on dry land

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