When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?... Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet... O lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Ps. 8:3.4, 6,9)

You can almost hear the awe in the Psalmist's voice in this passage as he considers his own existence against the backdrop of the heavens, in the context of God's great love. "What is man...?" For him this question inspired a sense of spiritual purpose—a recognition that all God has in store for every one of us is very, very good. God's grand purpose for each of us includes dominion!

As we near the turn of the twentieh century, with so many changes in the world happening so rapidly, the concept of man's dominion is more important than ever to understand.

What is this dominion? It's not physical strength, domination, authoritarian control over our fellowman, nor harmful disregard of our earthly environment. It's our God-given power over mortal, destructive beliefs, a power that man possesses by the very virtue of having been created in God's likeness. As Genesis reads, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion..." (1:26).

This dominion is the healing power that comes from seeing man as Christ Jesus did, in a spiritual light. "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals," writes Mary Baker Eddy. She continues: "In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy" (Science and Health, pp. 476–477).

The healing works of Jesus were not supernatural miracles but were based on a demonstrable divine law. The same kind of healing is possible and is going on today. People are challenging the conventional picture of man as basically physical or mortal, prone to sin and disease. Rather than a human exercise of mind over matter, however, this is a fundamentally different way of viewing creation: as wholly spiritual, not material; as governed by God's law of harmony, not by physical law. It demands that we really love one another—deeply—and, most of all, that we recognize and love our own true being.

Some time ago I noticed a cluster of warts growing on the underside of my foot, causing some discomfort when I walked. It is clear in the Bible that the will of God for man is always blessing, always good. When the Psalmist unequivocally declared man's dominion in the words "thou hast put all things under his feet," that certainly could not be misconstrued to mean that God could have caused those warts! God, good, never causes disease in any form. Rather, I felt that the verse spoke to my situation with irony, showing me how absurd it was to believe that anything ugly or harmful could be part of God's image and likeness. No picture of disease could pose a legitimate argument against the absolute perfection of man's true being—certainly not those little warts!

I prayed for several days to understand better my God-given dominion. Then I noticed a poster with a picture of daffodils in full bloom. They were growing up through a crack in the asphalt pavement that appeared to have resulted solely from the force of the bulbs bursting forth into bloom. The caption read, "Nothing can thwart God's purpose for you." I had to laugh. It was suddenly clear to me that all the arguments the world can lay down, all the arguments presented by the physical senses, do not have the power to hinder God's plan of perfection for each of us. They can't overturn the dominion of Spirit over disease and discord. They can't deter us, slow us down, or even get underfoot when we recognize that freedom is God's purpose for us. The arguments of disease are no more convincing than are the arguments of sin to make us believe that man is something less than the reflection of God, wholly and completely good. I could see that these spiritual facts included me, and a few days later while putting on my socks, I noticed that the warts were completely gone.

Dominion is ours—now. Like the Psalmist, we really can begin to feel that incredible sense of spiritual purpose, claiming our God-given dominion over sin, sickness, and death.