Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/470

458 thee that thou shouldest not eat?” And the man said, “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”

Here there is an attempt to trace all human errors directly or indirectly to God, or Good, as if He were the creator of evil. The allegory assigns no origin to this Snake-talker, — the first voluble lie that beguiled the woman and demoralized the man. Adam, alias mortal error, charges God and woman with his own dereliction, saying “The woman, whom Thou gavest me, is responsible.” According to this belief, the rib, taken from Adam's side, has grown into an evil mind, named woman, who aids man to make sinners more rapidly than he could alone. Is this “a help meet for man”?

Pantheism, 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 intelligence is growing worse at every step; but error must have its day, and multiply, until the end is reached.

Truth, cross-questioning man as to his knowledge of error, finds woman the first to confess her fault. She says, “The Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;” as much as to say, “Neither man nor God shall father my fault.” She has already learned thus much, that material sense is the Serpent. Hence she is first to abandon the belief that matter can give birth to man, and to discern spiritual creation. This will enable her to behold the risen and deathless man of God's creating. Why should woman not be the Divine Mother, and give birth to the spiritual idea of God's creating? Why should she not be first to make amends to man for her wrong influence, by interpreting the Scriptures in their true sense,