Article May 27, 1967 Issue

The Garden Path

THOMAS DOUGLAS SUTTON

The expression "to be led down the garden path" is sometimes used to mean being deceived or misguided. An ancient account of being led down the garden path is found in the Bible story of Eve and the serpent. We need to understand the signposts along this path of deception to avoid it in our own experience.

The Bible states, "The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed." Gen. 2:8; Eve was tempted through the physical senses to partake of a fruit pleasant to the sight and apparently good to eat. This temptation was an invitation to self-indulgence. As a result of yielding to this temptation, Eve and her husband were driven from the Garden of Eden.

Christian Science teaches that the story of Adam and Eve is a false account of creation. The man from the dust of the ground is a mistaken concept of the real, spiritual man made in the image and likeness of God. Mrs. Eddy writes of Adam and Eve's downfall, '"Knowledge and pleasure, evolved through material sense, produced the immediate fruits of fear and shame." Science and Health, p. 532; Human misery in such forms as lack, disease, and loneliness results from individual acceptance of the erroneous concept of man as an incomplete material being requiring satisfaction of a sensual self.

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