Editorial March 12, 1949 Issue

INDIVIDUAL MAN

Helen Wood Bauman

However one may interpret his honest efforts to be Christianly in character, his reward is the recovery, or unveiling, of his spiritual individuality, which Christ Jesus taught is as perfect as its Maker. "Be ye therefore perfect," he said, "even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." To human sense, this recovery may seem to be a gradual development of personal goodness, but Christian Science explains it as the activity of Truth, God, dispelling the illusion of a mortal sense of manhood and revealing its own expression, man in God's image.

Through Christian Science we find that God is one infinite, individual Mind, and that man is His idea, an idea which divine Mind individualizes, or endows with conscious entity, and which is as immortal and indestructible as the Mind conceiving it. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 103), "In Science, form and individuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, individualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mind as tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious." Every idea of Mind is individual, for God's ideas are conscious identities, inevitably individual. In fact, individuality without consciousness is inconceivable.

False theology would parallel a human personality with God, claiming that a sinful little mind reaches out in supplication and adoration to a great sinless one. But Science reveals God as the only Mind and man as Mind's reflection, designed eternally to embody the great forces, or attributes, of Spirit in God's unfoldment of good. An infinite creation is required to express the individuality that is God; hence the father outlines each idea, and His unlimited energies—goodness, intelligence, integrity—are manifested individually in all His ideas.

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