| |
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
PAGE 501
And I appeared unto Abraham,, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob
by the
name of God Almighty; but by My name Jehovah was I not known to
them. - EXODUS.
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not
anything
made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light
of
men. - JOHN.
Spiritual interpretation
|
| 1 |
SCIENTIFIC interpretation of the Scriptures
prop-
erly starts with the beginning of the Old Testa- |
| 3 |
ment, chiefly because the spiritual import
of
the Word, in its earliest articulations, often
seems so smothered by
the immediate context as to |
| 6 |
require explication; whereas the New Testament
narra-
tives are clearer and come nearer the heart. Jesus il-
lumines
them, showing the poverty of mortal existence, |
| 9 |
but richly recompensing human want and woe with
spiritual gain. The incarnation of Truth, that amplifi-
cation of
wonder and glory which angels could only |
| 12 |
whisper and which God illustrated by light and
har-
mony, is consonant with ever-present Love. So-called
mystery and
miracle, which subserve the end of natural |
| 15 |
good, are explained by that Love for whose rest
the
weary ones sigh when needing something more native
to their
immortal cravings than the history of perpetual |
| 18 |
evil.
PAGE 502
Spiritual overture
|
| 1 |
A second necessity for beginning with Genesis
is that
the living and real prelude of the older Scriptures is so |
| 3 |
brief that it would almost seem, from the
preponderance of unreality in the entire nar-
rative, as if reality did not
predominate over unreality, |
| 6 |
the light over the dark, the straight line of
Spirit over
the mortal deviations and inverted images of the creator
and His creation.
Deflection of being
|
| 9 |
Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is
the history
of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal. This
deflection of being, rightly viewed, serves to |
| 12 |
suggest the proper reflection of God and the
spiritual actuality of man, as given in the first chapter
of Genesis.
Even thus the crude forms of human thought |
| 15 |
take on higher symbols and significations, when
scien-
tifically Christian views of the universe appear, illuminat-
ing
time with the glory of eternity.
|
| 18 |
In the following exegesis, each text is
followed by its
spiritual interpretation according to the teachings of
Chris-
tian Science.
|
| 21 |
EXEGESIS
Genesis i. 1. In the
beginning God created the heaven
and the earth.
Ideas and identities
|
| 24 |
The infinite has no beginning. This word
beginning
is employed to signify the only, - that is, the
eternal ver-
ity and unity of God and man, including |
| 27 |
the universe. The creative Principle - Life,
Truth, and Love - is God. The universe reflects God.
There is but one
creator and one creation. This crea-
PAGE 503
|
| 1 |
tion consists of the unfolding of spiritual
ideas and their
identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind
and |
| 3 |
forever reflected. These ideas range from the
infini-
tesimal to infinity, and the highest ideas are the sons
and
daughters of God.
|
| 6 |
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.
Spiritual harmony
|
| 9 |
The divine Principle and idea constitute
spiritual har-
mony, - heaven and eternity. In the universe of Truth,
matter is unknown. No supposition of error |
| 12 |
enters there. Divine Science, the Word of
God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, "God
is All-in-all," and
the light of ever-present Love illumines |
| 15 |
the universe. Hence the eternal wonder, - that
infinite
space is peopled with God's ideas, reflecting Him in
countless
spiritual forms.
|
| 18 |
Genesis i. 3. And God said, Let there be
light: and
there was light.
Mind's idea faultless
Immortal and divine Mind
presents the idea of God: |
| 21 |
first, in light; second, in
reflection; third, in spiritual and
immortal forms of beauty and
goodness. But
this Mind creates no element nor symbol of |
| 24 |
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: |
| 27 |
and God divided the light from the darkness.
God, Spirit, dwelling in infinite light and harmony
PAGE 504
|
| 1 |
from which emanates the true idea, is never
reflected by
aught but the good.
|
| 3 |
Genesis i. 5. And God called the light
Day, and the
darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morn-
ing were the first day.
Light preceding the sun
|
| 6 |
All questions as to the divine creation being
both
spiritual and material are answered in this passage, for
though
solar beams are not yet included in |
| 9 |
the record of creation, still there is light.
This
light is not from the sun nor from volcanic flames, but it
is the
revelation of Truth and of spiritual ideas. This |
| 12 |
also shows that there is no place where God's
light is not
seen, since Truth, Life, and Love fill immensity and are
ever-present. Was not this a revelation instead of a |
| 15 |
creation?
Evenings and mornings
The successive appearing
of God's ideas is represented
as taking place on so many evenings
and mornings, - |
| 18 |
words which indicate, in the absence of solar
time, spiritually clearer views of Him, views
which are not implied by
material darkness and dawn. |
| 21 |
Here we have the explanation of another passage
of
Scripture, that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand
years." The
rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into |
| 24 |
the focus of ideas, bring light
instantaneously, whereas
a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses,
and
vague conjectures emit no such effulgence.
Spirit versus darkness
|
| 27 |
Did infinite Mind create matter, and call it
light?
Spirit is light, and the contradiction of Spirit is
matter,
darkness, and darkness obscures light. Mate- |
| 30 |
rial sense is nothing but a supposition of the
absence of Spirit. No solar rays nor planetary revolutions
PAGE 505
|
| 1 |
form the day of Spirit. Immortal Mind makes its
own
record, but mortal mind, sleep, dreams, sin, disease, and |
| 3 |
death have no record in the first chapter of
Genesis.
Genesis i. 6. And God said, Let there be a firmament
in
the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from |
| 6 |
the waters.
Spiritual firmament
Spiritual understanding, by
which human conception,
material sense, is separated from Truth, is the
firmament. |
| 9 |
The divine Mind, not matter, creates all iden-
tities, and they are forms of Mind, the ideas of
Spirit apparent only
as Mind, never as mindless matter |
| 12 |
nor the so-called material senses.
Genesis i. 7. And God made the firmament, and
divided
the waters which were under the firmament from the waters |
| 15 |
which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Understanding imparted
Spirit imparts the
understanding which uplifts con-
sciousness and leads into all truth. The
Psalmist saith: |
| 18 |
"The Lord on high is mightier than the noise
of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of
the sea." Spiritual
sense is the discernment of spiritual |
| 21 |
good. Understanding is the line of demarcation
between
the real and unreal. Spiritual understanding unfolds
Mind, -
Life, Truth, and Love, - and demonstrates the |
| 24 |
divine sense, giving the spiritual proof of the
universe in
Christian Science.
Original reflected
This understanding is not
intellectual, is not the result |
| 27 |
of scholarly attainments; it is the reality of
all things
brought to light. God's ideas reflect the im-
mortal,
unerring, and infinite. The mortal, |
| 30 |
erring, and finite are human beliefs, which
apportion to
PAGE 506
|
| 1 |
themselves a task impossible for them, that of
distinguish-
ing between the false and the true. Objects utterly un- |
| 3 |
like the original do not reflect that original.
