Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/547

Rh Knowledge and pleasure, evolved through material sense, produced the immediate fruits of fear and shame.

Ashamed before Truth, error shrank abashed from the divine voice, calling out to the corporeal senses. Its summons may be thus paraphrased: “Where art thou? Art thou in matter? Then art thou a sense of error instead of Truth, evil instead of God, or Good.”

Fear was the first manifestation of the error of material sense; it began and will end the dream of matter.

In the allegory the body had been naked, and Adam knew it not; but now error demands that mind shall see and feel through matter, which is impossible. The first impression material man had of himself was one of nakedness and shame. Had he lost man's rich inheritance and God's behest, — dominion over all the earth? No! This was never bestowed on Adam.

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 shows that the snake-talker utters the first voluble lie, which beguiles the woman and demoralizes 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