Mortal man spends his days endlessly searching, seeking to find those things he believes he lacks. Health, love, peace of mind, and companionship are but a few of the things he believes are exterior to himself—far-off and ofttimes unreachable bits of heaven that he feels he can't hope to experience here and now.
In his attempts to find satisfaction, he consciously or unconsciously turns pointlessly to chasing a will-o'-the-wisp with its illusive pleasures, which lead him off in all directions but the right one. He feels that happiness can be found in surrounding himself with friends and material possessions, and yet somehow these do not seem to bring that lasting sense of well-being and contentment which he craves.
We find the first suggestion of man's supposed incompleteness in the second and subsequent chapters of the book of Genesis in the Bible. Adam, the man of dust, was alone and incomplete, needing someone or something besides himself. Here is recorded the attempted reversal of the true account of the creation of man, which is found in the first chapter of Genesis and the first five verses of the second chapter. This account states that man was created "male and female" (Gen. 1:27) in the image and likeness of God, Spirit. Therefore man must of necessity be complete and spiritual.
Do not the Adams and Eves of today— those asleep in the dream of life in matter —need to turn from the subtle innuendos or suggestions of the serpent, material sense? The allegory of Adam and Eve has been accepted as true in each generation, for the spiritual reality of man's completeness as the image of the one infinite divine Mind, God, including all within Himself, is deceptively challenged by material sense.
Jesus met and overcame the challenge through Christ, Truth. It is in his ministry that we find the solution of every problem that the belief of life in matter presents. It is in his life's work that we find the Science which underlies all his words and works, and it is this Science—Christian Science—that Mrs. Eddy discovered in the year 1866 and shared with all the world through the establishment of the Church of Christ, Scientist, and its many activities.
In the Biblical accounts of Jesus' many and wonderful deeds, one senses his absolute denial and rebuke of any belief in a life apart from God. It was this understanding of man as God's image—spiritual, whole, and perfect—that enabled Jesus to do the Father's will, to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. It is this understanding that enables his disciples of every age to follow in his footsteps, just as he said those that believed on him would do. Had Jesus accepted as real and substantial the perverted concept of man as made of dust, he could not have overcome every lying mortal belief of the flesh.
The author at one time found herself feeling incomplete, unloved, and unwanted and seemingly without a home. The ensuing self-condemnation and self-pity led her to look to material means for finding self-satisfaction. She turned unconsciously to appeasing the sense of loss by seeking material pleasures, which, like a will-o'-the-wisp, seem so attractive and yet always just out of reach.
Years later, when a growing understanding of man in God's likeness, complete and spiritual, filled her consciousness, she woke to the glorious truth that because God is conscious only of Himself and imparts this consciousness to man, man is conscious only of good and is consequently forever satisfied and at peace; he is complete and includes all that is necessary for his well-being.
She found that as she turned to God absolutely and unreservedly, and claimed her heritage as His child, she relinquished all sense of self-will and of what she seemed to feel was necessary for her happiness. She turned from the desire to find satisfaction in the senses and began to understand the completeness of man. She found herself with a home more lovely than the one that had been lost and with a family of her own, who share with her a desire for a greater understanding of Truth, or God.
Many years ago the Psalmist, addressing his prayer to God, sang in words that apply to all today, "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness" (Ps. 17:15). The mistaken human concept of man can never find satisfaction; the man of dust is always incomplete. Only as we wake from this dream of life in and of matter shall we find ourselves truly satisfied.
It is of the utmost importance too that in the work of Christian healing we reason from the standpoint of man's present spiritual completeness, for the word "health" implies wholeness. Can we not then reason that disease is in a way a supposed state of incompleteness or one lacking in health and harmony? When we understandingly state that God "is the health of my countenance" (Ps. 42:11), the belief in disease is seen to be a gross conspiracy against mankind and definitely untrue. Then we understand that health and harmony are the reality, and our search for satisfaction is rewarded.
Mrs. Eddy writes on page 120 of Science and Health, "Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on the subject of health." When we understand that because we reflect God we possess all good, we shall find that the things which we seem to need are brought into our experience here and now, for it is right and natural to have manifested in this human experience the beauty and harmony in which we as the ideas of God dwell.
In "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy tells us (pp. 82, 83): "Immortal Mind is God, immortal good; in whom the Scripture saith 'we live, and move, and have our being.' This Mind, then, is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good."
