to the apprehension of divine Science. The520:1 highest and sweetest rest, even from a human standpoint,is in holy work.
Love and man coexistent
520:3 Unfathomable Mind is expressed. The depth, breadth,height, might, majesty, and glory of infinite Love fill allspace. That is enough! Human language520:6 can repeat only an infinitesimal part of whatexists. The absolute ideal, man, is no more seen norcomprehended by mortals, than is His infinite Principle,520:9 Love. Principle and its idea, man, are coexistent andeternal. The numerals of infinity, called /seven days/, cannever be reckoned according to the calendar of time.520:12 These days will appear as mortality disappears, and theywill reveal eternity, newness of Life, in which all sense oferror forever disappears and thought accepts the divine520:15 infinite calculus.
/Genesis/ ii. 4, 5. These are the generations of the heavensand of the earth when they were created, in the day that the520:18 Lord God [Jehovah] made the earth and the heavens, andevery plant of the field before it was in the earth, and everyherb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God [Jehovah]520:21 had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was nota man to till the ground.
Growth is from Mind
Here is the emphatic declaration that God creates all520:24 through Mind, not through matter, - that the plantgrows, not because of seed or soil, but becausegrowth is the eternal mandate of Mind. Mor-520:27 tal thought drops into the ground, but the immortal creat-ing thought is from above, not from beneath. BecauseMind makes all, there is nothing left to be made by a520:30 lower power. Spirit acts through the Science of Mind,never causing man to till the ground, but making him521:1 superior to the soil. Knowledge of this lifts man abovethe sod, above earth and its environments, to conscious521:3 spiritual harmony and eternal being.
Spiritual narrative
Here the inspired record closes its narrative of beingthat is without beginning or end. All that is made is521:6 the work of God, and all is good. We leavethis brief, glorious history of spiritual creation(as stated in the first chapter of Genesis) in the hands of521:9 God, not of man, in the keeping of Spirit, not matter, -joyfully acknowledging now and forever God's supremacy,omnipotence, and omnipresence.
521:12 The harmony and immortality of man are intact. Weshould look away from the opposite supposition that manis created materially, and turn our gaze to the spiritual521:15 record of creation, to that which should be engraved onthe understanding and heart "with the point of a diamond"and the pen of an angel.
521:18 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.
521:21 /Genesis/ ii. 6. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
The story of error
The Science and truth of the divine creation have been521:24 presented in the verses already considered, and now theopposite error, a material view of creation, isto be set forth. The second chapter of Gene-521:27 sis contains a statement of this material view of God andthe universe, a statement which is the exact opposite ofscientific truth as before recorded. The history of error521:30 or matter, if veritable, would set aside the omnipotence522:1 of Spirit; but it is the false history in contradistinctionto the true.
The two records
522:3 The Science of the first record proves the falsity ofthe second. If one is true, the other is false, for they areantagonistic. The first record assigns all522:6 might and government to God, and endowsman out of God's perfection and power. The secondrecord chronicles man as mutable and mortal, - as hav-522:9 ing broken away from Deity and as revolving in an orbitof his own. Existence, separate from divinity, Scienceexplains as impossible.
522:12 This second record unmistakably gives the history oferror in its externalized forms, called life and intelli-gence in matter. It records pantheism, opposed to the522:15 supremacy of divine Spirit; but this state of things isdeclared to be temporary and this man to be mortal, -dust returning to dust.
Erroneous representation
522:18 In this erroneous theory, matter takes the place of Spirit.Matter is represented as the life-giving principle of theearth. Spirit is represented as entering mat-522:21 ter in order to create man. God's glowingdenunciations of man when not found in Hisimage, the likeness of Spirit, convince reason and coincide522:24 with revelation in declaring this material creation false.
Hypothetical reversal
This latter part of the second chapter of Genesis, whichportrays Spirit as supposedly cooperating with matter in522:27 constructing the universe, is based on somehypothesis of error, for the Scripture just pre-ceding declares God's work to be finished. Does Life,522:30 Truth, and Love produce death, error, and hatred? Doesthe creator condemn His own creation? Does the un-erring Principle of divine law change or repent? It can-523:1 not be so. Yet one might so judge from an unintelligentperusal of the Scriptural account now under comment.
Mist, or false claim
523:3 Because of its false basis, the mist of obscurity evolvedby error deepens the false claim, and finally declares thatGod knows error and that error can improve523:6 His creation. Although presenting the exactopposite of Truth, the lie claims to be truth. The crea-tions of matter arise from a mist or false claim, or from523:9 mystification, and not from the firmament, or under-standing, which God erects between the true and false.In error everything comes from beneath, not from above.523:12 All is material myth, instead of the reflection ofSpirit.
Distinct documents
It may be worth while here to remark that, according523:15 to the best scholars, there are clear evidences of two dis-tinct documents in the early part of the book ofGenesis. One is called the Elohistic, because523:18 the Supreme Being is therein called Elohim. The otherdocument is called the Jehovistic, because Deity therein isalways called Jehovah, - or Lord God, as our common523:21 version translates it.