Therefore
matter, not being the reflection of Spirit, has no real en-
tity. Understanding is a quality of God, a quality which |
| 6 |
separates Christian Science from supposition
and makes
Truth final.
Genesis i. 8. And God called the firmament
Heaven. |
| 9 |
And the evening and the morning were the second
day.
Exalted thought
Through divine Science, Spirit,
God, unites under-
standing to eternal harmony. The calm and exalted
|
| 12 |
thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace.
Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each
successive stage of
progress.
|
| 15 |
Genesis i. 9. And God said, Let the
waters under the
heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the
dry
land appear: and it was so.
Unfolding of thoughts
|
| 18 |
Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into
their
proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts,
even as He opens the
petals of a holy purpose |
| 21 |
in order that the purpose may appear.
Genesis i. 10. And God called the dry land Earth;
and
the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and |
| 24 |
God saw that it was good.
Spirit names and blesses
Here the human concept
and divine idea seem con-
fused by the translator, but they are not so in
the scien- |
| 27 |
tifically Christian meaning of the text. Upon
Adam devolved the pleasurable task of find-
ing names for all material
things, but Adam has not yet
PAGE 507
|
| 1 |
appeared in the narrative. In metaphor, the
dry land
illustrates the absolute formations instituted by
Mind, |
| 3 |
while water symbolizes the elements of
Mind. Spirit duly
feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the
line
of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the father- |
| 6 |
hood and motherhood of God. Spirit names and
blesses
all. Without natures particularly defined, objects and
subjects would be obscure, and creation would be full of |
| 9 |
nameless offspring, - wanderers from the parent
Mind,
strangers in a tangled wilderness.
Genesis i. 11. And God said, Let the earth bring
forth |
| 12 |
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.
Divine propagation
|
| 15 |
The universe of Spirit reflects the creative
power of
the divine Principle, or Life, which reproduces the multi-
tudinous forms of Mind and governs the mul- |
| 18 |
tiplication of the compound idea man. The
tree and herb do not yield fruit because of any propagat-
ing power of
their own, but because they reflect the Mind |
| 21 |
which includes all. A material world implies a
mortal
mind and man a creator. The scientific divine creation
declares
immortal Mind and the universe created by God.
Ever-appearing creation
|
| 24 |
Infinite Mind creates and governs all, from the
men-
tal molecule to infinity. This divine Principle of all
expresses
Science and art throughout His |
| 27 |
creation, and the immortality of man and the
universe. Creation is ever appearing, and must ever con-
tinue to
appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. |
| 30 |
Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls
ideas mate-
rial. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall
PAGE 508
|
| 1 |
to the level of a human or material belief,
called mortal
man. But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind |
| 3 |
is All and reproduces all - as Mind is the
multiplier,
and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the
product. The only intelligence or substance of a thought, |
| 6 |
a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it.
Mind is the
Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which gov-
erns
all.
|
| 9 |
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 |
| 12 |
that it was good.
Mind's pure thought
God determines the gender
of His own ideas. Gen-
der is mental, not material. The seed within itself
is |
| 15 |
the pure thought emanating from divine
Mind. The feminine gender is not yet ex-
pressed in the text. Gender
means simply kind or sort, |
| 18 |
and does not necessarily refer either to
masculinity or
femininity. The word is not confined to sexuality, and
grammars always recognize a neuter gender, neither |
| 21 |
male nor female. The Mind or intelligence of
produc-
tion names the female gender last in the ascending order
of
creation. The intelligent individual idea, be it male |
| 24 |
or female, rising from the lesser to the
greater, unfolds
the infinitude of Love.
Genesis i. 13. And the evening and the morning
were |
| 27 |
the third day.
Rising to the light
The third stage in the
order of Christian Science is an
important one to the human thought,
letting in the light
PAGE 509
|
| 1 |
of spiritual understanding. This period
corresponds to
the resurrection, when Spirit is discerned to be the Life
of |
| 3 |
all, and the deathless Life, or Mind, dependent
upon no material organization. Our Master
reappeared to his students,
- to their apprehension he |
| 6 |
rose from the grave, - on the third day of his
ascending
thought, and so presented to them the certain sense of
eternal Life.
|
| 9 |
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, |
| 12 |
and years.
Rarefaction of thought
Spirit creates no other
than heavenly or celestial bodies,
but the stellar universe is no more
celestial than our earth. |
| 15 |
This text gives the idea of the rarefaction of
thought as it ascends higher. God forms and
peoples the universe. The
light of spiritual understand- |
| 18 |
ing gives gleams of the infinite only, even as
nebulae indi-
cate the immensity of space.
Divine nature appearing
So-called mineral,
vegetable, and animal substances |
| 21 |
are no more contingent now on time or material
struc-
ture than they were when "the morning stars
sang together."
Mind made the "plant of |
| 24 |
the field before it was in the earth." The
periods of
spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's
creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness |
| 27 |
- yea, the divine nature - appear in man and
the uni-
verse never to disappear.
Spiritual ideas apprehended
Knowing the Science
of creation, in which all is Mind |
| 30 |
and its ideas, Jesus rebuked the material
thought of his
fellow-countrymen: "Ye can discern the face of the
PAGE 510
|
| 1 |
sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the
times?"
How much more should we seek to apprehend the spirit- |
| 3 |
ual ideas of God, than to dwell on the objects
of sense! To discern the rhythm of Spirit
and to be holy, thought must
be purely spiritual.
|
| 6 |
Genesis i. 15. And let them be for
lights in the firma-
ment of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and
it
was so.
|
| 9 |
Truth and Love enlighten the understanding, in
whose
"light shall we see light;" and this illumination is re-
flected
spiritually by all who walk in the light and turn |
| 12 |
away from a false material sense.
Genesis i. 16. And God made two great lights;
the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule
the |
| 15 |
night: He made the stars also.
Geology a failure
The sun is a metaphorical
representation of Soul out-
side the body, giving existence and
intelligence to the |
| 18 |
universe. Love alone can impart the limit-
less idea of infinite Mind. Geology has never
explained the earth's
formations; it cannot explain them. |
| 21 |
There is no Scriptural allusion to solar light
until time has
been already divided into evening and morning; and the
allusion to fluids (Genesis i. 2) indicates a supposed for- |
| 24 |
mation of matter by the resolving of fluids
into solids,
analogous to the suppositional resolving of thoughts into
material things.
