# Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898)/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.
CHAPTER XV.
GENESIS.
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 any thing made that was made. In him was Life; and the Life was the light of men. — John.
SCIENTIFIC interpretation of the Scriptures most properly begins with the beginning of the Old Smothered utterances. 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 only could whisper, and God illustrated in light and harmony, is consonant with ever-present Love. So-called mystery and miracle, which subserve the end of natural goodness, 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 this, — that the living and real prelude of the elder Scriptures ​is so brief that it would almost seem, from the preponderance of unreality in the whole narrative, as if reality Spiritual overture. did not predominate over the unreal, the light side 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 mortal man. This Deflection. 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. When the crude forms of human thought take on higher symbols and significations, the Scientifically Christian views of the universe will 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 hath no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the first, — that is, the eternal Ideas and identities. verity and unity of God and man, including the universe. The creative Principle — Life, Truth, and Love — is God. The universe reflects Him. 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 immensity, 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 this universe of Exclusions. Truth, matter is unlvnown. No supposition of error enters there. Christian Science, the Word of God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, “God is All-in-all;” and light appears in proportion as this is understood. It reveals 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 Mind's idea. and immortal forms of beauty and goodness; but this Mind creates no element or 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 Light. though solar beams are not yet included in the record of creation, yet there is light. This light is not from the sun, nor from volcanic flames, but it is the revelation of Truth and 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?
The successive appearing of God's ideas is represented as taking place on so many evenings and One day. mornings, — words which indicate, in the absence of solar time, spiritually clearer views of Him, not implied by material darkness and dawn. Here we have the explanation of another Scripture, that “one day with the Lord is as a thousand years.” The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously; whereas a thousand years of unconcentrated beams — human beliefs, hypotheses, and vague conjectures — emit no such effulgence.
Did infinite Mind create matter, and call it light? Spirit is light; and the opposite of Spirit is matter, Darkness. just as darkness is the opposite of light. Material sense is nothing but a supposition of the absence of Spirit. No solar rays or planetary revolutions form the day of Spirit. Mind makes its own record; but mortal mind has 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.”
​Understanding is the spiritual firmament, whereby human conception distinguishes between Truth and error. Firmament. The divine Mind, not matter, creates all identities; and they are forms of thought, the ideas of Spirit, present to Mind only, never to mindless matter.
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 leads into all Truth. The Psalmist saith: “The Lord on high is Understanding. mightier than the noise of many waters, — yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.” Spiritual sight is the discernment of spiritual Good. Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and unreal. It brings the things of Truth, Life, and Love into a demonstration, which gives the divine sense and spiritual signification of all things in Christian Science.
This understanding is not intellectual, is not aided by scholarly attainments. The fact of all things is brought to light in Spirit. God's ideas reflect Origination. the immortal, unerring, and infinite. Mortal, erring, and finite are human beliefs, which apportion themselves the task of distinguishing between the false and the true. Objects utterly unlike their original do not reflect that original. Therefore matter cannot proceed from God, and it has no real entity. Understanding is a quality of God, a quality which separates Christian Science from supposition, — which makes Truth final, saying, “Truth is all, and there is no error.”
Genesis i. 8. And God called the firmament Heaven; and the evening and the morning were the second day.
​Spirit unites understanding to eternal harmony through Divine Science. The calm and exalted thought takes Peace. upon itself understanding, and is at peace; while the dawn of ideas goes on, forming the second 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.”
Spirit gathers unformed thoughts into their proper Thoughts. channels. God unfolds these thoughts, even as He opens the petals of a rose, to send their fragrance abroad.
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 Nomenclature. Scientifically Christian meaning of the text. Upon Adam devolves the pleasurable task of finding names for all material things; yet Adam has not yet appeared in the narrative. In metaphor, the dry land illustrates the solid formations instituted by Mind, while water symbolizes its solutions or elements. Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of creation, so that it may express the fatherhood and motherhood of God. Spirit names and blesses all. Without natures particularly defined, all things would be alike, and creation full of nameless children, — 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 its Principle, or Life, which reproduces the multitudinous Propagation. forms of Mind, and governs the multiplication of ideas. The tree or herb does not yield fruit because of any propagating principle of its own, but because it reflects the Mind which includes all. The material world reflects mortal mind, even as the spiritual creation reflects immortal Mind.
