Man is not matter; he is not made up of
brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The
Scriptures inform us that man is made in
475:9 the image and likeness of God. Matter is
not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so
unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and be-
475:12 cause he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so under-
stood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of
Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of
475:15 God, including all right ideas; the generic term for
all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious
identity of being as found in Science, in which man is
475:18 the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal;
that which has no separate mind from God; that which
has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which
475:21 possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his
own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker.
And God said: "Let us make man in our image, after
475:24 our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish
of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
475:27 creepeth upon the earth."
Man unfallen
Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The
real man cannot depart from holiness, nor
475:30 can God, by whom man is evolved, engender
the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not
476:1 God's man. Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals.
They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil,
476:3 which declares that man begins in dust or as a material
embryo. In divine Science, God and the real man are
inseparable as divine Principle and idea.
Mortals are not immortals
476:6 Error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed.
Error will cease to claim that soul is in body, that life
and intelligence are in matter, and that
476:9 this matter is man. God is the Principle of
man, and man is the idea of God. Hence man is not
mortal nor material. Mortals will disappear, and im-
476:12 mortals, or the children of God, will appear as the only
and eternal verities of man. Mortals are not fallen chil-
dren of God. They never had a perfect state of being,
476:15 which may subsequently be regained. They were, from
the beginning of mortal history, "conceived in sin and
brought forth in iniquity." Mortality is finally swallowed
476:18 up in immortality. Sin, sickness, and death must dis-
appear to give place to the facts which belong to immortal
man.
Imperishable identity
476:21 Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual
status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood.
Remember that the Scriptures say of mortal
476:24 man: "As for man, his days are as grass: as
a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind
passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall
476:27 know it no more."
The kingdom within
When speaking of God's children, not the children of
men, Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you;"
476:30 that is, Truth and Love reign in the real
man, showing that man in God's image is
unfallen and eternal. Jesus beheld in Science the per-
477:1 fect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal
man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour
477:3 saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man
healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom
of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy.
477:6 Man is not a material habitation for Soul; he is himself
spiritual. Soul, being Spirit, is seen in nothing imperfect
nor material.
Material body never God's idea
477:9 Whatever is material is mortal. To the five corporeal
senses, man appears to be matter and mind united; but
Christian Science reveals man as the idea of
477:12 God, and declares the corporeal senses to be
mortal and erring illusions. Divine Science
shows it to be impossible that a material body, though
477:15 interwoven with matter's highest stratum, misnamed
mind, should be man, - the genuine and perfect man,
the immortal idea of being, indestructible and eternal.
477:18 Were it otherwise, man would be annihilated.