It has been said that a man is what he knows. And it may be set down as an axiom that the Christian Scientist succeeds in proportion as he persists in knowing only Truth, and in refusing to know error. Christian Science teaches that there is one Mind, God. This being so, then man must be known to God, must be His idea, the divine Mind's thinking. Thus man as God's reflection, is essentially spiritual, conscious only of spiritual being, knowing only the Life which is God. Actually, man has no separate mind from God and is indeed solely the fact and process of God existing, or expressing Himself through His idea. This realization puts an end to the belief that man lives in matter, subject to matter, struggling to rise above the limitations imposed by the senses, such as sin, disease, death.
The fact is, that matter is not real but only a material, finite counterfeit of the real. A man needs only to ask himself precisely what he is knowing, to realize what he is. For a man is certainly what he knows. If he knows disease and sin then he need not be angry or resentful if he experiences disease and sin, because the sin and disease are precisely the nature and quality of his knowing. And if he wants to be rid of a troublesome sin or dangerous disease, he has simply got to look to his knowing. Let him ask himself: "What do I know? Do I know God as my Life, my being, my substance, my all; or do I know myself as not the emanation of Spirit, of Life, Truth. Love, but matter, disease-possessed and sin-possessed matter?" And the answer will reveal precisely where he stands. "For," in the words of the writer of Proverbs, "as he thinketh in his heart, so is he."
When a man comes to Christian Science he discovers that he is free to think his own thoughts. Thus he discovers that he may choose his own kind of way in life, his own conception of strength, health, freedom, wisdom, happiness, supply. This knowledge that man is free to choose his way of living brings a sense of responsibility and a sense of rejoicing, and wise is the man who realizing that he is free to know, sets out resolved to know nothing that is unlike God. The man who persists in knowing matter, flesh, blood, and bones, and persists in living in the material sense of life, reaps of the flesh, corruption. The man who accepts the fact that man is the image and likeness of God, the incorporeal and limitless, accepts freedom and activity, and goodness, without limit. For example, one could not imagine God as being tired. Thus the man who recognizes that man is the veritable likeness of God, refuses to be tired, and indeed does not experience weariness because he is not conscious of living in and as material body, but recognizes Life as wholly spiritual and not at all material; lives in being and doing, instead of in body: knows the consciousness of divine existence to be essential, primal, all, and all-sufficient. Knowing all Life to be God the tireless Mind, he knows that weariness is something that God and His likeness do not know.
