Article June 23, 1945 Issue

The Pre-existence of True Selfhood

MAY CREAMER

Christians generally have accepted the Biblical teaching that man survives the mortal body. Mary Baker Eddy, through her spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures, has awakened us to the truth that if man's life is eternal it is not only without end, but without beginning. If man survives this mortal sense of existence and lives eternally, he must of necessity have preceded it; and he must have all the elements and conditions of eternality now. Eternal Life not only extends unlimitedly into what we call the future, but it also extends unlimitedly into what we call the past.

Mrs. Eddy has called to our attention Jesus' plain statements (John 8:58; 17:5): "Before Abraham was, I am;" and, "Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." In "Miscellaneous Writings" our Leader tells us (p. 189), "The meek Nazarene's steadfast and true knowledge of preexistence, of the nature and the inseparability of God and man,—made him mighty."

Not until we see the truth of man's pre-existence do we comprehend that we individually are spiritual, conceived by the divine Mind, and that we do not begin at a point called birth and end at another called death. Good floods into our experience as we identify our sense of being with that which recognizes man as born "not ... of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." We discern that what claims to be our mortal beginning is but the feeble attempt of suppositional mortal mind to imitate the matchless ability of God, divine Mind, who has already created man by the might of flawless intelligence; and that man is you and I in our true and only being. As long as we believe that the appearing to sense of a mortal is the beginning of individual man, we cannot possibly understand man as idea, image, because the mortal imitation of individual man bears no resemblance to infinite Spirit, God. The original ever precedes the imitation, even as truth ever precedes a lie.

Send a comment to the editors