[The full value of the following article can only be had by a careful reading of the Bible references in connection with the author's comments. Read thus, the article is most helpful and convincing, as it shows how strictly are the conclusions of the Christian Science text-book from which Mr. Gillespie draws his text, based upon Scripture. This article will be, for this reason, especially helpful to inquirers who desire to be convinced that our Christian Science text-book is truly a Key to the Scriptures. All italics are the author's.—Ed.]
In Gen. 1:26-28, notice the account of the creation of man in his spiritual state, perfect in the image and likeness of his Father; also that man in his right estate should have dominion over all things, not in subjection to anything in God's universe, except the Father himself. To more fully verify this fact in God's creation, read Psalm 8:5, 6; here it is wonderfully and clearly set forth. In Gen. 1:31 God pronounces everything that he has made not only good but very good; and in Gen. 2:1, 2, God finishes all his work and rests. Now notice, that notwithstanding after God pronounces all his work finished, yet in Gen. 2:7, the Lord God, a new term for the Creator, and different from that used in chapter 1, begins a second creation or rather formation of man, symbolic, undoubtedly, of our supposed false sense of material man. Note here especially the specific terms used in these two parabolic or symbolic pictures of creation. In Gen. 1:26, 27, God, or the true creator, makes and creates man, while in Gen. 2:7, the Lord God, a carnal and mortal false sense of God, forms man out of materiality. That this false and carnal imaginary formation of man is only a false and unreal sense of the real spiritual man, can easily be seen by reading Isa. 2:22, showing conclusively that he is not "to be accounted of" at all.
Before leaving Genesis, notice there is given to mortal sense a slight gleam of the perfect spiritual creation. Gen. 2:4, 5. Here it will be seen that the herb and plant (typical of all vegetable life) was created by God before it" was in the earth, or before it grew in the field, and also before the Lord God (mortal sense) had even caused it to rain, another mortal belief that God's life in the plant needs rain to sustain it, similar to the belief that God's life in us needs material food to sustain it, instead of the eternal and everlasting supply of that bread which cometh down from heaven, spiritual life, "which if a man eat thereof he shall never die."
