Students of Christian Science seek an ever clearer understanding of the absolute perfection of God and His image, His compound idea, man. They find in human experience blessing and healing as they see more clearly that man, spiritual man, the only man, is indeed precisely as well, as strong, as intelligent, and as harmonious as his Father.
The need to distinguish in speech and writing as well as thought between man, the perfect reflection of the perfect Principle, and the erroneous material concept called mortal man is seen to be all-important in Christian Science. Rich rewards come to those who guard persistently against accepting the false human sense of self as real, or believing on the other hand that man has any consciousness of matter or evil. Mary Baker Eddy epitomizes this point in crisp, direct fashion when she writes on page 27 of "No and Yes," "Mortal man is the antipode of immortal man, and the two should not be confounded."
One learns through the study of Christian Science to acknowledge that because matter is full of imperfection, wholly unlike the one creator and His creation, it must be an illusion, and therefore that so-called mortal, material man exists only to mistaken human sense. Often, however, we find in writing and speech that some will, unwittingly perhaps, appear to refute what they have accepted as fact about God and man.
For example, one may acknowledge that God is whole and perfect, then contradict this by suggesting that man, His likeness, lacks something, that he believes in matter and evil and has power to cope with these things. Further thought shows this to be wrong, for God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil" (Hab. 1:13), and the idea of God possesses as God's reflection every quality of his Maker. He cannot lack anything or have any consciousness of materiality. There is no need even of healing in God's kingdom. Man, possessing as God's reflection the nature of his perfect Father, knows nothing of sickness in any form, not even that there is a false belief that sickness exists.
From the standpoint of absolute Truth, men, the only man, has no power to overcome evil nor any need to; for to say that he has, is to assume that evil is real and that man recognizes it and needs to do something about it—which is not so. It is the human which needs healing, and which experiences this healing through gaining some understanding of God's power and of the fact that in reality there is no illness, nothing to heal.
We may find one implying on the other hand that the so-called mortal man, the material, corporeal selfhood cognized only by the false material senses, is the child of God and has divine powers. This is of course as mistaken a view as the other, which holds that spiritual man can be less than perfect, for nothing mortal is real, and nothing unreal could have spiritual qualities or be changed into the real.
One who makes statements confusing man with the false concept may profess to understand that there is but one man. The difficulty may be that he presumes this man to have both mortal and spiritual qualities, or to possess first the one and then the other. Healing in Christian Science, no matter what the nature or seriousness of the ill, comes with a realization that these suggestions are wholly wrong; that, as Mrs. Eddy writes on page 525 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "Man reflects God; mankind represents the Adamic race, and is a human, not a divine, creation."
Keeping this statement in thought, students of Christian Science learn that when they say, "I am God's idea," they must be certain that the "I" referred to is not the false, corporeal personality, which exists only to erring material sense, but rather the forever unfallen, incorporeal son of God, the true spiritual selfhood found through spiritual sense. It is similarly misleading to think or say or write that so-and-so, referring to a human person, is the son of God and hence can make himself well with his God-given powers. We are healed most certainly, but this comes to pass through our knowing the perfection of the real man, our true selfhood, not by believing that this true self has any consciousness of error. The true, incorporeal identity of so-and-so of course is God's child. But does this spiritual identity know of illness? Has this true selfhood any need to make itself well? Man is eternally well and could not be otherwise. The so-called material personality, the human concept, is not the son of God and, being unreal, never could be. It is wholly fictitious, a myth. It is impossible to give spiritual identity to this mortal concept, or material consciousness to the spiritual man.
Sickness and inharmony disappear as the human self is evangelized, for the mortal myth is never real, is never the child of God. So-and-so, just as oneself, does most surely find health, employment, joy, and satisfaction in his human experience as he perceives more of the truth about man and the fact that in reality the perfect, spiritual man is his true identity.
Mrs. Eddy does not always explain to the reader in so many words, when she uses the term "man," whether she means the real, spiritual man or is referring to the mortal concept. She does make it unmistakably clear throughout her writings that there is an absolutely essential distinction, or rather that there is in actuality but one man. But in her writings she sometimes uses the word "man" when referring to mortal man, and at other times when meaning the spiritual, real man. There is an advantage in the fact that the reader must himself learn to discern, from the context and through his understanding of man in the light of Mrs. Eddy's teachings as a whole, exactly how this word is used each time. It is a challenge to the reader to ponder these truths and to acquire an accurate sense of Science; and this is done, not by learning just the letter, but through searching out the spiritual import of the terminology used.
That the distinction with which we are here concerned is not always immediately apparent on the first reading of Mrs. Eddy's statements only underlines the presence of this challenge and the importance of accepting it and persistently striving for a clearer grasp of the facts of being. The God-inspired wisdom of Mrs. Eddy's manner of presenting this truth is attested in the good works regularly done by those who humbly follow her and see more clearly as they progress the sharp cleavage between the real and the unreal concept of man.
Thus, distinguishing between the mortal and the immortal is not recognizing two contrary realities. It is separating in thought the false from the true. Facing squarely the fact that material existence is a misconception of reality does not invite frustration. It does not for a moment separate the individual from good, from God. Rather it inevitably brings comfort, hope, and healing. For the underlying fact is that the true selfhood, or identity, of each individual is the real man, the compound idea of God, the only man. And he is now, and forever, healthy, happy, able, wise, and satisfied.
To see this through spiritual sense with increasing clarity, to recognize in some degree one's true identity as the perfect man, inseparable from God, is to make every event of human experience more joyful and harmonious. There is, as students of this Science daily prove in some measure, no unhappy, discordant condition, mental or physical, which cannot be made to yield and disappear from consciousness and so cease to be evidenced, in the light of this truth, understood.
The student of Christian Science sees that he must fix his thought on the oneness and perfection of God and man, on the existence of but one man, and on the correlative fact that the material concept which we call mortal man is not man at all, is not real, and is not the child of God. He finds that in seeing more clearly the wholeness and the unblemished spirituality of the one man, he is less likely to think, say, or write anything which might suggest either the existence of two kinds of men or the possibility of the only real man having a consciousness of matter. An understanding of the distinction between the spiritual, which is real, and the mortal, which is unreal, gives new and a very present and practical meaning to the familiar Bible passage (Matt. 5:48), "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
