University of Virginia Library

Inverted images and ideas

As God is substance and man is the divine image and likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only the substance of good, the substance of Spirit, not matter. The belief that man has any other substance, or mind, is not spiritual and breaks the First Commandment, Thou shalt have one God, one Mind. Mortal man seems to himself to be material sub- stance, while man is "image" (idea). Delusion, sin, dis- ease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down.

This falsity presupposes soul to be an unsubstantial dweller in material forms, and man to be material instead of spiritual. Immortality is not bounded by mortality.

302:1Soul is not compassed by finiteness. Principle is not to be found in fragmentary ideas.