Spiritual subdivision
|
| 27 |
Light is a symbol of Mind, of Life, Truth, and
Love,
and not a vitalizing property of matter. Sci-
ence reveals only
one Mind, and this one shin- |
| 30 |
ing by its own light and governing the
universe, including
PAGE 511
|
| 1 |
man, in perfect harmony. This Mind forms ideas,
its
own images, subdivides and radiates their borrowed light, |
| 3 |
intelligence, and so explains the Scripture
phrase, "whose
seed is in itself." Thus God's ideas "multiply and re-
plenish the earth." The divine Mind supports the sub- |
| 6 |
limity, magnitude, and infinitude of spiritual
creation.
Genesis i. 17, 18. And God set them in the firmament
of
the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over |
| 9 |
the day and over the night, and to divide the
light from the
darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Darkness scattered
In divine Science, which is
the seal of Deity and has |
| 12 |
the impress of heaven, God is revealed as in-
finite light. In the eternal Mind, no night is
there.
|
| 15 |
Genesis i. 19. And the evening and the
morning were
the fourth day.
The changing glow and full effulgence of God's
infi- |
| 18 |
nite ideas, images, mark the periods of
progress.
Genesis i. 20. And God said, Let the waters bring
forth
abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl |
| 21 |
that may fly above the earth in the open
firmament of
heaven.
Soaring aspirations
To mortal mind, the
universe is liquid, solid, and a‰ri- |
| 24 |
form. Spiritually interpreted, rocks and
mountains stand
for solid and grand ideas. Animals and mor-
tals
metaphorically present the gradation of |
| 27 |
mortal thought, rising in the scale of
intelligence, taking
form in masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. The
fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament
PAGE 512
|
| 1 |
of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring
beyond and
above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal |
| 3 |
and divine Principle, Love.
Genesis i. 21. And God created great whales, and
every
living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth |
| 6 |
abundantly, after their kind, and every winged
fowl after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Seraphic symbols
Spirit is symbolized by
strength, presence, and power, |
| 9 |
and also by holy thoughts, winged with Love.
These an-
gels of His presence, which have the holiest
charge, abound
in the spiritual atmosphere of |
| 12 |
Mind, and consequently reproduce their own
character-
istics. Their individual forms we know not, but we do
know
that their natures are allied to God's nature; and |
| 15 |
spiritual blessings, thus typified, are the
externalized, yet
subjective, states of faith and spiritual understanding.
Genesis i. 22. And God blessed them, saying, Be
fruit- |
| 18 |
ful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the
seas; and let
fowl multiply in the earth.
Multiplication of pure ideas
Spirit blesses the
multiplication of its own pure and |
| 21 |
perfect ideas. From the infinite elements of
the one
Mind emanate all form, color, quality, and
quantity, and these
are mental, both primarily |
| 24 |
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 |
| 27 |
own misconceptions. Ignorant of the origin and
opera-
tions of mortal mind, - that is, ignorant of itself, - this
so-called mind puts forth its own qualities, and claims |
| 30 |
God as their author; albeit God is ignorant of
the ex-
PAGE 513
|
| 1 |
istence of both this mortal mentality,
so-called, and its
claim, for the claim usurps the deific prerogatives and
is |
| 3 |
an attempted infringement on infinity.
Genesis i. 23. And the evening and the morning
were
the fifth day.
Spiritual spheres
|
| 6 |
Advancing spiritual steps in the teeming
universe of
Mind lead on to spiritual spheres and exalted beings. To
material sense, this divine universe is dim and |
| 9 |
distant, gray in the sombre hues of
twilight;
but anon the veil is lifted, and the scene shifts into light.
In the record, time is not yet measured by solar revolutions, |
| 12 |
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 |
| 15 |
the living creature after his kind, cattle, and
creeping thing,
and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Continuity of thoughts
Spirit diversifies,
classifies, and individualizes all |
| 18 |
thoughts, which are as eternal as the Mind
conceiving them; but the intelligence, exist-
ence, and continuity of all
individuality remain in God, |
| 21 |
who is the divinely creative Principle thereof.
Genesis i. 25. And God made the beast of the earth
after
his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that |
| 24 |
creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God
saw that
it was good.
God's thoughts are spiritual realities
God
creates all forms of reality. His thoughts are |
| 27 |
spiritual realities. So-called mortal mind -
being non-
existent and consequently not within the range of im-
PAGE 514
|
| 1 |
mortal existence - could not by simulating
deific power
invert the divine creation, and afterwards recreate per- |
| 3 |
sons or things upon its own plane, since noth-
ing exists beyond the range of all-inclusive
infinity, in which and of
which God is the |
| 6 |
sole creator. Mind, joyous in strength, dwells
in the
realm of Mind. Mind's infinite ideas run and dis-
port
themselves. In humility they climb the heights of |
| 9 |
holiness.
Qualities of thought
Moral courage is "the lion
of the tribe of Juda," the
king of the mental realm. Free and fearless it
roams in |
| 12 |
the forest. Undisturbed it lies in the open
field, or rests in "green pastures, . . . beside
the still waters." In the
figurative transmission from the |
| 15 |
divine thought to the human, diligence,
promptness, and
perseverance are likened to "the cattle upon a thousand
hills." They carry the baggage of stern resolve, and |
| 18 |
keep pace with highest purpose. Tenderness
accompa-
nies all the might imparted by Spirit. The individ-
uality
created by God is not carnivorous, as witness the |
| 21 |
millennial estate pictured by Isaiah: -
The wolf also shall dwell
with the lamb,
And the leopard shall lie down
with the kid; |
| 24 |
And the calf and
the young lion, and the fatling together;
And
a little child shall lead them.
Creatures of God useful
Understanding the
control which Love held over all, |
| 27 |
Daniel felt safe in the lions' den, and Paul
proved the
viper to be harmless. All of God's creatures
moving in the
harmony of Science, are harm- |
| 30 |
less, useful, indestructible. A realization of
this grand
verity was a source of strength to the ancient worthies.
PAGE 515
|
| 1 |
It supports Christian healing, and enables its
possessor
to emulate the example of Jesus. "And God saw that |
| 3 |
it was good."
The serpent harmless
Patience is symbolized by
the tireless worm, creeping
over lofty summits, persevering in its intent.
The ser- |
| 6 |
pent of God's creating is neither subtle
nor
poisonous, but is a wise idea, charming in its
adroitness, for
Love's ideas are subject to the Mind which |
| 9 |
forms them, - the power which changeth the
serpent
into a staff.
Genesis i. 26. And God said, Let us make man in
our |
| 12 |
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 |
| 15 |
thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Elohistic plurality
The eternal Elohim includes
the forever universe.
The name Elohim is in the plural, but this plurality
of |
| 18 |
Spirit does not imply more than one God, nor
does it imply three persons in one. It relates
to the oneness, the
triunity of Life, Truth, and Love. |
| 21 |
"Let them have dominion." Man is the
family name
for all ideas, - the sons and daughters of God. All that
God imparts moves in accord with Him, reflecting good- |
| 24 |
ness and power.
