Were one to accept the evidence of the physical senses he would have no grounds for thinking of himself or others as anything else than mortal. Unless taught from childhood that these so-called senses are false witnesses concerning God and His spiritual creation, he would grow into manhood still thinking that he was a mortal, inevitably doomed to return to dust. He would have no incentive for reckoning himself to be anything else than a poor, miserable sinner. Under the sway of false material sense, which knows nothing of spiritual reality, he would reverse the natural order of spiritual development and reckon himself alive to sin and dead to God, Spirit. There would be no other course for him to pursue from the standpoint of the reality of matter or evil. How true are the words of Mrs. Eddy on page 95 of Science and Health, "Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours."
The question Who am I? will never be answered by blindly accepting what is said about creation in the second chapter of Genesis. To believe that there was a time when God's man had not been ushered into existence, and that at some later period the dust of the ground was utilized by the Almighty in the formation of man, is certainly not calculated to throw any light upon the subject of spiritual creation. And strange to relate, scholastic theology has tenaciously clung to this allegorical picture of material belief as an essential concomitant of the record of spiritual creation as presented in the first chapter of Genesis. This mental attitude on the part of would-be Christians is largely responsible for the lack of Christian healing in the churches of Christendom today.
It was the Master's understanding of spiritual creation which enabled him to do the wonderful healing works recorded in the New Testament. As Mrs. Eddy has so helpfully stated on page 476 of Science and Health: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals.In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." Every one must admit that a right understanding of man is a most desirable possession, for with it there is always a correct understanding of God. The two are conjoined and cannot be separated. Knowing this, Jesus was enabled to declare, "I and my Father are one;" and, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Neither of these statements can be construed to mean that man is God, but that God is Father and man is His spiritual offspring. The failure on the part of so-called orthodoxy to grasp this very point would not only hinder the demonstration of Christian healing but would denounce Christian Science for restoring this lost element of Christianity.
