"ART thou still unacquainted with thyself?" queries Mary Baker Eddy in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 86). She adds: "Then be introduced to this self. 'Know thyself!' as said the classic Grecian motto. Note well the falsity of this mortal self! Behold its vileness, and remember this poverty-stricken 'stranger that is within thy gates.' Cleanse every stain from this wanderer's soiled garments, wipe the dust from his feet and the tears from his eyes, that you may behold the real man, the fellow-saint of a holy household."
Here Mrs. Eddy indicates that knowing oneself involves self-correction, the awakening to and overcoming of the errors of mortal sense, which seem to obscure one's real status as God's perfect idea. Progress in self-knowledge, in the understanding of his inviolable spiritual selfhood, enables the student to "cleanse every stain" of error from his consciousness and to prove, here and now, that in reality he is "the fellow-saint of a holy household," pure, free, upright, and noble.
In her textbook,"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 240), "The divine method of paying sin's wages involves unwinding one's snarls, and learning from experience how to divide between sense and Soul." To know oneself, to understand and apply the truths pertaining to spiritual being, frees one from the claims of sickness and disability. Man, made in God's likeness, can never deviate from his original state of health and harmony, since he eternally is as perfect as his creator.
