IN the first chapter of Genesis we read that God's gift to man, who was made in His image and likeness, was dominion, and in Ecclesiastes it is stated that "whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it." Logically, then, it follows that man cannot be separated from his heritage; and yet a mortal, reasoning from his material sense of life, finds at once a contradiction to this fact.
From the time when material sense led Adam to be afraid, a false belief of fear has stalked side by side with all material conditions, and in this hard bondage mankind has served with rigor, a service more severe than the bondage of the children of Israel in Egypt, which we read "made their lives bitter." This sense of subjection to fear, and to the conditions which induce fear, has so embittered and falsified the mortal sense of existence that those ensnared in this net have struggled long and unceasingly to escape, yet without success. Where is their mistake, and in what direction must they look that their efforts be availing? Mrs. Eddy says that "mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms, if they would gain the true sense of things" (Science and Health, p. 264). This passage is full of helpful meaning, for it discloses a mistake and indicates the remedy.
To find the true sense of things is the goal of each and every effort made by mankind, and it is a sine qua non that one must bring intelligence to his aid. Here again Mrs. Eddy's fundamental command is, "Look away from the body into Truth and Love" (Science and Health, p. 261), clearly indicating that Truth is not to be found in a mortal, material sense of being. Truth must be intelligent to be true, but all belief in that which is apart from Truth begins and ends in the false consciousness which states that man is material; that he is surrounded by a material universe, and that intelligence is subject to material conditions. This is the lie which has kept mankind imprisoned in a world of their own false thinking, and this false thinking itself is the father of the lie which binds men. Hence the imperative command to look away from the false to the true, from the unreal to the real.
