Article July 10, 1920 Issue

God's Perfect Man

ALBERT H. HARDCASTLE

Ever since accepting as true the allegorical account of the creation of Adam and Eve, mankind have labored under the delusion that mortals are the fallen children of God and must wait until the second coming of a personal Savior, or until after the change called death, in order to be redeemed from this condition. The fact is, mankind never has been and never can be the child of God, for God's child is a spiritual idea, and has forever remained unfallen and perfect.

In the first chapter of Genesis we read, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;" and in the thirty-first verse of the same chapter, "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." This is the record of creation which Christian Science declares to be true, and in speaking of this God-created man, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says on page 470 of Science and Health, "God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection, man, remains perfect." And lower on the same page and on page 471 she says, "The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history."

When the fog obscures the sun, it does not in any manner touch or injure the sun, which goes on shining just the same, though invisible to the physical senses; and the sun's rays alone eventually dispel the fog, revealing the sun in all its beauty and splendor. Just so is it with mankind and God's perfect, spiritual man. Men have accepted as true all of the material beliefs under which they are laboring and by which their lives are apparently governed; as a consequence, they are ignorant of true spiritual identity. But these material beliefs do not in any manner touch or injure God's spiritual truth, which has forever remained perfect and in active operation, and which is the only possible thing that will destroy material beliefs.

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