Editorial April 6, 1957 Issue

THE DIGNITY OF MAN

John J. Selover

Christian Science teaches that man, made in God's likeness, has eternal, spiritual dignity and being. Speaking of the false creation in contradistinction to the true, Mary Baker Eddy asks in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 527), "Is the Supreme Being retrograding, and is man giving up his dignity?" Again she queries, "Was it requisite for the formation of man that dust should become sentient, when all being is the reflection of the eternal Mind, and the record declares that God has already created man, both male and female?"

How should we dignify man? Certainly not as a brute, a chattel of the state or society, as a belligerent advocate of battle, or as a murderer. These erroneous descriptions will continue to attach to mankind as long as it accepts the false belief that man is an unstable, mortal being. In proportion as one acknowledges that man is spiritual and perfect and subject only to the control of God, divine Mind, will he discern his true dignity as the child of God.

The determination to recognize his true, incorporeal nature does not await the edict of a state, or the whim of any person or system of thinking. The determination to magnify his true selfhood and thus to minimize his enslavement to the personal senses is an individual choice. Each one, wherever, in belief, he may be, has the right and the ability (although often dormant) to see himself as God made him and to benefit by that enlightened concept of being.

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