Infinite Mind governs all ideas, from the molecule to infinity. The divine Principle of all expresses Science Molecular universe. and art throughout His creation; and the only immortality of His work is in the divine Mind. 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 falls to the level of human belief, and is perverted in mortal mind. The seed is in itself, only as Mind is All and reproduces all. Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's idea, the universe, is the product. The only intelligence or substantiality of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the Creator of them. Mind is the Soul of all, and Truth and Love constitute the Intelligence 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. The gender of the tree is in Mind. The seed within itself is Seed and sexuality. the pure thought emanating from Mind. The feminine gender is not yet expressed in the text. Gender means simply kind, or sort, and does not necessarily refer to either masculinity or femineity; for the word is not confined to sexuality, and grammars always recognize a neuter gender, neither male nor female. The divine Mind — that is, the element of production, of which spiritual ideas are the expression — names the female gender last, because femineity is highest in the ascending order of creation. The intelligent idea reveals the infinitude of Love, as it rises from the lesser to the greater.
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 mind, whose indistinct Eschatology. and thronging thoughts are advancing towards the light of spiritual understanding. This period corresponds to the resurrection, when Spirit is seen to be the Life of all, and the deathless Life, or Mind, is seen to be dependent upon no organization whatever. Our Master reappeared to his students; that is, 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 Rarefaction. 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, as nebulæ indicate the immensity of space.
Mineral, vegetable, and animal substances are no more contingent on solar time or material structure, than Time. they were when “the morning stars sang together.” Mind made the “plant, before it was in the ground.” The periods of spiritual understanding are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, wherein beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness — yea, the divine nature — appear upon the universe and man, never to disappear.
Knowing the Science of creation, wherein all is Mind and its ideas, Jesus rebuked the material thought of his Meteorology. 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 idea of God, than to dwell on the objects of sense! To discern the rhythm of Spirit, and blend with the music of the spheres, 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 we shall see light;” and this illumination is reflected spiritually, by all who walk in the light, and turn away from light's absence, which we call darkness.
Genesis i. 16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser to rule the night. He made the stars also.
The sun is a metaphorical representation of Soul outside the body, as giving existence and intelligence to the Geology. 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 allusion to solar light, until time had been already divided into evening and morning; and no allusion to fluids, until after the record of formation of minerals and vegetables.
This shows that light is a symbol of Life, Truth, and Love, instead of a vitalizing property of matter. Science Subdivision. reveals one Mind, shining by its own light, and governing its own ideas in perfect harmony. Mind forms the ideas which subdivide and radiate their borrowed light; and this explains this Scripture, “whose seed is in itself.” Ideas “multiply and replenish the earth,” but Mind supports the various ideas constituting the sublimity and magnitude of its 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.
God is revealed through harmony, and also in Divine Science, which is the seal of Deity and has the impress God's seal. of Heaven. Mind gives light to our mortal sense of the sun, and scatters the darkness which fleeth away. In the eternal Mind there is no night, — no sorrow, pain, or sin.
Genesis i. 19. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
The changing glow and full effulgence of God's infinite idea mark the periods of its 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 aëriform. Spiritually interpreted, rocks and mountains stand Material metaphors. for the solid and grand ideas of Truth. Animals and mortals metaphorically present the gradation of thought, rising in the scale of intelligence, taking form in masculine and feminine ideas. 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 their incorporeal and divine Principle.
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 Seraphic symbols. 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 know their natures are allied to God's; and spiritual blessings, thus typified, are the externalized yet subjective states of hope and faith.
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 Emanations. Mind emanate all forms, colors, and qualities; 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, of itself, — this mentality puts forth its own qualities, and then claims God as their author; albeit God is ignorant of the existence of both this mortal mentality and its claim, for the latter 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 ideas. To Veiled spheres. 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. Time is not yet measured in the record 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 Diversity. thoughts, which are as eternal as the Mind conceiving them; but the intelligence, existence, and continuity of each thought remain in God, 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 inspires all forms of spiritual thought. His thoughts are spiritual realities. Mortal mind — being Forms mental. non-existent, and consequently outside the range of interminable space — could not, by simulating deific power, invert the divine thoughts, and afterwards recreate them upon its own plane; since nothing exists beyond the range of all-inclusive infinity, wherein and whereof God is the sole creator. He dwells in the realm of Mind, joyous in strength. His infinite ideas run and disport themselves. In humility they climb the heights of holiness.
