Article February 11, 1922 Issue

A contributor to your paper seems to think that a member...

Aaron E. Brandt

Pottstown (Pa.) News

A contributor to your paper seems to think that a member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship, when delivering his able lecture on Christian Science, was "greatly disturbed mentally in reference to the mist referred to in Genesis 2:6." Permit me to say that all the disturbance is on the side of those who find their material and inconsistent interpretations of the Scriptures rejected by the people for Mrs. Eddy's spiritual interpretation as being the only true and consistent one. There is only occasion for rejoicing that such is the fact and that people are being greatly benefited by Mrs. Eddy's revelation of Truth.

The different accounts of the creation, as given in the first and second chapters of Genesis, to which allusion has been made, were never consistently interpreted and explained until Mrs. Eddy revealed the fact that the former contained a record of the spiritual and true creation, while the latter is a history of material belief or error regarding that creation. Professor Harper, late president of the University of Chicago, is said to have called the latter the story of sin. Without an understanding of the difference between spiritual truth and material belief, as the lecturer explained, it is impossible to understand Biblical truth.

It is quite easy to agree with this contributor that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. On this subject Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 319): "The divine Science taught in the original language of the Bible came through inspiration, and needs inspiration to be understood." It must be quite obvious that any interpretation of the passage referring to the mist, which reveals only material phenomena such as dew, observable most any morning to any one, even an infidel, must be quite barren of spiritual results. "The Scriptures are very sacred," again writes Mrs. Eddy. "Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained. The true theory of the universe, including man, is not in material history but in spiritual development. Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, and mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and immortal" (Science and Health, p. 547). The contributor's interpretation of the mist from the earth as being dew is wholly devoid of inspiration and benefits no one. "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy." When it is known, however, that the metaphor of the mist alludes to material belief as having mystified human thought and hid from it the spiritual and true creation, a truth most vital to the salvation of mankind has been revealed.

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