Editorial February 26, 1927 Issue

Sons of God

Albert F. Gilmore

Few statements in the Bible apart from the declarations of Christ Jesus himself have brought more of comfort and balm to troubled hearts than have John's familiar words, "Now are we the sons of God." Wonder upon wonder! We, the sons of God, children of the infinite Father, offspring of the Most High! An early step in the effort to gain some adequate grasp of the true significance of these momentous words should be to inquire who are "we" whom John declared to be the sons of God. Surely not mortals, for mortals partake of qualities so unlike the divine that by no possibility could the handiwork of God be confused with objects so transitory.

Then to whom did John refer? Who are the sons of God? It is in answer to this all-important query that Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475): "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas." This definite statement places man entirely outside the categories of material belief, revealing his true selfhood as the offspring of God. Man is not physique, but the image of Love. Surely the image of divine Love could never be possessed of qualities so unlike Love as selfishness, hatred, greed, jealousy, envy, malice, resentment—qualities commonly identified with the false concept of man, physique. Then with what positiveness may we assert that the manifestation of these, and of all material qualities of thought, belongs wholly to a false concept of man and, in consequence, is but illusory, having nothing in common with God's idea.

As we progress in the study and practice of Christian Science we are increasingly convinced of the imperative need to hold unremittingly to the true concept, to man as idea, the image—expression—of God; and this must be with no slightest degree of doubt or mental reservation. We are the sons of God now, and no protestation of the so-called mortal mind, no argument it may present or claim to the contrary it may proffer, can in the least degree change this immutable fact.

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