Chapter XVII
579:1In Christian Science we learn that the substitution of the spiritual for the material definition of a Scrip‐3tural word often elucidates the meaning of the inspired writer. On this account this chapter is added. It con‐tains the metaphysical interpretation of Bible terms, 6giving their spiritual sense, which is also their original meaning.
Abraham. Fidelity; faith in the divine Life and in the eternal Principle of being.
12 This patriarch illustrated the purpose of Love to create trust in good, and showed the life-preserving power of spiritual understanding.
15Adam. Error; a falsity; the belief in “original sin,” sickness, and death; evil; the opposite of good, — of God and His creation; a curse; a belief in intelligent matter, 580 580:1finiteness, and mortality; “dust to dust;” red sand‐stone; nothingness; the first god of mythology; not 3God’s man, who represents the one God and is His own image and likeness; the opposite of Spirit and His crea‐tions; that which is not the image and likeness of good, 6but a material belief, opposed to the one Mind, or Spirit; a so-called finite mind, producing other minds, thus mak‐ing “gods many and lords many” (I Corinthians viii. 5); 9a product of nothing as the mimicry of something; an unreality as opposed to the great reality of spiritual ex‐istence and creation; a so-called man, whose origin, 12substance, and mind are found to be the antipode of God, or Spirit; an inverted image of Spirit; the image and likeness of what God has not created, namely, mat‐15ter, sin, sickness, and death; the opposer of Truth, termed error; Life’s counterfeit, which ultimates in death; the opposite of Love, called hate; the usurper 18of Spirit’s creation, called self-creative matter; immor‐tality’s opposite, mortality; that of which wisdom saith, “Thou shalt surely die.”
21 The name Adam represents the false supposition that Life is not eternal, but has beginning and end; that the infinite enters the finite, that intelligence passes into non-24intelligence, and that Soul dwells in material sense; that immortal Mind results in matter, and matter in mortal mind; that the one God and creator entered what He cre‐27ated, and then disappeared in the atheism of matter.
Adversary. An adversary is one who opposes, denies, disputes, not one who constructs and sustains reality and 30Truth. Jesus said of the devil, “He was a murderer from the beginning, . . . he is a liar and the father of it.” 581 581:1This view of Satan is confirmed by the name often con‐ferred upon him in Scripture, the “adversary.”
Angels. God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, 6purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality.
Ark. Safety; the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proved 9to be as immortal as its Principle; the understanding of Spirit, destroying belief in matter.
God and man coexistent and eternal; Science show‐12ing that the spiritual realities of all things are created by Him and exist forever. The ark indicates temptation overcome and followed by exaltation.
Babel. Self-destroying error; a kingdom divided 18against itself, which cannot stand; material knowledge.
The higher false knowledge builds on the basis of evi‐dence obtained from the five corporeal senses, the more 21confusion ensues, and the more certain is the downfall of its structure.
Baptism. Purification by Spirit; submergence in 24Spirit.
We are “willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (II Corinthians v. 8.)
582:1Believing. Firmness and constancy; not a faltering nor a blind faith, but the perception of spiritual Truth. 3Mortal thoughts, illusion.
Benjamin (Jacob’s son). A physical belief as to life, substance, and mind; human knowledge, or so-called 6mortal mind, devoted to matter; pride; envy; fame; illusion; a false belief; error masquerading as the pos‐sessor of life, strength, animation, and power to act.
9 Renewal of affections; self-offering; an improved state of mortal mind; the introduction of a more spiritual origin; a gleam of the infinite idea of the infinite Prin‐12ciple; a spiritual type; that which comforts, consoles, and supports.
Bride. Purity and innocence, conceiving man in the 15idea of God; a sense of Soul, which has spiritual bliss and enjoys but cannot suffer.
Bridegroom. Spiritual understanding; the pure con‐18sciousness that God, the divine Principle, creates man as His own spiritual idea, and that God is the only crea‐tive power.
21Burial. Corporeality and physical sense put out of sight and hearing; annihilation. Submergence in Spirit; immortality brought to light.
24Canaan (the son of Ham). A sensuous belief; the testimony of what is termed material sense; the error which would make man mortal and would make mortal 27mind a slave to the body.
Children. The spiritual thoughts and representa‐tives of Life, Truth, and Love.
583583:1 Sensual and mortal beliefs; counterfeits of creation, whose better originals are God’s thoughts, not in em‐3bryo, but in maturity; material suppositions of life, sub‐stance, and intelligence, opposed to the Science of being.
Children of Israel. The representatives of Soul, not 6corporeal sense; the offspring of Spirit, who, having wrestled with error, sin, and sense, are governed by divine Science; some of the ideas of God beheld as men, casting 9out error and healing the sick; Christ’s offspring.
