No other subject has more occupied the thoughts of men than the question as to the origin of man and the universe. Where and when and how did things begin: the first seed, the first star, the first man?

Believing the great First Cause to be unknowable or as yet unknown, the human mind confines its reasoning to secondary causes in the realm of the material senses —so mankind never learns to know Life at first hand. Thus human so-called life and experiences remain secondhand until the Christ, Truth, comes to human consciousness to reveal that which is first. Mythical in their nature, having no origin in Mind, in reality, the material senses exist only in the realm of supposition; the supposition that intelligence and life derive from nonintelligence, and that matter exists as the effect of its opposite, Mind.

One reads with interest of a group of scholarly men spending months in the jungle studying anthropoid apes, hoping to find the "missing link" that would prove man's development from those apes, the belief being that they are man's immediate ancestors. What caused the apes to be, they do not attempt to tell.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 497) gives the first religious tenet of Christian Science as follows: "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life." The question may be asked. Why, in an age of great physical research, and so-called scientific discovery, did Mrs. Eddy turn to the Bible for a knowledge of Life? She did so because her keen insight her spiritual vision, enabled her to pierce the veil of superstition and ignorance and see God as Jesus saw Him—and declared Him to be—Spirit. She knew, as did Jesus, that "it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." She knew also with St. Paul that "they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God."

Mrs. Eddy saw that nonintelligent matter, regardless of how finely organized it may appear to be, can never evolve intelligence, and that intelligence cannot produce its opposite, nonintelligence or matter. Through her study and search of the Scriptures she was enabled to recognize Spirit as cause. In her sermon "Christian Healing" she says (p. 19): "Spirit is causation, and the ancient question, which is first, the egg or the bird? is answered by the Scripture, He made 'every plant of the field before it was in the earth.'" Does not this indicate that all existence had its origin in Spirit, or Mind, as idea? Thus our Leader learned to know Life at first hand, and she proved her understanding by healing all manner of sickness and disease, all manner of sin, sorrow, and distress.

No one, then, needs to go back into a vague past to find his origin: my father had a father, his father had a father, and so on, through all the myths and legends and genealogies of the ages. One learns that omnipresence is origin, omnipresent Mind or Principle, without beginning or ending. Thus no one needs to accept a secondhand life, handed down to him from past generations, sometimes seeming to be a very undesirable commodity, full of inhibitions and disabilities. At best its abilities, pleasures, and achievements prove transitory and unsatisfying unless they, in some measure, pattern the divine Life and recognize the omnipotence of God, good.

On page 72 of "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mrs. Eddy, we read, "Science sets aside man as a creator, and unfolds the eternal harmonies of the only living and true origin, God." Here one learns how through Christian Science he may set aside the claim of human birth, a secondhand life transmitted by false laws of tradition, material generation, and heredity; how he may find his life at first hand, directly and immediately from its "living and true origin, God."

What is set aside by Science when it "sets aside man as a creator"? First, and of greatest importance, it sets aside bondage to the belief that one has to accept as his own the kind of life handed down to him by his forebears: his disposition, his capacities, his health, his environment, his religion. Having set these aside. Science reveals to him his own individual life derived directly from his divine origin. Life itself.

What is the nature of this Life which belongs to each individual firsthand? The exact nature of its origin. Therefore it is spiritual, original, fresh, intelligent, joyous, pure, complete, and eternally active. Here is freedom. One is free to find his own original, individual expression of Life in the qualities, nobilities, and excellencies of Spirit. He is free to put aside the shabby limited, purportedly glamorous and deceitful beliefs of a supposititious secondhand creation: pride, poverty, dishonesty, incompetence, sin, disease, and death, any least claim of a mentality unlike the creator.

Each one is free to refuse the mythical creation of false beliefs attempting to perpetuate themselves by handing them down from generation to generation, and to accept at first hand his true Christ-nature, the reflection of Love uninterrupted unimpeded, and undimmed by the belief of a counterfeit creation. For such a one are the promises of the Apocalypse: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. ... He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: ... and I will give him the morning star."

Margaret Morrison