Article September 7, 1907 Issue

THE PERFECT POWER

ARTHUR CHAMBERLAIN.

The law of the Lord is perfect.—Psalm 19:7.

All Christians, whether Scientists or not, are practically agreed that there is but one God, the creator of all things, and necessarily, that the law which governs creation is God's law. Precisely as monotheism disclaims a plurality of gods (who suppositionally work quite as often at cross-purposes as in unison), so modern thinkers disclaim any concept of law that asserts either the contradiction of one law by another or that any law of God can be lawfully annulled. Indeed men are rapidly learning that to speak of divine law in the plural is like speaking of God in the plural, if by this is meant opposing laws. The unity of God involves the unity of law, and unity is oneness. It is as impossible to conceive of law as self-contradictory as it is to think of God as at war with Himself. Yet it is clear that what is commonly called material law never attains that unity which always characterizes the law of God.

Nevertheless, the assumed material law which is thought to be the law of such a power as this—a law whose workings must be watched, limited, held in check at every turn, dealt with as one would deal with a venomous snake, too mighty to be crushed, too dangerous to be at large—this law is assumed to be the law of that infinite Love, goodness, wisdom, which we agree to call God! If material law were the law of God,—and therefore the expression of His own nature—experience would often lead us to feel that the less we could have of God the better! Logically, no God is better than a God whose power, if once suffered to get loose, would wreck the universe. Is it not obvious that any power, at once infinite and destructive, would be in its very inception infinitely destructive, and therefore logically an absurdity, an unthinkable proposition?

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