Jehovah or Elohim
Throughout the first chapter of Genesis and in threeverses of the second, - in what we understand to be the523:24 spiritually scientific account of creation, - it isElohim (God) who creates. From the fourthverse of chapter two to chapter five, the creator is called523:27 Jehovah, or the Lord. The different accounts becomemore and more closely intertwined to the end of chaptertwelve, after which the distinction is not definitely trace-523:30 able. In the historic parts of the Old Testament, it isusually Jehovah, peculiarly the divine sovereign of theHebrew people, who is referred to.
Gods of the heathen
524:1 The idolatry which followed this material mythology isseen in the Phoenician worship of Baal, in the Moabitish524:3 god Chemosh, in the Moloch of the Amorites,in the Hindoo Vishnu, in the Greek Aphro-dite, and in a thousand other so-called deities.
Jehovah a tribal deity
524:6 It was also found among the Israelites, who constantlywent after "strange gods." They called the SupremeBeing by the national name of Jehovah. In524:9 that name of Jehovah, the true idea of Godseems almost lost. God becomes "a man of war," atribal god to be worshipped, rather than Love, the divine524:12 Principle to be lived and loved.
/Genesis/ ii. 7. And the Lord God [Jehovah] formed manof the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils524:15 the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Creation reversed
Did the divine and infinite Principle become a finitedeity, that he should now be called Jehovah? Withl8 a single command, Mind had made man,both male and female. How then could amaterial organization become the basis of man? How524:21 could the non-intelligent become the medium of Mind,and error be the enunciator of Truth? Matter is notthe reflection of Spirit, yet God is reflected in all His524:24 creation. Is this addition to His creation real or un-real? Is it the truth, or is it a lie concerning man andGod?
524:27 It must be a lie, for God presently curses the ground.Could Spirit evolve its opposite, matter, and give matterability to sin and suffer? Is Spirit, God, injected into524:30 dust, and eventually ejected at the demand of matter?Does Spirit enter dust, and lose therein the divine nature525:1 and omnipotence? Does Mind, God, enter matter to be-come there a mortal sinner, animated by the breath of525:3 God? In this narrative, the validity of matter is opposed,not the validity of Spirit or Spirit's creations. Man re-flects God; /mankind/ represents the Adamic race, and is525:6 a human, not a divine, creation.
Definitions of man
The following are some of the equivalents of the term/man/ in different languages. In the Saxon, /mankind, a525:9 /woman, any one/; in the Welsh, /that which risesup/, - the primary sense being /image, form/; inthe Hebrew, /image, similitude/; in the Icelandic, /mind/.525:12 The following translation is from the Icelandic: -
And God said, Let us make man after our mind andour likeness; and God shaped man after His mind; after525:15 God's mind shaped He Him; and He shaped them male andfemale.
No baneful creation
In the Gospel of John, it is declared that all things were525:18 made through the Word of God, "and without Him [the/logos/, or /word/] was not anything made thatwas made." Everything good or worthy, God525:21 made. Whatever is valueless or baneful, He did notmake, - hence its unreality. In the Science of Genesiswe read that He saw everything which He had made,525:24 "and, behold, it was very good." The corporeal sensesdeclare otherwise; and if we give the same heed to thehistory of error as to the records of truth, the Scriptural525:27 record of sin and death favors the false conclusion of thematerial senses. Sin, sickness, and death must be deemedas devoid of reality as they are of good, God.
525:30 /Genesis/ ii. 9. And out of the ground made the Lord God[Jehovah] to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight,526:1 and good for food; the tree of life also, in the midst of thegarden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Contradicting first creation
526:3 The previous and more scientific record of creationdeclares that God made "every plant of the field be-fore it was in the earth." This opposite526:6 declaration, this statement that life issuesfrom matter, contradicts the teaching of the first chap-ter, - namely, that all Life is God. Belief is less than526:9 understanding. Belief involves theories of material hear-ing, sight, touch, taste, and smell, termed the five senses.The appetites and passions, sin, sickness, and death,526:12 follow in the train of this error of a belief in intelligentmatter.
Record of error
The first mention of evil is in the legendary Scriptural526:15 text in the second chapter of Genesis. God pronouncedgood all that He created, and the Scripturesdeclare that He created all. The "tree of526:18 life" stands for the idea of Truth, and the sword whichguards it is the type of divine Science. The "tree ofknowledge" stands for the erroneous doctrine that the526:21 knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God-bestowed, asthe knowledge of good. Was evil instituted through God,Love? Did He create this fruit-bearer of sin in contra-526:24 diction of the first creation? This second biblical accountis a picture of error throughout.
/Genesis/ ii. 15. And the Lord God [Jehovah] took the526:27 man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it andto keep it.
