Article January 12, 1924 Issue

Effect

EMILY EDWARDS

On page 275 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God." The writer had often read these words and thought she had understood them; and it was therefore with something like a shock that she realized one day that up to that moment she had been blind to the truth that all effect belongs to God. When the beauty of this statement dawned upon her consciousness, it was as though a weight had been rolled from her shoulders.

For many weary ages the workers of the world have been carrying a heavy burden of responsibility and care; and the more conscientious the worker, the heavier has seemed to be the burden. Until Mrs. Eddy presented to the world Christian Science, with its wonderful revelation of the nature of God, only in rare instances did men understand the omnipresence of God sufficiently to enable them to grasp what Christ Jesus meant when he said, "I can of mine own self do nothing," and so to cast their care upon the Father, who "doeth the works," in order to free themselves from this burden of responsibility. Even when one has had the help of the teachings of Christian Science, this false sense clings to him and threatens to destroy all joy in his work, until he awakens to the fact that it is part of the belief in a selfhood apart from God. We concede gladly, and willingly, that God is All, and that He is the cause of all that exists; but we are prone to be deceived into allowing the logical sequence of this, namely, that effect belongs to God, to elude us.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 23) our Leader says, "Reason and revelation declare that God is both noumenon and phenomena,—the first and only cause;" and on page 25 of the same book she states: "That there is but one God or Life, one cause and one effect, is the multum in parvo of Christian Science; and to my understanding it is the heart of Christianity, the religion that Jesus taught and demonstrated. In divine Science it is found that matter is a phase of error, and that neither one really exists, since God is Truth, and All-in-all."

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