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THE FORMATIONS OF SPIRIT

From the October 1953 issue of The Christian Science Journal


Christian Science reveals man as incorporeal, but it never implies that he is formless. Instead, it brings to light the spiritual formation that is man's eternal identity, distinct and individual, created and sustained by the one Supreme Being. Mary Baker Eddy makes this statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"(p. 281): "The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is infinite individuality, which supplies all form and comeliness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things."

The formations of Spirit can never become deformed. They persist forever as Mind evolves them, and they embody, or manifest, the divine elements of Spirit—elements not visible to material sense, but tangible and precious to spiritual consciousness. One catches a glimpse of these elements, hence of spiritual formations, when he recognizes and appreciates the purity, tenderness, and strength of character some individuals express. Spiritual qualities are the thought substance that constitutes man in God's image. The mortal dream of physical formation can never prevent human consciousness from recognizing and revering the evidence of a higher manhood than material sense can know. This is because the Christ, the true sense of sonship, is ever present, ever rousing mankind to states of nobility and goodness that instinctively know the worth of true spirituality.

When Christ Jesus said(Luke 12:7), "Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered," may he not have been metaphorically implying that the tiniest spiritual elements of the real self are important to the Father, known of Him because formed by Him? The formations of Spirit are spiritual, not organic, not structural, not material prisons of life and intelligence, but reflections of God, which eternally unfold Life in its infinite expansion of good.

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