Red sandstone. Have you ever wondered why these words are in the definition of Adam in the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy? What does a rock have to do with theories about the origin of life as represented by the Adam allegory? How could understanding this relationship bring healing?
Rocks such as red sandstone are formally studied in the science of geology, and in the mid-1800s geology was the new science. The discoveries in geology of physical process and fossil life-forms captured the interest of the public then much as computer science does today. The Old Red Sandstone (1841) by Hugh Miller of Scotland became "one of the great classics of geology, a book that had gone through 19 editions by 1874 and [was] read by countless thousands of people." Marshall Kay and Edwin H. Colbert, Stratigraphy and Life History (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), p. 208. The book was published on both sides of the Atlantic, and these "thousands" included many Americans, among them world-renowned ichthyologist and embryologist Louis Agassiz of Harvard, a natural scientist referred to in Science and Health, the Christian Science textbook.
The special feature of the red sandstone formation was fossil fish, the first vertebrates, or animals with backbones. Although Miller's book was about geology, it also, typically of the times, addressed theological issues. The discovery of the fossil fish satisfied the religious scruples of the many scientists, like Agassiz, who felt God as creator needed to be verified by material science. The oldest known forms of the phylum Vertebrata were now brought (temporarily) into a simultaneous beginning with the other three phyla of organic life at the time: Articulata, Mollusca, and Radiata.
