Article August 6, 1927 Issue

May it not be that much of the uncertainty expressed...

Charles W. J. Tennant, District Manager of Committees on Publication for Great Britain and Ireland,—London, England

Morning Post

May it not be that much of the uncertainty expressed in the interesting discussion on religion which is being carried on in your paper arises from the fact that the theology of the schools has never explained, in a manner to satisfy both reason and revelation, the difference between the first and second chapters of Genesis, the Elohistic and Jehovistic accounts of creation? Christian Science teaches that the first is the record of spiritual creation, which is immutable, immortal, divine, eternal, and harmonious. Man is described as made in the image and likeness of God; therefore, since God is Spirit, man, His likeness, must be wholly spiritual. It is further recorded that, in the first account, God pronounced His creation "very good." "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." There is no record of sin, disease, death, or matter in this account of creation. God spake, "and it was done," proving that all that exists in reality is the thought or Word of God, as John tells us.

The second account in Genesis, beginning at the sixth verse of the second chapter, starts from a mist or mystification, and declares that the "Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." This second or material account is the reverse of the first, in which man and the universe are already declared to be the spiritual manifestations of God, Spirit. Isaiah declares: "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" The spiritual fact and the material counterfeit can be traced side by side throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Like parallel lines, they never meet, and all our confusion is caused by trying to make them coincide. The eternal never becomes the temporal; the immutable never becomes the mutable; the immortal never becomes the mortal; the spiritual never becomes the material; and, further, the eternal or spiritual is true; the temporal or material is false.

Man, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, is the spiritual Son of God, Spirit. Man, described in the second chapter as formed from the dust of the ground or materiality, is Adam, and Adam has never been described as the only begotten Son of God. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Those who believe and understand the first account and acknowledge man as God's image and likeness, spiritual and eternal, gain the consciousness of eternal life here and now, and are able in increasing measure to demonstrate the spiritual facts of being. Christ Jesus was the Way-shower out of materiality into spirituality. He has declared that his way was the only way that led to heaven, or salvation from sin, disease, and death. He declared that each one individually must do the works that he did, and he demonstrated or proved every step of the way for the guidance of his followers. For centuries this way of primitive Christian healing has been lost, but in this age it has again been made available to humanity through the life-work of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science and the Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Through her earnest, consecrated study of the Bible she rediscovered the spiritual method by which Christ Jesus performed his mighty works, and in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she gave to the world the Science of Christ's Christianity.

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