Article September 11, 1978 Issue

Putting on the clothes that "make the man"

MARGARET EILEEN MOORE

The Psalmist speaks of God as covering Himself "with light as with a garment."Ps. 104:2; A prophet writes of the Christ as giving "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."Isa. 61:3; Another Old Testament writer tells us that when the king of Babylon brought Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison, he "changed his prison garments." Thereafter Jehoiachin "did continually eat bread before him all the days of his life."Jer. 52:33;

As we study the Bible with the help of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, we perceive that God has made man as His expression and clothed him with His own spiritual qualities as with a garment. And as we study, we also come to understand more clearly the mental nature of all cause and effect and to know God as the only true Mind, or cause. Many Bible stories illustrate these facts, and the main characters can be recognized as people who understood the essential link between the exercise of spiritual qualities and God's power to bring harmony to human existence.

Like the prophet's ringing call, "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city,"Isa. 52:1; the call of Christian Science commands human consciousness to awake and "put on" the spiritual qualities with which God has actually already invested us as His children. The power exercised by man as the reflection of Mind, the likeness of Spirit, is the ability to reflect effortlessly Mind's qualities and to be conscious of himself as the child of God. This reflected consciousness covers man "with light as with a garment."

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