Garden of Eden
The name Eden, according to Cruden, means /pleasure/,526:30 /delight./ In this text Eden stands for the mortal, mate-527:1 rial body. God could not put Mind into matter nor in-finite Spirit into finite form to dress it and527:3 keep it, - to make it beautiful or to cause itto live and grow. Man is God's reflection, needing nocultivation, but ever beautiful and complete.
527:6 /Genesis/ ii. 16, 17. And the Lord God [Jehovah] com-manded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thoumayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good527:9 and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thoueatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
No temptation from God
Here the metaphor represents God, Love, as tempting527:12 man, but the Apostle James says: "God cannot betempted with evil, neither tempteth He anyman." It is true that a knowledge of evil would527:15 make man mortal. It is plain also that mate-rial perception, gathered from the corporeal senses, consti-tutes evil and mortal knowledge. But is it true that God,527:18 good, made "the tree of life" to be the tree of death to Hisown creation? Has evil the reality of good? Evil is un-real because it is a lie, - false in every statement.
527:21 /Genesis/ ii. 19. And out of the ground the Lord God[Jehovah] formed every beast of the field, and every fowlof the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he527:24 would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every livingcreature, that was the name thereof.
Creation's counterfeit
Here the lie represents God as repeating creation, but527:27 doing so materially, not spiritually, and ask-ing a prospective sinner to help Him. Is theSupreme Being retrograding, and is man giving up his527:30 dignity? Was it requisite for the formation of man528:1 that dust should become sentient, when all being is thereflection of the eternal Mind, and the record declares528:3 that God has already created man, both male andfemale? That Adam gave the name and nature ofanimals, is solely mythological and material. It can-528:6 not be true that man was ordered to create man anewin partnership with God; this supposition was a dream,a myth.
528:9 /Genesis/ ii. 21, 22. And the Lord God [Jehovah, Yawah]caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: andHe took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead528:12 thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God [Jehovah] hadtaken from man, made He a woman, and brought her untothe man.
Hypnotic surgery
528:15 Here falsity, error, credits Truth, God, with inducinga sleep or hypnotic state in Adam in order to perform asurgical operation on him and thereby create528:18 woman. This is the first record of magnet-ism. Beginning creation with darkness instead of light,- materially rather than spiritually, - error now simu-528:21 lates the work of Truth, mocking Love and declar-ing what great things error has done. Beholding thecreations of his own dream and calling them real and528:24 God-given, Adam - /alias/ error - gives them names.Afterwards he is supposed to become the basis of thecreation of woman and of his own kind, calling them528:27 /mankind/, - that is, a kind of man.
Mental midwifery
But according to this narrative, surgery was first per-formed mentally and without instruments;528:30 and this may be a useful hint to the medicalfaculty. Later in human history, when the forbidden529:1 fruit was bringing forth fruit of its own kind, therecame a suggestion of change in the /modus operandi/, -529:3 that man should be born of woman, not woman againtaken from man. It came about, also, that instrumentswere needed to assist the birth of mortals. The first529:6 system of suggestive obstetrics has changed. Anotherchange will come as to the nature and origin of man,and this revelation will destroy the /dream/ of existence,529:9 reinstate reality, usher in Science and the glorious factof creation, that both man and woman proceed fromGod and are His eternal children, belonging to no lesser529:12 parent.
/Genesis/ iii. 1-3. Now the serpent was more subtle thanany beast of the field which the Lord God [Jehovah] had529:15 made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said,Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And thewoman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of529:18 the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which isin the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eatof it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Mythical serpent
529:21 Whence comes a talking, lying serpent to tempt thechildren of divine Love? The serpent enters into themetaphor only as evil. We have nothing in the529:24 animal kingdom which represents the speciesdescribed, - a talking serpent, - and should rejoice thatevil, by whatever figure presented, contradicts itself and529:27 has neither origin nor support in Truth and good. Seeingthis, we should have faith to fight all claims of evil, be-cause we know that they are worthless and unreal.
Error or Adam
529:30 Adam, the synonym for error, stands for a belief ofmaterial mind. He begins his reign over man some-530:1 what mildly, but he increases in falsehood and his daysbecome shorter. In this development, the im-530:3 mortal, spiritual law of Truth is made manifestas forever opposed to mortal, material sense.
Divine providence
In divine Science, man is sustained by God, the divine530:6 Principle of being. The earth, at God's command, bringsforth food for man's use. Knowing this, Jesusonce said, "Take no thought for your life,530:9 what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink," - presumingnot on the prerogative of his creator, but recognizing God,the Father and Mother of all, as able to feed and clothe530:12 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 day530:15 ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shallbe as gods, knowing good and evil.
Error's assumption
This myth represents error as always asserting its su-530:18 periority over truth, giving the lie to divine Science andsaying, through the material senses: "I canopen your eyes. I can do what God has not530:21 done for you. Bow down to me and have another god.Only admit that I am real, that sin and sense are morepleasant to the eyes than spiritual Life, more to be de-530:24 sired than Truth, and I shall know you, and you will bemine." Thus Spirit and flesh war.
Scriptural allegory
The history of error is a dream-narrative. The dream530:27 has no reality, no intelligence, no mind; therefore thedreamer and dream are one, for neither istrue nor real. /First/, this narrative supposes530:30 that something springs from nothing, that matter pre-cedes mind. /Second/, it supposes that mind enters matter,531:1 and matter becomes living, substantial, and intelligent.The order of this allegory - the belief that everything531:3 springs from dust instead of from Deity - has been main-tained in all the subsequent forms of belief. This is theerror, - that mortal man starts materially, that non-531:6 intelligence becomes intelligence, that mind and soul areboth right and wrong.
Higher hope
It is well that the upper portions of the brain represent531:9 the higher moral sentiments, as if hope were ever prophe-sying thus: The human mind will sometimerise above all material and physical sense, ex-531:12 changing it for spiritual perception, and exchanging hu-man concepts for the divine consciousness. Then manwill recognize his God-given dominion and being.
Biological inventions
531:15 If, in the beginning, man's body originated in non-intelligent dust, and mind was afterwards put into bodyby the creator, why is not this divine order531:18 still maintained by God in perpetuating thespecies? Who will say that minerals, vegetables, andanimals have a propagating property of their own?531:21 Who dares to say either that God is in matter or thatmatter exists without God? Has man sought out othercreative inventions, and so changed the method of his531:24 Maker?
Which institutes Life, - matter or Mind? Does Lifebegin with Mind or with matter? Is Life sustained by531:27 matter or by Spirit? Certainly not by both, since fleshwars against Spirit and the corporeal senses can take nocognizance of Spirit. The mythologic theory of mate-531:30 rial life at no point resembles the scientifically Christianrecord of man as created by Mind in the image and like-ness of God and having dominion over all the earth. Did532:1 God at first create one man unaided, - that is, Adam, -but afterwards require the union of the two sexes in order532:3 to create the rest of the human family? No! God makesand governs all.
Progeny cursed
All human knowledge and material sense must be532:6 gained from the five corporeal senses. Is this knowledgesafe, when eating its first fruits brought death?"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt532:9 surely die," was the prediction in the story under consid-eration. Adam and his progeny were cursed, not blessed;and this indicates that the divine Spirit, or Father, con-532:12 demns material man and remands him to dust.
/Genesis/ iii. 9, 10. And the Lord God [Jehovah] calledunto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he532:15 said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid,because I was naked; and I hid myself.
Shame the effect of sin
Knowledge and pleasure, evolved through material532:18 sense, produced the immediate fruits of fear and shame.Ashamed before Truth, error shrank abashedfrom the divine voice calling out to the cor-532:21 poreal senses. Its summons may be thus paraphrased:"Where art thou, man? Is Mind in matter? Is Mindcapable of error as well as of truth, of evil as well as of532:24 good, when God is All and He is Mind and there is butone God, hence one Mind?"
Fear comes of error
Fear was the first manifestation of the error of mate-532:27 rial sense. Thus error began and will end the dream ofmatter, In the allegory the body had beennaked, and Adam knew it not; but now error532:30 demands that /mind/ shall see and feel through matter, thefive senses. The first impression material man had of533:1 himself was one of nakedness and shame. Had he lostman's rich inheritance and God's behest, dominion over533:3 all the earth? No! This had never been bestowed onAdam.
/Genesis/ iii. 11, 12. And He said, Who told thee that533:6 thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof Icommanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the mansaid, The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave533:9 me of the tree, and I did eat.
The beguiling first lie
Here there is an attempt to trace all human errorsdirectly or indirectly to God, or good, as if He were the533:12 creator of evil. The allegory shows that thesnake-talker utters the first voluble lie, whichbeguiles the woman and demoralizes the man. Adam,533:15 /alias mortal error/, charges God and woman with his owndereliction, saying, "The woman, whom Thou gavestme, is responsible." According to this belief, the rib taken533:18 from Adam's side has grown into an evil mind, named/woman/, who aids man to make sinners more rapidly thanhe can alone. Is this an help meet for man?
533:21 Materiality, so obnoxious to God, is already found in therapid deterioration of the bone and flesh which came fromAdam to form Eve. The belief in material life and in-533:24 telligence is growing worse at every step, but error has itssuppositional day and multiplies until the end thereof.
False womanhood
Truth, cross-questioning man as to His knowledge of533:27 error, finds woman the first to confess her fault. Shesays, " The serpent beguiled me, and I dideat;" as much as to say in meek penitence,533:30 "Neither man nor God shall father my fault." She hasalready learned that corporeal sense is the serpent. Hence534:1 she is first to abandon the belief in the material origin ofman and to discern spiritual creation. This hereafter534:3 enabled woman to be the mother of Jesus and to beholdat the sepulchre the risen Saviour, who was soon to mani-fest the deathless man of God's creating. This enabled534:6 woman to be first to interpret the Scriptures in their truesense, which reveals the spiritual origin of man.
