comes in another a troublesome factor in the pathway of a system that claims the name of Christian and scientific, but which, when unmasked, reveals the features of an agnostic and unbeliever in both.

CHAPTER IX.

THE “KEY.”

In Genesis it is written: "In the beginning God "In the created the heavens and the earth." God-Elohim. Beginning" This word is found in the Hebrew Scriptures fiftyseven times in the singular, twice in the book of Deuteronomy and forty-one times in Job, and about three thousand times in the plural, of which seventeen instances are in Job. The most probable meaning of the root of the Arabic word is to be lasting, binding. Hence the noun means The Everlasting, and, in the plural, the Eternal Powers. It is correctly rendered God, the name of the Eternal and Supreme Being in our English tongue. This Being is never to be confounded with principle or attribute, but is an eternally living personality.

The Exegesis of Mrs. Eddy says: "The creative Principle-Life, Truth, and Love-is God." Again, "The universe reflects God." "In the universe of Truth matter is unknown. Divine Science, the Word of God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, 'God is All-in-All.” ”

Here are two declarations: God does not know matter; God is everything. This teaching, if words have any meaning, is another expression of plain, unadulterated Pantheism, met with so often in this

The "Untrue"
Image

woman's writings. Christianity believes that matter is real. God, Jehovah, formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. The dust of the ground is something real, and man did not become. a living soul until God had breathed into the body, already made, created, "a living soul."

We read in the poets of the "light that never was on land or sea." Mrs. Eddy in the heated fancies of her brain has forged a "key," which she names the "Key to the Scriptures," but it opens no lock and solves no mystery.

In the "Key to the Scriptures" the prophet begins by saying: "In the following exegesis each text is followed by its spiritual interpretation according to the teachings of Christian Science."

Again we read: "Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the history of the untrue image of God, named sinful mortal."

Here at the beginning of her exposition she labels as false the Word of God in its statement and teaching. The Bible account of the creation of man says:

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.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Nowhere does the Bible indicate that the image of Himself in which God made man was an "untrue image." There is no such distinction set up in the

Word as this "Key" attempts to make out. It was this man, made in the Creator's image, and not a shadow or a picture of him, to whom was given dominion "over all the earth."

How are the sublime facts of creation explained and gotten rid of by a distinct Christian Science method: "God creates neither erring thought, mortal life, mutable truth, nor variable love." That is, God did not create mortal man, man has no body, he is all soul and spirit, according to this exegesis. Paul says: "He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." Not only does the apostle teach here that man has a body, but also that the Spirit of God dwells in that body. He also sets forth that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This "Key," which claims to be Christian, and to have the power of opening the truth of Holy Scriptures, offers flat contradictions to the express declarations of Scripture and exposes its author to the charge of gross ignorance of exegetical principles.

In the animadversion on the fifth verse of Gene- on Light sis the "Key" continues:

"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. not this a revelation instead of a creation ?"

Was

The "Key" seems to know that this light was not

In explaining the sixth verse, “But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground," this inspired revelation declares:

"The Science and truth of the divine creation have been presented in the verses already considered, and now the opposite error, a material view of creation, is to be set forth, . but it is a false history in contradistinction to the true. The Science of the first record proves the falsity of the second. . . . The first record endows man out of God's perfection and power. The second record chronicles man as mutable and mortal. . . . This second record gives the history of errors. . . It records Pantheism. In this erroneous theory matter takes the The latter part of the second is based on some hy

place of Spirit. chapter of Genesis pothesis of error."

Here we have a distinct repudiation of the revelation of the divine Word when it does not fit into a previously formed theory or hypothesis. What an exhibition of an aping of Higher Criticism with scholarship and equipment left out!

Presently the "Key" in its eagerness that the Holy Scriptures should not, by any possible twisting of the truth, conform to its baseless dreams and theories, will turn the truth of God into a lie.

In Genesis 2: 7 we read: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

The "Key" says: