Article April 22, 1905 Issue

The Omnipotence of God

W. D. MC CRACKAN.

The word "omnipotence" is not infrequently used in a manner which is so careless as to frustrate the legitimate conclusions that should be drawn from its true meaning. It is sometimes used as equivalent to superior power or supreme power, while it really means almightiness, and its true significance will not admit of any lesser interpretation. Its derivation makes it clear that the word omnipotence means "all-power" or all-mightiness; not merely a power superior to other powers, or even a power supreme over all other powers, but the only real power, the possibility of the existence of any other real powers being excluded. There cannot be more than "all," hence there cannot be another real power beside omnipotence. It is thus, as the one and only power, that Christian Scientists are taught to regard and know God.

The admission that there is any other power beside that of God, leads, as our text-book shows, to errors variously called mythology, idolatry, or materialism, and to the worship of all manner of other gods, in disobedience to the first commandment.

The proper definition of omnipotence having once been clearly established, it will follow that if there seem to be other so-called powers beside the only power, such powers cannot be real, but must be illusive or delusive beliefs of powers, pretended and pretentious counterfeits of powers, which the recognition of God as the only power will promptly dispel as falsities. These so-called powers manifest themselves to the material senses as real and potent, frequently as violent and terrible, and seem at times cleverly to mimic the only power by acting apparently with intelligence and under law. But since the material senses can testify only of matter and never of God or Spirit, they are incompetent to give evidence concerning the omnipotence of God, and their reputed evidence on this subject must perforce be set aside as invalid and irrelevant. The only evidence admissible is spiritual evidence based on spiritual comprehension and apprehension; upon the understanding of the Christ-mind; upon the Science of Christianity or Christian Science.

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