/Genesis/ iii. 14, 15. And the Lord God [Jehovah] said534:9 unto the serpent, . . . I will put enmity between thee andthe woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shallbruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Spirit and flesh
534:12 This prophecy has been fulfilled. The Son of the Virgin-mother unfolded the remedy for Adam, or error; and theApostle Paul explains this warfare between the534:15 idea of divine power, which Jesus presented,and mythological material intelligence called /energy/ andopposed to Spirit.
534:18 Paul says in his epistle to the Romans: "The carnalmind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to thelaw of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that534:21 are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in theflesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwellin you."
Bruising sin's head
534:24 There will be greater mental opposition to the spirit-ual, scientific meaning of the Scriptures than there hasever been since the Christian era began. The534:27 serpent, material sense, will bite the heel ofthe woman, - will struggle to destroy the spiritual ideaof Love; and the woman, this idea, will bruise the head534:30 of lust. The spiritual idea has given the understanding535:1 a foothold in Christian Science. The seed of Truth andthe seed of error, of belief and of understanding, - yea,535:3 the seed of Spirit and the seed of matter, - are the wheatand tares which time will separate, the one to be burned,the other to be garnered into heavenly places.
535:6 /Genesis/ iii. 16. Unto the woman He said, I will greatlymultiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thoushalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy535:9 husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Judgment on error
Divine Science deals its chief blow at the supposed ma-terial foundations of life and intelligence. It dooms idol-535:12 atry. A belief in other gods, other creators,and other creations must go down before Chris-tian Science. It unveils the results of sin as shown in535:15 sickness and death. When will man pass through theopen gate of Christian Science into the heaven of Soul,into the heritage of the first born among men? Truth is535:18 indeed " the way."
/Genesis/ iii. 17-19. And unto Adam He said, Becausethou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast535:21 eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thoushalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; insorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: thorns535:24 also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalteat the herb of the field: in the sweat of thy face shalt thoueat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it535:27 wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shaltthou return.
New earth and no more sea
In the first chapter of Genesis we read: "And God535:30 called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together536:1 of the waters called He Seas." In the Apocalypse it iswritten: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for536:3 the first heaven and the first earth were passedaway; and there was no more sea." In St.John's vision, heaven and earth stand for spir-536:6 itual ideas, and the sea, as a symbol of tempest-tossedhuman concepts advancing and receding, is representedas having passed away. The divine understanding reigns,536:9 is /all/ and there is no other consciousness.
The fall of error
The way of error is awful to contemplate. The illu-sion of sin is without hope or God. If man's spiritual536:12 gravitation and attraction to one Father, inwhom we " live, and move, and have our be-ing," should be lost, and if man should be governed by536:15 corporeality instead of divine Principle, by body insteadof by Soul, man would be annihilated. Created by fleshinstead of by Spirit, starting from matter instead of from536:18 God, mortal man would be governed by himself. Theblind leading the blind, both would fall.
True attainment
Passions and appetites must end in pain. They are536:21 "of few days, and full of trouble." Their supposed joysare cheats. Their narrow limits belittle their gratifica-tions, and hedge about their achievements with thorns.536:24 Mortal mind accepts the erroneous, material concep-tion of life and joy, but the true idea is gained from theimmortal side. Through toil, struggle, and sor-536:27 row, what do mortals attain? They give uptheir belief in perishable life and happiness; the mortaland material return to dust, and the immortal is reached.
536:30 /Genesis/ iii. 22-24. And the Lord God [Jehovah] said,Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good537:1 and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and takealso of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever; therefore537:3 the Lord God [Jehovah] sent him forth from the gardenof Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.So He drove out the man: and He placed at the east537:6 of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming swordwhich turned every way, to keep the way of the tree oflife.
Justice and recompense
537:9 A knowledge of evil was never the essence of divin-ity or manhood. In the first chapter of Genesis, evilhas no local habitation nor name. Crea-537:12 tion is there represented as spiritual, entire,and good. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall healso reap." Error excludes itself from harmony. Sin537:15 is its own punishment. Truth guards the gatewayto harmony. Error tills its own barren soil and buriesitself in the ground, since ground and dust stand for537:18 nothingness.
Inspired interpretation
No one can reasonably doubt that the purpose of thisallegory - this second account in Genesis - is to depict537:21 the falsity of error and the effects of error.Subsequent Bible revelation is coordinatewith the Science of creation recorded in the537:24 first chapter of Genesis. Inspired writers interpret theWord spiritually, while the ordinary historian interpretsit literally. Literally taken, the text is made to appear537:27 contradictory in some places, and divine Love, whichblessed the earth and gave it to man for a possession, isrepresented as changeable. The literal meaning would537:30 imply that God withheld from man the opportunity toreform, lest man should improve it and become better;but this is not the nature of God, who is Love always, -538:1 Love infinitely wise and altogether lovely, who "seekethnot her own."
Spiritual gateway
538:3 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 gate538:6 of understanding to note the proper guests.Radiant with mercy and justice, the sword of Truthgleams afar and indicates the infinite distance between538:9 Truth and error, between the material and spiritual, -the unreal and the real.
Contrasted testimony
The sun, giving light and heat to the earth, is a figure538:12 of divine Life and Love, enlightening and sustaining theuniverse. The "tree of life" is significant ofeternal reality or being. The "tree of knowl-538:15 edge" typifies unreality. The testimony of the serpent issignificant of the illusion of error, of the false claims thatmisrepresent God, good. Sin, sickness, and death have538:18 no record in the Elohistic introduction of Genesis, in whichGod creates the heavens, earth, and man. Until thatwhich contradicts the truth of being enters into the arena,538:21 evil has no history, and evil is brought into view only asthe unreal in contradistinction to the real and eternal.
/Genesis/ iv. 1. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she538:24 conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a manfrom the Lord [Jehovah].
Erroneous conception
This account is given, not of immortal man, but of mor-538:27 tal man, and of sin which is temporal. As both mortalman and sin have a beginning, they mustconsequently have an end, while the sinless,538:30 real man is eternal. Eve's declaration, "I have gottena man from the Lord," supposes God to be the author539:1 of sin and sin's progeny. This false sense of existenceis fratricidal. In the words of Jesus, it (evil, devil) is539:3 "a murderer from the beginning." Error begins byreckoning life as separate from Spirit, thus sapping thefoundations of immortality, as if life and immortality539:6 were something which matter can both give and takeaway.
Only one standard
What can be the standard of good, of Spirit, of Life,539:9 or of Truth, if they produce their opposites, such as evil,matter, error, and death? God could neverimpart an element of evil, and man possesses539:12 nothing which he has not derived from God. How thenhas man a basis for wrong-doing? Whence does heobtain the propensity or power to do evil? Has Spirit539:15 resigned to matter the government of the universe?
A type of falsehood
The Scriptures declare that God condemned this lie asto man's origin and character by condemning its symbol,539:18 the serpent, to grovel beneath all the beastsof the field. It is false to say that Truth anderror commingle in creation. In parable and argument,539:21 this falsity is exposed by our Master as self-evidentlywrong. Disputing these points with the Pharisees andarguing for the Science of creation, Jesus said: "Do men539:24 gather grapes of thorns?" Paul asked: "What com-munion hath light with darkness? And what concordhath Christ with Belial?"
Scientific offspring
539:27 The divine origin of Jesus gave him more than humanpower to expound the facts of creation, and demonstratethe one Mind which makes and governs man539:30 and the universe. The Science of creation,so conspicuous in the birth of Jesus inspired his wisestand least-understood sayings, and was the basis of his540:1 marvellous demonstrations. Christ is the offspring ofSpirit, and spiritual existence shows that Spirit creates540:3 neither a wicked nor a mortal man, lapsing into sin, sick-ness, and death.
Cleansing upheaval
In Isaiah we read: "I make peace, and create evil. I540:6 the Lord do all these things;" but the prophet referred todivine law as stirring up the belief in evil to itsutmost, when bringing it to the surface and re-540:9 ducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. Themuddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify thestream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms540:12 of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our igno-rance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we oughtto know that God's law uncovers so-called sin and its540:15 effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of eviland all power to sin.
Allegiance to Spirit
Science renders "unto Caesar the things which are540:18 Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Itsaith to the human sense of sin, sickness, anddeath, "God never made you, and you are a540:21 false sense which hath no knowledge of God." The pur-pose of the Hebrew allegory, representing error as assum-ing a divine character, is to teach mortals never to believe540:24 a lie.
/Genesis/ iv. 3, 4. Cain brought of the fruit of the groundan offering unto the Lord [Jehovah]. And Abel, he also540:27 brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof.
Spiritual and material
Cain is the type of mortal and material man, conceivedin sin and "shapen in iniquity;" he is not the540:30 type of Truth and Love. Material in originand sense, he brings a material offering to God. Abel541:1 takes his offering from the firstlings of the flock. A lambis a more animate form of existence, and more nearly re-541:3 sembles a mind-offering than does Cain's fruit. Jealousof his brother's gift, Cain seeks Abel's life, instead of mak-ing his own gift a higher tribute to the Most High.
541:6 /Genesis/ iv. 4, 5. And the Lord [Jehovah] had respectunto Abel, and to his offering: but unto Cain, and to hisoffering, He had not respect.
541:9 Had God more respect for the homage bestowed througha gentle animal than for the worship expressed by Cain'sfruit? No; but the lamb was a more spiritual type of541:12 even the human concept of Love than the herbs of theground could be.
