Editorial May 10, 1952 Issue

MAN'S INHERENT PURITY

Helen Wood Bauman

By revealing man as God's spiritual image Christian Science provides a basis from which everyone may rid himself of the impurities of human nature. In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" Mary Baker Eddy explains the Science of man's inherent purity where she says (p. 262): "God creates man perfect and eternal in His own image. Hence man is the image, idea, or likeness of perfection—an ideal which cannot fall from its inherent unity with divine Love, from its spotless purity and original perfection."

Divine Love is pure Mind because it includes no evil or limited concept; it is unconscious of matter. Man is pure because he too is unconscious of matter, hence free from the sinful mental reactions which are likely to attend the belief that matter is real. Man's joy, his satisfaction, and his uprightness are found in his constant unfoldment of good. His interests are in spiritual things. Throughout eternity the "spotless purity" of his Christly character manifests the attributes of his immortal source.

All materialism is impure. The consciousness of matter is itself impure and must be replaced with the Christ-consciousness, which knows only Spirit and its spiritual creation. What are generally called impurities—lust, hatred, dishonesty, greed, drunkenness—represent obvious phases of materialism. They are admittedly unjustifiable states of self-love and self-interest. Their indulgence shows that the mortal self is not being discarded and that its falsity is not understood. Not so often is self-righteousness, with its unsound judgments, its caustic criticisms, its gossip and personal condemnation, seen to be human impurity too.

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