Article February 7, 1953 Issue

NOT ABSORBED BUT ABSOLVED

MYRTLE B. MC COSKER

"In Science, we learn that man is not absorbed in the divine nature, but is absolved by it." This awakening declaration is made by Mary Baker Eddy on page 119 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany." Each time this passage was pondered by one student of Christian Science it presented varied new facets of spiritual illumination. She saw that in order to comprehend the quotation, she should understand the definition of "absorb" and "absolve." A dictionary states that the former means "to cause to disappear as if by swallowing up." "Absolve" means "to exonerate, to set free."

A ray of light does not disappear or become absorbed because it is at one with the sun. Rather does it gather beauty and brightness from its source. Light and heat are freed, not bottled up, by the sun—freed to bless and benefit all. While the light and warmth are like the sun, they are not the sun. So man, being God's own likeness, cannot be engulfed or absorbed, but because he is identified with his Maker, he lives to express Him. Each identity has its own place, work, and function in the spiritual universe of Mind and is necessary to Mind's expression. The identity of each individual is strengthened by at-one-ment with God, for true identification is not being absorbed in God, but being absolved from materiality.

The understanding of man's immortal, imperishable identity and relationship to his creator, the fact that man is in and of Spirit, is fully explained in Christian Science and is further elucidated by Mrs. Eddy's statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 259), "Man is not absorbed in Deity, and man cannot lose his individuality, for he reflects eternal Life; nor is he an isolated, solitary idea, for he represents infinite Mind, the sum of all substance."

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