In the sense of ever-present, timeless being, man may be said to have a history, for then this being has no past or future, no beginning and no end, but is ever unfolding without sense of age or time. Mary Baker Eddy uses the word history in this absolute sense when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (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." In this absolute spiritual harmony there is no history of change, but Life and its idea is perfect, and its idea is forever unfolding, complete, yet forever developing from its infinite source. Spiritual history is the fact of unfolding present perfection.
Material history as a record of growth and change, or human history as a record of related or unrelated material events, belongs not to man as the likeness of God, but to the false concept of man, a mortal being, the so-called creation of mortal mind. The man of God's creating, the spiritual idea of divine Principle, knows no past, for he has his being in the eternal consciousness of Mind; and having no past he has no history in the human sense of the word. Anything which seems to have a material history, a beginning or a past, must be untrue, for it must also have an ending. All that is true is perfect and eternal, and is now. Man dwells in eternity, and time is no part of eternal Life. Spiritual history or development knows no time. Is not this thought expressed in Ecclesiastes (3:15), "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past"?
It is material sense only which falsely suggests the reality of a material history. Material sense declares a material universe with beginning, slow evolution, constant change, and an ending. This false concept is the cause of much fear and insecurity, with consequent sickness and sin, for as a result of it man is supposed to be subject to birth and death, heredity and material environment, and to be the victim of material conditions over which he has no control. But man is not a mortal speck in an immense material universe. Man is the infinite compound idea of divine Mind, and it might more truthfully be said that the universe is comprehended in man's consciousness and that through spiritual sense, which perceives this spiritual fact, man has dominion. The Psalmist said, referring to man (8:6), "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet."
