Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/233

Rh This man of error, who was formed after creation was finished, was named Adam. The significance of his name is not explained in the first edition of Science and Health, but in later editions, Mrs. Eddy, ignoring the Hebraic origin of the word, gives it this literal interpretation: "Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, A dam, or obstruction." Adam was to obstruct our growth in spirituality. Adam, the belief of life in matter, was the first "mortal man," and with him came sickness, sin, and death, and all the troop of error.

Adam, being a "product of belief," and Eve a product of Adam, "both were beliefs of Life in matter." At once they set about their "mortal" mischief. They ate of the tree of knowledge, which was "the symbol of error," in which originated "theology, materia medica, mesmerism, and every other 'ology and 'ism under the sun." The fruit of the tree which Eve gave to Adam was, Mrs. Glover suggested, "a medical work, perhaps."

The driving of Adam out of Eden is "a clear and distinct separation of Adam, error, from harmony and Truth, wherein Soul and Sense, person and Principle, Spirit and matter, are forever separate." The history of Adam and his descendants, then, is one of mortality and error, an evil dream that has no reality, and this is Mrs. Glover's contention. "There is no mortal man, or reality to error," she declared. We are not as we have thought, the descendants of Adam; but we are the offspring of that first nameless man who dwelt with God before Adam was. We have been so influenced, however, by the Adam belief that we have lost sight of our true inheritance.

The immediate outlook for the sons of error is not