Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/542

526

The previous and more scientific record of creation declares that God made “every plant of the field

before it was in the earth.” This opposite declaration, this statement that life issues from matter, contradicts the teaching of the first chapter, — namely, that all Life is God. Belief is less than understanding. Belief involves theories of material hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell, termed the five senses. The appetites and passions, sin, sickness, and death, follow in the train of this error of a belief in intelligent matter.

The first mention of evil is in the legendary Scriptural text in the second chapter of Genesis. God pronounced

good all that He created, and the Scriptures declare that He created all. The “tree of is life” stands for the idea of Truth, and the sword which guards it is the type of divine Science. The “tree of knowledge” stands for the erroneous doctrine that the knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God-bestowed, as the knowledge of good. Was evil instituted through God, Love? Did He create this fruit-bearer of sin in contradiction of the first creation? This second biblical account is a picture of error throughout.

The name Eden, according to Cruden, means pleasure, delight. In this text Eden stands for the mortal,