Article December 13, 1913 Issue

In considering the questions proposed by your correspondent,...

Henry Deutsch—Excelsior, Minn.

Minnetonka Record

In considering the questions proposed by your correspondent, we must of course remember that they are simply a repetition of those interrogations which have agitated the world from the beginning of time, and which have never been answered,—nor can they be answered, from the standpoint of material philosophy or purely human logic. God being infinite, it is impossible for finite comprehension to apprehend Him in terms of logic or language. We cannot prove God's existence by the mere process of human evidence, but nevertheless we know He does exist through that inner sense or feeling which responds to the higher intuitions of Spirit. God is defined in John's gospel as "Spirit," and it is said, "They that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." God being Spirit,—and on this there can be no possible controversy,—and He having created man in His own image and likeness, the real man must be spiritual and not material.

It is to be noted that there are two records of creation, one in the first chapter of Genesis, and one in the second. An examination of these two chapters will indicate very clearly that the first refers to the spiritual creation, and is undoubtedly the original record of the real creation, which is not disturbed or contradicted until we find in the sixth verse of the second chapter, "But there went up a mist from the earth," and thenceforward we have a material record of creation which negatives the original narrative and confines the creation of man to the male only, instead of male and female, as indicated in the first record.

The inaccuracy of the second record is further apparent when analyzed by facts. In the seventh verse we read, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground," but natural science informs us that material man, or body, is not made or composed of dust, but is really and actually about eighty per cent water, and the balance various salts, etc. Without, however, going into a further discussion of the socalled dust man, it is beyond controversy that what we recognize as man is not the physical body, but rather the mental or spiritual expression; wherefore we find it true in so many instances that men and women who present the poorest manifestation of physical development are really most manly and womanly, and as pointed out in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, "if the real man is in the material body, you take away a portion of the man when you amputate a limb; the surgeon destroys manhood, and worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb or injury to a tissue is sometimes the quickener of manliness; and the unfortunate cripple may present more nobility than the statuesque athlete,—teaching us by his very deprivations, that 'a man's a man, for a' that'" (p. 172).

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