God is original good. He is the first and only cause, and therefore, He is self-existent. God's creation, including man, His perfect likeness, has existed forever in God, divine Mind. Man was never born and can never die. He is coexistent and coeternal with God. Man originates in God and is subject to no limitations.

Mankind generally has not accepted this description of man. It accepts the myth of Adam as presenting the origin of man. It declares that Adam was derived from dust or clay. The Adam man and his descendants are not original, for they are not in the image and likeness of God, Spirit. They are the derivatives of a myth!

Jesus came to demonstrate original manhood. His true selfhood, the Christ, was not subject to birth or death, but was inseparable from God and dwells eternally in divine Mind. Throughout his earthly career Jesus demonstrated the spiritual fact presented in the first chapter of Genesis, namely that God gave man dominion or the absolute power to reflect Him. Through the understanding of the Christ, the Master demonstrated his original selfhood and the nothingness of mortality, with all of its erroneous concepts and beliefs.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key in the Scriptures" (p. 313): "Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." To his followers Jesus said (John 7:24), "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."

When he was brought before Pilate, the soldiers put a crown of thorns on his head and clothed him with a purple robe. Although this was done to mock him as a would-be king, it truly symbolized the original and regal nature of his Christlike character and his proof of his divine nature in overcoming the thorns—the false and evil beliefs of material existence. Then Pilate told his accusers that he could find no fault in him and said (John 19:5), "Behold the man!" Here was the exemplification of original manhood standing as a witness before blind mortals who tried to slay the Saviour of the world.

It was our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, who discerned the fundamental truths which guided Jesus' demonstration of man's original nature. In Christian Science she reveals to mankind the fact of man's original, indestructible perfection as God's image and likeness, never subject to the claims of material systems. In her own career she demonstrated the original nature of man's being, by overcoming the beliefs of poverty, sin, sickness, death, and other human discords.

For centuries men have "followed the crowd." Customs, habits, imitation, have limited mankind in all directions. Mortal mind has set up standards and laws which have put men into molds, subjected them to sin, sickness, and death, until they appear today as the very counterfeits of the original man presented in Genesis and demonstrated by Christian Science.

Our great Way-shower, Christ Jesus, and our Leader, his devoted follower, departed from the established modes and paths of materiality. They declared and demonstrated the hidden truths of Spirit, which bring salvation to men. They truly plunged beneath the material surface of things and brought to light the spiritual original—the true manhood of every individual.

It is the duty of all of us to maintain and prove in daily living man's original nature as the image and likeness of God. It is our duty to insist that we were never born into matter, never lived in it, and do not have to die out of it. It is our duty to rejoice that we reflect only the nature and qualities of the one original Mind; in fact, that this Mind is our Mind. Thus we have the basis for proving that we are unlimited and unfettered by human beliefs, hypotheses, or false laws regarding creation. We find that we dwell eternally in the realm of Mind as its free, fearless, sinless, perfect, eternal ideas. The Apostle Paul writes (Rom. 8:16,17), "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

The acceptance and firm conviction and utilization of the truths of original manhood bring about the new birth, to which Jesus referred when he said (John 3:7), "Ye must be born again." The Master declared that this birth is to be brought about through water and the Spirit—through spiritual, sinless living. We reflect the original, sinless nature of our Father-Mother God as we walk consistently in the footsteps of the original man, Jesus. In doing this we replace hatred with love, discouragement with hope, impurity with purity, sickness with health, sin with holiness. The rewards of spiritualization of thought are seen in increased usefulness to our fellow men, more harmonious home relationships, greater success in business, inspired church services, useful discoveries and inventions, better communities, and in the realization that the kingdom of heaven, man's original state of existence, is ever at hand and within us. In a letter to a group of Christian Scientists, Mrs. Eddy writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 253):

"It rejoices me to know that you know that healing the sick, soothing sorrow, brightening this lower sphere with the ways and means of the higher and everlasting harmony, brings to light the perfect original man and universe. What nobler achievement, what greater glory can nerve your endeavor? Press on! My heart and hope are with you.

Harold Molter