Article September 5, 1953 Issue

THE ETERNAL VERITY

BERNICE MURRAY KING

The young student of Christian Science soon notices as he reads the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly that in some Lessons there are references to two opposite accounts of creation in the Bible. In the first account we read (Gen. 1:27), "God created man in his own image," that is, in the image of Spirit, Mind; hence man is spiritual. However, in the other account we read (Gen. 2:6, 7): "There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." This "mist" concept of man is the carnal sense, the mortal sense, the lie which is constantly proposing itself for acceptance. It is this false belief about man that must be mastered on the basis of the eternal verity that man is the image and likeness of God, divine Mind, Life, Soul, Principle, Spirit, Truth, Love.

Throughout his study of Christian Science the student will be dealing with these two concepts, one the eternal verity—actual and absolute; the other a falsity—temporal and relative. He will encounter such opposite terms as mortals and immortals, mortal mind and divine Mind, material sense and spiritual sense, false belief and spiritual fact, mortality and immortality. Concerning these two concepts we have Paul's statement (Rom. 8:7), "The carnal mind is enmity against God," and Christ Jesus' words (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

In order to let the eternal verity, the spiritual sense of man, destroy the carnal sense, or material sense, it was necessary for our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, to employ relative as well as absolute statements in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." The student may, for instance, notice this absolute statement (p. 536): "The divine understanding reigns, is all, and there is no other consciousness." Then he may quickly recall another statement (p. 295), "Mortals are not like immortals, created in God's own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the real sense of being, perfect and forever intact, will appear." The first statement is absolute, free from any hint of the belief of mortality or a consciousness separate from Deity, whereas the second points out the false sense of life in matter, which must yield to divine consciousness or the understanding of man's oneness, or unity, with God, Spirit.