Article May 2, 1908 Issue

ACKNOWLEDGING GOD

PROF. JOEL RUFUS MOSLEY.

That God is good and All-in-all, that He is the present and eternal Life of all that has life and being, that He loves and meets every need of His whole creation, that all things are safe in the divine Mind and Love, that in Him and to Him there is good and only good, and that He is always working everything together for the highest good to each and all, and consciously so for all who love and do good, is what all should wish to have true, and what every one in high moments of insight and love instinctively feels is true. In fact, it is the very essence of all true religious experience to see and to feel that the power by which we live is wise and kind and good, and that we exist to bestow and to receive benefits and not injuries. Christian Science says that the power by which we live is not only good, but is All; that there is no real evil, and that what seems to be disappears as we acknowledge the good and only the good, perfection and only perfection, Life and only Life, Love and only Love.

To acknowledge God even in part of His ways and in part of our ways, does so much for us that it leads us to the reasonable hope that as we acknowledge Him in all of His ways and in all of our ways, it will do everything for us, or rather it will enable us to realize that God from the perfect necessity of His perfect being is doing all things well and is meeting every need. Certainly we have to be acknowledging something, admitting something to be true, all the time; we need to have something in consciousness, need to be thinking about something, feeling something, or doing something. All experience teaches us that it is much better to acknowledge good to be real and to act upon it as such than it is to acknowledge and act upon any of the suggestions of evil.

Christian Science says that we should acknowledge, admit to be true and real, health and not sickness, harmony and not discord, Life and not death, perfection and not imperfection, Love and not hate, God and not the denier and opposer of His goodness and allness, and that we should do this because it is the truth of being and because it sets us free from the seeming reality of evil, sin, sickness, fear, and death. Mrs. Eddy says that "immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual" (Science and Health, p. 427); and she says this because it is true and because to acknowledge that it is true casts out fear, heals the body, brings joy, peace, and assurance, and blesses one in every way. She also says that we should "become conscious ... that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter" (Ibid., p. 14), and she says this because this is the truth about Life and intelligence and because it heals the body to be conscious of this truth. Christian Science says to everything which seems to deny the allness and goodness of God, that God is All-in-all, and persists in saying it, not to make it true, but because it is true and only needs to be acknowledged in thought and in life to make it appear true even to the senses. In the midst of what seems to be death, it sees that Life never dies and is All-in-all. Where selfishness and hate seem to abound, it says that Love is supreme, and will appear so as we feel and express love and only love.

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