THE first verse of the first chapter of Genesis reads, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." And the first sentence of the thirty-first verse is, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." How simply do these words tell the truth about God and His creation! Verily, the writer of them had dipped his pen deeply in the inspiration which flows directly from the source of all truth, God Himself. God, then, is the sole creator of all that really exists; and His creation is "very good."
While many have said that they agreed with the great truth about creation stated in the first chapter of Genesis, they have often done so with a reservation. For have they not regarded matter as real? Have they not believed that matter has a creator and is a creator? But can the material creation, so called, be always regarded as good, since there seems to be so much associated with it that is the very opposite of good? To put it briefly, the spiritually unenlightened human thought fails to apprehend the perfection of God's creation because it believes in the reality of an imperfect material creation, vainly imagining it to be His creation; whereas God's creation is not material but spiritual, consisting solely of perfect ideas. As Mrs. Eddy writes on page 205 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "God created all through Mind, and made all perfect and eternal."
Christian Science teaches, then, the great spiritual truth that God is the sole creator and the universe of ideas the only real creation; and that since God is perfect, creation is likewise perfect. But what does Christian Science say about the so-called material creation? It declares it to be unreal, a false or illusory concept. Christian Science is absolutely true to God as creative Spirit or Mind. It maintains that God is infinite; that the universe of spiritual ideas alone expresses Him, and, consequently, that matter in its every form is entirely without reality. Isaiah's words state the truth: "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me."
