HOW clearly James answers the question, "Who is a doer of the Word?" in the first chapter of his epistle! How emphatically he enjoins us: "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."
Divine Science may be compared to the mirror wherein we may behold our true self, the incorporeal reflection of God. Through a careful study of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy we gain spiritual understanding and enlightenment. Christian Science teaches us that man is God's image and likeness, not a material organism. It teaches us that man, as God's idea, includes nothing that is not of God, nothing that engenders sickness, sorrow, fear, or limitation; hence no sickness, sorrow, fear, or limitation can be manifested by him. In Christian Science we learn that man reflects all that belongs to God, his creator.
In answering the question, "What is man?" Mrs. Eddy gives us a wonderful view of the real man in the mirror of divine Science. Her answer begins with the words in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475): "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness." And she continues farther on, "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique." The marginal heading of this paragraph is, "Fleshly factors unreal." Here we have the basis for spiritual freedom, the basis for metaphysical healing, "the perfect law of liberty." Here we may perceive man's oneness with God, his perfection, his incorporeality.
