Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/231

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HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
189

needed. All was Mind or Infinite Spirit. Man, the male and female Idea of God, was to bring forth his kind, through the law of Spirit only.[1] "That matter propagates itself through seed and germination is error, a belief only."

When God had thus made mankind, according to Mrs. Glover's version, he rested, and he had nothing to do with making anything that came later. Of the Bible statement: "Thus the heavens and earth were finished and all the hosts of them," Mrs. Glover said: "Here the scripture repeats again the science of creation, namely, that all was complete and finished, therefore that nothing has since been made." Having finished creation, God rested on the seventh day, and this again supplied to Mrs. Glover proof that whatever was created there after was not of God, but a myth only. Creation was finished, and the Great Principle was at rest.

But somehow, and because of the carelessness, no doubt, of the early translators, a second creation was started, after the seventh day. But the story of this supplementary creation, related in the second chapter of Genesis, is purely mythical and imaginary, Mrs. Glover declared. It is due entirely to misinterpretation, and is wholly untrustworthy. How this belief in a further creation started is not explained, even in Science and Health, but it seemed to originate with the discovery that "God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was


  1. This theory is the basis of the Christian Science belief that children born of the flesh are not born according to the "science of being." Christian Science discourages the birth of children in the usual way, but permits it as "expedient" for the present. In the future when, as they believe, the world shall be more spiritual, children will appear as products of Spirit only, and they will come by whatever means they are desired. "Should universal mind or belief adopt the appearing of a star as its formula of creation, the advent of mortal man would commence as a star." "Belief may adopt any condition whatever, and that will become its imperative mode of cause and effect." "Knowledge will . . . diminish and lose estimate in the sight of man; and Spirit instead of matter be made the basis of generation."