Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Hymns 172,412,201
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The Bible:
Isa 27:1 the
the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Gen 3:1-6, 14
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. … And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
Ex 3:1, 7, 10-12 (to ;)
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
¶ And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; … Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.
¶ And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee;
Ex 4:1-4
And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand:
John 3:14-16
¶ And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
¶ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
2Cor 11:3
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Rev 12:1-5, 7-11 (to ; )
And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. … And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony;
Rev 20:1-3 (to :)
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled:
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
564:24-26, 28
From Genesis to the Apocalypse, sin, sickness, and death, envy, hatred, and revenge, — all evil, — are typi
Doom of the dragon
fied by a serpent, or animal subtlety. … The serpent is perpetually close upon the heel of harmony. From the beginning to the end, the serpent pursues with hatred the spiritual idea. In Genesis, this allegorical, talking serpent typifies mortal mind, “more subtle than any beast of the
565
field.” In the Apocalypse, when nearing its doom, this evil increases and becomes the great red dragon, swollen with sin, inflamed with war against spirituality, and ripe for destruction. It is full of lust and hate, loathing the brightness of divine glory.
306:32
The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream,
307
the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter.
The serpent’s whisper
This pantheistic error, or so-called serpent, insists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, “Ye shall be as gods;” that is, I will make error as real and eternal as Truth.
539:16-24
The Scriptures declare that God condemned this lie as to man’s origin and character by condemning its symbol,
A type of falsehood
the serpent, to grovel beneath all the beasts of the field. It is false to say that Truth and error commingle in creation. In parable and argument, this falsity is exposed by our Master as self-evidently wrong. Disputing these points with the Pharisees and arguing for the Science of creation, Jesus said: “Do men gather grapes of thorns?”
529:21
Whence comes a talking, lying serpent to tempt the children of divine Love? The serpent enters into the
Mythical serpent
metaphor only as evil. We have nothing in the animal kingdom which represents the species described, — a talking serpent, — and should rejoice that evil, by whatever figure presented, contradicts itself and has neither origin nor support in Truth and good. Seeing this, we should have faith to fight all claims of evil, because we know that they are worthless and unreal.
481:12
The forbidden fruit of knowledge, against which wisdom warns man, is the testimony of error, declaring existence to be at the mercy of death, and good and evil to be capable of commingling. This is the significance of the Scripture concerning this “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” — this growth of material belief, of which it is said: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Human hypotheses first assume the reality of sickness, sin, and death, and then assume the necessity of these evils because of their admitted actuality. These human verdicts are the procurers of all discord.
92:11-29
In old Scriptural pictures we see a serpent coiled around the tree of knowledge and speaking to Adam and Eve.
Knowledge of good and evil
This represents the serpent in the act of commending to our first parents the knowledge of good and evil, a knowledge gained from matter, or evil, instead of from Spirit. The portrayal is still graphically accurate, for the common conception of mortal man — a burlesque of God’s man — is an outgrowth of human knowledge or sensuality, a mere offshoot of material sense.
Uncover error, and it turns the lie upon you. Until the fact concerning error — namely, its nothingness —
Opposing power
appears, the moral demand will not be met, and the ability to make nothing of error will be wanting. We should blush to call that real which is only a mistake. The foundation of evil is laid on a belief in something besides God. This belief tends to support two opposite powers, instead of urging the claims of Truth alone.
SH 321:6
The Hebrew Lawgiver, slow of speech, despaired of making the people understand what should be revealed
Fear of the serpent overcome
to him. When, led by wisdom to cast down his rod, he saw it become a serpent, Moses fled before it; but wisdom bade him come back and handle the serpent, and then Moses’ fear departed. In this incident was seen the actuality of Science. Matter was shown to be a belief only. The serpent, evil, under wisdom’s bidding, was destroyed through understanding divine Science, and this proof was a staff upon which to lean. The illusion of Moses lost its power to alarm him, when he discovered that what he apparently saw was really but a phase of mortal belief.
538:15-17
The testimony of the serpent is significant of the illusion of error, of the false claims that misrepresent God, good.
216:7
Error bites the heel of truth, but cannot kill truth. Truth bruises the head of error — destroys error. Spirituality lays open siege to materialism. On which side are we fighting?
130:26-2
If thought is startled at the strong claim of Science for the supremacy of God, or Truth, and doubts the su
All evil unnatural
premacy of good, ought we not, contrariwise, to be astounded at the vigorous claims of evil and doubt them, and no longer think it natural to love sin and unnatural to forsake it, — no longer imagine evil to be ever-present and good absent? Truth should
131
not seem so surprising and unnatural as error, and error should not seem so real as truth.
103:18-23 (to 1st .)
As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind.
The genus of error
It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful. This belief has not one quality of Truth.
102:1
Animal magnetism has no scientific foundation, for God governs all that is real, harmonious, and eternal, and
Mere negation
His power is neither animal nor human. Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in sense it is an unreal concept of the so-called mortal mind.
343:14
Jesus strips all disguise from error, when his teachings are fully understood. By parable and argument he ex
Proof from miracles
plains the impossibility of good producing evil; and he also scientifically demonstrates this great fact, proving by what are wrongly called miracles, that sin, sickness, and death are beliefs — illusive errors — which he could and did destroy.
269:3
From first to last the supposed coexistence of Mind and matter and the mingling of good and evil have resulted from the philosophy of the serpent. Jesus’ demonstrations sift the chaff from the wheat, and unfold the unity and the reality of good, the unreality, the nothingness, of evil.
450:19-22
The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good.
325:2
He who has
Abiding in Life
the true idea of good loses all sense of evil, and by reason of this is being ushered into the undying realities of Spirit. Such a one abideth in Life, — life obtained not of the body incapable of supporting life, but of Truth, unfolding its own immortal idea. Jesus gave the true idea of being, which results in infinite blessings to mortals.
567:18-23
That false claim — that ancient belief, that old serpent whose name is devil (evil), claiming that there is intelli
Dragon cast down to earth
gence in matter either to benefit or to injure men — is pure delusion, the red dragon; and it is cast out by Christ, Truth, the spiritual idea, and so proved to be powerless.
207:8
God is not the creator of an evil mind. Indeed, evil is not Mind. We must learn that evil is the awful decep
Subordination of evil
tion and unreality of existence. Evil is not supreme; good is not helpless; nor are the so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit secondary. Without this lesson, we lose sight of the perfect Father, or the divine Principle of man.
205:15
Befogged in error (the error of believing that matter can be intelligent for good or evil), we can catch clear
Perceiving the divine image
glimpses of God only as the mists disperse, or as they melt into such thinness that we perceive the divine image in some word or deed which indicates the true idea, — the supremacy and reality of good, the nothingness and unreality of evil.
167:14-26
If God made man both good and evil, man must remain thus. What can improve God’s work? Again, an error in the premise must appear in the conclusion. To have one God and avail yourself of the power of Spirit, you must love God supremely.
The “flesh lusteth against the Spirit.” The flesh and Spirit can no more unite in action, than good can coin
Half-way success
cide with evil. It is not wise to take a halting and half-way position or to expect to work equally with Spirit and matter, Truth and error. There is but one way — namely, God and His idea — which leads to spiritual being.
119:21
God is natural good, and is represented only by the idea of goodness; while evil should be regarded as unnatural, because it is opposed to the nature of Spirit, God.
167:7
Our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence, — our health, our longevity, and our Christianity.
SH 311:13 (only)
Evil is destroyed by the sense of good.