Article September 16, 1950 Issue

PERFECT GOD AND PERFECT MAN

AVELYN M. KERR

THE first chapter of Genesis contains a complete account of spiritual creation, when with deific command God made the heaven and the earth and all that is therein and separated the light of Truth from the darkness of ignorance. The twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh verses state that God made man in His image and likeness and gave man dominion. From this, one may infer that to know man aright one would have to know and rightly understand the creator of man. As in human experience a product is but the externalization of the producer's thinking, so the real man is the product or reflection of the one Mind, God. All thinkers will concede that a supreme, infinite God must be perfect, but for generations mankind has been mesmerized by the belief that this perfect God creates imperfect mortals.

Had no other chapter of the Bible been preserved than the first chapter of Genesis, we should still have the basic truths concerning God and man. However, it remained for Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, to bring these great truths of perfect God and perfect man to light and expose the fallacy of the mortal of the Adam-dream, as described in succeeding chapters of Genesis. Our Leader has devoted a whole chapter to the book of Genesis in her textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." There is no doubt that her clear explanation of this first book of the Bible has exposed the myth of man "shapen in iniquity" and conceived "in sin."

On page 259 of this remarkable textbook our Leader has written, "The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea, — perfect God and perfect man, — as the basis of thought and demonstration." And on page 468 she has written the most profound and dynamic statement in all literature, "the scientific statement of being," which is read at the close of every Sunday service in all Churches of Christ, Scientist: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual." As far as one understands this "scientific statement of being," he can prove man's perfection and dominion.

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