Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/354

338 other system can. Christian Science, rightly understood, leads to eternal harmony. It brings to light the only living and true God and man as made in His likeness; whereas the opposite belief — that man originates in matter and has beginning and end, that he is both soul and body, both good and evil, both spiritual and material — terminates in discord and mortality, in the error which must be destroyed by Truth. The mortality of material man proves that error has been ingrafted into the premises and conclusions of material and mortal humanity.

XXIX. The word Adam is from the Hebrew adamah, signifying the red color of the ground, dust, nothingness.

Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, a dam, or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, of mortal mind in solution. It further suggests the thought of that “darkness. . . upon the face of the deep,” when matter or dust was deemed the agent of Deity in creating man, — when matter, as that which is accursed, stood opposed to Spirit. Here a dam is not a mere play upon words; it stands for obstruction, error, even the supposed separation of man from God, and the obstacle which the serpent, sin, would impose between man and his creator. The dissection and definition of words, aside from their metaphysical derivation, is not scientific. Jehovah declared the ground was accursed; and from this ground, or matter, sprang Adam, notwithstanding God had blessed the earth “for man's sake.” so From this it follows that Adam was not the ideal man for whom the earth was blessed. The ideal man was revealed in due time, and was known as Christ Jesus.