Article October 3, 1925 Issue

In your issue of recent date a clergyman, commenting on...

Edgar McLeod, Committee on Publication for Northern California,—Oakland

Tribune

In your issue of recent date a clergyman, commenting on a Christian Science lecture published in the Tribune, assails the lecturer's statement that early in the second chapter of Genesis a "mist" arose and hid from view the ideal creation described in the first chapter of Genesis. The clergyman's first misapprehension seems to arise through his regarding the story of the "mist" which arose, as describing an actual occurrence, while clearly the whole account of creation in the second chapter is allegorical, and a "mist" arising from the ground is Oriental symbolism of the confusion which began to prevail as mortal thought substituted the material for the spiritual. Christian Science does not teach that "a good God made a good world and then allowed an evil mist to baffle His children." Christian Science maintains throughout its whole teaching that God is the only creator and that all that He creates is good; that He does not know mortal misconceptions, nor can He be held responsible for them, any more than mathematics can be held responsible for the misapprehension that two and three make six. The Christian Science lecture, to which the clergyman objected, was based on the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science; and she teaches clearly that the first chapter of Genesis records the real and spiritual creation, while the second chapter, as she explains on page 522 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "gives the history of error in its externalized forms, called life and intelligence in matter."

The critic implies that the first and second chapters contain different accounts, written at different times, of the same event; and as I understand him, he regards the narrative in the second chapter as the more acceptable of the two accounts. It is incomprehensible how any one who has glimpsed in the first chapter the work of Him who "spake, and it was done," could be reconciled to a creation brought forth through the travail of matter and by various fantastic methods, including the operation of removing a rib to make a woman, as allegorically described in the second chapter. Thousands of people, through Mrs. Eddy's interpretation, have begun to discern their true selfhood in this spiritual creation, as set forth in the first chapter of Genesis, and have thus been enabled to begin intelligently to "put off the old man" (the Adam-man of the second chapter), as admonished by Paul.

The critic states, "But it is strange to build a philosophy of religion on an awful dream," alluding to the Adam-dream, presumably. Christian Science is founded on the teachings of Christ Jesus, who clearly showed that the First Commandment was the basis of his theology; and it is his theology in Christian Science which heals the sick, incidentally to the correction of thought and the destruction of sin, thereby proving the correctness of its teaching that God made man in His own image and likeness, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, and not in the image and likeness of matter, as recorded in the second chapter. Manifestly, He who said, "Let there be light," should not be imputed with molding a man from clay and fashioning a woman from a rib. After all, the spread of Christian Science throughout the civilized world in less than half a century, together with overflowing attendance at Christian Science services, indicates that people are more interested in the theology which redeems the sinner and heals the sick than in tomes of theorizing as to the origin of evil.

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