In his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul, eager to convey to his readers their true spiritual identity, wrote (II Cor. 3:3), "Ye are... the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God." The figure is an arresting one, evidently distinguishing between what is truly man and the limited human concept of man. With material bodies needing to be clothed and fed, can we still say that we are not in matter? Yes, as surely as we are "the epistle... written not with ink, but with the Spirit of... God."
The idea that constitutes a poem is never confined to the book in which it appears. When a poem is memorized, it is recognized as wholly mental, and there is no further need of a book. In "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy tells us (p. 205): "Mortal man's repentance and absolute abandonment of sin finally dissolves all supposed material life or physical sensation, and the corporeal or mortal man disappears forever. The encumbering mortal molecules, called man, vanish as a dream; but man born of the great Forever, lives on, God-crowned and blest."
How often these encumbering mortal molecules are mistakenly assumed to be man. We note a person's height, weight, clothing, and so on. We learn his name and somewhat of his nature. Yet what has all this told us of God's man? As we learn the language of Christian Science, we discover the real man.
