The Real Man

From the time she was a little girl Mrs. Eddy loved and studied the Bible, and when in later years she discerned in the Bible the truth about God and man, the revelation of Christian Science came to her and she wrote her textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” With Jesus’ words before her that “God is a Spirit,” and the declaration about man as given in the first chapter of Genesis, she wrote in her textbook (p. 468) the beautiful and life-giving words which she called “the scientific statement of being,” beginning, “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter,” and ending, “Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.”

God, Spirit, is Mind, Love, Life, infinite good. So man, made in God’s likeness, must be intelligent, loving, and active. As matter has no life, no truth, no intelligence, the man God made can have nothing to do with matter; he must be wholly spiritual. And there can be only that one kind of man, for God alone created man. Therefore, there is in reality no material man.

But sometimes it seems as if there were two men, one spiritual and one material. When we see a sick person or a selfish boy or girl and know that God made only good, we may wonder what to call the one who seems material.

Suppose that, many centuries ago, a great artist, say Raphael, had painted a beautiful picture and hung it in some Italian city. And suppose that many years later a person had come along and had said, I don’t like that arm, I’ll make it like this; and another had painted in a new head; and another had changed a foot, and so on, till the beautiful picture was entirely hidden and in its place was an ugly daub with no beauty of line or color. Suppose that, after a great many more years had gone by, someone had declared that the original canvas was really a painting by Raphael, but very few believed him and the message was again forgotten until still later there came another person who said that he had discovered a manuscript that declared the ugly daub had originally been a Raphael portrait. The world then said, Prove it to us; and he would begin carefully with a solvent to remove the false covering of paint; and little by little as it disappeared the picture which it had hidden would come to light, till finally the beauty of Raphael’s work shone out and convinced the world that the picture had always been there, and that the false colors had never been the picture at all but had hidden it from everybody’s sight.

No material comparison can adequately explain a spiritual fact, but the illustration may, perhaps, help to show that the real spiritual man has always existed, is the only man there is, and that he has only been hidden from human understanding by the images of false belief about man which mortal thought has tried to portray. Mortal thought has made a sick, sad, sinning picture of man, but it was never a picture of man as God’s image and likeness. Mrs. Eddy, knowing through her revelation that man is wholly spiritual and that mortal man never could be a reality, found a solvent—she called it the spiritual understanding of Love—which would remove all the covering of false belief about man, and show the real man who was hidden. She not only used the solvent herself, but she taught us how to use it. She says (Science and Health, p. 37), “It is possible,—yea, it is the duty and privilege of every child, man, and woman,—to follow in some degree the example of the Master by the demonstration of Truth and Life, of health and holiness.” So, no matter how young we may be, we can through our understanding of the truth that comes to us by studying the Bible and Science and Health, begin to destroy the false beliefs which seem to hide from human sight man in God’s image and likeness. And just as fast as the false disappears, the true appears.

Every time boys or girls refuse to let selfishness or resentment into their consciousness, because they know that Love is the only reality; every time they withstand a dishonest thought or deed, because they understand the truth about man; every time they destroy idleness or laziness or sickness, because they are demonstrating the activity of Life; every time they conquer confusion or stupidity, because they know that man is the manifestation of Mind—every such time they are manifesting something of the duty and privilege that Mrs. Eddy says belongs to them in proving the reality of the spiritual man, who knows only health, holiness, and intelligence. And the more they do this, the happier they are; for they find that the spiritual man they are helping to show forth, is never touched by quarrels or disappointments, by resentment or jealousy, by sickness or loss. They can prove more and more each day that those things are only mortal beliefs, which, when they refuse them room in their thoughts, are powerless to hide the real man.

So we can remember, at home and at school and at play, that we can resist every temptation to make any picture of man that would hide the real man from ourselves or others. And we may know that if any such pictures seem to be made, the solvent of Love will always destroy them and bring to light the real man made in God’s image and likeness. Jesus understood man perfectly. Mrs. Eddy says of him in Science and Health (pp. 476, 477), “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.”