Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/542

520 and grow. Man is God's reflection, which needs no cultivation, but is ever beautiful and complete.

Here the metaphor represents God, Love, as tempting man; but the Apostle James says: “God cannot be

tempted of evil, neither tempteth He any man.” It is true that a knowledge of evil would make man mortal. It is plain also that material perception, gathered from the corporeal senses, constitutes evil and mortal knowledge. But is it true that God, Good, made the Tree of Life to be the Tree of Death to His own creation? Has evil the reality of Good? Evil is false, in every statement.

Here falsity represents God as repeating creation, but doing so materially, not spiritually, and asking a

prospective sinner to help Him. Is the Supreme retrograding, and is man giving up his dignity? Was it requisite that dust should become sentient, for the formation of man, when all Being is the reflection of the eternal Mind, and the text declares that He had already created man, both male and female? That Adam gave the name and nature of animals is true as a