The constant changes in the manuscript make it difficult to read, though there are flashes of eloquence and poetry as the author moves through what in one place she calls “the dancing forms of thought in illusory shadows and the light of the principle unchanging.” But, above all, the revisions show her determination to surrender whatever is not in accord with the “principle unchanging” to which she was now committed.⁵⁹ Her developing interpretation of Genesis was embryonic Christian Science, passing through the drastic metamorphosis common to embryos, but it was governed by a definite principle of growth.

That principle was summed up for her at the end of Genesis 1: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”⁶⁰ God, as the Principle of perfection, could create nothing imperfect. Yet in the second chapter of Genesis, as in daily experience, she was confronted with the tragic imperfection of human life. Here  ● ● ●