Proper identification enables us to demonstrate the glorious possibilities of man as God's image and likeness. The teaching of Christian Science of perfect God and of man as His perfect reflection furnishes the basis for our identification with the purity, freedom, joy, health, and holiness which characterize the Christ, our true selfhood.
The contradiction of this selfhood by the material senses and their false identification of man with materiality, limitation, unhappiness, imperfection, and disease were completely overthrown by the Master in his wondrous healing works. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes (pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."
No phase of error can stand before the Christly consciousness of the harmony and perfection of true selfhood. An instance of this is furnished in the fifth chapter of John in the account of the man at the pool of Bethesda, who was ill for thirty-eight years. Falsely identifying himself with mortality, helplessness, and disease, he complained that he had no one to put him into the pool when the water was troubled, but that another always stepped down before him. "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk," was the command given by the Master. We read, "And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked."
