Article August 7, 1920 Issue

God and Idea

ROSE MAUDE KEELER

IN "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" speaking of the chapter entitled "Recapitulation" (p. 465), Mrs. Eddy says, "Absolute Christian Science pervades its statements, to elucidate scientific metaphysics." She further states on this page, "Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Being, and His reflection is man and the universe." From this absolute statement we are confronted with the oneness of God and His idea, of the indissoluble unity which Christ Jesus exemplified throughout his earthly career. Jesus never failed to turn the thought of the disciples to this fact: "I and my Father are one." In other words, he demonstrated man's oneness with the Father.

The spiritual idea, then, originates in Spirit, God. Thus idea cannot be separated from its cause, because God and His idea is one. Paul says in the eighth chapter of Romans, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." Then man's union with Principle is indissoluble. Infinite Principle has its expression in infinite idea. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 258), "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis." The true man is the active manifestation of this boundless, limitless One.

It is a great thing to begin to know something about God and idea, to find that as the sun's ray is to the sun so is man to God—inseparable from Him. Though the mists of socalled material sense may seem to hide the sun, yet there it is—untouched, shining in its resplendent glory. So humanity learns that man is the pure reflection of Mind. Then comes the question, How do I know this? I know it because I am conscious of my own existence. I am conscious of living, and Life is God. To be conscious is to be intelligent, to be intelligent is to be active. Thus from this reasoning we deduce conscious, intelligent activity.

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