Reflected likeness
Your mirrored reflection is
your own image or like-
ness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does
this also. |
| 27 |
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 |
| 30 |
divine Science, and call man the reflection.
Then note
PAGE 516
|
| 1 |
how true, according to Christian Science, is
the reflection
to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears
in |
| 3 |
the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the
reflection of
God. The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love,
which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; |
| 6 |
and when we subordinate the false testimony of
the
corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see
this true
likeness and reflection everywhere.
Love imparts beauty
|
| 9 |
God fashions all things, after His own
likeness. Life
is reflected in existence, Truth in truthfulness, God in
goodness, which impart their own peace and |
| 12 |
permanence. Love, redolent with unselfish-
ness, bathes all in beauty and light. The grass beneath
our feet silently
exclaims, "The meek shall inherit the |
| 15 |
earth." The modest arbutus sends her sweet
breath to
heaven. The great rock gives shadow and shelter. The
sunlight
glints from the church-dome, glances into the |
| 18 |
prison-cell, glides into the sick-chamber,
brightens the
flower, beautifies the landscape, blesses the earth. Man,
made in His likeness, possesses and reflects God's domin- |
| 21 |
ion over all the earth. Man and woman as
coexistent
and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality,
the infinite Father-Mother God.
|
| 24 |
Genesis i. 27. So God created man in His
own image,
in the image of God created He him; male and female
created He them.
Ideal man and woman
|
| 27 |
To emphasize this momentous thought, it is
repeated
that God made man in His own image, to reflect the
divine
Spirit. It follows that man is a generic |
| 30 |
term. Masculine, feminine, and neuter gen-
ders are human concepts. In one of the ancient lan-
PAGE 517
|
| 1 |
guages the word for man is used also as
the synonym of
mind. This definition has been weakened by
anthropo- |
| 3 |
morphism, or a humanization of Deity. The word
an-
thropomorphic, in such a phrase as "an
anthropomorphic
God," is derived from two Greek words, signifying
man
|
| 6 |
and form, and may be defined as a
mortally mental at-
tempt to reduce Deity to corporeality. The life-giving
quality of Mind is Spirit, not matter. The ideal man |
| 9 |
corresponds to creation, to intelligence, and
to Truth.
The ideal woman corresponds to Life and to Love. In
divine
Science, we have not as much authority for con- |
| 12 |
sidering God masculine, as we have for
considering
Him feminine, for Love imparts the clearest idea of
Deity.
Divine personality
|
| 15 |
The world believes in many persons; but if God
is per-
sonal, there is but one person, because there is but one
God.
His personality can only be reflected, |
| 18 |
not transmitted. God has countless ideas, and
they all have one Principle and parentage. The only
proper symbol of
God as person is Mind's infinite ideal. |
| 21 |
What is this ideal? Who shall behold it? This
ideal
is God's own image, spiritual and infinite. Even eternity
can
never reveal the whole of God, since there is no limit |
| 24 |
to infinitude or to its reflections.
Genesis i. 28. And God blessed them, and God said
unto
them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, |
| 27 |
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.
Birthright of man
|
| 30 |
Divine Love blesses its own ideas, and causes
them to
multiply, - to manifest His power. Man is not made
PAGE 518
|
| 1 |
to till the soil. His birthright is dominion,
not sub-
jection. He is lord of the belief in earth |
| 3 |
and heaven, - himself subordinate alone to
his Maker. This is the Science of being.
Genesis i. 29, 30. And God said, Behold, I have
given |
| 6 |
you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the
face of all
the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a
tree
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every |
| 9 |
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 |
| 12 |
was so.
Assistance in brotherhood
God gives the lesser
idea of Himself for a link to the
greater, and in return, the higher always
protects the |
| 15 |
lower. The rich in spirit help the poor in
one grand brotherhood, all having the same
Principle, or Father; and
blessed is that man who seeth |
| 18 |
his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking
his own in
another's good. Love giveth to the least spiritual idea
might, immortality, and goodness, which shine through |
| 21 |
all as the blossom shines through the bud. All
the varied
expressions of God reflect health, holiness, immortality -
infinite Life, Truth, and Love.
|
| 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
|
| 27 |
The divine Principle, or Spirit, comprehends
and ex-
presses all, and all must therefore be as perfect is the
divine
Principle is perfect. Nothing is new to Spirit.
PAGE 519
|
| 1 |
Nothing can be novel to eternal Mind, the
author of all
things, who from all eternity knoweth His own ideas. |
| 3 |
Deity was satisfied with His work. How
could
He be otherwise, since the spiritual creation
was the outgrowth,
the emanation, of His infinite self- |
| 6 |
containment and immortal wisdom?
Genesis ii. 1. Thus the heavens and the earth
were
finished, and all the host of them.
Infinity measureless
|
| 9 |
Thus the ideas of God in universal being are
complete
and forever expressed, for Science reveals infinity and
the
fatherhood and motherhood of Love. Hu- |
| 12 |
man capacity is slow to discern and to grasp
God's creation and the divine power and presence which
go with it,
demonstrating its spiritual origin. Mortals |
| 15 |
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, |
| 18 |
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 ful- |
| 21 |
ness of Christ"?
Genesis ii. 2. And on the seventh day God ended
His
work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh |
| 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.
No |
| 27 |
exhaustion follows the action of this Mind,
according to the apprehension of divine Science. The
PAGE 520
|
| 1 |
highest and sweetest rest, even from a human
standpoint,
is in holy work.
Love and man coexistent
|
| 3 |
Unfathomable Mind is expressed. The depth,
breadth,
height, might, majesty, and glory of infinite Love fill all
space. That is enough! Human language |
| 6 |
can repeat only an infinitesimal part of
what
exists. The absolute ideal, man, is no more seen nor
comprehended
by mortals, than is His infinite Principle, |
| 9 |
Love. Principle and its idea, man, are
coexistent and
eternal. The numerals of infinity, called seven days,
can
never be reckoned according to the calendar of time. |
| 12 |
These days will appear as mortality disappears,
and they
will reveal eternity, newness of Life, in which all sense of
error forever disappears and thought accepts the divine |
| 15 |
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 |
| 18 |
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] |
| 21 |
had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and
there was not
a man to till the ground.
Growth is from Mind
Here is the emphatic
declaration that God creates all |
| 24 |
through Mind, not through matter, - that the
plant
grows, not because of seed or soil, but because
growth is the
eternal mandate of Mind. Mor- |
| 27 |
tal thought drops into the ground, but the
immortal creat-
ing thought is from above, not from beneath. Because
Mind makes all, there is nothing left to be made by a |
| 30 |
lower power. Spirit acts through the Science of
Mind,
never causing man to till the ground, but making him
PAGE 521
|
| 1 |
superior to the soil. Knowledge of this lifts
man above
the sod, above earth and its environments, to conscious |
| 3 |
spiritual harmony and eternal being.
