onstructs the Bible to accommodate these statements. Such portions of
the Bible as can be made, by judicious treatment, to corroborate her
theory, she takes and "spiritually interprets,"[9] that is, tells us
once and for all what the passages really mean; and such portions as
cannot possibly be converted into affirmative evidence she rejects as
errors of the early copyists. Mrs. Eddy insists that the Bible is the
record of truth, but a study of her exegesis shows that only such
portions of it as meet with Mrs. Eddy's approval and lend
themselves--under very rough handling--to the support of her theory, are
accepted as the record of truth; the rest is thrown out as a mass of
erroneous transcription. Mrs. Eddy's keen eye at once detects those
meaningless passages which have for so long beguiled the world, just as
it readily sees in familiar texts an entirely new meaning. She explains
the creation of the world from the account in the first chapter of
Genesis, but the unknown author of this disputed book would never
recognize his narrative when Mrs. Eddy gets through with it.

_Mrs. Eddy's Account of the Creation_[10]

To begin with, Mrs. Eddy says, there was God, "All and in all, the
eternal Principle." This Principle is both masculine and feminine;
"Gender is embraced in Spirit, else God could never have shadowed forth
from out Himself, the idea of male and female." But, Mrs. Eddy adds, "We
have not as much authority for calling God masculine as feminine, the
latter being the last, therefore highest idea given of Him."

Mrs. Eddy next sets about the creation. The "waters" out of which God
brought the dry land, she says, were "Love"; the dry land itself was
"the condensed idea of creation." When God divided the light from the
darkness, it means, says Mrs. Eddy, that "Truth and error were distinct
from the beginning, and never mingled." But Mrs. Eddy has always
insisted on the idea that "error" is a delusion which arose first in the
mind of mortal man; what is error doing away back here before man was
created, and why was God himself compelled to take measures against it?
Certainly the account of the Creation which came from Lynn is even more
perplexing than that which is related in the Pentateuch.

With regard to the creation of grass and herbs, Mrs. Eddy eagerly points
out that "God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth,
and every herb of the field before it grew." And that, she says, proves
that "