Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/206

194 flesh, whereby we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, now or hereafter, but certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit, or Life, as God.

The one important interpretation of Scripture is the spiritual. For instance, the text, “In my flesh shall I see God,” gives a profound idea of the divine power to heal the ills of the flesh, and encourages mortals to hope in Him who healeth all our diseases; whereas this passage is continually quoted as if Job intended to declare that if disease and worms destroyed his body, yet in the latter days he should stand perfected before Jehovah, clad in material flesh, — an interpretation which is just the opposite of the true, as may be traced throughout the entire statement of Christian Science.

The Soul-inspired patriarchs heard the voice of Truth, and talked with God as consciously as man talks with man.

Jacob wrestled with a man — not with a bodily personality, but with the senses. He wrestled “until daybreak,” until the light of Divine Science revealed this great fact of being, that matter has no sensation, that man is spiritual, pure as his Maker, and not halt or blind. When this Divine Science dawned upon Jacob he saw that man was in the image of God's purity and perfection. Jacob also saw that, as such, man could not be maimed, or lose one jot of his completeness. Then Jacob arose in the majesty of his Maker, the One Mind, to destroy the error of material belief that there are minds many; and thus the patriarch reflected his own spiritual origin.

The result of his struggle then appeared. He had conquered material belief with the understanding of Spirit. This spiritual being changed the man. He was no