In defining Adam, the counterfeit of the man God created, Mary Baker Eddy has stated in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 338): "Jehovah declared the ground was accursed; and from this ground, or matter, sprang Adam, notwithstanding God had blessed the earth 'for man's sake.' From this it follows that Adam was not the ideal man for whom the earth was blessed. The ideal man was revealed in due time, and was known as Christ Jesus."
The dream qualities of Adam include all that is false in human experience: its ignorance, idolatry, sickness, sin, death. The prophets referred to the evil of their times in such phrases as a "visage . . . blacker than a coal" (Lam. 4:8) and "a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse" (Jer. 44: 22). While denouncing these aspects of evil, they also perceived in varying degrees the truth of man, and through spiritual discernment foretold that this truth of man would appear humanly. This coming embodiment was forenamed by them the Messiah, whom they described as a son, a sign, a Branch, a refiner and purifier, a great light, a diadem, a sure foundation, a servant, a king, "a covert from the tempest," God's holy arm, "a root out of a dry ground," and a redeemer. Perhaps no prophetic phrasing so touches the core of the Messiah's redemptive coming as these words from Isaiah (63:9): "In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old."
Later Mrs. Eddy fully revealed the purpose of the coming of the Messiah as the practical appearance of the truth of man as the son of God. She saw that this forever fact of the Christ, the ideal man, is the truth regarding individual man, and proved that this truth rightly applied through spiritual understanding can redeem mankind from every form of evil in every age. It is the healing, ever-present Love of all ages made manifest as ever active, ever available, ever demonstrable.
