Article April 26, 1913 Issue

TRUE MODEL

ADELE LESLIE BECK.

To those who have been taught to think of God as a magnified human being, the second commandment is a mystery, or else it has been so materially interpreted that the spiritual import is lost; but it needs to be understood before we can comprehend what we worship as God, since it defines more than any other commandment what the Godhead is. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." How could we have a corporeal concept of God if we understood this? Have we ever seen the form of love, unselfishness, purity, life, or truth? Could they be pictured as anything that we have seen, in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth?

Mrs. Eddy says, "We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives;" and then she continues to define the perfect model, which is not a picture of any corporeality, when she says, "Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love—the kingdom of heaven—reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear" (Science and Health, p. 248). Says St. Paul, "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal," and this in obedience to the command, "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." And here we ask, What and who hates Life, Truth, and Love? Only that father-lie, which was a murderer from the beginning; which abode not in the truth, and the truth was not in him.

Will not infinite Truth, this zealous God (for zealous is the spiritual signification of jealous), visit the iniquity of the father-lie upon its children, sin, disease, and death, and destroy all untruth with the truth, unto the third and fourth generation, and show mercy unto thousands of those that love Truth and keep God's commandments? Paul tells us that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." Again he says, "I am jealous over you with godly jealousy : for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." In Christian Science we soon learn the vital importance of rejecting all false concepts of God and man, and of trusting Truth to reveal to us the spiritual idea which is the model for all true thinking and living.

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