Spiritual narrative
Here the inspired record
closes its narrative of being
that is without beginning or end. All that is
made is |
| 6 |
the work of God, and all is good. We leave
this brief, glorious history of spiritual creation
(as stated in the first
chapter of Genesis) in the hands of |
| 9 |
God, not of man, in the keeping of Spirit, not
matter, -
joyfully acknowledging now and forever God's supremacy,
omnipotence, and omnipresence.
|
| 12 |
The harmony and immortality of man are intact.
We
should look away from the opposite supposition that man
is created
materially, and turn our gaze to the spiritual |
| 15 |
record of creation, to that which should be
engraved on
the understanding and heart "with the point of a diamond"
and the pen of an angel.
|
| 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.
|
| 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 been |
| 24 |
presented in the verses already considered, and
now the
opposite error, a material view of creation, is
to be set
forth. The second chapter of Gene- |
| 27 |
sis contains a statement of this material view
of God and
the universe, a statement which is the exact opposite of
scientific truth as before recorded. The history of error |
| 30 |
or matter, if veritable, would set aside the
omnipotence
PAGE 522
|
| 1 |
of Spirit; but it is the false history in
contradistinction
to the true.
The two records
|
| 3 |
The Science of the first record proves the
falsity of
the second. If one is true, the other is false, for they are
antagonistic. The first record assigns all |
| 6 |
might and government to God, and endows
man
out of God's perfection and power. The second
record chronicles man as
mutable and mortal, - as hav- |
| 9 |
ing broken away from Deity and as revolving in
an orbit
of his own. Existence, separate from divinity, Science
explains as impossible.
|
| 12 |
This second record unmistakably gives the
history of
error in its externalized forms, called life and intelli-
gence in matter. It records pantheism, opposed to the |
| 15 |
supremacy of divine Spirit; but this state of
things is
declared to be temporary and this man to be mortal, -
dust
returning to dust.
Erroneous representation
|
| 18 |
In this erroneous theory, matter takes the
place of Spirit.
Matter is represented as the life-giving principle of
the
earth. Spirit is represented as entering mat- |
| 21 |
ter 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 |
| 24 |
with revelation in declaring this material
creation false.
Hypothetical reversal
This latter part of the
second chapter of Genesis, which
portrays Spirit as supposedly cooperating
with matter in |
| 27 |
constructing the universe, is based on some
hypothesis of error, for the Scripture just pre-
ceding declares God's
work to be finished. Does Life,
30 Truth, and Love produce death,
error, and hatred? Does
the creator condemn His own creation? Does the un-
erring Principle of divine law change or repent? It can-
PAGE 523
|
| 1 |
not be so. Yet one might so judge from an
unintelligent
perusal of the Scriptural account now under comment.
Mist, or false claim
|
| 3 |
Because of its false basis, the mist of
obscurity evolved
by error deepens the false claim, and finally declares
that
God knows error and that error can improve |
| 6 |
His creation. Although presenting the exact
opposite of Truth, the lie claims to be truth. The crea-
tions of matter
arise from a mist or false claim, or from |
| 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. |
| 12 |
All is material myth, instead of the reflection
of
Spirit.
Distinct documents
It may be worth while here
to remark that, according |
| 15 |
to the best scholars, there are clear evidences
of two dis-
tinct documents in the early part of the book of
Genesis.
One is called the Elohistic, because |
| 18 |
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 |
| 21 |
version translates it.
Jehovah or Elohim
Throughout the first chapter
of Genesis and in three
verses of the second, - in what we understand to be
the |
| 24 |
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 |
| 27 |
Jehovah, or the Lord. The different accounts
become
more and more closely intertwined to the end of chapter
twelve,
after which the distinction is not definitely trace- |
| 30 |
able. In the historic parts of the Old
Testament, it is
usually Jehovah, peculiarly the divine sovereign of
the
Hebrew people, who is referred to.
PAGE 524
Gods of the heathen
|
| 1 |
The idolatry which followed this material
mythology is
seen in the Phoenician worship of Baal, in the Moabitish |
| 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
|
| 6 |
It was also found among the Israelites, who
constantly
went after "strange gods." They called the Supreme
Being by
the national name of Jehovah. In |
| 9 |
that name of Jehovah, the true idea of God
seems almost lost. God becomes "a man of war," a
tribal god to be
worshipped, rather than Love, the divine |
| 12 |
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 |
| 15 |
the breath of life; and man became a living
soul.
Creation reversed
Did the divine and infinite
Principle become a finite
deity, that he should now be called Jehovah? With
l8 a single command, Mind had made man,
both male and female. How then
could a
material organization become the basis of man? How |
| 21 |
could the non-intelligent become the medium of
Mind,
and error be the enunciator of Truth? Matter is not
the
reflection of Spirit, yet God is reflected in all His |
| 24 |
creation. Is this addition to His creation real
or un-
real? Is it the truth, or is it a lie concerning man and
God?
|
| 27 |
It must be a lie, for God presently curses the
ground.
Could Spirit evolve its opposite, matter, and give matter
ability to sin and suffer? Is Spirit, God, injected into |
| 30 |
dust, and eventually ejected at the demand of
matter?
Does Spirit enter dust, and lose therein the divine nature
PAGE 525
|
| 1 |
and omnipotence? Does Mind, God, enter matter
to be-
come there a mortal sinner, animated by the breath of |
| 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 is |
| 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, a
|
| 9 |
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. |
| 12 |
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 |
| 15 |
God's mind shaped He Him; and He shaped them
male and
female.
No baneful creation
In the Gospel of John, it
is declared that all things were |
| 18 |
made through the Word of God, "and without Him
[the
logos, or word] was not anything made that
was
made." Everything good or worthy, God |
| 21 |
made. Whatever is valueless or baneful, He did
not
make, - hence its unreality. In the Science of Genesis
we read
that He saw everything which He had made, |
| 24 |
"and, behold, it was very good." The corporeal
senses
declare otherwise; and if we give the same heed to the
history
of error as to the records of truth, the Scriptural |
| 27 |
record of sin and death favors the false
conclusion of the
material senses. Sin, sickness, and death must be
deemed
as devoid of reality as they are of good, God.
|
| 30 |
Genesis ii. 9. And out of the ground
made the Lord God
[Jehovah] to grow every tree that is pleasant to the
sight,
PAGE 526
|
| 1 |
and good for food; the tree of life also, in
the midst of the
garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Contradicting first creation
|
| 3 |
The previous and more scientific record of
creation
declares that God made "every plant of the field be-
fore it
was in the earth." This opposite |
| 6 |
declaration, this statement that life
issues
from matter, contradicts the teaching of the first chap-
ter, -
namely, that all Life is God. Belief is less than |
| 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, |
| 12 |
follow in the train of this error of a belief
in intelligent
matter.
