Seeing What Constitutes Man

IRENE V. DUNAWAY

To understand what constitutes man, in God's image and likeness, is to see him as entirely apart from sin, disease, and death. It is to understand that he has never had any existence apart from God. It is to see him as abiding in everlasting perfection.

It was because Jesus understood what constitutes man that he was enabled to say to the woman bowed together for eighteen years, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." Jesus did not say she would be loosed after he healed her. He said, "Thou art loosed." He declared the truth to her, and she was loosed at once. He could say this with authority because he understood man's only existence to be in reflecting God.

Man lives as the expression of God. He does not live, or exist, apart from God. He has life, or being, only as the reflection of God, as the expression of all that God is. He has no life, no being, unlike the nature of God.

Since God is Mind, man, the expression of Mind, must be a spiritually mental being. He is idea. Now an idea partakes of the nature of Mind. Therefore man, as the idea of divine Mind, partakes of the nature of Mind, God. God is Spirit, Life, Principle. Then man is the expression of God, Spirit, Life, Principle, Love.

The nature of man thus understood is not what is commonly accepted as the nature of man. The material senses misinterpret man. One cannot think of man, God's idea, as having a boundary, as being circumscribed. God's idea must necessarily be uncircumscribed and unlimited. To understand man to be thus constituted, is to see as unreal the belief that man is material, subject to all the ills that are attendant upon that belief. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has written in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 369), "In proportion as matter loses to human sense all entity as man, in that proportion does man become its master."

The following incident illustrates the power of even a glimpse of the real status of man to heal the sick as taught in Christian Science. A man spoke to a Christian Science practitioner about his son, who had been suffering from chronic asthma for over five years and had found no relief. The practitioner replied that the son's life consisted in reflecting God, Spirit, that in reality his life had never been touched by asthma. The son was completely healed then and there.

Treatment based on the understanding of what constitutes man sees the true and only selfhood, which has never been touched by evil. This treatment is the consciousness of Christ, Truth, which overcomes error. Thought which is in accord with the divine in the understanding of true being sees every claim to an opposite existence as only an illusion—animal magnetism—a lie. Thought thus enlightened will be made manifest in improved human conditions, but actually it is the truth that is appearing as false beliefs are laid aside.

To understand what constitutes man is to find the remedy for defeat, fear, or failure in business, all of which is included in a limited, finite concept of man. As man is understood to be incorporeal, uncircumscribed, and unlimited, expressing the vastness of Mind, the belief in material limitation falls away. To see God's man as the boundless expression of the illimitable Mind is to remove the belief in material obstructions, the belief that one is dependent on person or any human influence for success, or that one is in subjection to many minds. It is to prove true Mrs. Eddy's words (Science and Health, p. 288), "Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses."

To understand what constitutes man is to see that he is not subject to sin or temptation. As the idea of God, divine Mind, man cannot know what Mind does not know.

As our concept of man grows clearer, the light of Truth will pierce the gloom of earth's shadows. It will say, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."

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