MAN EXPRESSES GOD'S FULLNESS

"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" (Ps. 8:4.) The Psalmist, who spoke these words, was aware of God's majesty and of His bountiful gift to His creation. He was also aware that God has given dominion to man.

Today many who do not understand or who are unaware of man's perfect spiritual being as the image and likeness of perfect God, seek in vain for a satisfactory explanation of the complex riddle of material existence. "Why are we here? What purpose is served by living?" they ask.

Uncertainty as to the purpose of being arises from the false conviction that life is material and mortal. From that premise no satisfactory conclusion can be reached as to true being. In fact, the belief that life and being are mortal and material leads only to inharmony and dismay.

Human logic is incapable of solving the problem of being. To gain the true solution, it is necessary to place one's faith in something higher than mere human knowledge. Divine inspiration and spiritual understanding are needed. The inspired Word of the Bible teaches the spiritual nature of God and man, and man's oneness, or unity, with God. This teaching has stood the test of reason; but, more important, it has been proved practical today in the solution of human problems.

John, the beloved disciple, had a clear comprehension of God and of man's relationship to Him. In the first chapter of his Gospel he states (John 1:1-3): "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." He then declares (verse 16), "Of his fulness have all we received."

What is this fullness that we all receive? Is it material or spiritual? Could God, Spirit, evolve materiality? Obviously, God does not include matter or mortality, nor does He have the capacity or desire to create the opposite of Himself. God's fullness, as expressed by the Christ, includes only that which is good and real—the spiritual universe and spiritual man. Man, the image and likeness of God, is eternally alive, alert, and existent in Spirit alone. He reflects spirituality from infinite Spirit, love from divine Love, truth, righteousness, and fullness from Truth.

In her definition of man as given on page 591 of the Glossary in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy describes him as "the compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind."

Whatever Mind includes, individual man reflects. Among the qualities inherent in Mind and reflected by man are wisdom, order, understanding, vision, and alertness. Then man, as Mind's expression, is wise, able, and orderly. In like manner, man possesses and manifests all of the attributes of Love, such as understanding, gentleness, tenderness, wisdom. Also he expresses the strength, permanency, vivacity, and immortality of divine Life; he radiates the purity, perfection, beauty, and grandeur of Soul and Spirit and is governed by the unchanging and eternal law of God, infinite Principle.

Matter has no creative ability and cannot originate anything that is real. This spurious claimant to power vanishes from consciousness as its false nature is understood. One who believes that he is a mortal is plagued with the accompanying belief that he is subject to disease, sin, and destruction. Such beliefs lead only to hopelessness and frustration and to unanswered and unanswerable questions. The assumption that life is in matter is the result of ignorance of man's genuine nature as the spiritual image of God. As one gradually develops a spiritual sense of his true nature as the perfect expression of perfect God, he loses a finite sense of himself; he becomes aware of his spiritual assets as an heir of God.

God's bounty is immediate and perpetual. Why then is it not always evident in our daily life? Because of the blindness engendered by the false belief that we are mortal and material. To gain God's bounty, we must identify ourselves with God and assert our rights as His heirs. Our right to the divine inheritance is established only to the extent that we give up the false belief that we are material beings and awaken to the realization that we are in reality God's perfect children, dwelling forever in His eternal household.

Nothing is lost but much is gained as one acknowledges his true, immortal selfhood, untouched by matter or mortal mind. Indeed, as one acknowledges his true immortal being, hopelessness, frustration, lack, limitation, sin, disease, pain, sorrow, and death begin to fade from human consciousness. With the recognition that man is immortal, ever happy, resourceful, and supplied with God's bounty, one finds that he is an individual beneficiary of God's fullness. And he realizes that his inheritance is undepletable and uncontestable. Further, his family, his friends, his community, take on a beauty and grandeur never before recognized by him. As this spiritual view of God, man, and the universe takes the ascendancy in human consciousness, a more perfect understanding comes as to what Jesus meant when he referred to his Christly mission thus (John 10:10): "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

A young woman who was left with the sole support of two small children was informed by her employer, during a period of financial depression, that he could no longer use her services. As she walked despondently down the busy street, she heard these words coming from a music shop: "Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." Being a Christian Scientist, this young woman recognized that she was hearing a Christian Science radio program, and she stopped at the doorway of the store and listened to the rest of it. The program was on the subject of supply, and the words which attracted her attention, "All that I have is thine," she recalled were spoken by the father to the elder son in the parable of the prodigal son, found in the fifteenth chapter of Luke.

The woman gained a strong assurance that all that her Father-Mother God has, was hers by reflection. With this clear realization the fear of lack, insecurity, inactivity, and hopelessness faded from thought. On the way to her home she continued to ponder the promise, "All that I have is thine." In a few days she was offered and accepted a more satisfactory and remunerative position than the one she had left. She had learned to some extent that God's full supply—all of His spiritual ideas—was ever available to her, and the spiritual understanding of that fact naturally and necessarily manifested itself in supplying her human needs.

God's bounty is not limited. It is immediately available to all who claim it. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 307), "God gives you His spiritual ideas, and in turn, they give you daily supplies." And farther on she adds: "What a glorious inheritance is given to us through the understanding of omnipresent Love! More we cannot ask: more we do not want: more we cannot have. This sweet assurance is the 'Peace, be still' to all human fears, to suffering of every sort."

Man dwells eternally in Spirit, and hence is spiritual. His perfect selfhood unfolds in Spirit. God is the inexhaustible and ever-present source of his being. Man could not then be in a stagnant, inactive, or impoverished state. His individual being constantly expresses God's perfect nature. Man, therefore, is forever satisfied and complete.

One's understanding of man's perfect and complete status as the child of God operates as a divine influence in human consciousness, bringing healing and happifying human existence. As one gains this spiritual understanding, he finds the answer to such questions as "Why are we here?" and "What purpose is served by living?" for it brings the assurance that the individual is not material and temporal but spiritual and eternal, and is ever fully supplied and equipped spiritually.

A loved hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal includes the following verse (Hymn No. 65):