HEREDITY UPROOTED

One of the most prolific illusions of the human mind is its belief in heredity. Man is believed to be born into a state of mortality without his consent, to be doomed to suffer his way through such a state, and to pass finally into an unknown condition, equally without his consent. He is identified as a physical body, the offspring of other physical bodies, which have transmitted to him characteristics and weaknesses inherent in themselves and their progenitors. He is the slave of time and the offspring of sense. This godless theory finds strong rebuke in the Bible.

The first chapter of Genesis holds the revelation of creation. Here man is revealed in the similitude of God. Thus Christian Science defines man as conceived in Mind, fashioned of Spirit, governed by Principle, endowed with Life. He is complete in Love, pure in Soul, stable in Truth. The Father-Mother God, the divine Principle or source and origin of his being, could not engender a capacity for imperfection. Hence man is sinless, sickless, fearless, sound, and deathless, as incapable of experiencing or expressing these illusions as is God.

It is true that the second chapter of Genesis records a man made from the dust, a man who is dissatisfied and mortal, who begets offspring according to his own pattern and similitude, to whom he transmits all the frailties and imperfections of his own misconceived sense of life. All through the centuries mankind has suffered from its acceptance of the belief of a dual creation, the belief of the reality of Spirit and matter, and the consequent belief that the man of God's creating has fallen from his state of perfection and is procreated in a materialistic state from which he must attempt to struggle back to perfection.

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September 13, 1947
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