Moral courage is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the king of the mental realm. Free and fearless he roams Quadrupeds. in the forest. Undisturbed he lies in the open field, or rests in “green pastures, beside the still waters.” In the transmission from the divine thought to the human, diligence, promptness, and perseverance are likened to “the cattle on 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 animals created by God are not carnivorous, as witness the millennial estate pictured by Isaiah:
* Then shall the wolf lie down with the lamb,
* And the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
* The calf and the young lion and the fatling shall be together,
* And a little child shall lead them.
Patience is symbolized by the tireless worm, creeping slowly over lofty summits, persevering always in its Reptiles. intent. The serpent of God's creating is neither subtle nor poisonous, but a wise idea, charming in its adroitness; for Love has no elements of evil or poison to impart. Its ideas are subject to the Mind which formed them, — the power which changeth the serpent into a rod.
Understanding the control which Love holds over all, Daniel felt safe in the lions' den, and Paul knew the Eternally harmless. viper to be harmless. All the creatures of God are harmless, useful, indestructible, moving in the harmony of Science. 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,” being His divine reflection.
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 has created the universe. The name Elohim is in the plural; but this plurality of Spirit Elohistic plurality. does not imply more than one God, nor does it imply three persons in one. It relates to the triunity of Life, Truth, and Love. “Let them have dominion.” Man is the family name for all the sons ​and daughters of God. All that God creates moves in accord with His Mind, reflecting goodness and power.
Your mirrored reflection is your own image, or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this Mirror. 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 its reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the reflection to its original. As the mirror reflects yourself, so you, being spiritual, reflect God. The Substance, Life, Intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere, when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Divine Science.
Spirit creates and fashions all things spiritually, after its own likeness. Life is reflected in existence, Truth in Sublunary reflections. truthfulness, God in goodness. Truth imparts its own true 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, from under the snow, 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, gilds the hospital cot, 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 is co-existent and eternal with God, forever manifesting, in more glorified forms, the infinite Father and Mother.
Genesis i. 27. So God created man in His 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 Gender. 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 Truth. The ideal woman corresponds to Life and Love. We have not as much authority, in Divine Science, for considering God masculine, as we have for considering Him feminine, for Love imparts the highest idea of Deity.
The world believes in many persons; but if God is personal, there is but one person, because there is but Emblematic personality. one God. His personality can only be reflected, not transmitted. God has countless ideas, as sons and daughters; and they all have one Principle and parentage. The only proper symbol of God, as person, is Mind's infinite idea. What is this idea? Who shall behold it? This idea is God's own image, spiritual, infinite. Even eternity can never reveal the whole of God, since there is no limit to Mind or 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, causes them to multiply, to manifest His power. Man, as the image of Birthright. his Maker, reflects the divine might. He is the master of earth, not made to till the soil. His birthright is dominion, not subjection. He is lord of beast, fowl, reptile, and fish, — 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 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, to support the greater. In return, the higher always protects the Assistance and beauty. lower. The rich in spirit help the poor, in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that mortal who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good. Love giveth to the smallest spiritual idea might, immortality, and goodness, which shine through all, as the blossom shines through the dew. All the varied expressions of God reflect 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 Satisfaction. divine Principle is perfect. Nothing is new to Spirit. Nothing can be novel to eternal Mind, the author of all things, who knoweth His own ideas from all eternity. 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 earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Thus the ideas of God, in universal man, are complete, and forever expressed; and Science engirdles infinity Completeness. with the fatherhood and motherhood of Love. Human capacity is slow to discern or grasp God's idea, and the divine power and presence which go with it, in demonstration of 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 works which He had made.
