Can you and I heal sickness and overcome evil as Jesus did? Can you and I say, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30)? Can you and I evidence the Christ? The answer is a qualified "Yes." We can and do in proportion as we understand, as Christ Jesus understood, man's spiritual identity as God's idea and the consequent falsity of the belief that man is material, subject to such discordant manifestations of false material belief as sickness, sorrow, and limitation.

"The scientific statement of being," found on page 468 of our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, concludes with these statements: "Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual." Here is a scientifically accurate presentation of man's identity as the reflection of God. "Identity," Mrs. Eddy states on page 477 of the textbook, "is the reflection of Spirit, the reflection in multifarious forms of the living Principle, Love."

Jesus emphatically and unhesitatingly affirmed his spiritual identity as the Son of God when he said, "I and my Father are one," and since he is the Way-shower, we can profitably follow his example. His clear understanding of God and of man's identity as the image and likeness of God enabled him to demonstrate the unreality of every phase of the Adam-dream, the dream that man is separated from God and exists as a material personality in a world of matter. This demonstration of man's unity with God, good, evidenced his Christliness.

Through Mrs. Eddy's discovery, students of Christian Science learn to perceive, as Jesus perceived, that God's creation, including man, is wholly spiritual, and therefore must and does express God's power, immortality, completeness, beauty, and purity. They begin to see in some measure what Jesus saw, namely, that the material man, so called, is really not man at all, but a false assumption that man is finite—a false sense which disappears along with its evidence as the real man is cognized and thought is spiritualized. They increasingly see the utter falsity and powerlessness of such erroneous claims as sickness, lack, strife, and limitation. They learn that the curse on Adam (Gen. 3:19), "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," is not valid for man, but is only a false accusation of mortal mind, and is totally without power.

That the recognition of man's true identity heals is seen in the following incident. Early in the year 1945 a young mother sought treatment from a Christian Science practitioner for what is often considered to be a serious, if not incurable disease.

The practitioner said something like this to her: You know that there is only one God, and that He is Spirit and infinite. Therefore the only creation there is, is the creation of God, Spirit, and it must be wholly spiritual and perfect, not material, sick, or discordant. Your true being, the reflection of Spirit, can only be harmonious, can only be identified in Godlike manifestations and not in anything which would make you afraid or cause deformity or suffering.

Your true selfhood cannot be separated from God's perfection any more than a ray of sunlight can be bottled up and hidden or separated from the sun. This disease, like all evil, has its basis in the suggestion that man is or can become separated from God. But man, God's idea, can never for an instant be separated from Mind, from the Life which is God, wherein all is harmony. This lie, which appears as a bodily condition, cannot harm you or stay with you, because spiritual man reflects only God, and there is in reality no other man.

After the young woman left, the practitioner continued to maintain that God's man, the only man there is, can never be touched by the false beliefs about man, no matter how conclusive the evidence accompanying these beliefs may appear to be, or how tenaciously mortal thought may cling to conditions outlined by itself. The practitioner knew that belief and its evidence are one, a lie, which vanishes before the understanding of Truth. He also realized that, since God alone governs man, no claim of disease can reverse spiritual law and appear to make good its claims through unhealthy cellular or tissue growth, since God is the only substance of man. It was recognized also that, since there is only one Mind, the young mother's sense of existence did not include, in reality, anything which would terrify her, but it did include an abiding sense of the ever-presence and omnipotence of God.

About three weeks later this young woman came into the office radiant with happiness. The discordant evidence had completely vanished, but she could not remember when.

The ability to recognize what constitutes man's identity is imparted by the ever-present Christ, available to all here and now to guide, protect, and transform, even as it was present with Jesus. Of him who demonstrates Christ, Truth, John wrote (I John 5:10), "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself."