If one wants to justify his belief in man's sinful, corrupt nature, he will find much in the Bible to satisfy him. But if he wants to find assurance of the spiritual perfection of man, he will find that too. To seek and find such assurance, in the face of all that appears to the material senses to the contrary, is to glorify and honor God. This is the highest religious impulse of which anyone is capable.
Christian Science does not teach that mortal man is perfect or that he is not a sinner. It teaches that man is not mortal. It teaches that because God is immortal and man is God's image and likeness, man must be immortal. And Christian Science enables us to utilize the present to prove what is true of man.
It is impossible to reconcile man's perfection as a child of God with the imperfection of men as we know them. To compensate for this, old theology encourages us to look forward to the time when men will be perfect, when the saving power of Christ will have separated them from their sins, their imperfections, their susceptibility to evil. But the Science of being establishes the fact that perfection, as a quality of God, already belongs to man. It is his spiritual heritage.
