IN Science and Health (p. 115), under the marginal heading "Divine image," Mrs. Eddy gives this definition of man: "God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal." And then she quotes the following definition of "idea": "An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding.—Webster."
This true concept of man, revealed in Christian Science, is a mighty influence for good. The understanding of it heals sickness and sin, comforts, purifies, and forwards the new birth. The true concept enables mankind to leave traditional beliefs in the reality of matter and to realize that man is not a conglomeration of material images, drawn by the carnal mind, that he is not encased in a material body, subject to changing conditions of blood, bones, brain, flesh, and so on. In Science man is found to be the individualized idea of Spirit, therefore a spiritual compound of divine ideas, whose qualities have their source in the perfect Mind, God.
In her reply to the question, "What is man?" Mrs. Eddy includes these statements: "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas" (ibid., p.475). As "the compound idea of God" man is constituted exclusively of divine ideas. Originating in divine Mind, these ideas are perfect and harmonious. Therefore man, "the compound idea of God," is imbued with perfection and health.
Just as a masterwork of art impresses us with its overall perfection as well as its perfection in outline, color, and detail, so man, as the reflection of God, is perfect as a whole and perfect in detail. There is no aspect of man in God's image which is less than perfect.
As we come to understand that health is a perfect and eternal state of divine consciousness, or Mind, forever expressed in man, we cease to believe that our health is dependent upon a material body or subject to man-made laws of hygiene, sickness, and decay. Health is as inseparable from man as light is from a sunbeam. Sickness is as impossible and unnatural in man as is darkness in a ray of light.
Man is not partly the product of sensuality, embryonic development, or material growth and partly of divine origin. God originates man. Not one of the ideas that constitute God's man has its origin in brain or physicality; nor is any of these ideas self-created. Each forever emanates from God and remains under His control.
Christian Science discloses that disease is mental, a false and inharmonious image of thought, and therefore it must be and can be corrected as thought by the replacing of false mortal thoughts with divine ideas.
As erroneous traits, such as hatred, resentment, fear, anger, criticism, are uprooted and cast out of human thought and replaced by spiritual qualities, such as purity, understanding, and harmony, human consciousness becomes more open to ideas from the divine Mind. This transformation of thought through the perception and spiritual understanding of divine reality, life in God, was demonstrated by Christ Jesus in his healing and redeeming ministry to mankind. Jesus' words to Nicodemus apply to all (John 3:7), "Ye must be born again."
It is the office of the Christ to transform human consciousness by bringing the true idea of God and man to bear upon it. Through Christian Science, the Christ, as the true spiritual idea of God, is recognized as operative in human consciousness today. On the human scene, the Christ, Truth, acts as a law of adjustment to whatever is discordant in human experience.
Christian Science treatment is the activity of the Christ. It applies the ever-operative law of Christ, Truth, to human situations, thus bringing harmony, peace, and tranquillity where discord and strife had prevailed. Each treatment brings to bear upon a specific problem a specific aspect of the Christ. Through bringing mankind the concept of God as divine Love, the Christ at the same time reveals the true concept of man in God's image.
The Bible reveals God as Spirit and the only creator. Spirit is the only real substance, and as God's reflection man partakes of the substance and nature of Spirit. He is completely spiritual, an infinite divine idea, the image of health, harmony, perfection.
This is the concept of man which Christ Jesus beheld and which healed the sick instantaneously. His clear vision took in only the view of God's perfect spiritual universe. He looked beyond the dark images of material sense into spiritual reality. He held the material as unreal and the spiritual as the only reality, substance, and power. This true view of God's perfect creation acted as a law of destruction to the illusive imagery of mortal mind, with its belief in matter, and this true view restored the sick to health and well-being.
In "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 11), "Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the currents of matter, or mortal mind." And a few lines farther on she adds: "He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God."
If in our home someone were to hang on a wall a completely distorted picture of a friend, we would, upon beholding it, immediately dispose of this misrepresentation of the friend's true appearance and replace the false picture with the true. Knowing the actual facts about this friend, we would not even for a moment be tricked into believing that this picture presented any real aspect of him.
Mortal mind, through the evidence of material sense, presents the counterfeit image of man in God's likeness. Are we going to accept it as real? Through Christian Science we learn that the image of man which the carnal mind presents—a sick, sinful, poor, and dying material form with a mortal soul in it—is utterly false. It has no more reality than an image we behold in a dream, which upon awakening we immediately recognize as illusion.
Mortal mind holds the false image of man—the unlikeness of God—before our thought by suggesting, for example, that Mr. A is a very critical superior or that Mrs. B is always seeking to make herself the center of attention. Or it may suggest that we cannot make our demonstration concerning some physical problem.
What picture do we have of ourselves? Is it the picture God has of us, or have we accepted the limited view of mortal mind, which, being finite itself, can see only mortal pictures? Man is God's image. Let us rejoice in this glorious truth and affirm it with conviction based on spiritual understanding. Man is an individual consciousness, forever awake to its own immortality, harmony, and permanence. Man in God's image and likeness cannot be distorted, affected, or touched by suggestions from an evil mind. He is safe in Soul's substance, coexistent with his creative divine Principle, Love.
In our daily lives we are not always conscious of the fact that what we see are really thoughts. The human mind has been educated for centuries to consider matter as substance, and it does not readily recognize that matter is but mortal mind made manifest, as Christian Science reveals. Material things, in fact, the entire material universe, represent nothing but objectified mortal thought-images.
As a manifestation of the carnal mind, matter is composed of the elements of mortal thinking, such as fear, hatred, human willpower, destructive electricity, greed, lust, and the like—in short, the manifold beliefs in a substance apart from God, Spirit. As these false components of thought are progressively overcome through scientific right thinking, matter will disappear. Then Spirit will be recognized as the only substance, creator, and Ego, and man will be found in the image and likeness of Spirit—eternal, harmonious, perfect.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul admonished his friends to "put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" (4: 22). And he added, "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and . . . put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."
