The history of word-development often runs parallel with the progress of human thinking. To trace the origin and history of words, therefore, is often to throw light on the evolution of human concepts.
Prof. Max Muller in his book on the Science of Language gives an example of this when he traces the various branchings of an ancient Indo-European word-root, which became in Sanskrit anh, meaning "to choke," hence ahi, meaning "throttling serpent," and anhas, meaning "sin." Professor Muller shows also how this same ancient root branched into the Latin angor, meaning "suffocation"; into agos, the Greek word for "sin"; into the Gothic agis, meaning "fear"; and finally into the English words, "awful," "ugly," "anger," "anxiety," and "anguish." Commenting on two of the oldest known branches of this ancient fear-connoting root,—namely the Sanskrit word for "throttling serpent" and its derivative which means "sin,"—Professor Muller aptly says, "All who have seen and contemplated the statue of Laocoon and his sons, with the serpent coiled round them from head to foot, may realize what those ancients felt and saw when they called sin 'anhas,' or the throttler."
It is hardly necessary, however, for most of those who are going through the ordinary human experiences to look upon the Laocoon group in order to picture sin as a throttler or choker of love, life, and happiness but it is interesting to find that, even philologically considered, the root of sin branches out into anger, anguish, and anxiety, indulgences of feeling which moderns had condoned as natural to men, until Christian Science stripped off their disguise and exposed them in all their naked display of faithlessness and distrust of God's goodness and allness.
That the ancient Indo-Aryans, leading their simple lives and longing for God, had some conception of the sinfulness and impiety of fear, there is no doubt; and it might be interesting from the historical point of view to trace the wanderings of the word "anxiety" to find when and where it put a veil over its face and became respectable in the eyes of society! However that may be, as far as modern times are concerned all branches of the root anh, whether they were bluntly called sin or politely termed anxiety, were uncovered and correctly placed by the author of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In the Glossary of this book, on page 594, Mrs. Eddy interprets "serpent," in part, as "the first audible claim that God was not omnipotent and that there was another power, named evil, which was as real and eternal as God, good."
The serpent—the lie which creeps in and throttles all happiness—is the belief in a power, life, substance, or mind apart from the one God, Spirit. This belief being the root of all sin, it is eminently appropriate that the ancient Sanskrit word for sin should have been derived from the same root as the word for the "throttling serpent," and that these words should have borne the fruit which Mrs. Eddy gathered under one head in her Glossary, on page 586 of Science and Health, when she gives, as a portion of the metaphysical synonyms of fear, "Heat; inflammation; anxiety; ignorance; error."
Mrs. Eddy, having uncovered the root of fear and all its progeny, turns on them the light of that perfect Love which casts out fear, that Truth which destroys sin, root and branch; and, leaving ancient thinking behind, she goes on, holding aloft the banner of God, "the great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence,"—the God that Christian Scientists find thus defined on page 587 of Science and Health; and it is this correct knowledge of God which destroys, in so far as it is gained, all fear, all false beliefs which claim to-day as of yore to throttle health and life and happiness.
This is the great blessing which the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, has given to humanity; namely, the absolute confidence and happiness which come from understanding that the cause and source of all reality is "our Father which art in heaven;" and that whatever is not Godlike is illusion,—the result of a false belief in a possible separation from God! What is more, Christian Science teaching is arousing mankind to know that every one can choose whether he will believe in the lying whispers of a mythical talking serpent, or in the voice of God, whom Christ Jesus declared and proved to be divine Love, who never changes, the one Spirit, who is all-presence and all-power, the One altogether good, who knows no evil.
The proof of this glorious truth, which shows that man is free from the false law of sin and death, was furnished to a suffering world nearly two thousand years ago; but the picture had been neglected and painted over by mere copyists; and parts of it had remained unnoticed until one came who loved enough to see the hidden power and beauty of the original masterpiece, and to clean off, painstakingly, the dust of ages, strip off all unauthorized varnish, and interpret the picture so that to-day each one may again see man, as Christ Jesus proved him to be, the beloved son of God, made in His image and likeness, heir to all that belongs to the Father. The ancients found the root of sin to lie in the speechless tongue of a fabulous monster. Christianity, as revealed by Christian Science, explains that all reality remains eternally protected by God, perfect divine Mind.
