Article April 23, 1927 Issue

The Commandments

FREDDA R. GRATKE

On a wall in one of our Christian Science branch churches appears the first command of the Decalogue, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." One Wednesday evening, struggling with a sense of physical discord, the writer, upon entering the church, allowed her thought to dwell upon that commandment. Suddenly the word "shalt" stood out with a marvelous new significance, as a glorious promise rather than as the somewhat stern command it had hitherto always seemed to be. As a wave of joy flooded consciousness with the realization of the magnitude of that promise, all sense of the discord vanished.

"Thou shalt have no other gods"! Could a promise be more glorious? We are to be enabled to know that there is no power apart from God; nor can any seeming power have dominion over us. Freedom from belief in and fear of other powers,—of sin, of sickness, of lack,—this freedom is our rightful heritage, promised by a loving God. We shall, ultimately, have no other gods, no bondage to false sense, no clinging to erroneous thought-habits, no fear of evil.

As the commandment took on this new and beautiful meaning, even the reason for the statement which precedes the Commandments in the twentieth chapter of Exodus became clearer: "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." "I am"—the name by which the nature of Deity was revealed to Moses, the one Mind, all-good, all-acting, all-beneficent Mind, the only God, the only governing power in our lives! What words can express the gratitude and joy such a realization awakens! The promise is for the present, and is fulfilled in proportion to our understanding of the real nature and presence of God, and the recognition that it is God, good, that forgives all our iniquities, that heals all our diseases.

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