​God rests in action. Giving has not, cannot, impoverish the divine Mind. No exhaustion follows the action Resting. of this Mind, according to the apprehension of Divine Science. The highest and finest 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 Diurnal divisions. space. That is enough! Human language can only repeat an infinitesimal part of what exists. The infinite idea, man, is no more seen or comprehended by mortals, than his infinite Principle, Love. Both are co-existent 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, wherein all sense of error disappears forever, and thought accepts the 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, Vegetation. 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 it. Knowledge of this lifts man above the sod, above earth and its environments, to conscious harmony and eternal Being.
Here the inspired record closes its narrative of creation. “It is finished.” All that is made is the work of Spiritual narrative. God, and Good has created all, and all is Good. We leave this brief, glorious history of spiritual creation (as reported in the first chapter of Genesis) in the hands of God, not of man, — acknowledging His supremacy, omnipotence, and omnipresence, to-day and forever.
The harmony and immortality of man are intact. We should look away from the opposite supposition, that Eternal record. man is created materially, and turn our gaze to the spiritual record of creation; for that should be engraven on the understanding and heart, with the point of a diamond and the hand 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 Error's story. 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, which is the exact opposite of Scientific Truth. 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 incorrectness of the second, for they are antagonistic. The first The two records. record assigns all might and government to God, and endows man out of His 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 regards as impossible.
This second record unmistakably gives the history of error in its externalized forms, called life and intelligence in matter. It records Pantheism, as 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. It is represented as the life-giving principle of Conflict. 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, wherein Spirit is supposed to co-operate with matter, in Hypothetical co-operation. constructing man, must be based on some hypothesis of error, for the Scripture just preceding declares God's work to be finished. Do 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 subsequent Scriptural account, now under comment.
The mist of obscurity evolved by error, because of its material basis, deepens the false claim, and finally Vaporous evocation. declares that God knows error, and that it can improve His creation. The lie claims to be Truth, when presenting the exact opposite of 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. 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 Jehovah or Elohim. 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. Later on, 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 who is referred to, as peculiarly the divine sovereign of the Hebrew people.
​The idolatry which followed this material mythology is seen in the Phœnician worship of Baal, in the Idolatry. 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 is found among the Israelites also, who constantly went after “strange gods.” They called the Supreme Tribal deity. Being by the national name of Jehovah. In that name of Jehovah the true idea of God seems almost lost. He 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? Mind had Man's basis. made man, both male and female, with a single command. How then can a material organization become the basis of man? How can 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 the latter, for God presently curses the ground. Could Spirit evolve its opposite, matter, and Dust. 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? The validity of matter is herein opposed, not the validity of Spirit, or its creations. Man represents 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, Definitions of man. 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 No baneful creation. [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. 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 the Scriptural record of sin and death favors this conclusion, if we give the same heed to the history of error as to the records of Truth. This should not be. Sin, sickness, and death must be deemed as devoid of reality as they are of Truth.
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.
Now the previous and more Scientific record of creation declares that he made “every plant of the field Implantation. 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 beneath understanding. It involves theories of material hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell, termed the five senses. The appetites and passions, sin, sickness, and death, follow in this train of error, of a belief in intelligent matter.
The first mention of evil is in the second chapter of Genesis, in the legend of the serpent. God pronounced Serpent and trees. 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 guarded it was the type of Divine Science. The Tree of Knowledge stands for the erroneous belief that the knowledge of evil is as real and God-bestowed as the knowledge of Good. Was evil instituted through God, Love, who created this fruit-bearer of sin, in contradiction of the first creation? This second 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 Garden. body. God could not put Mind into matter, or infinite Spirit into finite form, to dress it and keep it, — to make it beautiful, or cause it to live ​and grow. Man is God's reflection, which needs no cultivation, but is ever beautiful and complete.
Genesis ii. 16. 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 Temptation. tempted of 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 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 whatever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Here falsity represents God as repeating creation, but doing so materially, not spiritually, and asking a Creation's counterfeit. prospective sinner to help Him. Is the Supreme retrograding, and is man giving up his dignity? Was it requisite that dust should become sentient, for the formation of man, when all Being is the reflection of the eternal Mind, and the text declares that He had already created man, both male and female? That Adam gave the name and nature of animals is true as a ​mortal belief, but it cannot be true that he was ordered to create man anew, in partnership with God.