/Genesis/ iv. 8. Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and541:15 slew him.
The erroneous belief that life, substance, and intelli-gence can be material ruptures the life and brotherhood541:18 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: Am541:21 I my brother's keeper?
Brotherhood repudiated
Here the serpentine lie invents new forms. At first itusurps divine power. It is supposed to say541:24 in the first instance, "Ye shall be as gods."Now it repudiates even the human duty of man towardshis brother.
541:27 /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.
Murder brings its curse
542:1 The belief of life in matter sins at every step. It in-curs divine displeasure, and it would kill Jesus that it542:3 might be rid of troublesome Truth. Materialbeliefs would slay the spiritual idea when-ever and wherever it appears. Though error hides542:6 behind a lie and excuses guilt, error cannot forever beconcealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveilserror. Truth causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon542:9 error the mark of the beast. Even the disposition toexcuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidanceof justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin,542:12 invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divinemercy.
/Genesis/ iv. 15. And the Lord [Jehovah] said unto him542:15 Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be takenon him sevenfold. And the Lord [Jehovah] set a markupon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
Retribution and remorse
542:18 "They that take the sword shall perish with thesword." Let Truth uncover and destroy error in God'sown way, and let human justice pattern the542:21 divine. Sin will receive its full penalty, bothfor what it is and for what it does. Justice marksthe sinner, and teaches mortals not to remove the542:24 waymarks of God. To envy's own hell, justice con-signs the lie which, to advance itself, breaks God'scommandments.
542:27 /Genesis/ iv. 16. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord [Jehovah], and dwelt in the land of Nod.
Climax of suffering
The sinful misconception of Life as something less543:1 than God, having no truth to support it, falls back uponitself. This error, after reaching the climax of suffering,543:3 yields to Truth and returns to dust; but itis only mortal man and not the real man,who dies. The image of Spirit cannot be effaced, since it543:6 is the idea of Truth and changes not, but becomes morebeautifully apparent at error's demise.
Dwelling in dreamland
In divine Science, the material man is shut out from543:9 the presence of God. The five corporeal senses cannottake cognizance of Spirit. They cannot comeinto His presence, and must dwell in dream-543:12 land, until mortals arrive at the understanding that ma-terial life, with all its sin, sickness, and death, is an illu-sion, against which divine Science is engaged in a warfare543:15 of extermination. The great verities of existence arenever excluded by falsity.
Man springs from Mind
All error proceeds from the evidence before the mate-543:18 rial senses. If man is material and originates in anegg, who shall say that he is not primarilydust? May not Darwin be right in think-543:21 ing that apehood preceded mortal manhood? Mineralsand vegetables are found, according to divine Science,to be the creations of erroneous thought, not of matter.543:24 Did man, whom God created with a word, originatein an egg? When Spirit made all, did it leave aughtfor matter to create? Ideas of Truth alone are reflected543:27 in the myriad manifestations of Life, and thus it isseen that man springs solely from Mind. The beliefthat matter supports life would make Life, or God,543:30 mortal.
Material inception
The text, "In the day that the Lord God [JehovahGod] made the earth and the heavens," introduces the544:1 record of a material creation which followed the spiritual,- a creation so wholly apart from God's, that Spirit544:3 had no participation in it. In God's creationideas became productive, obedient to Mind.There was no rain and "not a man to till the ground."544:6 Mind, instead of matter, being the producer, Life wasself-sustained. Birth, decay, and death arise from thematerial sense of things, not from the spiritual, for in544:9 the latter Life consisteth not of the things which a maneateth. Matter cannot change the eternal fact thatman exists because God exists. Nothing is new to the544:12 infinite Mind.
First evil suggestion
In Science, Mind neither produces matter nor doesmatter produce mind. No mortal mind has the might544:15 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 first544:18 suggestion of more than the one Mind, - is in the fableof the serpent. The facts of creation, as previously re-corded, include nothing of the kind.
Material personality
544:21 The serpent is supposed to say, "Ye shall be as gods,"but these gods must be evolved from materiality and bethe very antipodes of immortal and spiritual544:24 being. Man is the likeness of Spirit, but amaterial personality is not this likeness. Therefore man,in this allegory, is neither a lesser god nor the image and544:27 likeness of the one God.
Material, erroneous belief reverses understanding andtruth. It declares mind to be in and of matter, so-called544:30 mortal life to be Life, infinity to enter man's nostrilsso that matter becomes spiritual. Error begins withcorporeality as the producer instead of divine Prin-545:1 ciple, and explains Deity through mortal and finite con-ceptions.
545:3 "Behold, the man is become as one of us." This couldnot be the utterance of Truth or Science, for accordingto the record, material man was fast degenerating and545:6 never had been divinely conceived.
