THE first chapter of Genesis reveals that God is cause,—"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The full revelation or discernment of Truth announced by Jesus, was prophetically outlined in the book of Revelation, which similarly proclaims God as cause — I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." From Genesis to the Apocalypse the Bible discloses, by means of reason and revelation the footsteps leading from erring finite sense into spiritual understanding. Reason alone is inadequate to explain God. It has been said that "reason is only our intellectual eye and like the eye, to see, it needs light,—to see clearly and far, it needs the light of heaven." Reasoning is defined as the process of arriving at conclusions by a systematic comparison of facts," and it is obvious that if the so-called facts are incorrect, the conclusion is faulty. It was once believed that the earth is flat. This theory is now known to be false, therefore any past reasoning which was based upon this as a fact must have led to untrue conclusions.
In the same way, many things which at present are believed to be facts, will be seen as untruths when a larger perception of God's perfect creation shall be manifest Hence, comparing facts as we see them, and drawing conclusions therefrom, cannot be an absolutely correct process. This accounts for the unreliability of the human reason. March's Thesaurus calls attention to that type of reason denominated ratiocination, and defines it thus; The process of drawing conclusions from the premise stated. By following this process, no matter what the facts may seem to be, one does reach the correct conclusion, provided the premises are right, and whenever we speak of the correct operation of reason, we refer to this process of ratiocination, for the premises of which we must look to revelation. It is necessary that revelation should convince the reason, and, thus convinced, the rational faculty serves to present revelation to mankind.
Guided by revelation, the author of the book of Genesis doubtless perceived the faultless premise that God, Spirit is the only cause and creator. But because he allowed his gaze to be turned aside by the seeming facts of materiality, and because of his vain attempt to explain materiality as evolved from God, his judgment was led astray, and, as the narrative proceeds, the book becomes lamentably entangled in the mazes of mortal thinking. For centuries mankind have been reasoning about God. They have struggled in the dark to understand Life; since reason, apart from revelation, is nothing but mortal mind wandering in the mists of its own creating. Mrs. Eddy says, "Reason, rightly directed, serves to correct the errors of corporeal sense" (Science and Health, p. 494). Revelation is the disclosure of Truth through the perception of God as Spirit and man as His spiritual and perfect idea. In so far as human reason aids mankind in joining revelation and understanding, apprehending spiritual truth, in so far it is beneficial and essential to humanity.
