Among Scripture writers, Isaiah may well be called the prophet of far-reaching spiritual vision. His gaze pierces through the dark clouds of material sense and beholds the spiritual fact, which to mortal sense "is dim and distant, gray in the somber hues of twilight" (Science and Health, p. 513), but which to the infinite Mind is the ever-present reality. Throughout Isaiah's prophecy we have what seems a strange blending of the real and the unreal; yet these never blend, but are mutually exclusive each of the other, as are light and darkness. (Here it should not be forgotten that darkness can never destroy light, though to material sense it often seems to displace it.) It is therefore fair to interpret Isaiah's pictures as showing the contrast between the material and the spiritual, the false and the true; but, as Mrs. Eddy says, "it would almost seem, from the preponderance of unreality ... as if reality did not predominate over unreality, the light over the dark, the straight line of Spirit over the mortal deviations and inverted images of the creator and His creation" (Ibid., p. 502).
Toward the close of Isaiah's prophecy we are told of a new heaven and a new earth, radiant with righteousness and peace, wherein even "the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock," the chapter closing with the declaration, "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord." Mrs. Eddy says, "The individuality created by God is not carnivorous" (Ibid., p. 514). In studying carefully the first chapter of Genesis, which presents a spiritual concept of creation, there is no hint that any of God's creatures were to prey upon each other, but instead the herbs, seeds, and fruits were to be for the food of men and animals. The first reference to the slaughtering of animals, for sacrifices and also for food, is found following the story of the deluge. The account of creation in the first chapter emphasizes man's dominion over all lesser ideas, which undoubtedly means his mental control of all beneath him in the scale of being; this, however, does not imply their destruction, but rather their protection.
From the view-point of Christian Science, there could be no evil qualities expressed either by men or by the so-called lower animals, if all men expressed the God qualities of the ideal man, since man reflects the governing Mind. St. Paul must have perceived this when he wrote that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." He also said that "the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God;" and this is truly the sole hope of harmony, of deliverance, for all who are "under the curse" of belief in material law.
