The seeker for the truth that will heal him of physical affliction finds a most helpful statement by Mrs. Eddy on page 476 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "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." Elsewhere, our Leader tells us that "the harmony and immortality of man are intact" (ibid., p. 521); that "the perfection of man is intact" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 173).
By turning to these spiritual truths, revealed in Christian Science, we learn that man is perfect, and that his perfection is intact. A dictionary definition of "intact" is "untouched, especially by anything that harms;...undefiled." The undefiled, perfect man whom Jesus saw, is the man of whom it is recorded in Genesis that God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."
Outside of spiritual creation there is no perfection. For an hour or a day, a flower may appear perfect to material sense, but that seeming perfection is not permanently intact, for the flower soon withers and fades; its fleeting beauty is soon a thing of the past. It is the same with mortal man, of whom the Scriptures say that he "is of few days, and full of trouble."
