Environment has played, and continues to play, an important role in the history and development of mankind. Individually, collectively, and nationally its influence may be seen and felt. Throughout human experience, from the Stone Age to the space age, men have been striving to overcome its restrictions and limitations, explore its possibilities, and develop its resources.
Reasoning with himself on this subject, one who is a student of Christian Science finds that the first essential is to gain an understanding of the real environment man enjoys as the image and likeness of God. He must begin at "the beginning." Why? Because, as the opening chapter of the Bible declares, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." And the same chapter states, "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Gen. 1:1, 26;
Man has ever been at one with God, with infinite Life, Truth, and Love. Christian Science, which finds its authority in the Bible, teaches that God is Spirit, Mind, and that man is the offspring or idea of this all-inclusive Mind. Man lives in Mind. God is at once the Father and Mother of the universe, including man. Man exists because God exists. The only conditions surrounding him have their origin in God. They are not, then, conditions of matter but of Mind, which man reflects. They include the riches and honor of wisdom, the wealth of understanding, the strength of purity, the beauty of holiness, the joy of life, the productivity of intelligence, the warmth of love, and the perfection of immortal being. Such spiritually mental qualities constitute the natural environment of the sons and daughters of God. It is "the heaven and the earth" of God's creating, over which man was given complete dominion.
