When some material object is made, for instance an automobile, it is first conceived in thought; drawings are made; materials are assembled, mechanical processes set to work; and the car is completed. The making is over; so many strokes and it is done; there is a beginning and an end of the making. So with all temporary things.'Once made, they soon begin to wear out, disintegrate, or decay.
God is often referred to as the Maker of the universe and man, but God's creation is not something made at a point on the calendar of time, nor is His making work a process of forming with material forces, out of material elements, temporary material worlds, perishable mortals, beasts, and things. In God's creation there is no formative period of one day or several days, when the creative activity of God begins and ends. God has no priority in time over man. As Mind and Mind's idea, God and man coexist always. Time, a mentally mortal concept, is forever unknown to God or God's man. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, refutes the misconception that God's creation has a time beginning thus: "The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only,—that is, the eternal verity and unity of God and man, including the universe" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 502).
As Mind never begins and never ends, so God's causing of man never begins and never ends. This sense of God as the continuous Maker of man does not mean that God's man is imperfect and needs to be more fully made in order to be perfect. Perfection is always the condition of God's man. But man does need some power continually to cause his life, individuality, health, ideas, activity, throughout eternity, and God is the Maker who thus eternally makes him.
