IN "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 238) Mary Baker Eddy has written: "Let one's life answer well these questions, and it already hath a benediction: Have you renounced self? Are you faithful? Do you love?" One whose incentive in living is the expression of unselfed love can answer aright such queries and experience the satisfaction that comes from a career purified of erroneous self-interest.
The Apostle John gave the definition of true identity when he declared, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." Through the study and demonstration of Christian Science, many have been reborn and transformed by means of the understanding of what constitutes man. One finds that personal sense can tell him nothing about himself except that which is unreal and limited. It is in the recognition of man's oneness with God, infinite good, that one grasps his true selfhood, and this selfhood expresses not only perfection, but fullness and eternality. God is Spirit, and it must needs follow that His likeness, reflection, idea, expression, or image—man—is wholly spiritual, flawless, and eternal. According to John's statement, already quoted, this is the fact now. God's man was never born into a material and fleshly existence which must be worked out of. As the recognition of this fact takes place in one's consciousness, healing is realized.
Christian Science makes clear the distinction between material personality and true individuality. Material personality has its basis in the supposition that there are many finite beings, each possessing a material mentality and living in a realm of matter; whereas true individuality, expressing infinite variety, perfection, grandeur, is the fact about each child of God, the one and only Mind. The individual in Mind's universe moves in accordance with deific laws and exists forever at the standpoint of harmony and infinity.
