Editorial December 31, 1960 Issue

God Characterizes Man

Helen Wood Bauman

However human beliefs may claim to develop an individual, the fact is that God alone characterizes man. Nothing can erase the consciousness which God bestows upon His sons. The Father's characterization is permanent, forever present, always ready to be brought to light. This Christian Science accomplishes, for one of the grand functions of scientific Christianity is to demonstrate true consciousness, which expresses nothing but the present spirituality. This proof of real selfhood destroys the belief of a mortal selfhood, or consciousness, which bases its thinking on matter and is consequently materialistic in nature—corporeal, given to self interest and the tendency to sin and sickness.

Through Science one can redeem himself from evil traits and unpleasant experiences imposed upon him by false consciousness. Identifying himself as the image or idea of divine Mind by expressing the divine character and exercising the faculties of Mind, he speeds the full revelation of the man he really is.

Mary Baker Eddy discusses mankind's advancement on page 76 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," showing that the individual who has progressed beyond matter cannot return to it. She says, "Neither will man seem to be corporeal, but he will be an individual consciousness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter."

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