GOD, THE ETERNAL MAKER OF MAN

When some material object is made, for instance an automobile, it is first conceived in thought; drawings are made; materials are assembled, mechanical processes set to work; and the car is completed. The making is over; so many strokes and it is done; there is a beginning and an end of the making. So with all temporary things.'Once made, they soon begin to wear out, disintegrate, or decay.

God is often referred to as the Maker of the universe and man, but God's creation is not something made at a point on the calendar of time, nor is His making work a process of forming with material forces, out of material elements, temporary material worlds, perishable mortals, beasts, and things. In God's creation there is no formative period of one day or several days, when the creative activity of God begins and ends. God has no priority in time over man. As Mind and Mind's idea, God and man coexist always. Time, a mentally mortal concept, is forever unknown to God or God's man. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, refutes the misconception that God's creation has a time beginning thus: "The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only,—that is, the eternal verity and unity of God and man, including the universe" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 502).

As Mind never begins and never ends, so God's causing of man never begins and never ends. This sense of God as the continuous Maker of man does not mean that God's man is imperfect and needs to be more fully made in order to be perfect. Perfection is always the condition of God's man. But man does need some power continually to cause his life, individuality, health, ideas, activity, throughout eternity, and God is the Maker who thus eternally makes him.

Never believe that at some time in the past God set about making you and the universe, and that the making was completed a few days thereafter. The first chapter of Genesis, which depicts creation as being made in six days, symbolizes the periods of increasing discernment, by human thought, of the facts of eternal, spiritual existence, which always is. They indicate Mind's progressive appearing to us, by which we find reality, God's creation, perfect and just at hand.

This chapter records that God "made" man. The Hebrew word translated into the English word "made" has the meaning "to appoint," "to maintain." God, eternal Spirit, forever appoints and maintains man as the expression of Mind. In the first chapter of John's Gospel we read, "All things were made by him." Here the original Greek text used a verb which also means "to continue," and "to be ordained to be." Supreme Mind eternally continues, or ordains to be, all that really is. God's status as the Maker of man is an eternal status with perpetual responsibilities.

The continuity of man depends on the continuity of his Maker. His ability to manifest continuing life, consciousness, strength, health, and joyousness depends on the continuing ability of Spirit thus to constitute its representative, man. Says Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 124), "Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things." Lovingly, tirelessly, perpetually, the omnipresent, omniactive God is maintaining His beloved son, the one selfhood of man. As Paul puts it, "The inward man is renewed day by day."

When one goes into a forest, he enjoys the grandeur of a tree, the color of a flower, the grace of the bending grass. Physical forces are working every moment to maintain the scene. Remove them and the scene would collapse. So in God's spiritual creation, the spiritual forces of intelligence and Love are eternally maintaining all identities in perfection and continuity. The constancy of these spiritual, sustaining forces is cause for our everlasting gratitude. They have no beginning, no ending, no irregularity, no slackening. They experience no interruption, no variableness, no depletion. The constant, even flow of Love's maintaining power, universal and impartial, assures to each individual the eternal life, the abiding health, the unwaning strength, the unimpaired perception of continuing godliness. The only real making is the infinite and eternal Mind, God, making Himself manifest in man.

These truths are usable in our daily lives. The realization that it is the function of God each instant to constitute man gives comfort and courage, for this fact reverses the belief in, or fear of, matter as able to make, unmake, or condition man.

How careful we need to be in our use of the word "make"! Too often we hear someone say: This food makes me ill. That person makes me mad. My dear one's absence makes me grieved. The years are making me old. A little sinful indulgence makes me satisfied. Bad luck has made me a failure. Material forces make me to be in danger. These mistaken conceptions all arise from the belief that mortal mind and matter make, animate, and unmake man. Let the one tempted with such suggestions ask himself. What has become of the omniactive and omnipotent God as the eternal Maker of man? Has Deity surrendered His prerogative over man to food, material personality, time, sinning sense, chance, or destructive material forces? Can any of these really be a making power to man?'

Though error may claim to be the maker of men and a recurring force in their lives, that does not make it so. The powerlessness of mortal mind's claim is found as thought recognizes the Christ, revealing to each individual the infinite Mind as the sole Ego and Maker, forever embracing, containing, and maintaining man.

The student of Christian Science daily needs to realize that God is the one constituting power for him and for all; that negative mortal mind cannot make him, for it possesses no intelligence with which to originate him, no substance out of which to constitute him. His alone substance is eternal Mind, his Life, his God. Into God's infinite presence, supposititious mortal mind cannot come to possess, or control, what is forever made and governed by God. Mortal mind, material generation, and all that makes the sum of mortality cannot find him, cannot amalgamate with, assail, frighten, or belabor him. By the law and the will of God, he knows he is predestined to be the son of the Eternal, eternally God-made. The hourly condition of his life, his health, his individuality is and must be today, tomorrow, forever Spirit-constituted, Love-determined, since God is the one, the only, the eternal Maker of man.

Paul Stark Seeley