Article October 17, 1977 Issue

Do You Know Your Own Identity?

DOROTHY M. HARVEY

One means of attempting to identify a criminal is to line the suspect up with a number of other people known to be quite unconnected with the crime. Then a witness to the offense is asked to select the offender. But when a suspect has been mistakenly identified, he has never at any point been guilty, although all the evidence may seem to point to him.

Man's innocence as a perfect child of God remains intact, regardless of what the senses would tell us. Appearances can be misleading. We may hear that someone feels ill, that a wound is painful, or that symptoms sound serious. Christian Science teaches us that this testimony is false; to accept it is to be mistaken about identity and to believe ourselves creatures of flesh and blood rather than in our true being created by God and therefore spiritual.

Man's identity is fully recognized only when God, Mind, who has created him, is acknowledged. There is no Mind without idea to express it and no idea without Mind to evolve it. Mind and idea are inextricably united. God, who is Spirit, cannot create matter with all its attendant limitations. We read in the Bible, "Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs?"^{James 3:12;}

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