University of Virginia Library

Spirit names and blesses

Here the human concept and divine idea seem con- fused by the translator, but they are not so in the scien- tifically Christian meaning of the text. Upon Adam devolved the pleasurable task of find- ing names for all material things, but Adam has not yet

appeared in the narrative. In metaphor, the dry land illustrates the absolute formations instituted by Mind, while water symbolizes the elements of Mind. Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the father- hood and motherhood of God. Spirit names and blesses all. Without natures particularly defined, objects and subjects would be obscure, and creation would be full of nameless offspring, - wanderers from the parent Mind, strangers in a tangled wilderness.

Genesis i. 11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.