"As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life." This is the first of six important points, or Tenets, listed by Mrs. Eddy on page 497 of the textbook, Science and Health. It was indeed in the inspired Word of the Bible that Mrs. Eddy found the authority for all her teaching and all her writings.
The Bible opens with this resounding statement: (verses 26 and 27), "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
In the second chapter of Genesis a contrary account is presented, where in verse 6 we are told that a mist arose "and watered the whole face of the ground." Through this mist there appears a distorted view of creation. Man no longer appears as the image and likeness of God, Spirit, but as Adam, a material, solitary, and sinful mortal. Soon appears the mortal sense of woman, to whom the serpent, personal sense, whispers, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5). But this counterfeit description of man's origin is legendary and mythical.
