On the ceiling of a chapel he decorated, Michelangelo has represented God the Father as a majestic man, dignified and beneficent beyond words, and to Christian Scientists one of the most suggestive features of his famous work is this, that in it he illustrates the immensely significant fact that in the innumerable chapels of individual consciousness the divine character is outlined very much after such a superhuman model who is yet subject to limitations which are utterly opposed to the universally accepted dogma that God is infinite, the All-in-all.

It would seem that no one who attributes the world order to an individual source, called God, could fail to appreciate the importance of the emphasis which Christian Science lays upon the necessity of gaining a right concept of the nature of this all-creative, all-governing Being. Mrs. Eddy's words, "The true idea of God gives the true understanding of Life and Love, robs the grave of victory, takes away all sin and the delusion that there are other minds, and destroys mortality" (Science and Health, p. 323), make it clear that she regarded right thought of God as the summum bonum. Surely nothing can be more fundamental, more vital, or more imperative, and it is probable that no other teaching of Christian Science is more profoundly and more helpfully influencing general religious thought than is this to-day.

That the concept of Deity which men have entertained should have borne the impress of their imperfect sense of the nature of personality, so that they were led to think and speak of God as a mighty king, seems not at all surprising, and yet it is apparent that at their best all the Scripture writers recognized the menace of this point of view. In moments when they were "caught up into paradise," as St. Paul describes one of his own experiences, they were always exalting the name (nature) of the Lord, were trying to instruct the people out of that anthropomorphism which has regarded the Supreme Being as other than infinite Spirit. Mrs. Eddy clearly discerned the existing need of the religious world in this respect. She saw the hopelessness of its spiritual advance so long as inconsistent and incongruous concepts of God remained regnant in human consciousness; and the heart of the gospel which she preached from the date of her discovery of the present, healing power of the truth Christ Jesus taught, might be said to be found in her oft repeated declaration that God is infinite Truth, Life, Love. By making use of the Scripturally authorized synonyms for God, she undertook to rectify and enlarge every thought of Him which would in any way impeach His integrity and thus fetter faith or discourage aspiration.

Just here it may be said that practically all Christian creeds include definite statements respecting the infinity, the righteousness, and the integrity of the divine nature, but unhappily, Christian people have not logically adhered to these premises in all that they have thought and said about God, hence much of current belief is at war with, and cannot possibly be adjusted to, His asserted all-wisdom, all-goodness, and all-power. This lamentable fact has furnished a legitimate basis for the charge of ignorance or inconsistency, and the one way of escape from the contradiction is found in the return to that demonstrably true teaching of Christ Jesus which could but be named Christian Science. In this teaching all that is attributed to God, all of which He is the asserted origin and support, and all for which He is made responsible, is the necessary outcome of the fundamental postulates respecting His nature, the various synonyms which are used for God serving to present His inherent right relation to every subject of thought.

The practical value of these synonyms is easily discerned. For instance, to think of God as infinite Truth introduces us at once into the realm of Mind, of intelligence. We know that Truth apprehended constitutes right consciousness, the true selfhood; hence the identity of this right consciousness, or man, with Truth's reflection or expression. This at once illumines a large area of the Master's teaching. He declared that life, eternal life, is a God-knowing, and also that Truth-knowing brings freedom. All true progress is to be gained, therefore, as error is supplanted by Truth. This takes place in consciousness, and it manifestly brings the right thinker into at-one-ment with Truth. Immanuel, "God with us," now becomes perfectly intelligible as divine Truth apprehended. The coming of the Holy Ghost, the dawning of the Christ-idea, the new birth,—all are identified with Truth's appearing in consciousness, the attainment of the Mind that was in Christ Jesus. Redemption is effected as Truth is unfolded to the spiritually aspiring, and the true Bethlehem is found to be not far from any one of us. How many of the deep things of Scripture teaching are thus unveiled!

But further, we all know how difficult it is while thinking of God as a corporeal personality to understand or get any abiding inspiration from the teaching that He is omnipresent. Christians accept the fact as not to be questioned, but the how of it is, for the many, altogether obscure and inexplicable, so that the essential requisite of a truly inspired life, namely, an uplifting and continuous sense of the divine nearness, is quite unknown. Every effort to gain it has proved mockingly futile, and the outcome has been that, lacking the foundation of a real knowledge of God, no enduring spiritual structure has been or can be erected. If now, however, one begins to think of God as infinite Truth, he will be impressed with the rapidity with which these old-time difficulties begin to disappear. One has no sense whatever of any necessary separation from the truth. On the contrary we know that it is everywhere present; that it is not limited by or subject to time or space; that the laws pertaining to recent discoveries were as near to Archimedes as they were to Edison, and that their utilization was not a question of their existence, but of human insight. The Medes and Persians might as certainly have had telephones, etc., as we, had they through study and investigation come to know as much of the so-called forces of nature as did Bell and Dolbear. To gain a knowledge of law and order always means simply that we must awaken. Thus thinking, one's trouble in grasping the fact of the divine omnipresence speedily reaches its vanishing point, and his heart is as speedily made glad.

Yet again, Truth is eternal, unchangeable, and all-inclusive. It is forever pure and perfect, its expression is always harmonious, hence beautiful. It is just and impartial, it cannot be exhausted or monopolized, made over, or enslaved. It can never have to do with or consent to falsity for any purpose or end; hence our sure conviction that error is not truth in the making. For the true to be, is always for falsity not to be. Furthermore we know that Truth is one, and that this one is always right and therefore good. To say that evil is legitimate or good would be to say that falsity is true, and both are ethically unthinkable. Even when men consent to falsify, it is always excused as a "necessary evil," and not as good in itself, so that the unfailing intolerance of Truth for evil is still maintained in human thought.

And now how wonderfully these universal and undisputed perceptions of Truth's immutable nature and relations clarify and establish one's concept of God! What a clearing up of questionings they bring about! Indeed, the more one thinks of the ultimate fact of the universe as the expression of Truth, the more he rejoices that it is true. That God is Truth, and that He cannot be conscious of any untruth, any evil or disharmony,—may be said to be the first, the last, and the best thing to be known, and this knowing, Christian Science is certainly bringing about. More,—let it be told in Gath and published in the streets of Askelon,—it is healing the sick and sinful thereby!

The products of human skill usually reveal their finest art when they are seen from a single point of view, or in a specific light. They cannot bear the fullest inspection, because they are not above criticism. With a lily, however, a dewdrop, or an ideal character,—the more carefully it is examined and the greater the number of points from which it is observed, the more its splendors are revealed. New discoveries of hidden grace and glory are forever being made, and this explains, in part, why the study of the divine nature through the larger spiritual symbolism employed in Christian Science serves to magnify and enhance the glory of God, since, as Moses declares, "his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he."

Copyright, 1918, by The Christian Science Publishing Society, Falmouth and St. Paul Streets, Boston, Massachusetts. Entered at Boston post office as second-class matter