and good for food; the tree of life also, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The previous and more scientific record of creation
declares that God made “every plant of the field
Contradicting first creation
before it was in the earth.” This opposite
declaration, this statement that life issues
from matter, contradicts the teaching of the first chapter,
— namely, that all Life is God. Belief is less than
understanding. Belief involves theories of material hearing,
sight, touch, taste, and smell, termed the five senses.
The appetites and passions, sin, sickness, and death,
follow in the train of this error of a belief in intelligent
matter.
The first mention of evil is in the legendary Scriptural text in the second chapter of Genesis. God pronounced Record of error good all that He created, and the Scriptures declare that He created all. The “tree of is life” stands for the idea of Truth, and the sword which guards it is the type of divine Science. The “tree of knowledge” stands for the erroneous doctrine that the knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God-bestowed, as the knowledge of good. Was evil instituted through God, Love? Did He create this fruit-bearer of sin in contradiction of the first creation? This second biblical account is a picture of error throughout.
Genesis ii. 15. And the Lord God [Jehovah] took the
man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and
to keep it.
The name Eden, according to Cruden, means pleasure,
delight. In this text Eden stands for the mortal, mate-
