The record of creation as depicted in the first chapter of Genesis sets forth the fact that God created the universe and man. Although we are told here that man is made in God's image and likeness and that creation, including man, is "very good," yet the chapter does not define God other than as creator. The nature and character of Deity are thus left to subsequent Bible teaching, as for example when the Master, Christ Jesus, proclaimed the spiritual fact that the "Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). Jesus not only indicated the perfection of God, but also taught that this perfect God could send forth, that is, create, nothing unlike Himself. The Master defined God as Spirit and also as Father.
Because God is perfect, His creation must likewise be perfect, and furthermore it must be spiritual. James saw this fact, for he said (3:11, 12): "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree ... bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh."
God did not make man mortal or a combination of good and evil, Truth and error, Spirit and matter. What appears to be man containing these mixed elements Christian Science reveals is not man at all, but is a false concept of man. The revelation of what man is, namely, an individualized spiritual idea, has come through Christian Science as a light which is enlightening the world. It awakens those who have thought of themselves as mortals to the spiritual fact of being that man is now and forever spiritual and perfect. This truth illumining human thought is as the morning's dawn, whose light glows into the fullness of divine intelligence, like the sun at the meridian.
