IN the study of Christian Science we learn that the purely spiritual record of creation is given in the first chapter of Genesis, when God said "Let there be," and there was, and all was good, and God ended His work.
The 4th verse of the 2nd chapter introduces "Lord God" (the Jewish concept of God). The disjunctive conjunction "but" beginning the 6th verse, might be interpreted "on the other hand," or "on the contrary," and then follows the account of the mist that "went up from the earth," and the formation of man of dust with the breath of life breathed into his nostrils.
The root meaning of breath, according to Webster, is, "scent," "odor," "vapor," etc., and is significant, since it may imply that odor, vapor, or even a temporary semblance of life was what constituted the dust man. The acceptance of Adam as the first man, or the belief that breath in dust constitutes man, is pantheistic, and results now, as aforetime, in dust or death. Discarding this theory, in which all die, and accepting the man made in the image of God as the true basis of creation, is Christian, because Christ was the first to prove understanding that Life did not result in dust, but that knowing no other Father but God, Spirit, enabled man to demonstrate life, not subject to death or dust.
