These things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He that hath the key of David, He that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. - REVELATION.
CHAPTER XV – GENESIS
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by My name Jehovah was I not known to them. - EXODUS.
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. - JOHN.
SCIENTIFIC interpretation of the Scriptures properly starts with the beginning of the Old Testament, chiefly because the spiritual import of the Word, in its earliest articulations, often seems so smothered by the immediate context as to require explication; whereas the New Testament narratives are clearer and come nearer the heart. Jesus illumines them, showing the poverty of mortal existence, but richly recompensing human want and woe with spiritual gain. The incarnation of Truth, that amplification of wonder and glory which angels could only whisper and which God illustrated by light and harmony, is consonant with ever-present Love. So-called mystery and miracle, which subserve the end of natural good, are explained by that Love for whose rest the weary ones sigh when needing something more native to their immortal cravings than the history of perpetual evil.
A second necessity for beginning with Genesis is that the living and real prelude of the older Scriptures is so brief that it would almost seem, from the preponderance of unreality in the entire narrative, as if reality did not predominate over unreality, the light over the dark, the straight line of Spirit over the mortal deviations and inverted images of the creator and His creation.
Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal. This deflection of being, rightly viewed, serves to suggest the proper reflection of God and the spiritual actuality of man, as given in the first chapter of Genesis. Even thus the crude forms of human thought take on higher symbols and significations, when scientifically Christian views of the universe appear, illuminating time with the glory of eternity.
In the following exegesis, each text is followed by its spiritual interpretation according to the teachings of Christian Science.
EXEGESIS
Genesis i. 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
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. The creative Principle - Life, Truth, and Love - is God. The universe reflects God. There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity, and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God.
Genesis i. 2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The divine Principle and idea constitute spiritual harmony, - heaven and eternity. In the universe of Truth, matter is unknown. No supposition of error enters there. Divine Science, the Word of God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, "God is All-in-all," and the light of ever-present Love illumines the universe. Hence the eternal wonder, - that infinite space is peopled with God's ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms.
Genesis i. 3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Immortal and divine Mind presents the idea of God: first, in light; second, in reflection; third, in spiritual and immortal forms of beauty and goodness. But this Mind creates no element nor symbol of discord and decay. God creates neither erring thought, mortal life, mutable truth, nor variable love.
Genesis i. 4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
God, Spirit, dwelling in infinite light and harmony from which emanates the true idea, is never reflected by aught but the good.
Genesis i. 5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
All questions as to the divine creation being both spiritual and material are answered in this passage, for though solar beams are not yet included in the record of creation, still there is light. This light is not from the sun nor from volcanic flames, but it is the revelation of Truth and of spiritual ideas. This also shows that there is no place where God's light is not seen, since Truth, Life, and Love fill immensity and are ever-present. Was not this a revelation instead of a creation?
The successive appearing of God's ideas is represented as taking place on so many evenings and mornings, - words which indicate, in the absence of solar time, spiritually clearer views of Him, views which are not implied by material darkness and dawn. Here we have the explanation of another passage of Scripture, that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years." The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously, whereas a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses, and vague conjectures emit no such effulgence.
Did infinite Mind create matter, and call it light? Spirit is light, and the contradiction of Spirit is matter, darkness, and darkness obscures light. Material sense is nothing but a supposition of the absence of Spirit. No solar rays nor planetary revolutions form the day of Spirit. Immortal Mind makes its own record, but mortal mind, sleep, dreams, sin, disease, and death have no record in the first chapter of Genesis.
Genesis i. 6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Spiritual understanding, by which human conception, material sense, is separated from Truth, is the firmament. The divine Mind, not matter, creates all identities, and they are forms of Mind, the ideas of Spirit apparent only as Mind, never as mindless matter nor the so-called material senses.
Genesis i. 7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Spirit imparts the understanding which uplifts consciousness and leads into all truth. The Psalmist saith: "The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." Spiritual sense is the discernment of spiritual good. Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and unreal. Spiritual understanding unfolds Mind, - Life, Truth, and Love, - and demonstrates the divine sense, giving the spiritual proof of the universe in Christian Science.
This understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the reality of all things brought to light. God's ideas reflect the immortal, unerring, and infinite. The mortal, erring, and finite are human beliefs, which apportion to themselves a task impossible for them, that of distinguishing between the false and the true. Objects utterly un like the original do not reflect that original. Therefore matter, not being the reflection of Spirit, has no real entity. Understanding is a quality of God, a quality which separates Christian Science from supposition and makes Truth final.
Genesis i. 8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Exalted thought
Through divine Science, Spirit, God, unites understanding to eternal harmony. The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress.
Genesis i. 9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts, even as He opens the petals of a holy purpose in order that the purpose may appear.
Genesis i. 10. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good.
Here the human concept and divine idea seem confused by the translator, but they are not so in the scientifically Christian meaning of the text. Upon Adam devolved the pleasurable task of finding names for all material things, but Adam has not yet appeared in the narrative. In metaphor, the dry land illustrates the absolute formations instituted by Mind, while water symbolizes the elements of Mind. Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the fatherhood and motherhood of God. Spirit names and blesses all. Without natures particularly defined, objects and subjects would be obscure, and creation would be full of nameless offspring, - wanderers from the parent Mind, strangers in a tangled wilderness.
Genesis i. 11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
The universe of Spirit reflects the creative power of the divine Principle, or Life, which reproduces the multitudinous forms of Mind and governs the multiplication of the compound idea man. The tree and herb do not yield fruit because of any propagating power of their own, but because they reflect the Mind which includes all. A material world implies a mortal mind and man a creator. The scientific divine creation declares immortal Mind and the universe created by God.
Infinite Mind creates and governs all, from the mental molecule to infinity. This divine Principle of all expresses Science and art throughout His creation, and the immortality of man and the universe. Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls ideas material. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall to the level of a human or material belief, called mortal man. But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind is All and reproduces all - as Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the product. The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all.
Genesis i. 12. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
God determines the gender of His own ideas. Gender is mental, not material. The seed within itself is the pure thought emanating from divine Mind. The feminine gender is not yet expressed in the text. Gender means simply kind or sort, and does not necessarily refer either to masculinity or femininity. The word is not confined to sexuality, and grammars always recognize a neuter gender, neither male nor female. The Mind or intelligence of production names the female gender last in the ascending order of creation. The intelligent individual idea, be it male or female, rising from the lesser to the greater, unfolds the infinitude of Love.
Genesis i. 13. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
The third stage in the order of Christian Science is an important one to the human thought, letting in the light of spiritual understanding. This period corresponds to the resurrection, when Spirit is discerned to be the Life of all, and the deathless Life, or Mind, dependent upon no material organization. Our Master reappeared to his students, - to their apprehension he rose from the grave, - on the third day of his ascending thought, and so presented to them the certain sense of eternal Life.
Genesis i. 14. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.
Spirit creates no other than heavenly or celestial bodies, but the stellar universe is no more celestial than our earth. This text gives the idea of the rarefaction of thought as it ascends higher. God forms and peoples the universe. The light of spiritual understanding gives gleams of the infinite only, even as nebulae indicate the immensity of space.
Divine nature appearing So-called mineral, vegetable, and animal substances are no more contingent now on time or material structure than they were when "the morning stars sang together." Mind made the "plant of the field before it was in the earth." The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness - yea, the divine nature - appear in man and the universe never to disappear.
Knowing the Science of creation, in which all is Mind and its ideas, Jesus rebuked the material thought of his fellow-countrymen: "Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" How much more should we seek to apprehend the spiritual ideas of God, than to dwell on the objects of sense! To discern the rhythm of Spirit and to be holy, thought must be purely spiritual.
Genesis i. 15. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. Truth and Love enlighten the understanding, in whose "light shall we see light;" and this illumination is reflected spiritually by all who walk in the light and turn away from a false material sense.
Genesis i. 16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.
The sun is a metaphorical representation of Soul outside the body, giving existence and intelligence to the universe. Love alone can impart the limitless idea of infinite Mind. Geology has never explained the earth's formations; it cannot explain them. There is no Scriptural allusion to solar light until time has been already divided into evening and morning; and the allusion to fluids (Genesis i. 2) indicates a supposed formation of matter by the resolving of fluids into solids, analogous to the suppositional resolving of thoughts into material things.
