The truth about God and man is eternal; it has neither beginning nor ending; but it must be revealed to human consciousness. Humanity must rise above the evidence of the material senses to perceive the spiritual idea. The history of spiritual development in the human race is the history of those individuals who perceived the spiritual idea and its revelation of the covenant between God and man, and tried to impart it to others.
Knowing that the only true interpretation of the Scriptures is the spiritual it is interesting to trace the work of such individuals through the Bible narratives, finding that each expresses the same confidence in the allness of God. The first record which gleams through the mist of the Adam-dream is of Enoch, of whom we read, "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." From the house of Enoch we come to Noah who, relying on spiritual power alone, raised himself and all those depending on him above the "noise of many waters," and who states the first definite record in the Scriptural narrative of the covenant between God and man. "Behold. I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you." And so later in the history of the children of Israel, the ark became the symbol of this covenant.
Of Noah's three sons. Ham, whose sin—a material concept of life—is related in Genesis, became the father of the Canaanites with whom the children of Israel were afterwards to wage perpetual warfare. The other two sons, Shem and Japheth, are spiritually defined in the Glossary of Science and Health. And of Shem Noah says, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem." From the house of Shem we come to Abraham, through whose inspired thought we have the covenant again stated: "Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward;" and Abraham went out from his kindred and his father's house to seek for "a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
