How concerned most of us are with doing things and planning things to be done! Do fatigue, futility, and lack of time for proper praying sometimes seem to be present? If so, it might be well to consider whether an overdeveloped sense of doing may not be accompanied by an underdeveloped sense of being. At such a point it is well to remember that in the account of God's creation in the first chapter of Genesis the writer first brings out what God commands man to be, then what He commands man to do.

The entirety of being is indicated in the fulfillment of these two commands. In the familiar verses 26 and 27 we read: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." Here is God's command to man defining what he is to be—namely, His image and likeness. Man must be Godlike. Verse 28 carries the further command to do: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Christian Science bases its teachings squarely upon these commands as to what man is made to be and to do. First, he must express God's attributes and qualities and thus have the dominion of spiritual understanding over all of God's work. This understanding, in the degree that we gain it, gives us dominion over every material belief. Since God is Spirit, man must be essentially and entirely spiritual. God is always manifesting His own qualities, and man is individually expressing them. Man's being is the reflection of God's being.

The important question then arises, "What are the qualities of God's being which man lives to express?" The answer reaches into infinity and cannot be bounded by a single statement. However, it has been ably summarized by Mary Baker Eddy on page 481 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." She writes: "Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else. God's being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss." To utilize these truths, even in some degree, is to translate them into terms of human action, and thus glorify daily living. One can ponder what it means consciously to reflect infinity. Obviously it means the immediate beginning of the removal of a sense of limitation. While human thought can never compass infinity, it can begin to push back its own horizons and attain an ever-enlarging concept of unlimited Love, Life, and supply of right ideas for the meeting of every human need.

The refusal to measure or limit good in any way need not be postponed to some remote period of happiness, but can be progressively maintained now. No spiritual achievement is the final step of progress. Every goal attained is but a point of departure for the next step Godward. Every victory won is but a rainbow of promise for the next victory. The Psalmist said (Ps. 17:15), "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." This "when" can mean daily satisfaction in the footsteps of infinite progress.

The second quality mentioned in the citation quoted from Science and Health is freedom. To express the freedom of Spirit is to begin to lay off the bondage of matter—poverty, disease, accident, fear, old age, and all the processes which mortal mind says lead to death. Yes, in holy moments even now, can come a gleam of that divine light which comforts us with the assurance of freedom from the belief of death itself.

Harmony is the third quality which Mrs. Eddy points out in the sentence under consideration. Harmony bespeaks the power and presence of Love, and Love expresses itself in loving. Through the unction of Love, frictions are removed in human experience, selfishness gives place to unselfed love, generosity replaces parsimony, sharing blots out greed, and right activity appears where inhibition, frustration, and obstruction seemed to be. Harmony is where divine Love is active, and Love heals.

The last quality mentioned in this sentence regarding God's being is "boundless bliss." This is man's possession by right of his oneness with God. Boundless bliss is not just human good nature, but the abundant well-being of Spirit; not just meager moments of happiness, but unlimited upspringing joy. This is not the outcome of emotion, but the profoundly blissful realization of man's immunity from aggressive suggestions. It discards a "too good to be true" attitude and accepts the better sense of "good enough to be true." In this spiritual happiness there is no fear of relapse into evil, for as one magnifies Godlike qualities, evil recedes into oblivion.

In God's second command to man. "to multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." it is well to note that this order is not given to the mythical material man, whose story is told in the second chapter of Genesis, but to the spiritual man, whom God made and endowed with His own nature. How else could spiritual man "multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" but by the multiplication of spiritual ideas, by the reflecting, the ceaseless unfoldment, of ideas which evidence God's being? Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 517), "Divine Love blesses its own ideas, and causes them to multiply,—to manifest His power." This manifestation of God's power—and this alone—gives man that dominion of understanding which is emphasized in both commandments. How clearly God has made man always victor, never victim! How clearly does spiritual power alone govern, energize, and carry through to unwearied success all right activity!

It is strengthening to note how closely the two commandments given by Jesus in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew parallel the two commands appearing in Genesis centuries earlier. Jesus said (Matt. 22:37, 38): "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment." Is not this a commandment to be as well as to do—to be God-loving and Godlike? "And the second," continued the Master, "is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (verse 39). Is not this the commandment to do as well as to be—to do the works of the Father?

Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 271), "Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God." May we prayerfully, consciously, and constantly see ourselves in our proper place in this "design of God" and let the inevitability of Godlike being establish the inevitability of Godlike doing.