GOD is infinite, self-existent, changeless, perfect divine Being, or Mind. The prophet Malachi declared (3:6), "I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." Man in God's likeness needs no recovery, because God needs none.
To recover means to regain something good or useful. But God's idea, man, has never lost nor fallen from his spiritual state of perfection and eternal harmony. He has no necessity to regain good, for he is forever the expression of God, good. Mary Baker Eddy reveals these great truths in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she writes (pp. 470, 471), "The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history."
These truths are of the utmost practical value to mankind. Although the real man, God's reflection, never suffers any loss of good, and therefore never has any need of recovering it, mortals often do have this need. We find some men striving to recover health, others seeking to regain happiness or useful employment, still others, freedom from bondage to depraved appetites. We see peoples under the heel of oppressive dictatorial rule struggling to repossess political freedom. We witness one nation engaged in a commendable program to help others recover their economic stability. Men everywhere are striving to retake that which they believe has been lost, yet spiritual sense reveals that no good has ever for an instant been lost by the real man. The false material sense of life presupposes the reality of sickness and sin, limitation and discord, and then attempts to improve these conditions through material means. Divine Science refutes the false testimony of the material senses with the spiritual evidence of the eternal perfection and unity of God and His idea, man, and thus acts as a law of recovery to every claim of lack and loss.
