Article March 11, 1950 Issue

WHO AM I?

HERBERT E. BONHAM

What a glorious answer to this question is given in the first epistle of John: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." You and I sons of God! How necessary that we know that man is His image and likeness, in order that we may claim our rich heritage as God's sons.

Christ Jesus knew the truth of his sonship with God. He said, "I and my Father are one." His realization of man's sonship, of man's oneness as reflection with the Father, enabled him to say with authority to one with a withered hand, "Stretch forth thy hand," and to another, waiting at the pool of Bethesda, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk," and to the widow of Nain's son, "Young man, I say unto thee, Arise." In each instance his command was immediately obeyed, and the discordant condition, or false belief, disappeared into its native nothingness.

Just as Jesus' recognition of man's divine sonship freed those in bondage to sickness, sin, and death, so today this understanding of man's perfectness frees mankind from the bondage of all mortal beliefs. "But," one may ask, "what about the sin, sickness, and death which seem so real in the daily experience of mankind?" Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 475, 476): "Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The real man cannot depart from holiness, nor can God, by whom man is evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not God's man." There are not, therefore, two kinds of man, one mortal and the other immortal. The only man there really is, is made in the image and likeness of God; and each of us, in his true being, is that man now.

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