12Church. The structure of Truth and Love; what‐ever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.
The Church is that institution, which affords proof of 15its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the ap‐prehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of 18divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick.
Creator. Spirit; Mind; intelligence; the animating 21divine Principle of all that is real and good; self-existent Life, Truth, and Love; that which is perfect and eternal; the opposite of matter and evil, which have no Prin‐24ciple; God, who made all that was made and could not create an atom or an element the opposite of Himself.
Dan (Jacob’s son). Animal magnetism; so-called mor‐27tal mind controlling mortal mind; error, working out the designs of error; one belief preying upon another.
584:1Day. The irradiance of Life; light, the spiritual idea of Truth and Love.
3 “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis i. 5.) The objects of time and sense disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind 6 measures time according to the good that is unfolded. This unfolding is God’s day, and “there shall be no night there.”
9Death. An illusion, the lie of life in matter; the un‐real and untrue; the opposite of Life.
Matter has no life, hence it has no real existence. Mind 12 is immortal. The flesh, warring against Spirit; that which frets itself free from one belief only to be fettered by another, until every belief of life where Life is not 15yields to eternal Life. Any material evidence of death is false, for it contradicts the spiritual facts of being.
Devil. Evil; a lie; error; neither corporeality nor 18mind; the opposite of Truth; a belief in sin, sickness, and death; animal magnetism or hypnotism; the lust of the flesh, which saith: “I am life and intelligence in 21matter. There is more than one mind, for I am mind, — a wicked mind, self-made or created by a tribal god and put into the opposite of mind, termed matter, thence to 24reproduce a mortal universe, including man, not after the image and likeness of Spirit, but after its own image.”
585:1Ears. Not organs of the so-called corporeal senses, but spiritual understanding.
3 Jesus said, referring to spiritual perception, “Having ears, hear ye not?” (Mark viii. 18.)
Earth. A sphere; a type of eternity and immortality, 6which are likewise without beginning or end.
To material sense, earth is matter; to spiritual sense, it is a compound idea.
9Elias. Prophecy; spiritual evidence opposed to mate‐rial sense; Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold; 12the basis of immortality.
“Elias truly shall first come and restore all things.” (Matthew xvii. 11.)
Euphrates (river). Divine Science encompassing the universe and man; the true idea of God; a type 18of the glory which is to come; metaphysics taking the place of physics; the reign of righteousness. The atmos‐phere of human belief before it accepts sin, sickness, or 21death; a state of mortal thought, the only error of which is limitation; finity; the opposite of infinity.
Eve. A beginning; mortality; that which does not 24last forever; a finite belief concerning life, substance, and intelligence in matter; error; the belief that the hu‐man race originated materially instead of spiritually, — 27that man started first from dust, second from a rib, and third from an egg.
586:1Evening. Mistiness of mortal thought; weariness of mortal mind; obscured views; peace and rest.
3Eyes. Spiritual discernment, — not material but mental.
Jesus said, thinking of the outward vision, “Having 6eyes, see ye not?” (Mark viii. 18.)
15Firmament. Spiritual understanding; the scientific line of demarcation between Truth and error, between Spirit and so-called matter.
18Flesh. An error of physical belief; a supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief that matter has sensation.
Gethsemane. Patient woe; the human yielding to 24the divine; love meeting no response, but still remaining love.
587:1Ghost. An illusion; a belief that mind is outlined and limited; a supposition that spirit is finite.
God. The great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, 6all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence.
9Gods. Mythology; a belief that life, substance, and intelligence are both mental and material; a supposition of sentient physicality; the belief that infinite Mind is in 12finite forms; the various theories that hold mind to be a material sense, existing in brain, nerve, matter; supposi‐titious minds, or souls, going in and out of matter, erring 15and mortal; the serpents of error, which say, “Ye shall be as gods.”
God is one God, infinite and perfect, and cannot be‐18come finite and imperfect.
Heaven. Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle; spirituality; bliss; the atmosphere 27of Soul.
588:1Hell. Mortal belief; error; lust; remorse; hatred; revenge; sin; sickness; death; suffering and self-de‐3struction; self-imposed agony; effects of sin; that which “worketh abomination or maketh a lie.”
9I, or Ego. Divine Principle; Spirit; Soul; incor‐poreal, unerring, immortal, and eternal Mind.
There is but one I, or Us, but one divine Principle, or 12Mind, governing all existence; man and woman un‐changed forever in their individual characters, even as numbers which never blend with each other, though they 15are governed by one Principle. All the objects of God’s creation reflect one Mind, and whatever reflects not this one Mind, is false and erroneous, even the belief that 18life, substance, and intelligence are both mental and material.
24Intelligence. Substance; self-existent and eternal Mind; that which is never unconscious nor limited.
