DIVINE SCIENCE is more than a flickering light in a world darkened by materialism and inadequate theology. This glorious Science is the flaming sword which—according to the Scriptural allegory of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:24)— "turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
Adam, or error, had been driven from the garden. The tree of life remained. In her interpretation of this allegory in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 526), "The 'tree of life' stands for the idea of Truth, and the sword which guards it is the type of divine Science." Later on in the same book is this passage (p. 538): "Radiant with mercy and justice, the sword of Truth gleams afar and indicates the infinite distance between Truth and error, between the material and spiritual,—the unreal and the real."
Divine Science, the Word of Truth, enlightens the understanding, separates divine facts from the illusions that counterfeit them, and demonstrates the Christ-power, which overcomes all that claims to oppose God's spiritual creation or reverse His omnipotent will. We should ask ourselves whether we are wielding the power of Science as a flaming sword or as a feeble glow of Truth, with little ability to reveal and guard reality.
