These things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He that
hath the key of David, He that openeth, and no man shutteth;
and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works: behold,
I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.
- REVELATION.
579:1In Christian Science we learn that the substitution of
the spiritual for the material definition of a Scrip-
tural 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,
giving their spiritual sense, which is also their original
meaning.
579:8ABEL. Watchfulness; self-offering; surrendering to
the creator the early fruits of experience.
579:10ABRAHAM. Fidelity; faith in the divine Life and in the
eternal Principle of being.
This patriarch illustrated the purpose of Love to create
trust in good, and showed the life-preserving power of
spiritual understanding.
579:15ADAM. 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,
580:1finiteness, and mortality; "dust to dust;" red sand-
stone; nothingness; the first god of mythology; not
God'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,
but 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);
a 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,
substance, 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-
ter, 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
of Spirit's creation, called self-creative matter; immor-
tality's opposite, mortality; that of which wisdom saith,
"Thou shalt surely die."
580:21The 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-
intelligence, 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-
ated, and then disappeared in the atheism of matter.
580:28ADVERSARY. An adversary is one who opposes, denies,
disputes, not one who constructs and sustains reality and
Truth. Jesus said of the devil, "He was a murderer from
the beginning, . . . he is a liar and the father of it."
581:1This view of Satan is confirmed by the name often con-
ferred upon him in Scripture, the "adversary."