Record of error
The first mention of evil is in
the legendary Scriptural |
| 15 |
text in the second chapter of Genesis. God
pronounced
good all that He created, and the Scriptures
declare that He
created all. The "tree of |
| 18 |
life" stands for the idea of Truth, and the
sword which
guards it is the type of divine Science. The "tree of
knowledge" stands for the erroneous doctrine that the |
| 21 |
knowledge of evil is as real, hence as
God-bestowed, as
the knowledge of good. Was evil instituted through
God,
Love? Did He create this fruit-bearer of sin in contra- |
| 24 |
diction of the first creation? This second
biblical account
is a picture of error throughout.
Genesis ii. 15. And the Lord God [Jehovah] took
the |
| 27 |
man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to
dress it and
to keep it.
Garden of Eden
The name Eden, according to
Cruden, means pleasure, |
| 30 |
delight. In this text Eden stands for
the mortal, mate-
PAGE 527
|
| 1 |
rial body. God could not put Mind into matter
nor in-
finite Spirit into finite form to dress it and |
| 3 |
keep it, - to make it beautiful or to cause it
to live and grow. Man is God's reflection, needing no
cultivation, but
ever beautiful and complete.
|
| 6 |
Genesis ii. 16, 17. And the Lord God
[Jehovah] com-
manded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou
mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good |
| 9 |
and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the
day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
No temptation from God
Here the metaphor
represents God, Love, as tempting |
| 12 |
man, but the Apostle James says: "God cannot
be
tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any
man." It is true that a
knowledge of evil would |
| 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, |
| 18 |
good, made "the tree of life" to be the tree of
death to His
own creation? Has evil the reality of good? Evil is un-
real because it is a lie, - false in every statement.
|
| 21 |
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 |
| 24 |
would call them: and whatsoever Adam called
every living
creature, that was the name thereof.
Creation's counterfeit
Here the lie represents
God as repeating creation, but |
| 27 |
doing so materially, not spiritually, and ask-
ing a prospective sinner to help Him. Is the
Supreme Being
retrograding, and is man giving up his |
| 30 |
dignity? Was it requisite for the formation of
man
PAGE 528
|
| 1 |
that dust should become sentient, when all
being is the
reflection of the eternal Mind, and the record declares |
| 3 |
that God has already created man, both male and
female? That Adam gave the name and nature of
animals, is solely
mythological and material. It can- |
| 6 |
not be true that man was ordered to create man
anew
in partnership with God; this supposition was a dream,
a
myth.
|
| 9 |
Genesis ii. 21, 22. And the Lord God
[Jehovah, Yawah]
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept:
and
He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead |
| 12 |
thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God
[Jehovah] had
taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto
the
man.
Hypnotic surgery
|
| 15 |
Here falsity, error, credits Truth, God, with
inducing
a sleep or hypnotic state in Adam in order to perform a
surgical operation on him and thereby create |
| 18 |
woman. This is the first record of magnet-
ism. Beginning creation with darkness instead of light,
- materially rather
than spiritually, - error now simu- |
| 21 |
lates the work of Truth, mocking Love and
declar-
ing what great things error has done. Beholding the
creations
of his own dream and calling them real and |
| 24 |
God-given, Adam - alias error - gives
them names.
Afterwards he is supposed to become the basis of the
creation of woman and of his own kind, calling them |
| 27 |
mankind, - that is, a kind of man.
Mental midwifery
But according to this
narrative, surgery was first per-
formed mentally and without
instruments; |
| 30 |
and this may be a useful hint to the medical
faculty. Later in human history, when the forbidden
PAGE 529
|
| 1 |
fruit was bringing forth fruit of its own kind,
there
came a suggestion of change in the modus operandi, - |
| 3 |
that man should be born of woman, not woman
again
taken from man. It came about, also, that instruments
were
needed to assist the birth of mortals. The first |
| 6 |
system of suggestive obstetrics has changed.
Another
change will come as to the nature and origin of man,
and this
revelation will destroy the dream of existence, |
| 9 |
reinstate reality, usher in Science and the
glorious fact
of creation, that both man and woman proceed from
God
and are His eternal children, belonging to no lesser |
| 12 |
parent.
Genesis iii. 1-3. Now the serpent was more subtle
than
any beast of the field which the Lord God [Jehovah] had |
| 15 |
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 |
| 18 |
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.
Mythical serpent
|
| 21 |
Whence comes a talking, lying serpent to tempt
the
children of divine Love? The serpent enters into the
metaphor only
as evil. We have nothing in the |
| 24 |
animal kingdom which represents the species
described, - a talking serpent, - and should rejoice that
evil, by whatever
figure presented, contradicts itself and |
| 27 |
has neither origin nor support in Truth and
good. Seeing
this, we should have faith to fight all claims of evil,
be-
cause we know that they are worthless and unreal.
Error or Adam
|
| 30 |
Adam, the synonym for error, stands for a
belief of
material mind. He begins his reign over man some-
PAGE 530
|
| 1 |
what mildly, but he increases in falsehood and
his days
become shorter. In this development, the im- |
| 3 |
mortal, spiritual law of Truth is made manifest
as forever opposed to mortal, material sense.
Divine providence
In divine Science, man is
sustained by God, the divine |
| 6 |
Principle of being. The earth, at God's
command, brings
forth food for man's use. Knowing this, Jesus
once
said, "Take no thought for your life, |
| 9 |
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 |
| 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 day |
| 15 |
ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened;
and ye shall
be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Error's assumption
This myth represents error
as always asserting its su- |
| 18 |
periority over truth, giving the lie to divine
Science and
saying, through the material senses: "I can
open your
eyes. I can do what God has not |
| 21 |
done for you. Bow down to me and have another
god.
Only admit that I am real, that sin and sense are more
pleasant to
the eyes than spiritual Life, more to be de- |
| 24 |
sired than Truth, and I shall know you, and you
will be
mine." Thus Spirit and flesh war.
Scriptural allegory
The history of error is a
dream-narrative. The dream |
| 27 |
has no reality, no intelligence, no mind;
therefore the
dreamer and dream are one, for neither is
true nor real.
First, this narrative supposes |
| 30 |
that something springs from nothing, that
matter pre-
cedes mind. Second, it supposes that mind enters
matter,
PAGE 531
|
| 1 |
and matter becomes living, substantial, and
intelligent.
The order of this allegory - the belief that everything |
| 3 |
springs from dust instead of from Deity - has
been main-
tained in all the subsequent forms of belief. This is the
error, - that mortal man starts materially, that non- |
| 6 |
intelligence becomes intelligence, that mind
and soul are
both right and wrong.
