Article October 24, 1942 Issue

"I and my Father are one"

HAROLD C. LEWIS

When Christ Jesus said, "I and my Father are one," he was declaring the truth about his real selfhood, in the image and likeness of God. That this truth applies to each and every one of us is indicated in another of his statements: "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." Christian Science reveals the fact that in our true being we are the children of God and one with our divine Principle.

Man's oneness with God is brought out clearly in the Bible. It is evident that if man is the image and likeness of God, as the first chapter of Genesis plainly declares, man must coexist with God. Man expresses God as a ray of sunshine reflects the sun. There is no separation between man and God, and man never fell from his perfect state of existence. Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 282), "Whatever indicates the fall of man or the opposite of God or God's absence, is the Adam-dream, which is neither Mind nor man, for it is not begotten of the Father."

The testimony of the physical senses presents a false picture of existence as divorced from Spirit, God, and expressed in materiality. The real man, being purely spiritual and coexistent with God, cannot be imprisoned in matter. The rays of the sun shine into a room, bathing everything therein with light. But no matter how quickly we close the shutters, we can never imprison the rays of sunshine. When the shutters are closed the rays are still intact, still maintaining their connection with the sun, filling garden and field with warmth and beauty. As the rays of light coexist with the sun, so our spiritual selfhood coexists with God, Spirit. In this connection it is helpful to study our Leader's statement (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 344), "If we say that the sun stands for God, then all his rays collectively stand for Christ, and each separate ray for men and women." We should face every human problem armed with the knowledge of our spiritual coexistence with God and the nothingness of anything that would separate us from Him—sin, disease, and death included.

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