In human experience it is increasingly necessary to identify oneself. To facilitate this, one usually carries with him various cards and other means of identification, giving pertinent facts regarding his appearance and his background in education and business. This human method of identification classifies man as mortal, born of human parents, occupying space in a material universe peopled with millions of other finite mortals, each with a mind, body, background, and self-interest peculiarly his own, subject to chance, change, and conditions outside his control.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 477): "Identity is the reflection of Spirit, the reflection in multifarious forms of the living Principle, Love. Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter. Soul can never reflect anything inferior to Spirit."

Since man's true identity as understood in Christian Science is the reflection of God, it is wholly spiritual. It is of primal importance that mankind awaken to man's oneness with God as His idea, or reflection, for it is only through the realization and demonstration of his real nature that one can experience in any condition and under all circumstances the freedom and dominion of his spiritual identity.

Christ Jesus was the greatest Exemplar of right self-identification the world has ever known. He said (John 10:30): "I and my Father are one"; and (John 2:19), "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Referring to the latter statement and to Jesus' reappearance after the crucifixion, Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 27): "It is as if he had said: The I—the Life, substance, and intelligence of the universe—is not in matter to be destroyed."

How satisfying is the revelation of man's oneness with God! How demonstrable the fact that the I of our being—our Life, substance, and intelligence—is never in matter to be destroyed! What infinite vistas and possibilities are opened to us as we realize that God alone is the only cause, or source, of our being! Man as the reflection of God, His perfect manifestation, or expression, is the effect of God; thus he is in a degree as perfect and unconfined as his cause.

To understand that God, the only cause and creator, is responsible for man's completeness and perfection; to know that man reflects all that God includes—health, beauty, ability, capacity, supply—is to experience the peace and dominion of the kingdom of heaven within. How is it possible for one to be afraid, to be in a state of suspense, or to be frustrated in the presence of the spiritual fact that man's purpose for existing is to manifest, within God's infinitude, the power and glory of His nature and being?

We are enabled to discredit and yield the illegitimate claims and demands of material sense existence, with its false responsibilities, sorrows, and limitations, in the degree that we recognize and accept the truth of our identity and let Soul existence be the reality of our being. Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 5): "Soul is the only real consciousness which cognizes being."

Soul cognizes its own nature and manifests it through its ideas, which are ever consciously identified perfectly in infinite variety of form, color, and outline. Thus man's identity as the reflection of Soul, Spirit, God, is ever safe and secure in Soul's keeping. Man's opportunity, continually new and fresh, is ever present. His joy is firmly established and is incapable of fluctuation or change.

Every aspect of man's being is perfect and is harmoniously established forever. The divinity and purity of his being—its oneness, or unity, with Soul, Spirit—preclude the possibility that it will be defiled, deformed, dethroned, or destroyed.

Right self-identification must become a constant way of thinking and living. Only by a conscious, constant acknowledgment and demonstration of man's indissoluble oneness with God as His expression do we render to God the things that are God's.