The human being, before he learns of Christian Science, naturally associates his sense of existence with a physical body and a personal mind. He also entertains the belief that what he calls his life resides in this body. When he learns or is told that Christian Science declares the unreality of matter, his first and perhaps natural reaction may be: "Well, if there is no matter' and I have no material body, what am I? Have I no tangible existence? In just what way am I identified?"

While Christian Science teaches that all is Spirit and its infinite manifestation, it should be said that Christian Science neither wipes out nor destroys man's identity, or his distinct individuality. On the contrary, it gives him a scientific understanding of his permanent and ineradicable being.

In the first chapter of Genesis the fact of man's true spiritual identity has been presented, for we read that God created man in His own image. It follows logically that God being Spirit, Mind, His expression and exact image must be spiritual and divinely mental, since effect must be like cause. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Gen. 1:27, 28). It may be noted here that the Scriptural account not only states that God, Mind, created man in His own image and according to His own nature—spiritual, perfect, and wholly good—but also declares that man as the divine image, or idea, shall be infinitely multiplied.

Holding to a sense of the physical, and of a material body, as man is seeing "through a glass, darkly," as Paul puts it. The discernment, through the understanding of Christian Science, of man's true individuality or body enables us to know even as we are known of God. Therefore, is it not clear that one's true identity appears as an individual expression or manifestation of God's being? Describing man's spiritual and mental nature, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 76): "When being is understood, Life will be recognized as neither material nor finite, but as infinite,—as God, universal good; and the belief that life, or mind, was ever in a finite form, or good in evil, will be destroyed." And she continues, "Neither will man seem to be corporeal, but he will be an individual consciousness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter." Then, that which gives man his specific identity or individuality is not a matter body but his consciousness, his individual consciousness of being. It is our individual consciousness that identifies us with God, with Mind—as being the reflection of Mind, as being one and coexistent with Mind.

As has been said, the word body is generally associated with matter, but used in relation to Spirit and the facts of Spirit, it takes on a very different meaning. Body having been identified with the physical, one can understand why reference to body in a spiritual sense might, if not made clear, convey a concept of spiritualized matter. Christian Science, however, never spiritualizes matter, but is constantly doing away with any materialization of Spirit. In her textbook Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 425): "Consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered. Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew." Obviously this does not mean that consciousness constructs a material body, but that the substance of consciousness being thought or ideas, body in its true sense is spiritually mental, an embodiment of ideas. And this is exactly what man in his true being is—the compound idea, the infinite idea and the idea of infinity, ever unfolding and revealing and expressing itself in immeasurable ideas.

One therefore need never feel that his identity, or individuality, has become shadowy or intangible because he has turned away from matter and is claiming his true selfhood, or body, as the unfolding of God's being, as individual, incorporeal consciousness. If a single idea, identity, or individuality could be lost or absorbed, God would not be infinite but finite. One does not lose his identity because he gives up a sense of matter body. On the contrary, he finds it. In the understanding of Science his individuality becomes increasingly definite. His specific originality is established and in the order of divine unfoldment is forever appearing.

It is through and because of individuality that we are conscious of ourselves and our distinctive being. Every idea knows and is conscious of itself. It cannot be confused, lost, or absorbed with any other idea. Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians (15; 37, 38), points out in an unusual statement the false and the true understanding of body: "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body." And correlative to this statement, our Leader writes in Science and Health (p. 280), "Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, the Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man,—through Mind, not matter."

As the ever-unfolding reflection and embodiment of God, divine Mind, man's spiritual identity exists now and forever.

Richard J. Davis