Much of the work Christ Jesus accomplished during his ministry concerned the human body. He healed it, fed it, protected it, restored it to life and useful activity. In the ascension, he put off the mortal sense of body for his individual embodiment of immortal Life. We may reasonably conclude that the Master found it of primary importance that men understand the spiritual sense of body as God's perfect expression. His works showed that one can know real health and life only as he demonstrates his individual place in the universal embodiment of Life.
The words "body" and "embodiment" are closely associated in meaning. In fact, as a verb, "body" may be defined, "to embody." In this usage, body also means to produce in form and to represent. Embodiment means either the act of embodying or the state of being embodied. Mary Baker Eddy clarifies her own use of the word "embodiment" in "Miscellaneous Writings," when she says (p. 61), "Mortals are the embodiments (or bodies, if you please) of error, not of Truth; of sickness, sin, and death." The true body, the spiritual body, which Mrs. Eddy tells us came with the ascension in the experience of Christ Jesus (see The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 218), is the deathless formation, or spiritual idea, of God.
In other passages in her writings, our Leader refers to every embodiment of Life and Mind and to man as embodying Life, God. On page 39 of "Unity of Good" she says, "As the image of God, or Life, man forever reflects and embodies Life, not death." Perhaps one comes nearest the metaphysical meaning of embodiment when he finds body defining the word "form." A formation of Life is the embodiment of Life. In its formations Life finds expression. Such formations represent Life and show forth the substance of Spirit, which includes no material or destructible element.
