Editorial April 30, 1977 Issue

Magnificent Man

Geoffrey J. Barratt

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.

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