Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/232

190 not a man to till the ground." Mrs. Glover had already pointed out that rain and light were not necessary to the growth of vegetation, and there was not a man to till the ground because, to quote Mrs. Glover, "there was no necessity of it," for "the earth brought forth spontaneously, and man lived not because of matter." "Man was the Idea of Spirit, and this Idea tilled not the ground for bread."

"But," we are told in that fatal second chapter of Genesis, "there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground." That was error, "the figurative mist of earth," and "that which started from a matter basis," in Mrs. Glover's interpretation. "And," to quote Genesis again, "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Here, then, was the beginning of a "belief of life in matter," and this belief has accompanied us throughout the ages. "The first record," says Science and Health, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical," and "the supposed utterances of matter."

Mrs. Glover thought it was unfortunate that whoever wrote the first reports of the creation had not, by making judicious comments, indicated which was the true and which the make-believe record: "Had the record divided the first statement of creation from the fabulous second, by saying 'after Truth's creation we will name the opposite belief of error, regarding the origin of the universe and man,' it would have separated the tares from wheat, and we should have reached sooner the spiritual significance of the Bible." But there was no clue, and the error went on.