Keys are important tools. Not only do they provide entry to
physical spaces like buildings and cars, they also signify access to information
that might otherwise be withheld or obscured. The Chapter “Genesis” in Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures (SH) by Mary Baker Eddy, is the first in the section Key to the Scriptures. So here we are
promised access. Access to the Scriptures!
Eddy was a thorough student of the Bible but her aim was to
interpret its message spiritually rather than humanly. She writes: “The
Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to have them understood
spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained” (SH p.
547:23). She understood that the Bible contains many literary styles including narrative,
history, allegory, poetry, letters, and apocalyptic writings. She also notes its literary devices such as metaphor. For instance, she states that “In metaphor,
the dry land (see Genesis 1:10) illustrates
the absolute formations instituted by Mind…” (SH 507:1).
It’s interesting that the Bible offers several stories that
include the phrase “dry land” or its equivalent. For instance, both Moses and
Joshua led their people across the sea on dry land, and Jonah was finally
delivered to dry land after his days in the fish’s belly. So if we consider “absolute”
to mean fixed, unalterable, universal, total and undeniable, then dry land
begins to have great significance. We might ask: on what then did these Biblical
characters base their thinking, thinking that enabled them to move forward
fearlessly and obediently on dry land?
Each reader will draw his or her own conclusion.
We here note Eddy’s letter to a student (Judge Septimus J. Hanna),
quoted by Robert Peel in his masterful Mary
Baker Eddy – Years of Authority:
“The effect of my writings is often diluted and sometimes
lost by attempting to explain them. It is the seed which once sown springs up,
and if seemingly obscure at first, it makes its way in the soil of thought,
upward, and though least understood it bears the biggest results of all books.”
Peel, p. 106
Here is the Eddy's final paragraph in this fascinating chapter (SH
p. 557):
“Popular
theology takes up the history of man as if he began materially
right, but immediately fell into mental sin; whereas revealed religion proclaims the
Science of Mind and its formations as in accordance with the first chapter
of the Old Testament, when God, Mind, spake and it was done."
This then is no ordinary chapter in an ordinary book. This
is a book, the study of which was expected to have a practical effect on the
reader. And it does.
Julie Swannell
