In Science man reflects God, his Maker. It follows that spiritual man is not a mere pinprick of light in an immense darkness. He is never apart from God's allness. His being is the image of the one infinite individuality, the All-in-all which is Soul, God. Reflecting God, man has nothing to lose, nothing to fear, nothing to be blamed for. He is undefeated and intact. The free and spontaneous expression of his own divine origin, he is complete in character and capacity to do good. Our God-derived ability to become conscious of these facts of true being is evidence of imperishable substance, which outweighs every opposing argument or circumstance. Through Christian Science we are able to verify in the fearless dignity of our daily living that all-arresting declaration of Christ Jesus (Luke 9:24): "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it."
We are commonly told that our identity can be lost in the mad rush to hold our own in a complicated modern world. The truth is that we lose our identity whenever we turn away from God. In divine reflection the infinite Mind is our intelligence, always active; the holy Spirit our freedom, never to be lost. To suppose that matter can supply our needs, or human will hold us in bondage, is ignorance of God. Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, stood face to face with God when she wrote in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 472, 473): "We learn in Christian Science that all inharmony of mortal mind or body is illusion, possessing neither reality nor identity though seeming to be real and identical." Beset by bodily, mental, and moral discords, we may well inquire how to learn and apply this tremendous lesson. After all, our identity is our closest, and it should be our most precious, companion. If aggressive mental suggestion has betrayed us into a wrong view of what we are and what we must do, there will never be a better moment than now to begin the search for our true selfhood.
When God revealed Himself to our Leader, she beheld Him as Soul. This revelation of God's nature outdistances all earlier glimpses of Deity since the days of Jesus. It stirs human consciousness to accept God as the infinite Father-Mother of all His ideas. It enshrines all individuality in God, instead of dividing it up among the sons of man. As this is seen, we become more willing to give up a supposed identity materially conceived and humanly regimented. Step by step we then come closer to God, and prove that Soul claims its own and will not let us go. This deepening reliance on God releases us, here a little and there a little, from the plagues and limitations of material sense. Mrs. Eddy exposed the falsity of spirits and souls many. She summed it all up as a mingling of good and evil which is supposed to constitute personalities. A worthy aim of existence is to free oneself from erring personal influence or control. We gain this freedom only by turning resolutely away from the evidence of the senses. The Apostle John tells us in the first chapter of his Gospel that the sons of God "were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. but of God."
