Editorial December 11, 1948 Issue

A CORRECT CONCEPT OF MAN

Robert Ellis Key

A spiritual awakening is taking place throughout the earth. Material methods have signally failed, and many people today are seeking a solution for their problems through spiritual means. Christian Science is meeting their need because it presents the spiritual facts of being and applies them to human problems. This Science is naturally expansive and progressive. It reveals God as infinite Spirit and man as His image and likeness. Material systems in general deny this. They teach that man is material, dependent upon five material senses, confined in matter, and limited in all directions. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, presents an entirely different concept of man, a concept revealed to her through a spiritual understanding of the Scriptures.

This spiritual conception of man includes limitless God-bestowed capacities. These capacities are expressed in achievement, on which no limit can be placed. On page 323 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes: "Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause,—wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory." This, therefore, is the true concept of man. Not a finite mortal born into limitation, fettered by restrictive beliefs, handicapped in every direction, but an immortal idea to be found apart from matter in the substance of Spirit and in the realm of ideas.

The definition of man as given on page 475 of Science and Health makes this clear. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements." And she continues: "Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique." This is the man of God's creating, very different from, in fact diametrically opposite to, the mortal born of human parents and the product of human beliefs. Human belief confines everything. It begins its short and troubled career with confinement. It confines heart in an organ, mind in matter, soul in the body, strength in muscle, and life in material blood.

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