prior to reaching intelligence.  Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being” (p. 63).

“The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter.  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....  ’I will put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem to have life as much as God, Spirit, who is the only Life.’  This error has proved itself to be error.  Its life is found to be not Life, but only a transient, false sense of an existence which ends in death” (pp. 306, 307).

“When will the error of believing that there is life in matter, and that sin, sickness, and death are creations of God, be unmasked?  When will it be understood that matter has no intelligence, life, nor sensation, and that the opposite belief is the prolific source of all suffering?  God created all through Mind, and made all perfect and eternal.  Where then is the necessity for recreation or procreation?” (p. 205).

“Above error’s awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls:  ’Adam, where art thou?  Consciousness, where art thou?  Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou in the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandment?’” (pp. 307, 308).  “Mortal mind inverts the true likeness, and confers animal names and natures upon its own misconceptions.  Ignorant of the origin and operations of mortal mind,—­that is, ignorant of itself,—­this so-called mind puts forth its own qualities, and claims God as their author;... usurps the deific prerogatives and is an attempted infringement on infinity” (pp. 512, 513).

We do not question the authenticity of the Scriptural narrative of the Virgin-mother and Bethlehem babe, and the Messianic mission of Christ Jesus; but in our time no Christian Scientist will give chimerical wings to his imagination, or advance speculative theories as to the recurrence of such events.

No person can take the individual place of the Virgin Mary.  No person can compass or fulfil the individual mission of Jesus of Nazareth.  No person can take the place of the author of Science and Health, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.  Each individual must fill his own niche in time and eternity.

The second appearing of Jesus is, unquestionably, the spiritual advent of the advancing idea of God, as in Christian Science.

And the scientific ultimate of this God-idea must be, will be, forever individual, incorporeal, and infinite, even the reflection, “image and likeness,” of the infinite God.