Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📖

the Christian era began. The 534:27 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 534:30 of lust. The spiritual idea has given the understanding 535:1 a foothold in Christian Science. The seed of Truth and

the seed of error, of belief and of understanding, - yea, 535:3 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.

535:6 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 535:9 husband, and he shall rule over thee.

 

Judgment on error

 

Divine Science deals its chief blow at the supposed material foundations of life and intelligence. It dooms idol-535:12 atry. A belief in other gods, other creators,

and other creations must go down before Christian Science. It unveils the results of sin as shown in 535:15 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 535:18 indeed ” the way.”

 

Genesis iii. 17-19. And unto Adam He said, Because

thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast 535:21 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 535:24 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 535:27 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 535:30 called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together 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 536:3 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-536:6 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, 536:9 is all and there is no other consciousness.

 

The fall of error

 

The way of error is awful to contemplate. The illusion of sin is without hope or God. If man’s spiritual 536:12 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 536:15 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 536:18 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 536:21 “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. 536:24 Mortal mind accepts the erroneous, material conception of life and joy, but the true idea is gained from the

immortal side. Through toil, struggle, and sor-536:27 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.

536:30 Genesis iii. 22-24. And the Lord God [Jehovah] said,

Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good 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 537:3 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 537:6 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

537:9 A knowledge of evil was never the essence of divinity or manhood. In the first chapter of Genesis, evil

has no local habitation nor name. Crea-537:12 tion is there represented as spiritual, entire,

and good. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he

also reap.” Error excludes itself from harmony. Sin 537:15 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 537:18 nothingness.

 

Inspired interpretation

 

No one can reasonably doubt that the purpose of this

allegory - this second account in Genesis - is to depict 537:21 the falsity of error and the effects of error.

Subsequent Bible revelation is coordinate

with the Science of creation recorded in the 537:24 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 537:27 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 537:30 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, - 538:1 Love infinitely wise and altogether lovely, who “seeketh

not her own.”

 

Spiritual gateway

538:3 Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood.

Truth is a two-edged sword, guarding and guiding.

Truth places the cherub wisdom at the gate 538:6 of understanding to note the proper guests.

Radiant with mercy and justice, the sword of Truth

gleams afar and indicates the infinite distance between 538:9 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 538:12 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-538:15 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 538:18 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, 538:21 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 538:24 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-538:27 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, 538:30 real man is eternal. Eve’s declaration, “I have gotten

a man from the Lord,” supposes God to be the author 539:1 of sin and sin’s progeny. This false sense of existence

is fratricidal. In the words of Jesus, it (evil, devil) is 539:3 “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 539:6 were something which matter can both give and take

away.

 

Only one standard

 

What can be the standard of good, of Spirit, of Life, 539:9 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 539:12 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 539:15 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, 539:18 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, 539:21 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 539:24 gather grapes of thorns?” Paul asked: “What communion hath light with darkness? And what concord

hath Christ with Belial?”

 

Scientific offspring

539:27 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 539:30 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 540:1 marvellous demonstrations. Christ is the offspring of

Spirit, and spiritual existence shows that Spirit creates 540:3 neither a wicked nor a mortal man, lapsing into sin, sickness, and death.

 

Cleansing upheaval

 

In Isaiah we read: “I make peace, and create evil. I 540:6 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-540:9 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 540:12 of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought

to know that God’s law uncovers so-called sin and its 540:15 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 540:18 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 540:21 false sense which hath no knowledge of God.” The purpose of the Hebrew allegory, representing error as assum—

ing a divine character, is to teach mortals never to believe 540:24 a lie.

 

Genesis iv. 3, 4. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground

an offering unto the Lord [Jehovah]. And Abel, he also 540:27 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 540:30 type of Truth and Love. Material in origin

and sense, he brings a material offering to God. Abel 541:1 takes his offering from the firstlings of the flock. A lamb

is a more animate form of existence, and more nearly re-541:3 sembles 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.

541:6 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.

541:9 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 541:12 even the human concept of Love than the herbs of the

ground could be.