Higher hope
It is well that the upper portions
of the brain represent |
| 9 |
the higher moral sentiments, as if hope were
ever prophe-
sying thus: The human mind will sometime
rise above all
material and physical sense, ex- |
| 12 |
changing it for spiritual perception, and
exchanging hu-
man concepts for the divine consciousness. Then man
will
recognize his God-given dominion and being.
Biological inventions
|
| 15 |
If, in the beginning, man's body originated in
non-
intelligent dust, and mind was afterwards put into body
by the
creator, why is not this divine order |
| 18 |
still maintained by God in perpetuating the
species? Who will say that minerals, vegetables, and
animals have a
propagating property of their own? |
| 21 |
Who dares to say either that God is in matter
or that
matter exists without God? Has man sought out other
creative
inventions, and so changed the method of his |
| 24 |
Maker?
Which institutes Life, - matter or Mind? Does Life
begin with Mind or with matter? Is Life sustained by |
| 27 |
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 mate- |
| 30 |
rial life at no point resembles the
scientifically Christian
record of man as created by Mind in the image and
like-
ness of God and having dominion over all the earth. Did
PAGE 532
|
| 1 |
God at first create one man unaided, - that is,
Adam, -
but afterwards require the union of the two sexes in order |
| 3 |
to create the rest of the human family? No! God
makes
and governs all.
Progeny cursed
All human knowledge and material
sense must be |
| 6 |
gained from the five corporeal senses. Is this
knowledge
safe, when eating its first fruits brought death?
"In the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt |
| 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- |
| 12 |
demns material man and remands him to dust.
Genesis iii. 9, 10. And the Lord God [Jehovah]
called
unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he |
| 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 material |
| 18 |
sense, produced the immediate fruits of fear
and shame.
Ashamed before Truth, error shrank abashed
from the divine
voice calling out to the cor- |
| 21 |
poreal senses. Its summons may be thus
paraphrased:
"Where art thou, man? Is Mind in matter? Is Mind
capable
of error as well as of truth, of evil as well as of |
| 24 |
good, when God is All and He is Mind and there
is but
one God, hence one Mind?"
Fear comes of error
Fear was the first
manifestation of the error of mate- |
| 27 |
rial sense. Thus error began and will end the
dream of
matter, In the allegory the body had been
naked, and Adam knew
it not; but now error |
| 30 |
demands that mind shall see and feel
through matter, the
five senses. The first impression material man had
of
PAGE 533
|
| 1 |
himself was one of nakedness and shame. Had he
lost
man's rich inheritance and God's behest, dominion over |
| 3 |
all the earth? No! This had never been bestowed
on
Adam.
Genesis iii. 11, 12. And He said, Who told thee
that |
| 6 |
thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree,
whereof I
commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the man
said,
The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave |
| 9 |
me of the tree, and I did eat.
The beguiling first lie
Here there is an
attempt to trace all human errors
directly or indirectly to God, or good,
as if He were the |
| 12 |
creator of evil. The allegory shows that the
snake-talker utters the first voluble lie, which
beguiles the woman
and demoralizes the man. Adam, |
| 15 |
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 |
| 18 |
from Adam's side has grown into an evil mind,
named
woman, who aids man to make sinners more rapidly than
he
can alone. Is this an help meet for man?
|
| 21 |
Materiality, so obnoxious to God, is already
found in the
rapid deterioration of the bone and flesh which came from
Adam to form Eve. The belief in material life and in- |
| 24 |
telligence is growing worse at every step, but
error has its
suppositional day and multiplies until the end thereof.
False womanhood
Truth, cross-questioning man as
to His knowledge of |
| 27 |
error, finds woman the first to confess her
fault. She
says, " The serpent beguiled me, and I did
eat;" as much as
to say in meek penitence, |
| 30 |
"Neither man nor God shall father my fault."
She has
already learned that corporeal sense is the serpent. Hence
PAGE 534
|
| 1 |
she is first to abandon the belief in the
material origin of
man and to discern spiritual creation. This hereafter
|
| 3 |
enabled woman to be the mother of Jesus and to
behold
at the sepulchre the risen Saviour, who was soon to mani-
fest
the deathless man of God's creating. This enabled |
| 6 |
woman to be first to interpret the Scriptures
in their true
sense, which reveals the spiritual origin of man.
Genesis iii. 14, 15. And the Lord God [Jehovah]
said |
| 9 |
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.
Spirit and flesh
|
| 12 |
This prophecy has been fulfilled. The Son of
the Virgin-
mother unfolded the remedy for Adam, or error; and the
Apostle Paul explains this warfare between the |
| 15 |
idea of divine power, which Jesus presented,
and mythological material intelligence called energy and
opposed to Spirit.
|
| 18 |
Paul says in his epistle to the Romans: "The
carnal
mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the
law of
God, neither indeed can be. So then they that |
| 21 |
are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are
not in the
flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the spirit of God
dwell
in you."
Bruising sin's head
|
| 24 |
There will be greater mental opposition to the
spirit-
ual, scientific meaning of the Scriptures than there has
ever
been since the Christian era began. The |
| 27 |
serpent, material sense, will bite the heel of
the woman, - will struggle to destroy the spiritual idea
of Love; and
the woman, this idea, will bruise the head |
| 30 |
of lust. The spiritual idea has given the
understanding
PAGE 535
|
| 1 |
a foothold in Christian Science. The seed of
Truth and
the seed of error, of belief and of understanding, - yea, |
| 3 |
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.
|
| 6 |
Genesis iii. 16. Unto the woman He said,
I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou
shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy |
| 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- |
| 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 in |
| 15 |
sickness and death. When will man pass through
the
open gate of Christian Science into the heaven of Soul,
into the
heritage of the first born among men? Truth is |
| 18 |
indeed " the way."
Genesis iii. 17-19. And unto Adam He said,
Because
thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast |
| 21 |
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 |
| 24 |
also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee;
and thou shalt
eat the herb of the field: in the sweat of thy face shalt
thou
eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it |
| 27 |
wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto
dust shalt
thou return.
New earth and no more sea
In the first chapter
of Genesis we read: "And God |
| 30 |
called the dry land Earth; and the gathering
together
PAGE 536
|
| 1 |
of the waters called He Seas." In the
Apocalypse it is
written: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth:
for |
| 3 |
the first heaven and the first earth were
passed
away; and there was no more sea." In St.
John's vision, heaven
and earth stand for spir- |
| 6 |
itual 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, |
| 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
spiritual |
| 12 |
gravitation and attraction to one Father, in
whom we " live, and move, and have our be-
ing," should be lost, and
if man should be governed by |
| 15 |
corporeality instead of divine Principle, by
body instead
of by Soul, man would be annihilated. Created by flesh
instead of by Spirit, starting from matter instead of from |
| 18 |
God, mortal man would be governed by himself.
