Large audiences for television interviews and talk shows with successful writers or politicians, actors or scientists, and so on may point to a general wish for evidence of man's capabilities. The genuine success of one individual can be encouraging to us all because it contributes to the overall success and progress of mankind.

Where success and talent are authentic—that is, constructive, opening wider a sense of mankind's capacities for good and leading to growth in understanding and compassion—then they hint at the real man, the manifestation of God. Examined through Christian Science, man is magnificent—magnificent because he shows forth the perfectness and majesty of divine Life. He is not a poor, fallible creature, as he's often adjudged according to mortal reasoning.

Talent, intelligence, vision, and the like don't have their source in mortal personality. They derive from God. They indicate the presence of God and His attributes. So genuine achievement should not draw our thought to mortal personality but should remind us of the infinitude and wisdom of God, divine Mind. There has never been, nor ever will be, a genuinely successful individual who has been the source of the qualities that brought about the success. Consciously or unconsciously, such an individual is showing something of his true identity, God's man.

How may we ourselves do better? By resting our thought as consistently as we can on more spiritually scientific premises. That man is the descendant of mortals and the father of mortals is the initial misconception on which limitations and mortality rest. We are the direct descendants of divine Life, Life's expression and manifestation.

A spiritually scientific perception of man cracks through the ice of personal sense, which seems to confine and chill our view of man. The possibility has come through Science for mankind to find a high—and an unlimited—definition of man. Science shows us how to base our reasoning on God, to affirm His immortal perfection and the unchanging perfection of man as God's expression.

Divine Life makes and keeps us the ideal man we really are, provides all we need, and creates the flawless universe in which we have our being. Cultural, class, or racial prejudice—none of these can actually come into being nor have a place in our being. The spiritual reality is that in our true selfhood we are inseparable from the infinite attributes and qualities belonging to God. In the measure that we acknowledge this we lay the foundation for being more useful and fulfilled—we evidence to a larger degree the magnificent man of divine Life's creating.

Because Christian Science reveals the omnipotence and omnipresence of divine Life, the only cause, it inevitably promotes and recognizes positive human achievement. To the degree we recognize the presence of Life and its idea, man, we rejoice in the possibilities of men, women, and children. Quite an improvement on sinking morosely into negative, sin-laden concepts of our fellows!

Suppose a small child is given a doll. One of the child's first actions will probably be to name it. The name will almost certainly be one that expresses the child's affection for the toy and the expectation of having a delightful relationship with it. We sometimes need to recognize within ourselves the innocence that prompts us to identify fellow beings positively.

The eternal scientific fact is that perfect, divine cause can have only perfect effect. Man is the infinite expression of infinite Life. Our admission of this, our living from this basis, means we can more and more cultivate the characteristics that enrich living and unlock gates to worthwhile achievements. We think in larger terms and more creatively. We think more universally and so less self-centeredly. We're freer of the ball and chain of theological views that man is an abject sinner.

Regardless of what levels we may have slithered to, we can find in the Science of man the way to immediately begin taking a better course. Far from being a hopeless failure or a squalid wrongdoer, man is actually the evidencer that good is permanent, present, and incorruptible. The life and spirit of Christ Jesus teach this.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Jesus acknowledged no ties of the flesh. He said: 'Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.'" ^{Science and Health, p. 31.} Jesus, more than anyone, has cut through the mythology of mortal man and disclosed man's magnificence as God's expression. His insight, of inexpressible significance, was the outcome of his conscious inseparability from the Father Mind. The possibilities of such perception have been broadened out to us today through divine Science, the Science of man, showing that man does not come from and live in matter, but arises and has his being in immortal Spirit. Here is an entirely fresh and infinitely hopeful foundation for humanity.

Geoffrey J. Barratt