In what she calls the platform of Christian Science Mary Baker Eddy states (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 336): "God, the divine Principle of man, and man in God's likeness are inseparable, harmonious, and eternal. The Science of being furnishes the rule of perfection, and brings immortality to light. God and man are not the same, but in the order of divine Science, God and man coexist and are eternal. God is the parent Mind, and man is God's spiritual offspring."
Students of Christian Science subscribe to this scientific statement and feel a deep sense of gratitude to Mrs. Eddy for this explanation of the basic truth of spiritual being. They realize also that this statement demands demonstration. To receptive thought it speaks of the profound significance of the allness and oneness of God. It also declares man to be Mind's perfect image, reflection, or idea. This teaching is in accord with that of the Bible; for in the first chapter of Genesis it is written: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
The logic of these divine facts proves the nothingness of every suggestion of a separate material embodiment of life or mind. Since man is God's image or likeness, Mind's idea, he is at one with God. Man can never be separated from his creator. Christ Jesus completely understood man's coexistence with God and he said of himself, his real selfhood (John 10:30), "I and my Father are one." As God knows what is true of man, so man knows what is true of himself. As the reflection of Mind, he knows his own status as a son of God and recognizes his own identity, which has nothing to do with matter. If this is true, why does mankind seem to manifest the opposite of these conditions? Because, instead of seeing man as spiritual, material sense believes it sees a mortal or counterfeit man expressing all that so-called mortal mind claims to impose. Since man, God's image or reflection, is altogether spiritual, there is in reality no mortal man. Similarly, all that pertains to a so-called mortal has no real existence. The sin, suffering, tragedy, and death that seem to belong to mortals are the dream or illusion that man exists apart from God. Christian Science deduces reasonably the self-evident impossibility of two different kinds of being and shows men the means of protection and defense from believing in a selfhood apart from God. The acceptance of the divine facts regarding man and the repudiation of false beliefs are of importance to any student.
