In Paul's first epistle to the church at Corinth we find this arresting statement (15:45): "And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."
Mary Baker Eddy gives an enlightening explanation of this verse on page 186 of her "Miscellaneous Writings," where she states: "In the creation of Adam from dust,—in which Soul is supposed to enter the embryo-man after his birth,—we see the material self-constituted belief of the Jews as referred to by St. Paul. Their material belief has fallen far below man's original standard, the spiritual man made in the image and likeness of God; for this erring belief even separates its conception of man from, God, and ultimates in the opposite of immortal man, namely, in a sick and sinning mortal." Farther on she continues (pp. 186, 187), "As the apostle proceeds in this line of thought, he undoubtedly refers to the last Adam represented by the Messias, whose demonstration of God restored to mortals the lost sense of man's perfection, even the sense of the real man in God's likeness, who restored this sense by the spiritual regeneration of both mind and body,—casting out evils, healing the sick, and raising the dead."
We note here that the first Adam does not refer to material man as a reality, but as a "material self-constituted belief," the exact opposite of the last Adam, the man of God's creating, made in His own image and likeness. What is this first Adam, or material man, whom we see about us on all sides, who claims that he thinks, that he is made of flesh and bones and other material substances, that he does good and evil as he chooses, that he is sick or well, lives or dies? All we know about him is what the material senses tell us. How unreliable is the testimony of the material senses: car tracks seem to come together in the distance, earth and sky to meet on the horizon, and the sun to rise and set. If sense testimony deceives us in such instances as these, is it not apparent that it deceives us in every instance?
