HOW much happier the world would be, how much more joyous and secure our lives, if there were full obedience to the commandment (Ex. 20:15), "Thou shalt not steal"! If one watches a few birds feeding, one sees that they sometimes rob one another of morsels of food. In human experience thieving is sufficiently common so that we ordinarily bolt doors and windows for greater security before leaving our dwellings. Thieving also occurs in more subtle forms, and on a vaster scale, among nations as well as birds, under the guise of friendship as well as of open enmity.
While it is a relief to know, as Christian Science teaches, that material things, whose safety often causes their owners anxiety, are not real substance, there are more harmful ways whereby one may be robbed than by the depletion of material goods. What, then, are the true values which must be even more assiduously protected than our material possessions?
The Bible proclaims God to be Spirit and man to be His image and likeness; from which it follows that man is spiritual. Thus man's real being, his true substance, is what he reflects of Spirit, divine Mind, for the true substance of all things is divine Mind. Therefore man's substance is, and ever must be, as eternal as Mind. Among other statements regarding man on page 475 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we find the following: "Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect he must be so understood in Christian Science."