The
blind leading the blind, both would fall.
True attainment
Passions and appetites must end
in pain. They are |
| 21 |
"of few days, and full of trouble." Their
supposed joys
are cheats. Their narrow limits belittle their gratifica-
tions, and hedge about their achievements with thorns.
|
| 24 |
Mortal mind accepts the erroneous, material
concep-
tion of life and joy, but the true idea is gained from the
immortal side. Through toil, struggle, and sor- |
| 27 |
row, what do mortals attain? They give up
their belief in perishable life and happiness; the mortal
and material
return to dust, and the immortal is reached.
|
| 30 |
Genesis iii. 22-24. And the Lord God
[Jehovah] said,
Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good
PAGE 537
|
| 1 |
and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand,
and take
also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever;
therefore |
| 3 |
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 |
| 6 |
of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming
sword
which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of
life.
Justice and recompense
|
| 9 |
A knowledge of evil was never the essence of
divin-
ity or manhood. In the first chapter of Genesis, evil
has no
local habitation nor name. Crea- |
| 12 |
tion is there represented as spiritual, entire,
and good. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap." Error
excludes itself from harmony. Sin |
| 15 |
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 |
| 18 |
nothingness.
Inspired interpretation
No one can reasonably
doubt that the purpose of this
allegory - this second account in Genesis -
is to depict |
| 21 |
the falsity of error and the effects of error.
Subsequent Bible revelation is coordinate
with the Science of creation
recorded in the |
| 24 |
first chapter of Genesis. Inspired writers
interpret the
Word spiritually, while the ordinary historian interprets
it literally. Literally taken, the text is made to appear |
| 27 |
contradictory in some places, and divine Love,
which
blessed the earth and gave it to man for a possession, is
represented as changeable. The literal meaning would |
| 30 |
imply that God withheld from man the
opportunity to
reform, lest man should improve it and become better;
but this is not the nature of God, who is Love always, -
PAGE 538
|
| 1 |
Love infinitely wise and altogether lovely, who
"seeketh
not her own."
Spiritual gateway
|
| 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 gate |
| 6 |
of understanding to note the proper guests.
Radiant with mercy and justice, the sword of Truth
gleams afar and
indicates the infinite distance between |
| 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 figure |
| 12 |
of divine Life and Love, enlightening and
sustaining the
universe. The "tree of life" is significant of
eternal
reality or being. The "tree of knowl- |
| 15 |
edge" typifies unreality. The testimony of the
serpent is
significant of the illusion of error, of the false claims
that
misrepresent God, good. Sin, sickness, and death have |
| 18 |
no record in the Elohistic introduction of
Genesis, in which
God creates the heavens, earth, and man. Until that
which contradicts the truth of being enters into the arena, |
| 21 |
evil has no history, and evil is brought into
view only as
the unreal in contradistinction to the real and eternal.
Genesis iv. 1. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and
she |
| 24 |
conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have
gotten a man
from the Lord [Jehovah].
Erroneous conception
This account is given, not
of immortal man, but of mor- |
| 27 |
tal man, and of sin which is temporal. As both
mortal
man and sin have a beginning, they must
consequently have an
end, while the sinless, |
| 30 |
real man is eternal. Eve's declaration, "I have
gotten
a man from the Lord," supposes God to be the author
PAGE 539
|
| 1 |
of sin and sin's progeny. This false sense of
existence
is fratricidal. In the words of Jesus, it (evil, devil) is |
| 3 |
"a murderer from the beginning." Error begins
by
reckoning life as separate from Spirit, thus sapping the
foundations
of immortality, as if life and immortality |
| 6 |
were something which matter can both give and
take
away.
Only one standard
What can be the standard of
good, of Spirit, of Life, |
| 9 |
or of Truth, if they produce their opposites,
such as evil,
matter, error, and death? God could never
impart an
element of evil, and man possesses |
| 12 |
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 |
| 15 |
resigned to matter the government of the
universe?
A type of falsehood
The Scriptures declare that
God condemned this lie as
to man's origin and character by condemning its
symbol, |
| 18 |
the serpent, to grovel beneath all the beasts
of the field. It is false to say that Truth and
error commingle in
creation. In parable and argument, |
| 21 |
this falsity is exposed by our Master as
self-evidently
wrong. Disputing these points with the Pharisees and
arguing for the Science of creation, Jesus said: "Do men |
| 24 |
gather grapes of thorns?" Paul asked: "What
com-
munion hath light with darkness? And what concord
hath Christ
with Belial?"
Scientific offspring
|
| 27 |
The divine origin of Jesus gave him more than
human
power to expound the facts of creation, and demonstrate
the one
Mind which makes and governs man |
| 30 |
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
PAGE 540
|
| 1 |
marvellous demonstrations. Christ is the
offspring of
Spirit, and spiritual existence shows that Spirit creates |
| 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. I |
| 6 |
the Lord do all these things;" but the prophet
referred to
divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its
utmost, when bringing it to the surface and re- |
| 9 |
ducing it to its common denominator,
nothingness. The
muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the
stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms |
| 12 |
of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think
in our igno-
rance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought
to
know that God's law uncovers so-called sin and its |
| 15 |
effects, only that Truth may annihilate all
sense of evil
and all power to sin.
Allegiance to Spirit
Science renders "unto
Caesar the things which are |
| 18 |
Caesar's; and unto God the things that are
God's." It
saith to the human sense of sin, sickness, and
death, "God
never made you, and you are a |
| 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 believe |
| 24 |
a lie.
Genesis iv. 3, 4. Cain brought of the fruit of the
ground
an offering unto the Lord [Jehovah]. And Abel, he also |
| 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, conceived
in sin and "shapen in iniquity;" he is
not the |
| 30 |
type of Truth and Love. Material in origin
and sense, he brings a material offering to God. Abel
PAGE 541
|
| 1 |
takes his offering from the firstlings of the
flock. A lamb
is a more animate form of existence, and more nearly
re- |
| 3 |
sembles a mind-offering than does Cain's fruit.
Jealous
of his brother's gift, Cain seeks Abel's life, instead of mak-
ing his own gift a higher tribute to the Most High.
|
| 6 |
Genesis iv. 4, 5. And the Lord [Jehovah]
had respect
unto Abel, and to his offering: but unto Cain, and to his
offering, He had not respect.
|
| 9 |
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 |
| 12 |
even the human concept of Love than the herbs
of the
ground could be.
Genesis iv. 8. Cain rose up against Abel his
brother, and |
| 15 |
slew him.
The erroneous belief that life, substance, and intelli-
gence can
|