Light is a symbol of Mind, of Life, Truth, and Love, and not a vitalizing property of matter. Science reveals only one Mind, and this one shining by its own light and governing the universe, including man, in perfect harmony. This Mind forms ideas, its own images, subdivides and radiates their borrowed light, intelligence, and so explains the Scripture phrase, "whose seed is in itself." Thus God's ideas "multiply and replenish the earth." The divine Mind supports the sublimity, magnitude, and infinitude of spiritual creation.
Genesis i. 17, 18. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
In divine Science, which is the seal of Deity and has the impress of heaven, God is revealed as infinite light. In the eternal Mind, no night is there.
Genesis i. 19. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
The changing glow and full effulgence of God's infinite ideas, images, mark the periods of progress.
Genesis i. 20. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
To mortal mind, the universe is liquid, solid, and aeriform. Spiritually interpreted, rocks and mountains stand for solid and grand ideas. Animals and mortals metaphorically present the gradation of mortal thought, rising in the scale of intelligence, taking form in masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love.
Genesis i. 21. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Spirit is symbolized by strength, presence, and power, and also by holy thoughts, winged with Love. These angels of His presence, which have the holiest charge, abound in the spiritual atmosphere of Mind, and consequently reproduce their own characteristics. Their individual forms we know not, but we do know that their natures are allied to God's nature; and spiritual blessings, thus typified, are the externalized, yet subjective, states of faith and spiritual understanding.
Genesis i. 22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas; and let fowl multiply in the earth.
Spirit blesses the multiplication of its own pure and perfect ideas. From the infinite elements of the one Mind emanate all form, color, quality, and quantity, and these are mental, both primarily and secondarily. Their spiritual nature is discerned only through the spiritual senses. Mortal mind inverts the true likeness, and confers animal names and natures upon its own misconceptions. Ignorant of the origin and operations of mortal mind, - that is, ignorant of itself, - this so-called mind puts forth its own qualities, and claims God as their author; albeit God is ignorant of the existence of both this mortal mentality, so-called, and its claim, for the claim usurps the deific prerogatives and is an attempted infringement on infinity.
Genesis i. 23. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Advancing spiritual steps in the teeming universe of Mind lead on to spiritual spheres and exalted beings. To material sense, this divine universe is dim and distant, gray in the sombre hues of twilight; but anon the veil is lifted, and the scene shifts into light. In the record, time is not yet measured by solar revolutions, and the motions and reflections of deific power cannot be apprehended until divine Science becomes the interpreter.
Genesis i. 24. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Spirit diversifies, classifies, and individualizes all thoughts, which are as eternal as the Mind conceiving them; but the intelligence, existence, and continuity of all individuality remain in God, who is the divinely creative Principle thereof.
Genesis i. 25. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
God's thoughts are spiritual realities
God creates all forms of reality. His thoughts are spiritual realities. So-called mortal mind - being nonexistent and consequently not within the range of immortal existence - could not by simulating deific power invert the divine creation, and afterwards recreate persons or things upon its own plane, since nothing exists beyond the range of all-inclusive infinity, in which and of which God is the sole creator. Mind, joyous in strength, dwells in the realm of Mind. Mind's infinite ideas run and disport themselves. In humility they climb the heights of holiness.
Moral courage is "the lion of the tribe of Juda," the king of the mental realm. Free and fearless it roams in the forest. Undisturbed it lies in the open field, or rests in "green pastures, . . . beside the still waters." In the figurative transmission from the divine thought to the human, diligence, promptness, and perseverance are likened to "the cattle upon a thousand hills." They carry the baggage of stern resolve, and keep pace with highest purpose. Tenderness accompanies all the might imparted by Spirit. The individuality created by God is not carnivorous, as witness the millennial estate pictured by Isaiah: -
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, And the leopard shall lie down with the kid; And the calf and the young lion, and the fatling together; And a little child shall lead them.
Understanding the control which Love held over all, Daniel felt safe in the lions' den, and Paul proved the viper to be harmless. All of God's creatures moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible. A realization of this grand verity was a source of strength to the ancient worthies. It supports Christian healing, and enables its possessor to emulate the example of Jesus. "And God saw that it was good."