Article January 20, 1923 Issue

All Christians agree that the first and foremost commandment...

Dr. Johannes Klaudius, Committee on Publication for Germany,

Darmstadter Tagblatt

All Christians agree that the first and foremost commandment is to love God with all their mind and with all their strength, and their neighbor as themselves. The fulfillment of this commandment was the substance of the life of Jesus; and Christian Science makes it possible for all men of all time to obey this commandment. "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Christian Science is the revival of primitive Christianity. It brings the understanding of the true nature of God and His creation, including man. God is Spirit, the one Spirit, eternal and perfect, and His creation, expressing His nature, is spiritual. Man, as the image and likeness of God, must therefore be spiritual. God is Life, Truth, and Love: He is good. God is omnipotent,—has all power; He is omnipresent,—fills all space. Apart from Him, from good, there is no reality, in the true sense of the word; and reality can have no beginning or end; it endures forever, being perfect. In this realm of reality nothing can exist which is unlike it,—nothing which is not at once eternal and perfect. Sin, sickness, and death are no part of this realm, the kingdom of God. The material world, cognized by the senses, seems to be real; but it is imperfect and therefore temporal. The so-called material creation exists merely in belief in the so-called carnal mind, and remains only so long as it is believed in; its seeming existence rests merely on the belief that there is a cause and effect apart from God, Spirit.

It should be one's life-purpose to put off the carnal mind or material sense, which has nothing in common with God, the only reality. The Bible says that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," that one must be "born again" in order to enter into this kingdom, which is not of this world but in spiritual consciousness. Christian Science teaches that mankind must eliminate all will-power, and strive to cultivate spiritual sense, in order to attain that sonship with God to which every one is appointed. By continually and steadfastly striving, above all in our thinking, and then, naturally, in words and deeds, to be kind, honest, pure, unselfish, loving, chaste, patient, humble, fearless, consecrated, and obedient, we acquire spiritual understanding, the perception of the true divine consciousness; and, as a natural consequence, salvation from all evil; but God alone gives "the increase."

Jesus' example and commands set forth the healing of the sick as a necessary part of Christianity. What a blessing for mankind that Christian Science is again proving irrefutably that God is the only true and reliable physician! The textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, which is available to every one, explains in detail that this teaching offers true Christianity and real Science for the salvation of men of all nations. Christian Science, being a practical religion, must be lived. By its fruits alone, by the actual inner purification and the awakening to the peace and joy of man's sonship with God, can one understand that this teaching from above is a good and perfect gift from the affluence of divine Love. "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God."

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