Article March 7, 1914 Issue

Christian Science for more than a generation has been calling...

William S. Campbell

Washington (D. C.) Post

Christian Science for more than a generation has been calling attention to the fact that God could not have made man out of the dust of the ground, for the reason that God "created man in his own image." It is high time that humanity gave up its belittling thought of God, which assumes that He bears some resemblance to a man made of dust. As understood in Christian Science, God writes His commandments upon the "tables of the heart," where they are as enduring as though chiseled in "tables of stone."

To read the Bible from an historical or even from a literary view-point, has a certain value, though not the highest. The Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, states this concisely in the single sentence, "Take away the spiritual signification of Scripture, and that compilation can do no more for mortals than can moonbeams to melt a river of ice" (p. 241). The value of Bible study, whether the subject covered be historical, allegorical, or didactic, can be found in the answer to these questions by the student: What does this mean to me? How does this apply to my individual experience? We may read of Adam's fall and think of the misery and the suffering that would never have been, had Adam not been so weak; but the practical line of thought is, What about the Adam in me? Am I overcoming the temptation to sin and be sinful, and so doing my part to annihilate this stream of sin?

A scientific understanding of the Bible helps to answer these questions aright, for it makes clear that the Adam—antediluvian and postdiluvian—is the man of dust, of which it is said, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." It makes it clear that this dust man is not God's man described in the first chapter of Genesis. This scientific understanding opens the way of redemption—not by trying to make dust into spirit, nor by imputing intelligence or power to dust, but by knowing that dust or matter is no part of God's creation, for the record reads, "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

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