Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/560

544 record of a material creation which followed the spiritual, — a creation so wholly apart from God's, that Spirit

had no participation in it. In God's creation ideas became productive, obedient to Mind. There was no rain and “not a man to till the ground.” Mind, instead of matter, being the producer, Life was self-sustained. Birth, decay, and death arise from the material sense of things, not from the spiritual, for in the latter Life consisteth not of the things which a man eateth. Matter cannot change the eternal fact that man exists because God exists. Nothing is new to the infinite Mind.

In Science, Mind neither produces matter nor does matter produce mind. No mortal mind has the might

or right or wisdom to create or to destroy. All is under the control of the one Mind, even God. The first statement about evil, — the first suggestion of more than the one Mind, — is in the fable of the serpent. The facts of creation, as previously recorded, include nothing of the kind.

The serpent is supposed to say, “Ye shall be as gods,” but these gods must be evolved from materiality and be

the very antipodes of immortal and spiritual being. Man is the likeness of Spirit, but a material personality is not this likeness. Therefore man, in this allegory, is neither a lesser god nor the image and likeness of the one God.

Material, erroneous belief reverses understanding and truth. It declares mind to be in and of matter, so-called mortal life to be Life, infinity to enter man's nostrils so that matter becomes spiritual. Error begins with corporeality as the producer instead of divine