Man's identity is revealed in Christian Science as spiritual. This Science repudiates the Adam-myth that man is a fleshly mortal, materially conceived and brought forth. It denies that man inhabits a sensuous, material body for a span of years, sins and suffers in it, and returns to dust. A so-called mortal, subject to sickness, sin, and mortality, is not the man of God's creating, but is an inverted image, an unreal product of mortal mind.
Mary Baker Eddy emphasizes throughout her writings that since God, Spirit, is the only cause and creator, the universe, including man, must be spiritual. Her definition of man, who is referred to in the opening chapter of the Bible as the image and likeness of God, includes this sentence (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 475): "Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science." It may be noted that Mrs. Eddy uses the present tense, thus emphasizing the truth that man has never been less than man, and his status as God's idea remains inviolate and intact.
Christ Jesus was ever lifting humanity out of sin and sickness by his perfect understanding of man as God's own likeness. Mrs. Eddy writes of his healing method (ibid., p. 259), "The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought-models would allow,—thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying." When, on that memorable Sabbath in the synagogue, he healed the sufferer with the withered hand, his perception of man in God's own likeness must have been wondrously clear and complete. To Jesus no such abnormality as a withered hand existed as real. His command (Matt. 12:13), "Stretch forth thine hand," must have amazed the learned scoffers standing there, as in simple faith and with a deep yearning to be healed the man obeyed, and his hand "was restored whole, like as the other." This surely was proof of the truth which Jesus taught, the irresistible truth which declares the allness of God and the perfection of His reflection, man and the universe.
