The greatest artist in the world today is the man or woman who is striving to see creation entirely from a spiritual point of view. This artist finds his model in the inspired first chapter of Genesis and the first three verses of the second chapter, which constitute a record of the spiritual universe and man. This record supports Christian Science in its entirety. In the remaining verses of the second chapter and those following, is set forth a narrative of the belief of a material creation with its attendant phenomena. At this point the question often arises, Why does a record of material creation appear in the Scriptures if it is not true? The material record of creation is placed in the Bible for the sole purpose of exposing the errors of material sense, that they may be overcome and the true man realized. It is in this way that the spiritual record of creation reaches humanity.
In the first and true account of creation in Genesis, we are told that man was made in the image and likeness of God; also that "the heavens and the earth were finished." There was nothing left for man to create. Everything, however, in regard to spiritual creation does remain to be revealed to mankind. The seven days of creation reveal the order in which spiritual ideas of creation dawn upon human thought. The spiritual universe and man have always existed without beginning. To mortals, the beginning signifies the time when they begin to learn that the spiritual record of creation is true and the material record false.
As one proceeds with the book of Genesis, it will be observed that the record of material creation seems to become so closely interwoven with the spiritual record that it appears to human sense to be a confused mass. The task of separating the material from the spiritual is a question of learning how to divide between the beliefs of the material senses and the facts of spiritual sense. This may seem difficult now, as in the beginning, because the serpent as in the allegory has, in belief, always asserted itself, suggesting that the indulgence of material sense would give pleasure. The story of the serpent is thus not a far-away affair. The suggestion of evil to-day comes slyly in the guise of material desire, and appears to us to be our own thinking. Therefore, mortal thought becomes agitated and disturbed in the struggle to conquer material sense and to learn of the true creation. But the effort to divide between the two is the mental process which separates error from Truth, planting one's feet on the firmament of spiritual understanding.
