Almost as if spoken, the words from the Bible (Gen.1:1), "In the beginning God," came to the writer as she stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona watching the floodlight of dawn unveil a drama of color and space. The restrictions of time, boundaries, distance, and materiality momentarily vanished in the presence of this rainbow-tinted immensity. Her thought turned to a paragraph in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" where Mary Baker Eddy writes (p.240): "Nature voices natural, spiritual law and divine Love, but human belief misinterprets nature. Arctic regions, sunny tropics, giant hills, winged winds, mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers, and glorious heavens, —all point to Mind, the spiritual intelligence they reflect."
Though Mrs. Eddy has explicitly stated that Christian Science bears no resemblance to pantheism, yet throughout her works she expresses a genuine appreciation of natural wonders and uses them to illustrate the variety and beauty of Spirit's creation of ideas.
Many fantastic legends clothe the origin of the Grand Canyon in mystery, but geologists explain it as the result of the operation of natural forces over a period of from eight to ten million years. To the student of Christian Science, these geologic findings present an impressive resemblance to the revelation of the flawless and eternal qualities of the spiritual man, the only real man. Natural scientists regard the Grand Canyon as the most striking example of erosion by the cutting action of running water filled with silt and sediment, of frost, wind, rain, assisted by chemical action, faulting, gravity, and growing vegetation. It is estimated that the river, if its present velocity is maintained, will continue deepening the gorge at the rate of a small fraction of an inch each year, thus uncovering more and more of the glory of the rock walls. It is very important to note that this process cannot add to or take away from the beauty of the rock, which has been there from the beginning.
In a somewhat similar way the purifying and cleansing action of Truth wears away the sand and loose soil of human errors. But here the resemblance ceases, for the Christ-like or spiritual character of man is eternal, forever untouched by mortal beliefs. It was the perfect man which Jesus beheld under every circumstance; it was his understanding of man which enabled him instantly to heal the sick, cast out devils, raise the dead, and calm the storms. Mrs. Eddy's cognizance of man's spiritual status restored her health when death seemed inevitable and led her to the discovery of the Science of the Christ in its absolute completeness.
During a storm in the Grand Canyon, the floor and walls of the canyon seem buried under a sea of boiling whitecaps or wrapped in a gray pall. This does not disturb those who know that when the storm is over the colorful picture will emerge un-married. Likewise, no seeming opaqueness of error, no mist of doubt or fear, no cloud of mortal misconception, can change or mar the perfection of God's creation or efface or exclude it from the consciousness of one who knows that it always has been and always will be good, or Godlike.
A study of the Bible illumined by the truths of Christian Science enables one to perceive spiritually beyond the drab covering of materiality, sickness, sin, death, and world confusion and lifts thought above intangible mists into the penetrating sunlight of Truth. Such study convinces one that every individual idea of God is included in His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence; that the permanency of His glory is reflected by man, His image and likeness; and that God—Life, Truth, Love, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Mind—is the only creator and power in the universe.
At one time the writer, discouraged by seeming lack of progress in overcoming hereditary migraine, diagnosed as incurable, found healing as she reasoned that man's only heritage is the good bequeathed to him by his Father-Mother God and that his being is forever complete and harmonious. The disquieting suggestion that healing was slow was disposed of by understanding that God's measurement of time is concerned only with the unfoldment of good and that mortal measurements, involving so many seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years of mingled good and evil, have no effect on eternity.
She gratefully took inventory of some of the blessings which had come to her through the prayerful study and application of Christian Science: a healing of arthritis and other illnesses, the overcoming of nervousness, gratifying opportunities for the use of her abilities, and life enriched through service as a member of a Church of Christ, Scientist. As she reviewed these proofs, the Biblical promise became significant (Ps. 00:4), "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.'' Acknowledging the eternal, God-created perfection of man and the universe, even the truth of her own being, she realized that one can expect instantaneous healing; that is, an immediate proof of man's indestructible harmony and wholeness. That it does not require time for God to be God or for man to be His reflection became clear. These actualities are already established in the divine order of being, just as the majesty and beauty of the Grand Canyon remain even beneath enveloping sands, mist, or storm.
These truths persistently held to obliterated the debris of false human concepts, and the migraine vanished into its native nothingness. In addition to this permanent physical healing a confidence was gained in the postulates of Christian Science: that progress and spiritual growth are the eternal mandates of creative Mind; that as the mutable sands of error continue to be worn away by the truth the Christ-consciousness is revealed in ever-increasing clarity; that the continuity of good is the inviolable law of God; and that each successive stratum of experience represents an enlightened awareness of the bliss and supremacy of Soul.
Just as the findings of geology annul the incongruous legends of the creation of the Grand Canyon, so the study and practice of Christian Science, by lifting the veil of perplexity from the conflicting accounts of creation in the first and second chapters of Genesis, expose the legend that man is fashioned from the dust of the ground. The forever existence of man in God's image and likeness and of a perfect universe is explained in Mrs. Eddy's comment on Genesis 1:1. She writes (Science and Health, p.502): "The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only,—that is, the eternal verity and unity of God and man, including the universe."
As the dawn of Truth in our consciousness illumines spiritual facts once shrouded to human sense in darkness, we perceive that the phrase ''in the beginning God" means that in the vast forever there always has been, there now is, and there always will be God and His infinite, perfect spiritual idea, man and the universe, one with Him.
