A Gorious Discovery

                                              John Robert Howell



        Genesis 1:27 reads:  "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created  he him."  It is worth noting that the Hebrew word here for "man" is "Adam."  In Genesis 12:7 man is said to  be formed of the dust of the ground, and that "man" is also "adam."  Around this fleshly axle theological material mindedness and slavish literalness to the text have been wrapped and tangled for over two millennia.

        Without Mary Baker Eddy and her glorious Discovery, we might never have known better.  Her inspired and inspiring definition on pages 475-77* of her Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures is alone worth the cost of that precious volume.  Students of Christian Science are thus blessed with the knowledge that the man of our heavenly Father God's creating is something much more glorious than the descendant of a couple of wardrobeless sinners cavorting about the Garden of Eden skimpily clad only with "napkins" made of fig leaves.
 

        *Let me quote from some of the passages in Science and Health:

"Question. -- What is man?

"Answer. -- Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements.  The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God.  Matter is not that likeness.  The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit.  Man is spiritual and perfect;

A mortal sinner is not God's man.  Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals.  They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil, which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo.

Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood.

When speaking of God's children, not the children of men, Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you," that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God's image is unfallen and eternal.  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.  Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy."