Exit Guest Session
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
  • Update Existing
  • Format
    • Book Format
    • Citations
    • Free Flowing
  • Font Size
    • Small
    • Medium
    • Large
  • Options
    • Date
    • Marginal Headings
    • Line/Verse Numbers
    • Notes
    • Hymn Author/Composer
PRINT / EXPORT
530:1what mildly, but he increases in falsehood and his days
Error or
Adam
become shorter.
In this development, the im3mortal, spiritual law of Truth is made manifest as forever opposed to mortal, material sense.
In divine Science, man is sustained by God, the divine 6Principle of being. The earth, at God’s command, brings
Divine
providence
forth food for man’s use.
Knowing this, Jesus once said, Take no thought for your life, 9what 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 12man 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 15ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
This myth represents error as always asserting its su18periority over truth, giving the lie to divine Science and
Error’s
assumption
saying, through the material senses: I can open your eyes.
I can do what God has not 21done 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 de24sired than Truth, and I shall know you, and you will be mine. Thus Spirit and flesh war.
The history of error is a dream-narrative. The dream 27has no reality, no intelligence, no mind; therefore the
Scriptural
allegory
dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true nor real.
First, this narrative supposes 30that something springs from nothing, that matter precedes mind. Second, it supposes that mind enters matter, 531:1and matter becomes living, substantial, and intelligent. The order of this allegory the belief that everything 3springs from dust instead of from Deity has been maintained in all the subsequent forms of belief. This is the error, that mortal man starts materially, that non-6intelligence becomes intelligence, that mind and soul are both right and wrong.
It is well that the upper portions of the brain represent 9the higher moral sentiments, as if hope were ever prophe
Higher
hope
sying thus: The human mind will sometime rise above all material and physical sense, ex12changing it for spiritual perception, and exchanging human concepts for the divine consciousness.
Then man will recognize his God-given dominion and being.
15If, in the beginning, man’s body originated in non-intelligent dust, and mind was afterwards put into body
Biological
inventions
by the creator, why is not this divine order 18still maintained by God in perpetuating the species?
Who will say that minerals, vegetables, and animals have a propagating property of their own? 21Who 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 24Maker?
Which institutes Life, matter or Mind? Does Life begin with Mind or with matter? Is Life sustained by 27matter 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 mate30rial 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 532:1God at first create one man unaided, that is, Adam, but afterwards require the union of the two sexes in order 3to create the rest of the human family? No! God makes and governs all.
All human knowledge and material sense must be 6gained from the five corporeal senses. Is this knowledge
Progeny
cursed
safe, when eating its first fruits brought death?
In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt 9surely 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, con12demns 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 15said, 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 18sense, produced the immediate fruits of fear and shame.
Shame the
effect of sin
Ashamed before Truth, error shrank abashed from the divine voice calling out to the cor21poreal 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 24good, when God is All and He is Mind and there is but one God, hence one Mind?
Fear was the first manifestation of the error of mate27rial sense. Thus error began and will end the dream of
Fear comes
of error
matter.
In the allegory the body had been naked, and Adam knew it not; but now error 30demands that mind shall see and feel through matter, the five senses. The first impression material man had of 533:1himself was one of nakedness and shame. Had he lost man’s rich inheritance and God’s behest, dominion over 3all the earth? No! This had never been bestowed on Adam.
Genesis iii. 11, 12. And He said, Who told thee that 6thou 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 9me 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 12
The beguiling
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, 15alias 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 18from 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?
21Materiality, 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 in24telligence is growing worse at every step, but error has its suppositional day and multiplies until the end thereof.
Truth, cross-questioning man as to his knowledge of 27error, finds woman the first to confess her fault. She
False
womanhood
says, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;as much as to say in meek penitence, 30Neither man nor God shall father my fault.
She has already learned that corporeal sense is the serpent. Hence 534:1she is first to abandon the belief in the material origin of man and to discern spiritual creation. This hereafter 3enabled woman to be the mother of Jesus and to behold at the sepulchre the risen Saviour, who was soon to manifest the deathless man of God’s creating. This enabled 6woman 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 9unto 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.
12This prophecy has been fulfilled. The Son of the Virgin-mother unfolded the remedy for Adam, or error; and the
Spirit and
flesh
Apostle Paul explains this warfare between the 15idea of divine power, which Jesus presented, and mythological material intelligence called energy and opposed to Spirit.
18Paul 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 21are 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.
24There will be greater mental opposition to the spiritual, scientific meaning of the Scriptures than there has
Bruising
sin’s head
ever been since the Christian era began.
The 27serpent, 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 30of lust. The spiritual idea has given the understanding 535:1a foothold in Christian Science. The seed of Truth and the seed of error, of belief and of understanding, yea, 3the 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.
