Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/551

Rh and appetites must end in pain. They are “of few

days, and full of trouble.” Their supposed joys are cheats. Their narrow limits belittle their gratifications, and hedge about their achievements with thorns.

Mortal mind accepts the erroneous, material conception of life and joy; but the true idea is gained from

the immortal side. Through toil, struggle, and sorrow, what do mortals attain? They give up their belief in perishable life and happiness; and the mortal and material returns to dust.

A knowledge of evil was never the essence of divinity or manhood. In the first chapter of Genesis, evil has

no local habitation or name. Creation is there represented as spiritual, entire, and good. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Error excludes itself from harmony. Sin is its own punishment. Truth guards the gateway to harmony. Error tills its own barren soil, and buries itself in the ground, since ground and dust stand for nothingness.

No one can reasonably doubt that the purpose of this allegory — this second account in Genesis — is to depict