Mental tillage
The condemnation of mortals to till the ground meansthis, - that mortals should so improve material belief545:9 by thought tending spiritually upward as todestroy materiality. Man, created by God,was given dominion over the whole earth. The notion545:12 of a material universe is utterly opposed to the theoryof man as evolved from Mind. Such fundamental errorssend falsity into all human doctrines and conclusions,545:15 and do not accord infinity to Deity. Error tills thewhole ground in this material theory, which is entirely afalse view, destructive to existence and happiness. Out-545:18 side of Christian Science all is vague and hypothetical, theopposite of Truth; yet this opposite, in its false view ofGod and man, impudently demands a blessing.
Erroneous standpoint
545:21 The translators of this record of scientific creationentertained a false sense of being. They believed inthe existence of matter, its propagation and545:24 power. From that standpoint of error, theycould not apprehend the nature and operation of Spirit.Hence the seeming contradiction in that Scripture, which545:27 is so glorious in its spiritual signification. Truth hasbut one reply to all error, - to sin, sickness, and death:"Dust [nothingness] thou art, and unto dust [nothingness]545:30 shalt thou return."
Mortality mythical
"As in Adam [error] all die, even so in Christ [Truth]shall all be made alive." The mortality of man is a546:1 myth, for man is immortal. The false belief that spirit isnow submerged in matter, at some future time to be eman-546:3 cipated from it, - this belief alone is mortal.Spirit, God, never germinates, but is "the sameyesterday, and to-day, and forever." If Mind, God, cre-546:6 ates error, that error must exist in the divine Mind, andthis assumption of error would dethrone the perfectionof Deity.
No truth from a material basis
546:9 Is Christian Science contradictory? Is the divinePrinciple of creation misstated? Has God no Science todeclare Mind, while matter is governed by un-546:12 erring intelligence? "There went up a mistfrom the earth." This represents error asstarting from an idea of good on a material basis. It546:15 supposes God and man to be manifested only throughthe corporeal senses, although the material senses cantake no cognizance of Spirit or the spiritual idea.546:18 Genesis and the Apocalypse seem more obscure thanother portions of the Scripture, because they cannotpossibly be interpreted from a material standpoint. To546:21 the author, they are transparent, for they contain the deepdivinity of the Bible.
Dawning of spiritual facts
Christian Science is dawning upon a material age.546:24 The great spiritual facts of being, like rays of light, shinein the darkness, though the darkness, com-prehending them not, may deny their reality.546:27 The proof that the system stated in this book is Chris-tianly scientific resides in the good this system accom-plishes, for it cures on a divine demonstrable Principle546:30 which all may understand.
Proof given in healing
If mathematics should present a thousand differentexamples of one rule, the proving of one example would547:1 authenticate all the others. A simple statement of Chris-tian Science, if demonstrated by healing, contains the547:3 proof of all here said of Christian Science. Ifone of the statements in this book is true, everyone must be true, for not one departs from the stated sys-547:6 tem and rule. You can prove for yourself, dear reader,the Science of healing, and so ascertain if the author hasgiven you the correct interpretation of Scripture.
Embryonic evolution
547:9 The late Louis Agassiz, by his microscopic examinationof a vulture's ovum, strengthens the thinker's conclusionsas to the scientific theory of creation. Agassiz547:12 was able to see in the egg the earth's atmos-phere, the gathering clouds, the moon and stars, while thegerminating speck of so-called embryonic life seemed a547:15 small sun. In its history of mortality, Darwin's theoryof evolution from a material basis is more consistent thanmost theories. Briefly, this is Darwin's theory, - that547:18 Mind produces its opposite, matter, and endues matterwith power to recreate the universe, including man. Ma-terial evolution implies that the great First Cause must547:21 become material, and afterwards must either return toMind or go down into dust and nothingness.
True theory of the universe
The Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to547:24 have them understood spiritually, for only by this under-standing can truth be gained. The true the-ory of the universe, including man, is not in547:27 material history but in spiritual development.Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, andmortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and547:30 immortal.
Scriptural perception
It is this spiritual perception of Scripture, which liftshumanity out of disease and death and inspires faith.548:1 "The Spirit and the bride say, Come! . . . and whoso-ever will, let him take the water of life freely." Christian548:3 Science separates error from truth, and breathesthrough the sacred pages the spiritual sense oflife, substance, and intelligence. In this Science, we dis-548:6 cover man in the image and likeness of God. We see thatman has never lost his spiritual estate and his eternalharmony.
The clouds dissolving
548:9 How little light or heat reach our earth when cloudscover the sun's face! So Christian Science can be seenonly as the clouds of corporeal sense roll away.548:12 Earth has little light or joy for mortals beforeLife is spiritually learned. Every agony of mortal errorhelps error to destroy error, and so aids the apprehension548:15 of immortal Truth. This is the new birth going onhourly, by which men may entertain angels, the trueideas of God, the spiritual sense of being.
Prediction of a naturalist