Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/323

Rh the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter.

This pantheistic error, or so-called serpent, insists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, “Ye shall be as gods;” that is, I will make error as real and eternal as Truth.

Evil still affirms itself to be mind, and declares that there is more than one intelligence or God. It says: “There shall be lords and gods many. I declare that God makes evil minds and evil spirits, and that I aid Him. Truth shall change sides and be unlike Spirit. I will put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem to have life as much as God, Spirit, who is the only Life.”

This error has proved itself to be error. Its life is found to be not Life, but only a transient, false sense of an

existence which ends in death. Error charges its lie to Truth and says: “The Lord knows it. He has made man mortal and material, out of matter instead of Spirit.” Thus error partakes of its own nature and utters its own falsities. If we regard matter as intelligent, and Mind as both good and evil, every sin or supposed material pain and pleasure seems normal, a part of God's creation, and so weighs against our course Spiritward.

Truth has no beginning. The divine Mind is the Soul of man, and gives man dominion over all things. Man

was not created from a material basis, nor bidden to obey material laws which Spirit never made; his province is in spiritual statutes, in the higher law of Mind.

Above error's awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: “Adam, where art thou?