589:1Issachar (Jacob’s son). A corporeal belief; the offspring of error; envy; hatred; selfishness; self-will; 3lust.
Jacob. A corporeal mortal embracing duplicity, re‐pentance, sensualism. Inspiration; the revelation of 6Science, in which the so-called material senses yield to the spiritual sense of Life and Love.
Japhet (Noah’s son). A type of spiritual peace, flow‐9ing from the understanding that God is the divine Prin‐ciple of all existence, and that man is His idea, the child of His care.
12Jerusalem. Mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal senses; the pride of power and the power of pride; sensuality; envy; oppression; tyr‐15anny. Home, heaven.
Jesus. The highest human corporeal concept of the divine idea, rebuking and destroying error and bringing 18to light man’s immortality.
Joseph. A corporeal mortal; a higher sense of Truth rebuking mortal belief, or error, and showing the immor‐21tality and supremacy of Truth; pure affection blessing its enemies.
Judah. A corporeal material belief progressing and 24disappearing; the spiritual understanding of God and man appearing.
590:1Kingdom of Heaven. The reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent 3Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme.
Knowledge. Evidence obtained from the five cor‐poreal senses; mortality; beliefs and opinions; human 6theories, doctrines, hypotheses; that which is not divine and is the origin of sin, sickness, and death; the oppo‐site of spiritual Truth and understanding.
Levi (Jacob’s son). A corporeal and sensual belief; 12mortal man; denial of the fulness of God’s creation; ecclesiastical despotism.
15Lord. In the Hebrew, this term is sometimes em‐ployed as a title, which has the inferior sense of master, or ruler. In the Greek, the word kurios almost always 18has this lower sense, unless specially coupled with the name God. Its higher signification is Supreme Ruler.
21 This double term is not used in the first chapter of Genesis, the record of spiritual creation. It is intro‐duced in the second and following chapters, when the 24spiritual sense of God and of infinity is disappearing from the recorder’s thought, — when the true scientific statements of the Scriptures become clouded through a 591 591:1physical sense of God as finite and corporeal. From this follow idolatry and mythology, — belief in many gods, or 3material intelligences, as the opposite of the one Spirit, or intelligence, named Elohim, or God.
Man. The compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spirit‐6ual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind.
Matter. Mythology; mortality; another name for 9mortal mind; illusion; intelligence, substance, and life in non-intelligence and mortality; life resulting in death, and death in life; sensation in the sensationless; mind 12originating in matter; the opposite of Truth; the oppo‐site of Spirit; the opposite of God; that of which immortal Mind takes no cognizance; that which mortal mind sees, 15feels, hears, tastes, and smells only in belief.
Mind. The only I, or Us; the only Spirit, Soul, divine Principle, substance, Life, Truth, Love; the one God; 18not that which is in man, but the divine Principle, or God, of whom man is the full and perfect expression; Deity, which outlines but is not outlined.
Mortal Mind. Nothing claiming to be something, for Mind is immortal; mythology; error creating other 27errors; a suppositional material sense, alias the belief 592 592:1that sensation is in matter, which is sensationless; a be‐lief that life, substance, and intelligence are in and of 3matter; the opposite of Spirit, and therefore the opposite of God, or good; the belief that life has a beginning and therefore an end; the belief that man is the off‐6spring of mortals; the belief that there can be more than one creator; idolatry; the subjective states of error; material senses; that which neither exists in Science nor 9can be recognized by the spiritual sense; sin; sickness; death.
Moses. A corporeal mortal; moral courage; a type 12of moral law and the demonstration thereof; the proof that, without the gospel, — the union of justice and affec‐tion, — there is something spiritually lacking, since justice 15demands penalties under the law.
18New Jerusalem. Divine Science; the spiritual facts and harmony of the universe; the kingdom of heaven, or reign of harmony.
Noah. A corporeal mortal; knowledge of the noth‐ingness of material things and of the immortality of all 24that is spiritual.
Prophet. A spiritual seer; disappearance of mate‐rial sense before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth.
9Resurrection. Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding.
15 When smooth and unobstructed, it typifies the course of Truth; but muddy, foaming, and dashing, it is a type of error.
Salvation. Life, Truth, and Love understood and 21demonstrated as supreme over all; sin, sickness, and death destroyed.
594:1Serpent (ophis, in Greek; nacash, in Hebrew). Subtlety; a lie; the opposite of Truth, named error; 3the first statement of mythology and idolatry; the belief in more than one God; animal magnetism; the first lie of limitation; finity; the first claim that there is an oppo‐6site of Spirit, or good, termed matter, or evil; the first delusion that error exists as fact; the first claim that sin, sickness, and death are the realities of life. The first 9audible claim that God was not omnipotent and that there was another power, named evil, which was as real and eternal as God, good.
