Is there a law of heredity? Emphatically our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 178), "Heredity is not a law." She adds, "In proportion to our understanding of Christian Science, we are freed from the belief of heredity, of mind in matter or animal magnetism."

Instead of being a law, then, heredity is merely a belief, a conjectural and speculative theory that is based on the false testimony of the material senses. It is a mythical law that never really existed or operated anywhere, upon anybody. This suppositional law is mortal mind's counterfeit or imitation of the real, spiritual law of inheritance or reflection, the divine law which is based upon the truth that God is our Father-Mother and man is His spiritual offspring. This law proceeds from unfailing divine Principle and is certain and inevitable; furthermore, it rebukes and destroys the seeming activity of its counterfeit. Paul declared, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

Heredity is a false conclusion drawn from the mistaken premise that man is material. The whole theory thereby collapses, for God is the only cause and creator and is man's only cause and creator and is man's only parent. Heredity is a grave mistake, for it supposes that man lives in matter, that life, intelligence, and substance are material, whereas man is a spiritual, incorporeal being, the likeness of Spirit, living in Soul, the only intelligence and substance. The real man is inseparable from God, and to this spiritual man there is no law of heredity. In the first chapter of Genesis may be found the record of spiritual creation, in which God is the creator and man His image and likeness. The second chapter of Genesis gives an account of a dream creation, wherein the Lord God is represented as a creator and man as formed of the dust of the earth. Of this dream state Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, pp. 306, 307), "The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter."

Are we laboring under the delusion that some error has been passed on to us from our human parents or ancestors, something physical or mental from which there is no escape? Then we are only dreaming the Adam-dream and are not awake to the scientific fact that God made our true selfhood, and that we live in Soul, not in matter.

There is no true law whereby matter passes on its own tendencies, weaknesses, forms, and diseases; no law that enforces the transmission of personal temperament, characteristics, disposition, or failings.

Mrs. Eddy writes (ibid., p. 262): "Divine Mind is the only cause or Principle of existence. Cause does not exist in matter, in mortal mind, or in physical forms." The only law is the law of God, who bestows upon man all the qualities and characteristics of his creator. We may believe that we have inherited some qualities unlike God, but this is not the result of God's law; it is the result of accepting the false belief of heredity. We can be a law unto ourselves by refusing to believe error.

All goodness comes from God, and He alone transmits all good qualities to man. Man's talents are inherited from limitless Mind, his nature is Love-bestowed, and all real inheritance comes from God. If we understood our real selfhood as God's perfect child, we could never believe that we ever inherited anything real except from God.

Mortal characteristics are not part of one's true individuality. Certain beliefs, such as shyness, temperament, nervousness, are often attached to persons. But God never created inharmonious elements as part of man, and God alone created man.

Do we believe that we are bound by a suffering sense of disease or a tendency toward physical weakness because of the so-called law of heredity? God's law of reflection, or life in Christ, Truth, has made us free, and we can prove this freedom right now by knowing that Life, God, is the only creator.

Man is spiritual, incorporeal, the embodiment of divine ideas. Life is Spirit; therefore he reflects the perfect substance of Spirit, which is incapable of being discordant, decayed, or diseased. No malformation, incompleteness, weakness is possible, because man reflects Spirit's harmonious, complete, and indestructible ideas. Vitality and every necessary element of health are his. He does not have to gain or add anything to make him whole, complete, healthy, for he is so already. Nor can he possess any burdensome thing that needs to be removed. Nothing can be added to or taken from that which God has made. Since God is changeless and man reflects Him, there is nothing about him that needs to be or can be changed.

Does mortal man believe that he is subject to selfishness, to moods, to moments of depression and discouragement, to bad temper, to thoughts of fear and criticism because some member of his family may have expressed these qualities? Man does not inherit these beliefs, for Mind never made them, and "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." As the reflection of Love, he is inherently obedient to God, changelessly patient, unselfish, and compassionate. Man is ever immovably loving and undisturbed; he does not need to acquire these qualities, for he inherits them unconditionally.

These great truths lead us to the inescapable conclusion that man forever remains perfect and spiritual. God's glorious heritage of good is for all His children everywhere; and as Paul wrote to the Romans, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs."