It will be remembered that when the mission of Moses was about to commence, he sought to fortify himself in authority by asking the question, "Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." The name I AM signifies the only self-existence or the only ego. Mankind constantly refers to his personal sense of self as I, using what is called the first person singular to describe himself, but in reality he has no right to such an appellation, as there can be but one First Person, namely the infinite Person or God, and for mortal man to assume such a title in all seriousness is to take the name of God in vain—to attempt to arrogate to one's self the sole prerogative of the Almighty, and consequently bring himself into conflict with the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Yet mortal man has continued to hug the delusion that his physical person is the image and likeness of God, and that he is therefore entitled to speak of himself as I.

It was by this name I AM that God confirmed the ambassadorship of Moses and revealed himself to the children of Israel, and further identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To the Israelites, in bondage to a heathen nation which worshiped images of wood and stone made by the hands of men, the title of the self-existent One was all that was required, and by it Moses was accepted henceforth as the spokesman of God by all those who remembered and obeyed the teachings handed down to them, teachings which were obeyed by them from generation to generation.

The command of Christ Jesus to those seeking the spiritual life was, "Let him deny himself," cancel his false estimate of his personality, and thus assuming true humility let him "take up his cross, and follow me." This denial of self is a reversal of the lying promise made by the serpent, "Ye shall be as gods," and it is an all-important step in the proving of man's spiritual selfhood. There is then but one self, God, and the egotist is not His image and likeness but a counterfeit, which attempts to usurp Deity. The false concept of self, the I of personal sense is the cause of man's assumption of power and authority over his brother man, and should be abandoned in view of the statement that "power belongeth unto God," twice heard by the psalmist and thus specially emphasized. This does not, of course, mean that we have to abandon the use of the personal pronoun in our everyday conversation, but rather that we should understand that it is but a locution which custom has countenanced and seemed to make necessary, and that it is given place on sufferance only, and with a full understanding of the real import and significance of the word. It is by paying attention to such seemingly unimportant details that we help ourselves to get away from the mortal sense of existence and emerge into full stature, for as the prophet Isaiah says, "Precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little." Thus as infants shall we learn the rudiments of what is required for spiritual growth and be weaned away from the material sense of life in matter, and we shall, in the language of Peter, "as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word," in order that we may grow.