What is man?

 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.