Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/537

Rh veritable, would set aside the omnipotence of Spirit; but it is the false history, in contradistinction to the true.

The Science of the first record proves the incorrectness of the second, for they are antagonistic. The first

record assigns all might and government to God, and endows man out of His perfection and power. The second record chronicles man as mutable and mortal, — as having broken away from Deity, and as revolving in an orbit of his own. Existence, separate from Divinity, Science regards as impossible.

This second record unmistakably gives the history of error in its externalized forms, called life and intelligence in matter. It records Pantheism, as opposed to the supremacy of divine Spirit; but this state of things is declared to be temporary, and this man to be mortal, dust returning to dust.

In this erroneous theory, matter takes the place of Spirit. It is represented as the life-giving principle of

the earth. Spirit is represented as entering matter, 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 with revelation, in declaring this material creation false.

This latter part of the second chapter of Genesis, wherein Spirit is supposed to co-operate with matter, in

constructing man, must be based on some hypothesis of error, for the Scripture just preceding declares God's work to be finished. Do Life, Truth, and Love produce death, error, and hatred? Does the Creator condemn His own creation? Does the unerring Principle of divine law change or repent? It cannot be so. Yet one might so judge, from an