Mortal error
From: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
p.548:13–16
Every agony of mortal error
helps error to destroy error,
and so aids the apprehension of immortal Truth.
This is the new birth going on hourly,
by which men may entertain angels...
p.468:11–13
Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error.
Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal.
p.96:21–24
Mortal error will vanish in a moral chemicalization.
This mental fermentation has begun, and will continue
until all errors of belief yield to understanding. Belief is
changeable, but spiritual understanding is changeless.
p.533:10–534:7
The beguiling first lie
Here there is an attempt to trace all human errors
directly or indirectly to God, or good, as if He were the
creator of evil. The allegory shows that the
snake-talker utters the first voluble lie, which
beguiles the woman and demoralizes the man. Adam,
alias mortal error, charges God and woman with his own
dereliction, saying, "The woman, whom Thou gavest
me, is responsible." According to this belief, the rib taken
from Adam's side has grown into an evil mind, named
woman, who aids man to make sinners more rapidly than
he can alone. Is this an help meet for man?
Materiality, so obnoxious to God, is already found in the
rapid deterioration of the bone and flesh which came from
Adam to form Eve. The belief in material life and intelligence
is growing worse at every step, but error has its
suppositional day and multiplies until the end thereof.
False womanhood
Truth, cross-questioning man as to His knowledge of
error, finds woman the first to confess her fault. She
says, " The serpent beguiled me, and I did
eat;" as much as to say in meek penitence,
"Neither man nor God shall father my fault." She has
already learned that corporeal sense is the serpent. Hence
she is first to abandon the belief in the material origin of
man and to discern spiritual creation. This hereafter
enabled woman to be the mother of Jesus and to behold
at the sepulchre the risen Saviour, who was soon to mani-
fest the deathless man of God's creating. This enabled
woman to be first to interpret the Scriptures in their true
sense, which reveals the spiritual origin of man.