Article July 12, 1913 Issue

WORKING WITH GOD

SAMUEL GREENWOOD.

In his second letter to the Corinthians St. Paul speaks of himself and his fellow Christians as workers together with God; and St. Mark records of the disciples, that after the ascension "they went forth, . . . the Lord working with them." According to Scriptural record and teaching, the privilege of intelligently working with God in the overcoming of a sense of evil, is available to all mankind, but this is not generally appreciated or believed possible because the popular concept of Deity, as formulated in human doctrines, is not such as to lead to the practical recognition of the divine presence, and of His ever-presence in time of need. Mortals have been nurtured in the belief that man exists in a state of estrangement from his Maker, hence their constant fear of calamity; but Christian Science makes plain the impossibility of God's ideas being separated from their divine Principle, and this understanding destroys mortal fear. It is but a sense of evil, or an evil sense, and not the dictum of Truth, which declares an existence separate from God, for it is evident that if man is the image of God, as the Scriptures teach, he could not live an instant apart from his divine source.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy speaks of Christian Science as "the revelation of Immanuel, 'God with us,' " not as the sender of disease and death, as is sometimes wrongly taught, but as "delivering the children of men from every ill 'that flesh is heir to'" (p. 107). This revelation of God's omnipresence as the creating and governing Principle of being, illumines human consciousness and dissipates the false notion that man's connection with his creator has been severed. Both reason and revelation declare the inseparability of Principle and idea, neither having existence without the other, even as on the human plane one cannot conceive of the sun apart from its light, or of the sun's rays as capable of reflecting that light when separated from their source.

The psalmist says, "The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?" On the night of his betrayal, after foretelling the desertion of his friends and followers, Jesus said, "Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." What should it be worth to a Christian to have such assurances as these, actually to know that God is working with him and for him, and that "the power of the Highest" is available in his behalf? What would it be worth to a man in business, for example, who is facing financial difficulties, to know that a great banker was ever ready to come to his relief? Or who would be disturbed over the increasing cost of living, as it is called, if he were reliably informed that the treasury of the nation was at his command? Wherefore, then, should a Christian fear when he may have the positive assurance that God and His law, with all that this implies, is on his side, and therefore that there is nothing against him?

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