Article February 4, 1967 ISSUE

Can a Serpent Be Changed into a Staff?

PETER B. VANDERHOEF

Christian Science teaches us that our real identity is the image and likeness of God, good. Through the study and practice of this Science we are aroused to identify ourselves as we really are, God's ideas, subject only to God and His beneficent law. When this spiritual fact is understood, the erroneous, mortal sense that would beguile us into believing that we are mortals who can degenerate through sin, be limited by inadequacies, or handicapped by sickness is destroyed.

Referring to the serpent's beguiling of Adam and Eve, Mrs. Eddy says, "A sense of evil is supposed to have spoken, been listened to, and afterwards to have formed an evil sense that blinded the eyes of reason, masked with deformity the glories of revelation, and shamed the face of mortals." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 332; And she continues: "What was this sense? Error versus Truth: first, a supposition; second, a false belief; third, suffering; fourth, death."

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