With regard to the creation of grass and herbs, Mrs. Eddy eagerly points out that "God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew." And that, she says, proves that "creations of Wisdom are not dependent on laws of matter, but on Intelligence alone." She admits here that the Universe is the "idea of Creative Wisdom," which is getting dangerously near the very old idea that matter is but a manifestation of spirit. Call the universe "matter," and Mrs. Eddy flies into a rage; call it "an idea of God," and she is serenely complaisant. There was certainly never any one so put about and tricked by mere words; on the whole, it may be said that the English language has avenged itself on Mrs. Eddy.
Arriving at the creation of the beasts of the field, Mrs. Eddy says that "The beast and reptile made by Love and Wisdom were neither carnivorous nor poisonous." Ferocious tendencies in animals are entirely the product of man's imagination. Daniel understood this, we are told, and that is why the lions did not hurt him.
When she comes to the creation of man, Mrs. Eddy accepts the first account given in Genesis, but the second, which states that God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, she rejects as untrustworthy. The first account, she says, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical, even the supposed utterances of matter; the scripture not being understood by its translators, was misinterpreted."
The Story of Adam
"The history of Adam is allegorical throughout, a description of error and its results," etc. Man was created in God's likeness, free from sin, sickness, and death; but this Adam, who crept in, Mrs. Eddy does not explain how, was the origin of our belief that there is life in matter and was to obstruct our growth in spirituality. Mrs. Eddy says, "Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, a dam, or obstruction." This original method of word-analysis she seems to regard as final evidence concerning Adam. About the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy changes her mind. In the later editions of her book she says it is absurd to believe that God ever put Adam into a hypnotic sleep and performed "a surgical operation" upon him. In the first edition she says it is a mere chance that the human race is not still propagated by the removal of man's ribs. "The belief regarding the origin of mortal man has changed since Adam produced Eve, and the only reason a rib is not the present mode of evolution is because of this change," etc.
Not to be warned by the footprints of time, Mrs. Eddy pauses in her revision of Genesis to wonder "whence came the wife of Cain?" But on the whole she profits by the story of Cain, for here she finds one of those little etymological clews which never escape her penetration. The fact that Adam and all his race were but a dream of mortal mind is proved, she says, by the fact that Cain went "to dwell in the land of Nod, the land of dreams and illusions." Mrs. Eddy offers this seriously, as "scientific" exegesis.
Mrs. Eddy's conclusion about the Creation seems to be that we are all in reality the offspring of the first creation recounted in Genesis, in which man is not named but is simply said to be in the image of God; but we think we are the children of the creation described in the second chapter; of the race that imagined sickness, sin, and death for itself. The tree of knowledge which caused Adam's fall, Mrs. Eddy says, was the belief of life in matter, and she suggests that the forbidden fruit which Eve gave to Adam may have been "a medical work, perhaps."
Mrs. Eddy Denies the Atonement
When she comes to the Atonement, Mrs. Eddy says that Christ did not come to save
mankind from sin, but to show us that sin is a thing imagined by mortal mind, that it is an illusion which can be overcome, like sickness and death. It was by his understanding of the truths of Christian Science that Christ remained sinless, healed the sick, and that he "demonstrated" over death in the sepulcher and rose on the third day. His sacrifice had no more efficacy than that of any other man who dies as a result of his labors to bring a new truth into the world, and we profit by his death only as we realize the nothingness of sickness, sin, and death. "God's wrath, vented on his only son, is without logic or humanity, and but a man-made belief."