6Genesis 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 9husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Divine Science deals its chief blow at the supposed material foundations of life and intelligence. It dooms idol12
Judgment
on error
atry.
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 15sickness 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 18indeed the way.
Genesis iii. 17–19. And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast 21eaten 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 24also 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 27wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
In the first chapter of Genesis we read: And God 30called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together 536:1of the waters called He Seas. In the Apocalypse it is written: And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for 3
New earth
and no more
sea
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 spir6itual 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, 9is 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 12
The fall
of error
gravitation and attraction to one Father, in whom we live, and move, and have our being,should be lost, and if man should be governed by 15corporeality 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 18God, mortal man would be governed by himself. The blind leading the blind, both would fall.
Passions and appetites must end in pain. They are 21of few days, and full of trouble. Their supposed joys are cheats. Their narrow limits belittle their gratifications, and hedge about their achievements with thorns.
24Mortal mind accepts the erroneous, material conception of life and joy, but the true idea is gained from the
True
attainment
immortal side.
Through toil, struggle, and sor27row, 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.
30Genesis iii. 22–24. And the Lord God [Jehovah] said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good 537:1and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever; therefore 3the 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 6of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
9A knowledge of evil was never the essence of divinity or manhood. In the first chapter of Genesis, evil
Justice and
recompense
has no local habitation nor name.
Crea12tion is there represented as spiritual, entire, and good. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Error excludes itself from harmony. Sin 15is 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 18nothingness.
No one can reasonably doubt that the purpose of this allegory this second account in Genesis is to depict 21
Inspired
interpreta-
tion
the falsity of error and the effects of error.
Subsequent Bible revelation is coordinate with the Science of creation recorded in the 24first chapter of Genesis. Inspired writers interpret the Word spiritually, while the ordinary historian interprets it literally. Literally taken, the text is made to appear 27contradictory 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 30imply 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, 538:1Love infinitely wise and altogether lovely, who seeketh not her own.
3Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood. Truth is a two-edged sword, guarding and guiding.
Spiritual
gateway
Truth places the cherub wisdom at the gate 6of understanding to note the proper guests. Radiant with mercy and justice, the sword of Truth gleams afar and indicates the infinite distance between 9Truth and error, between the material and spiritual, the unreal and the real.
The sun, giving light and heat to the earth, is a figure 12of divine Life and Love, enlightening and sustaining the
Contrasted
testimony
universe.
The tree of lifeis significant of eternal reality or being. The tree of knowl15edgetypifies 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 18no 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, 21evil 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 24conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord [Jehovah].
This account is given, not of immortal man, but of mor27tal man, and of sin which is temporal. As both mortal
Erroneous
conception
man and sin have a beginning, they must consequently have an end, while the sinless, 30real man is eternal.
Eve’s declaration, I have gotten a man from the Lord,supposes God to be the author 539:1of sin and sin’s progeny. This false sense of existence is fratricidal. In the words of Jesus, it (evil, devil) is 3a murderer from the beginning. Error begins by reckoning life as separate from Spirit, thus sapping the foundations of immortality, as if life and immortality 6were something which matter can both give and take away.
What can be the standard of good, of Spirit, of Life, 9or of Truth, if they produce their opposites, such as evil,
Only one
standard
matter, error, and death?
God could never impart an element of evil, and man possesses 12nothing 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 15resigned to matter the government of the universe?
The Scriptures declare that God condemned this lie as to man’s origin and character by condemning its symbol, 18
A type of
falsehood
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, 21this 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 24gather grapes of thorns? Paul asked: What communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?
27The divine origin of Jesus gave him more than human power to expound the facts of creation, and demonstrate
Scientific
offspring
the one Mind which makes and governs man 30and 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

We Use Cookies

We use cookies to provide this website and to improve your experience. By clicking ACCEPT ALL, you consent to the use and storage of cookies per our Cookie Policy.

- Keep Me Logged In Cookie
- Analytics Cookies
N/A
- Not applicable to the Concord program
LET ME CHOOSE ACCEPT ALL ACCEPT
A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE STUDY RESOURCE
WELCOME! Explore the Bible, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, and the Christian Science Hymnals.
An account is required to use Concord. Learn more here
Log in with your Concord account
:
:
Visit Concord as a Guest
CONTINUE AS GUEST
Limited access to Concord
By using Concord Guest Access you agree to our
Terms of Service and Privacy Policy