Shem (Noah’s son). A corporeal mortal; kindly affec‐15tion; love rebuking error; reproof of sensualism.
Son. The Son of God, the Messiah or Christ. The son of man, the offspring of the flesh. “Son of a year.”
Spirit. Divine substance; Mind; divine Principle; all that is good; God; that only which is perfect, ever‐21lasting, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite.
Spirits. Mortal beliefs; corporeality; evil minds; supposed intelligences, or gods; the opposites of God; 24errors; hallucinations. (See page 466.)
Temple. Body; the idea of Life, substance, and in‐telligence; the superstructure of Truth; the shrine of 9Love; a material superstructure, where mortals congre‐gate for worship.
Thummim. Perfection; the eternal demand of divine 12Science.
The Urim and Thummim, which were to be on Aaron’s breast when he went before Jehovah, were holiness and 15purification of thought and deed, which alone can fit us for the office of spiritual teaching.
Time. Mortal measurements; limits, in which are 18summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge; matter; error; that which begins before, and continues after, what is termed death, until the mortal 21disappears and spiritual perfection appears.
596:1Unknown. That which spiritual sense alone compre‐hends, and which is unknown to the material senses.
3 Paganism and agnosticism may define Deity as “the great unknowable;” but Christian Science brings God much nearer to man, and makes Him better known as 6the All-in-all, forever near.
Paul saw in Athens an altar dedicated “to the unknown God.” Referring to it, he said to the Athenians: “Whom 9therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” (Acts xvii. 23.)
12 The rabbins believed that the stones in the breast-plate of the high-priest had supernatural illumination, but Christian Science reveals Spirit, not matter, as the 15illuminator of all. The illuminations of Science give us a sense of the nothingness of error, and they show the spiritual inspiration of Love and Truth to be the only fit 18preparation for admission to the presence and power of the Most High.
Valley. Depression; meekness; darkness.
21 “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” (Psalm xxiii. 4.)
Though the way is dark in mortal sense, divine Life 24 and Love illumine it, destroy the unrest of mortal thought, the fear of death, and the supposed reality of error. Chris‐tian Science, contradicting sense, maketh the valley to bud 27and blossom as the rose.
Veil. A cover; concealment; hiding; hypocrisy.
The Jewish women wore veils over their faces in token 597 597:1of reverence and submission and in accordance with Pharisaical notions.
3 The Judaic religion consisted mostly of rites and cere‐monies. The motives and affections of a man were of little value, if only he appeared unto men to fast. The 6great Nazarene, as meek as he was mighty, rebuked the hypocrisy, which offered long petitions for blessings upon material methods, but cloaked the crime, latent in thought, 9which was ready to spring into action and crucify God’s anointed. The martyrdom of Jesus was the culminating sin of Pharisaism. It rent the veil of the temple. It re‐12vealed the false foundations and superstructures of super‐ficial religion, tore from bigotry and superstition their coverings, and opened the sepulchre with divine Science, 15 — immortality and Love.
Wilderness. Loneliness; doubt; darkness. Spon‐taneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a 18material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.
Will. The motive-power of error; mortal belief; ani‐21mal power. The might and wisdom of God.
“For this is the will of God.” (I Thessalonians iv. 3.)
24 Will, as a quality of so-called mortal mind, is a wrong-doer; hence it should not be confounded with the term as applied to Mind or to one of God’s qualities.
27Wind. That which indicates the might of omnipo‐tence and the movements of God’s spiritual government, encompassing all things. Destruction; anger; mortal 30passions.
598598:1 The Greek word for wind (pneuma) is used also for spirit, as in the passage in John’s Gospel, the third chap‐3ter, where we read: “The wind [pneuma] bloweth where it listeth. . . . So is every one that is born of the Spirit [pneuma].” Here the original word is the same in both 6cases, yet it has received different translations, as in other passages in this same chapter and elsewhere in the New Testament. This shows how our Master had constantly 9to employ words of material significance in order to unfold spiritual thoughts. In the record of Jesus’ supposed death, we read: “He bowed his head, and gave up the 12ghost;” but this word ghost is pneuma. It might be trans‐lated wind or air, and the phrase is equivalent to our common statement, “He breathed his last.” What 15Jesus gave up was indeed air, an etherealized form of matter, for never did he give up Spirit, or Soul.
Year. A solar measurement of time; mortality; space for repentance.
21 “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” (II Peter iii. 8.)
One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual 24understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. This exalted view, obtained and retained when the Sci‐ence of being is understood, would bridge over with life 27discerned spiritually the interval of death, and man would be in the full consciousness of his immortality and eternal harmony, where sin, sickness, and death are un‐30known. Time is a mortal thought, the divisor of which 599 599:1is the solar year. Eternity is God’s measurement of Soul-filled years.