Genesis ii. 21. And the Lord God [Jehovah] 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 with the rib, which the Lord God [Jehovah] had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Here falsity, error, charges Truth, God, with inducing a hypnotic state in Adam, in order to perform a surgical Hypnotic surgery. operation on him, and thereby to create woman. 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 hath done. Beholding the creations of his own dream, and calling them real and God-given, Adam — alias error — gives them names. Afterwards he becomes the basis of the creation of woman, and of his own kind, — calling them mankind.
According to this narrative, surgery was first performed mentally, and without instruments; and this Midwifery. may be a useful hint to the medical faculty. Later in human history, when the forbidden food had been evilly digested, there came a change in the modus operandi, — namely, that man should be born of woman, and not woman again taken from man. It came about, also, that instruments were needed to assist the birth of mortals. As the first system of obstetrics has changed its character, the next change in the manner of mortal birth may usher in the glorious fact of creation, — namely, 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? He enters into the metaphor Serpent. only as evil. We have nothing in the animal kingdom which represents the species herein described, — a talking serpent, — and should rejoice that evil, by whatever figure presented, contradicts itself, and has neither origin nor support in God, Good; so that we may have faith to fight all its claims as worthless.
Adam, the synonym for error, stands for a belief of material mind. He begins his reign over man somewhat Adam. mildly, but increases in falsehood as his days become shorter. In this development, the divine law of Truth is made manifest by the mortality of error.
In Divine Science, man is sustained by God, the divine Principle of Being. The earth, at His command, Edibles. 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 cat 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, Assumption. and saving, 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 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.”
The history of error is a dream-narrative. The dream has no reality, no intelligence, no mind; therefore the Allegory. dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true or real. First, this narrative supposes that something springs from nothing, that matter precedes mind. Second, it supposes that mind enters matter, and so 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 error. This is the error, — that mortal man starts from dust, 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 Cerebrum. prophesying thus: 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 it by the Creator, why is not this divine order still maintained by Biology. Him in perpetuating the species? Who will say that minerals, vegetables, and animals have a propagating principle of their own? Who dare 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 afterward require the union of the two sexes, in order to create the rest of the human family? No! He made and governs all.
All human knowledge and material sense must be gained from the five corporeal senses. Is this knowledge Progeny cursed. safe, when eating its first fruits brought death? “If man eat he shall 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. And the Lord God [Jehovah] called unto Adam, and said: “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. 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? Art thou in matter? Then art thou a sense of error instead of Truth, evil instead of God, or Good.”
Fear was the first manifestation of the error of material sense; it began and will end the dream of matter. Terror. 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, which is impossible. 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 was never 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 shouldest 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 First lie. 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 could alone. Is this “a help meet for man”?
Materiality, so obnoxious to God, is already found in the rapid deterioration of the bone and flesh which came Deterioration. from Adam to form Eve. The belief in material life and intelligence is growing worse at every step; but error must have its suppositional day, and multiply until the end thereof.
Truth, cross-questioning man as to his knowledge of error, finds woman the first to confess her fault. She Womanhood. 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 so much, 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 enables woman to be the mother of Jesus, and to behold at the sepulchre the risen Saviour, soon to manifest the deathless man of God's creating. This enables woman to be first to interpret the Scriptures in their true sense, which reveals the spiritual origin of man.
Genesis iii. 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: Warfare. and the Apostle Paul explains this warfare — between the idea that Jesus presented of divine power, and mythological material intelligence — as 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. And then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye arc not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.”
There will hereafter be greater mental opposition to the spiritual and Scientific meaning of the Scriptures, Bruising sin's head. than has ever been before, since the Christian era began. The serpent, material sense, will bruise the heel of the woman, will struggle to destroy the spiritual idea of Love; and the woman, this idea, will bruise his head. 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 shalt thou 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 Judgment on error. 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, the heritage of the firstborn 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 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 it reads: “And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of The ground and water. 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 Saint 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. gravitation and attraction to one Father, in whom all live, move, and have their Being, should be lost, and man should be governed by corporeality instead of Principle, by body instead of Soul, he would be annihilated. Created by flesh instead of by Spirit, starting from humanity 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 Blindness. 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 Attainment. the immortal side. Through toil, struggle, and sorrow, what do mortals attain? They give up their belief in perishable life and happiness; and the mortal and material returns to dust.
