Question. — What is man?
Answer. — Man is not matter, — made up of brains, blood, bones, and other material elements. The Scriptures Human factors. inform us that man was made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness. The reflection of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and because of this, he must be so understood in Christian Science. Man is the idea of divine Principle, not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious identity of Being, as found in Science, where man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, or creative power of his own, but reflects all that belongs to his Maker.
And God said: “Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death, inasmuch as he derives his essence from God, and possesses not a Incapacity for any evil. single original, or underived, power. Hence the real man cannot depart from holiness. Nor can God, by whom man was evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not God's man, for the offspring of God cannot be evil. Mortals are man's counterfeits. They are the children of the Wicked One, or the one evil, which declares that
