An impressive moment in the Sunday service of the Church of Christ, Scientist, comes when "the scientific statement of being," from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 468), and the correlative Scripture according to I John 3: 1-3 are read. Mrs. Eddy's words, "Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual," are of utmost import, for they identify man as he actually is. The receptive listener thus becomes more conscious of his true identity as God's image and is reassured that "now are we the sons of God." The divine fact of man's sonship with God is a fundamental teaching of the Science of being, and its realization is requisite to spiritual healing.

That which characterized the life and teaching of the master Christian, Christ Jesus, perhaps more than anything else was his insistence upon his sonship with God. Even at the age of twelve, as he stood in the presence of a group of learned men, he was conscious of his sonship with the Father. When members of his human household anxiously sought his whereabouts, he asked (Luke 2:49), "How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

Near the close of his ministry he declared, "I and my Father are one." His consciousness of his spiritual identity had sustained, maintained, protected him under all hostile and untoward circumstances. He knew his sonship with God to be a divine heritage, as is ours today, and it is significant that he not only claimed his unity with God, but proved it each step of the way.

What a wonderful gift we have in the revelation of man's divine sonship in Christian Science. With an understanding of this spiritual fact we may go forth and heal suffering humanity of the delusion that man is mortal, subject to sin, sickness, poverty, and death. The realization of true sonship enables one to rise above the mists of mortal mind to the very summit of divine revelation, wherein Life is seen to be God, and man Life's undying reflection. If man is immortal at all, he is immortal now. To know this is to have dominion over the beliefs of mortality, sin, sickness, and death.

James says (James 1:27), "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." It is our joyous privilege as Christian Scientists to offer the Christ, Truth, to those who believe themselves bereft, to give them a knowledge of their relationship to God, their Father-Mother, to lift their thought to a higher sense of being. To serve God as evidence of our gratitude for the revelation of the blessing of sonship with Him and demonstrate the light and glory of spiritual perfection is our ideal and reason for existing.

Just as the sunlight pours forth its radiance, disclosing the beauties of landscape, earth, flowers, and sky, so our spiritual light will reveal to the distressed, unhappy, discouraged, sick, or sinful the beauties of Truth and the holiness of divine Love. By letting divine Mind refine and exalt our lives we shall strengthen the faith of our fellow men and help to turn their thought away from materiality to the actuality of spiritual being, to an understanding of the kingdom of heaven, in which man forever dwells.

Our Master taught that the kingdom of heaven not only is at hand but is within man's consciousness. The kingdom of heaven is defined by Mrs. Eddy in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 590) as "the reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme." It is comforting to know that we do not die to reach this divine estate, for man lives, here and now, in the consciousness of harmony and peace. It is for us to claim man's God-given harmony, joy, and peace.

Christian Scientists learn joyously to express the spirit of divine Love in their daily lives, in their homes, in their relationships with others, in their workshops, and in their churches. They demonstrate the ever-present healing power of God and prove that no power can oppose divine Love. The Church of Christ, Scientist, is taking the healing truth to universal humanity. Its members work collectively as "lively stones" in the church of their beloved Leader's founding.

Through our example and precept we shall draw mankind into the light of divine Science, where they will find, as we have, that man is the son of God, perfect and free. Let us unite in the oneness of motive and purpose to plant, water, and nurture to an abundant harvest the seed of Truth and Love in the heart of universal humanity. And let our work for our loved Cause make us be, as a hymn states (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 218):

Our reward comes when we see the light of Truth illumine our brother's way and reveal to him the true meaning of life hid with Christ in God. He too finds in Christian Science that the kingdom of heaven, or harmony, is within his true being. And as the understanding of man's spiritual sonship with God dawns upon him, he gains dominion over fear, freedom from distress, disease, and wrong thinking. Through spiritual discernment he sees that man is the son of God.