The symbolic language of the Apocalypse refers to the serpent or the dragon which persecuted the woman, but also assures us that eventually even "the earth helped the woman." The revelator further declares that he visioned "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet." What does "the woman" symbolize? Mrs. Eddy's spiritual insight answers this question on page 561 of Science and Health. "The woman in the Apocalypse," she writes, "symbolizes generic man, the spiritual idea of God ... The spiritual idea is clad with the radiance of spiritual Truth, and matter is put under her feet." In this sense woman, the spiritual idea, is today fast coming into her own and is being helped by human conditions. The spiritual idea born to human consciousness is mastering matter through the might of Mind, even though personal sense, symbolized by the subtle serpent or the enraged dragon, tries to destroy the idea and drives it at times into the wilderness, where the at-one-ment of God and man must be recognized.
Advancing Christian Scientists need to give constantly more protection to the woman, the spiritual idea. The Leader's writings contain full warning against the enemy which in multifarious ways seeks to destroy this idea. The modes and methods, the pretended high potencies of evil, are already finally uncovered in Mrs. Eddy's writings, notably in the chapters Animal Magnetism Unmasked and The Apocalypse in Science and Health, in the article "Mental Practice" in "Miscellaneous Writings," and in "Ways that are Vain" in Miscellany. The Scientist who feels an instinctive reluctance or resistance to study these chapters and these articles, is aware of the struggle of the serpent in his own consciousness to destroy the woman and to save itself from its own undoing by Truth.
In safeguarding the spiritual idea through Christian Science, justice, law, and order are supplemented by love, tenderness, and mercy. These qualities spread their protecting wings over the sick and sinning, and without them there can be no healing. The law of Moses is not abrogated but fulfilled by the law of Love. The sinner, instead of being destroyed by his sin, can be separated from it and live; the sick man can be relieved of his false belief by spiritual understanding and so healed; those stricken with grief can be unburdened and sent forth rejoicing; the wilderness of loneliness can become the place where the spiritual idea is seen to be united with God.
