MAN is not a physical personality placed or displaced in a material world. He is the spiritual idea of the infinite Mind, God, forever embraced in that Mind. He can never stray outside the focal distance of illimitable Love, for God is All-in-all, and there is nought besides infinity. Man, made in God's image and likeness, can no more be displaced, lost, homeless, in want or distress, than can God.
"But," one may ask, "are not multitudes of persons in many parts of the world displaced from their homes and native lands, separated from kin and comforts by the ravages of war? Are not massive transfers of populations going on, and are not thousands waiting for repatriation?" According to the testimony of the so-called physical senses, such is the tragic situation. But Christian Science teaches that the material senses do not reveal the reality of God's creation and man's being. While teaching in the temple, Jesus once said (John 7: 24), "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
On page 114 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says: "In Science, Mind is one, including noumenon and phenomena, God and His thoughts." God being All, He can know only His own allness, for there can be nothing outside infinity. God's allness, illimitable Life, Truth, and Love, is evidenced by the one compound, infinite idea, or universe. This infinite idea is forever included in the one Mind, coexistent and coeternal with God. God's ideas forever expressing Him are eternally held, controlled, sustained, protected, and governed by unerring Mind's law of harmony, perfection, and completeness. The relationship of the idea to its divine Principle and to all ideas included in the full expression of Deity is maintained by Principle, and this relationship is changeless and inviolable.
The Christian Scientist is empowered, in proportion to his spirituality, to aid effectually in the solution of all problems, whether they appear as problems of the world or of individuals. He knows that he is not dealing with objective phenomena, but only with unreal material sense, over which he has divine authority through his understanding of the omnipotence of the one Mind. Victory over all error is to him synonymous with clarifying his own consciousness spiritually, ruling out every suggestion of something besides infinite Spirit and its self-expression.
The spiritually scientific account of creation given in the first chapter of Genesis shows man to be the likeness of Spirit, God, who created all that was made and pronounced it "very good." The second chapter depicts a mist that arose from the earth, followed by the creation of man materially. What was this mist but a suppositional, inverted view, or material misconception, of creation? It is by yielding this inverted view to the Christ-idea of Life—that is, by establishing in individual consciousness the spiritual idea of God and man as wholly perfect—that the false concept of existence gradually disappears and the kingdom of heaven, the reign of harmony, is realized.
Christian Science, in complete consonance with the inspired Word of the Bible, acknowledges but one Mind, God, and that one infinite. In infinite Mind there is no mesmeric mist of error, no inverted view of creation. Our Leader states the basic truth in Science and Health. She writes as follows (pp. 513, 514): "God creates all forms of reality. His thoughts are spiritual realities. So-called mortal mind—being non-existent and consequently not within the range of immortal existence—could not by simulating deific power invert the divine creation, and afterwards recreate persons or things upon its own plane, since nothing exists beyond the range of all-inclusive infinity, in which and of which God is the sole creator."
Divine Science reveals the glorious fact that man is now and forever in his harmonious and eternal home, the realm of universal Love. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews perceived this in some measure. Writing of the patriarchs who had "confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth," he affirmed (Hebr. 11:13-16): "They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city."
God's man, the expression of Mind, is individually complete. His consciousness includes the right idea of home, environment, business, government, supply, health, and all that pertains to his well-being. Therefore he can never be deprived of that which Mind has bestowed upon him, or separated for an instant therefrom. Dwelling eternally in infinite Mind, he experiences only good at all times.
To human sense all that appears to be material is a false mental picture calling itself circumstance, place, thing, or person. The picture of multitudes of people homeless, displaced, in want, or of government leaders in disagreement over international or national conditions is not beyond the healing power of spiritual understanding. The understanding of the omnipresence and omnipotence of God exposes the spurious picture of material existence as a pretense to reality. The material sense of existence is a lie which the spiritual sense of infinite Life—the oneness and allness of God— realized, will finally dispel and destroy.
Let each courageously affirm and steadfastly hold to the spiritual fact that, as God's idea, he is protected, maintained, sustained, and governed by Love's law of harmony. The more loudly material sense suggests displacement, the more persistent should be his affirmation that his true selfhood is not now nor ever was a suffering mortal living in a material world, subject to material law, but is the spiritual child of God—His idea —embraced in His spiritual kingdom here and now, for Spirit is All.
Spiritual qualities of Soul, God, characterize man's true home or environment, qualities of love, courtesy, consideration, gratitude, order, beauty, purity, courage, harmony, humility, selflessness, spirituality, and the like. An understanding of these facts will inevitably be externalized in our human experience. We do not know what the effect of spiritual understanding will be to human sense: it may be removal to another locality, or the demonstration of the presence and power of infinite good, God, where we are.
In her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 our beloved Leader writes (p.11): "Our heavenly Father never destined mortals who seek for a better country to wander on the shores of time disappointed travellers, tossed to and fro by adverse circumstances, inevitably subject to sin, disease, and death. Divine Love waits and pleads to save mankind—and awaits with warrant and welcome, grace and glory, the earth-weary and heavy-laden who find and point the path to heaven."
Christian Science teaches that it is a present possibility for all mankind to awaken from the dream that man is a displaced mortal in a material world to the recognition of man's spiritual status and his eternal home in ever-present illimitable Love and Life.
