“Reading the chapter brought back a lot of memories of well-known and well-loved passages that brought healing.”
/(1) What do you feel the word creation implies?
“Thy throne is established of old: Thou art from everlasting.” -Psalms
“Eternal Truth is changing the universe. As mortals drop off their mental swaddling-clothes, thought expands into expression. ‘Let there be light’, is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love, changing chaos into order and discord into the music of the spheres.” (SH, p. 255)
From the Oxford Dictionary, definition of Creation:
The action or process of bringing something into existence, for example, creation of a coalition government, job creation.
I love the true sense of creation that waits on God and works to perceive and understand what He has already done—and seeing “that it was good”. Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy states, “The Scriptures are definite on this point, declaring that His work was finished, nothing is new to God, and that it was good.” (SH 206:22)
The mortal, material sense of creation, leaving God out, sadly results in mortal egotism, mistakes, limitation and death. Mrs. Eddy’s writes in her chapter on Creation,
Carnal beliefs defraud us. They make man an involuntary hypocrite,--producing evil when he would create good, forming deformity when he would outline grace and beauty, injuring those whom he would bless. He becomes a general mis-creator, who believes he is a semi-god. His ‘touch turns hope to dust, the dust we all have trod.’ He might say in Bible language: ‘The good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. (SH 263:11)
On a brighter note, Mrs. Eddy also writes,
When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven. (SH 263:7-10)
(2) In your own words describe your impressions of the chapter “Creation” in Science and Health.
I have loved the chapter “Creation” for a long time. Reading the chapter recently brought back a lot of memories of well-known and well-loved passages that brought healing, light, and hope, as far back as my teenage years. When I was in my twenties and preparing for class instruction, I remember being so excited about the prospect of Eternal Truth changing the universe and thought expanding into expression. I still of course love these ideas and believe in them, but sometimes in today’s world, instead of thought expanding, it seems to be shrinking. Instead of increasingly identifying man as immortal, spiritual, and perfect, the world seems to be going in the opposite direction. I think the term de-evolving had been used at last year’s Association. I had never heard that term before, but I looked it up and one definition says it means going from an advanced state to a less advanced state.
Mrs. Eddy writes, Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered, for more than all others spiritual causation relates to human progress…The description of man as purely physical, or as both material and spiritual,--but in either case dependent upon his physical organization,--is the Pandora box, from which all ills have gone forth, especially despair. Matter, which takes divine power into its own hands and claims to be a creator, is a fiction, in which paganism and lust are so sanctioned by society that mankind has caught their moral contagion. (SH 170:22-3)
Reading the chapter on Creation today in 2017, I see how Mrs. Eddy is teaching us to stand with infinite and accurate views of creation by the divine Mind, to side with Science and peace, rather than discord and dismay, and giving us step by step instructions in spiritual living and blessedness.
(3) How can the increased understanding of true creation make a difference in your life? Better yet, share with us how the truth of creation has been, or is being, demonstrated in your life.
I’m seeing the chapter on Creation in a whole new light with much useful instruction in resisting a belief in a power opposed to God and His true spiritual creation. In recent months, I’ve been praying more than ever for myself and the world and working frequently with the chapter in Science and Health, “Animal Magnetism Unmasked.” Reading Mary Baker Eddy’s chapter on “Creation” only adds to the necessity and urgency of pulling away from mesmeric influence that rejects God as Spirit and instead “enthrones matter as deity”. The hour is come.
Good demands of man every hour, in which to work out the problem of being. (SH 261:32-1)
Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal. All things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the creator. Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man. (SH 256:1)