Genesis iii. 22-24. And the Lord God [Jehovah] said: “Behold, the man has 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 Recompense. no local habitation or 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 its effects. Subsequent Bible revelation is co-ordinate with the Science of Creation, Allegoric intention. as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, Inspired writers interpret the Word spiritually, whereas the ordinary historian interprets it literally. Literally taken, the text is made to appear contradictory in some places; and divine Love — which gave man earth for a possession, and blessed it for his sake — is represented as changeable. The literal meaning would imply that God withheld from man the opportunity to reform, lest he should improve it, and become better; but this is not the nature of God, who is Love, — Love infinitely wise and altogether lovely, “seeking not her own, but another's good.”
Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood. It is a two-edged sword, to guard and guide. Gateway. 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 arena contested. the universe. The holy Tree of Life is significant of eternal reality. The Tree of Knowledge typifies falsity. The testimony of the serpent is significant of the illusion of error, of the false claims of matter, of all that misrepresents God. Sin, sickness, and death have no record in the Elohistic introduction of Genesis, wherein God creates the heavens, earth, and man. Until that which contradicts the Truth of Being ​enters into the arena, evil has no history; and it 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 mortal, and of sin which is temporal. Both having a Conception. beginning, 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 (the Devil) is “a murderer from the beginning.” Error begins by sapping the foundations of Immortality, by reckoning Life as separate from Spirit; as if they 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, Standard. 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 A type of falsehood. symbol, the serpent, to grovel beneath all the beasts of the field. It is false to say that Truth and error commingle in creation. This falsity is exposed by our Master, in parable and argument, as ​self-evidently wrong. Disputing these points with the Pharisees, and arguing for the Science of Creation, he says: “Do men gather grapes of thorns?” Paul asks: “What communion hath light with darkness, or what concord hath Christ with Belial?”
The divine origin of Jesus gave him more than human power to expound the facts of creation, and Scientific offspring. demonstrate the one Mind, which made 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. Jesus was the offspring of Spirit, and his existence shows that Spirit creates neither a wicked nor a mortal man, lapsing into sin, sickness, and death.
Isaiah said, “The Lord makes peace, and creates evil;” but he referred to divine law, as stirring up evil Cleansing upheaval. to its utmost, — when bringing it to the surface, and reducing it to nothingness, its only proper state. The muddy river-bed must be stirred, in order to be purified. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil are aggravated, we may think, in our ignorance, that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God's law only uncovers sin and its effects, that He may annihilate all sense of sin.
Science renders “unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's.” It says to Allegiance. 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 Hebrew allegory, representing error as assuming a divine character, is to teach mortals never to believe a lie.
Genesis iv. 3, And 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 “brought forth in iniquity,” not the The two offerings. 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 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 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 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. It usurps divine power at first. It is supposed to say, New lies. 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 thou art cursed from the earth.”
The belief in material life sins at every step. It incurs the divine displeasure, and would kill Jesus, that it Murder. might be rid of troublesome Truth. Material beliefs would slay the idea of Spirit, whenever and wherever it appears. Though error hides behind a lie, and excuses guilt, it cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. It causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon error the mark of the beast. The disposition to excuse guilt, or conceal it, is punished. The avoidance of justice and denial of Truth tends to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock the 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.
“He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.” Let Truth uncover and destroy error in God's own way, Retribution. and let human justice wait on the divine. Sin shall receive its full penalty, both for what it is and what it does. Justice marks the sinner, and teaches mortals not to remove the way marks of God. ​To enmity's own hell of hatred, justice consigns the lie which would kill others, in order to satisfy itself.
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, falls back upon itself, having no Truth to Climax. support it. This error, after reaching the climax of suffering, yields to Truth and returns to dust; but it is only mortal man, not the real man, who is lost. The image of Spirit cannot be effaced, since it is the ideal of Truth, and changes not, but becomes more beautifully apparent at error's demise.
The material man is shut out by Divine Science from the presence of God, for the five corporeal senses cannot Dreamland. 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 Science is engaged in a warfare of extermination. The great verities of existence are shut out by this falsity.
