Article December 10, 1979 Issue

You can't catch a beam of light

ARNO PRELLER

The famous clown Emmet Kelley had a routine in which he would attempt to sweep up the spotlight beam cast on the stage. He would chase it all over the stage, but even when he caught up with it, his attempts at sweeping it up were obviously futile. This act invariably got a laugh from the audience. Why? Because of the absurdity of trying to treat something that had the properties of light as if it were a solid object.

The clown's conception of light is really no more absurd than human conceptions of man that treat him as a material, corporeal entity. The Bible teaches that "God created man in his own image."^{Gen. 1:27;} Since God is infinite Spirit, not a material being, aren't we entertaining a misconception of man when we think of him as material substance? If we are made in God's image, our true substance remains in Spirit and we simply reflect it. To think of ourselves in terms of matter is just as foolish as the clown's efforts to sweep up the spotlight.

Man's true substance includes all the spiritual ideas and qualities that originate in God. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says of man: "He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious identity of being as found in Science, in which man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker."^{Science and Health, p. 475;}

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