Article February 17, 1906 Issue

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Arthur Chamberlain with contributions from Dean Hodges

Briefly, then, we find happiness to be normal for man, and the desire for it to be a law of his being and God-bestowed; we find mortal existence to be a failure so far as any permanent happiness is concerned, and to ultimate in defeat and death; we find that spiritual existence, though held merely as a future possibility, has given men courage and constancy, through ceaseless endeavor, to strive to make real, to some extent at least, a spiritual existence here and now, in flat defiance of material concepts and in the face of all logic based upon them. Confessedly, it is the only possible existence that can, even conceivably, give man what he rightly feels to be inalienably and eternally his own.

Why, then, should we attempt to saddle Deity with the creation of a state of existence for man which is a proven failure, when at the same time we ascribe to God the creation, for man, of a state of existence which is a perfect success? Why not frankly admit that material existence is not a real state of existence at all, but false and unreal; that there is, and can be, but one state of existence,—spiritual, since God is spirit; good, since God is good; perfect, since God is perfect; eternal, with the eternity of God?

Surely "in the bright lexicon of" God "there's no such word as fail." What He created perfect abides perfect. He created naught imperfect and He is the sole creator. Surely God created nothing unlike himself. Let us turn to the Eternal Goodness which alone is I AM to all generations, and, thus turning, humbly, joyfully, reverently, see all evil, like the dreams of the night, disappear in the clear shining of omnipotent Love.

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