All error grows out of the evidence before the material senses. If man is material, and originates in an Cosmology. 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 God's ideas, — creations of 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 when Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens,” introduces the record of material Material inception. creation which followed the spiritual, — creation so wholly apart from God's, that Spirit had no participation in it. In His 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 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, and nothing is new to the infinite Mind.
In Science, Mind neither produces matter, nor does matter produce Mind. No mortal mind has the right First evil suggestion. or power to create or to destroy. All is in the hands of the one Mind, even God. The first statement about evil, and 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 Personality. 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 lower god, nor the image and likeness of the one God.
​Erroneous belief reverses every position of understanding and Truth. Hence it declares mind to be in and of Production. matter, and existence to be infinity entering man's nostrils, so that matter shall become spiritual. Error begins with corporeality as the producer, instead of divine Principle, and explains Deity through mortal and finite metaphors.
“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 divine.
The condemnation of mortals to till the ground means this, — that they should so improve material belief as to Mental tillage. destroy it, by germs tending spiritually upward. 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 conclusions, and accord neither place nor privilege to Deity. Error tills the whole ground in this material theory, which is wholly a false view, destructive to existence and happiness. Outside of Christian Science all is vague and hypothetical, the opposite of Truth; yet this opposite impudently demands a blessing, in its false view of God and man.
The translators of this record of Scientific creation entertained a false sense of Being. They believed in the Erroneous standpoint. 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 Germination and mortality. 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, to-day, and forever.” If Spirit, God, creates error, that error must have existed in the Mind of God, and this dethrones the perfection of Deity.
Is Christian Science contradictory? Is the divine Principle of creation misstated? Has Mind no Science Mystification. to declare it, while matter is governed by unerring Intelligence? The mist which “went up from the earth” represents error as starting from an idea of truth on a material basis. It supposes God and man to be explainable 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 discoverer of Christian Science 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, Dawning. shine in the darkness; though the darkness. comprehending them not, may deny their reality. The proof that the system herein stated is ​Christianly Scientific resides in the good it accomplishes; for it cures on a demonstrable Principle, which all may understand.
If mathematics presents a thousand different examples of one principle, the proving of one example authenticates Problems. all the others. A simple statement of Christian Science, if demonstrated by healing, contains the proof of all here said of it. If one of the statements in this book is true, every one must be true, for not one departs from its 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 examinations of a vulture's ovum, strengthened the author's Embryonic evolution. conclusions as to the Scientific theory of creation. He was able to see in the egg the earth's atmosphere, the gathering clouds, the moon and stars, while the germinating speck of embryotic life seemed a small sun. Darwin's theory of evolution, from a material basis, is more consistent than most theories in its history of mortality. Briefly, this is Darwin's theory, — that Mind produces its opposite, 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 again to Mind, or go down into dust and nothingness.
The Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for thus only can Truth be Sensuous theories. 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, including man, and adopts the spiritual and immortal.
It is this perception of Scripture which lifts humanity out of disease and death, and inspires faith. “The Spirit Scriptural perception. and the Bride say: Come! . . . 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, The clouds dissolving. only as the clouds of corporeal sense roll away; and it gives little joy and light to mortals, before Life is spiritually learned. Every agony of mortal error helps to destroy error itself, and so aids the apprehension of immortal Truth. This is the new birth going on hourly, whereby 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 Naturalist's prediction. 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 of 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 embryotic ​life. The propagation of their species, by butterfly, bee, and moth, without the customary presence of male Methods of reproduction. companions, is a discovery corroborative of the Science of Mind; because these discoveries show that the origin and continuance of certain insects rest on a Principle 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 mistake which will finally give place to higher theories and demonstrations.
Creatures of lower forms of organization are supposed to have, collectively, three differing methods of The three processes. 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, whence one or more of those 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 A descent from grace. beards the lion of materialism in its den. At that point, however, even this great observer mistakes nature, forsakes Spirit as the divine essence of creative Deity, 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 a circumscribed and non-intelligent egg.
If this be so, whence cometh Life, or Mind, to the human race? Matter surely possesseth it not. God is Deep-reaching interrogations. the Life, or Intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as men. God cannot become finite, and so be limited within material bounds. Spirit cannot become matter, nor can it be developed through its opposite. Of what avail is it to investigate what is miscalled material life, which ends in nameless nothingness, even as it begins? The true sense of Being and its eternal perfection should appear now, just as it will hereafter.
Error of thought is reflected in error of action. The continual contemplation of existence as material and Stages of existence. corporeal — as beginning and ending, 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 material starting-point whatsoever, then the great I Am is a myth. If Life is God, as the Scriptures imply, then it cannot be embryotic; and an egg would be an impossible enclosure for Deity.
Embryology supplies no instance of one species producing its opposite. A serpent never begets a bird, Amalgamation. 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 them; for both these 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, matter. If matter The real producer. 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 The ascent of species. 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, or 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, — Transmitted peculiarities. 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 naturalists 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, “Who, by searching, can find out God?” All must be Mind, or else all must be matter. Neither can produce the other. Mind is immortal; but 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 as to which is first, the egg or the bird, is answered, if the egg Incubation. 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 facts of existence include neither member of this dolorous and fatal triad.
Human experience in mortal life, starting from an egg, corresponds with that of Job, when he says, “Man Release. is of few days and full of trouble.” Mortals must emerge from this notion of material life as all-in-all. They must peck their shells open with Christian Science, and look upward. 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 Persistence of species. they occasion, is not in egg or 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 claim, when the perfect and eternal Mind appears.
Naturalists describe the origin of mortal and material existence in the various forms of embryology, and Embryology. accompany their descriptions with important observations, which should awaken thought to a higher and purer contemplation of man's origin. This 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 Assumptions. 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 his deductions generally material?
Adam was created before Eve. Herein it is seen that the maternal egg never brought forth Adam. Eve was All nativity in thought. formed from Adam's rib, not from a fœtal ovum. Whatever theory may be adopted by general mortal thought, to account for human origin, that thought is sure to become the signal for the appearance of that 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 Preconception. 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,” — that the universe, inclusive of man, is as eternal as God, who is its 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 one and inseparable.
Error is always error. It is no thing. Any statement of life, following from a misconception thereof, Our conscious development. is erroneous, because it is destitute of any knowledge of its so-called selfhood, of its origin or existence. The mortal is unconscious of his fœtal and infantile existence; but as he grows up into another false claim, 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 is, and always has been, to impute to God the creation of whatever is sinful and mortal; but infinite Mind sets at naught such a mistaken belief.
Jesus defines this opposite of God and His creation better than we can, when he says, “He is a liar, and the Mendacity. father of it.” Jesus also said, “I have 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, Ailments of animals. especially those of the human form. This would indicate that there is less disease, in proportion as the force of mortal mind is less felt, and that health attends its absence. 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 about Truth, but I The sign of error. 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 divine 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 himself, The origin of divinity. 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 of sinning, or that Truth confers the ability to err. Oar great example, Jesus, could restore the ​individualized manifestation of existence, which seemed to vanish with death. Knowing that God is 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 evolved by mortal and material thought. By this thought Genera. they are classified, and supposed to possess life and mind. These beliefs will disappear, when the radiation of Spirit destroys forever any belief in intelligent matter. Then will the new Heaven and new earth appear, for the former things will have passed away.
Mortal belief fulfils the conditions of belief. It dies, to live again in renewed forms, only to go out at last Profoundness and oblivion. forever; for Life everlasting is not to be gained simply 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 all 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, 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 Ontology. Life, before it cares to solve the problem of Being; but when that awakening comes, existence will be viewed from a new standpoint.
​It is related that a father, anxious to try such an experiment, plunged his infant babe, only a few hours A watery experiment. old, into 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 so learn how to develop their children properly on dry land.
Mind controls the birth-throes in the lower realms of nature, wherein parturition is without suffering. Parturition. Vegetables, minerals, and many animals suffer no pain in multiplying; but human propagation has its woe, because of its 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 or dying, but coexistent with his Creator.
Popular theology takes up the history of man as if he began materially right, but immediately fell into spiritual Genesis and Jesus. 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 Mind spake and it was done.