The Old Testament tells of two extraordinary encounters with a serpent. According to the allegorical record of creation, the first encounter took place in the Garden of Eden, where the woman succumbed to the beguiling words of the talking serpent. The allegory indicates that Eve came under the serpent's mesmeric spell because she listened to the suggestion to disobey the divine command not to partake of the tree in the midst of the garden. Curiosity, self-justification, and self-love was the serpent, arguing to her that a knowledge of both good and evil was desirable. Eve's failure to detect and rebuke evil—to handle the serpent—proved to be injurious to her and her husband.
Christian Science teaches that evil, or animal magnetism, symbolized by a serpent, has no power to be or to act except by means of suggestion. The serpent's attempts to undermine men through suggestion are devious and its allurements are invariably in the guise of good. This is altogether necessary in order for evil to find a victim; if temptations were labeled "evil," victims would be fewer in number.
The serpent in the Garden of Eden was not of God's creating; therefore its claim to power was unfounded. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes, "The serpent of God's creating is neither subtle nor poisonous, but is a wise idea, charming in its adroitness, for Love's ideas are subject to the Mind which forms them,—the power which changeth the serpent into a staff."Science and Health, p. 515;
