Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/549

Rh 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 had never been 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 woman, who aids man to make sinners more rapidly than he can alone. Is this an help meet for man?

Materiality, so obnoxious to God, is already found in the rapid deterioration of the bone and flesh which came from Adam to form Eve. The belief in material life and intelligence is growing worse at every step, but error has its suppositional day and multiplies until the end thereof. Truth, cross-questioning man as to his knowledge of

error, finds woman the first to confess her fault. She says, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;” as much as to say in meek penitence, “Neither man nor God shall father my fault.” She has already learned that corporeal sense is the serpent. Hence