Article January 9, 1915 Issue

Man's Place in the First Commandment

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

"The First Commandment," Mrs. Eddy writes, "demonstrates Christian Science" (Science and Health, p.340). This commandment covers the whole ground of Christian endeavor. It is the foundation of all true religion and of all right thinking. It expresses the Science of eternal being, wherein and whereof good alone is. Its demand upon mankind is not because it is in the Bible, but because it is the law of infinity; not because there is something besides God, but because there is nothing besides Him. If it were really true that other gods exist, that other powers rule, and that other causes create, it were surely no sin to acknowledge them.

While the first commandment is generally accepted as embodying man's obligation to God, it is not so generally regarded as including one's rightful attitude toward man. Jesus taught that the Son is as perfect as the Father; and Christian Science, true to his teaching, declares the perfection of the ideal man to be as scientifically indispensable to divine Truth as is the perfection of God. The Scriptures indicate that God is the only creator; hence if the Scriptures are true, there can be no other man than God's man, despite material evidence to the contrary. We should not forget that it is evil, so called, and not good, that first argued and still argues against the validity of God's word, and that led and still leads, in belief, to the recognition of another man than God's image and likeness. To the false sense that believes in evil it may seem to exist, but to the inspired thought that recorded the spiritual facts of being in the first chapter of Genesis, and that today understands them in Christian Science, aught besides God, infinite good, is seen to be impossible.

Since all Christians agree there is but one God, infinite and perfect, they should likewise agree to acknowledge but one type of man, and that he is as perfect as his origin. The corollary of the first commandment would be: Thou shalt have no other man than God's image and likeness. If God is the same now as in the beginning, and if there is and has been no other power, then man, in the reality of his being and in his relation to God, must be the same. The theory frequently advanced, that God bestowed upon man the faculty to recognize evil and the will or power to obey it, would preclude any necessity for the first commandment; for in such a theory good and evil have the same source and are essentially one. Truth is self-evidently incapable of deterioration, and so must be its idea or product. The true God and man, today as in the beginning, are the only God and man that exist. To accept the argument of evil respecting man, would be as sacrilegious as to accept the argument of evil respecting God, such as is said to have seduced Adam in the garden of Eden.

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