Article August 11, 1928 Issue

Knowing God

HARRY S. SOUTHAM

When the writer of the forty-sixth psalm recorded that profound injunction, "Be still, and know that I am God," he would appear to have stated tersely and definitely for all time the one thing needful, whereby mankind may be saved. For has he not paraphrased in this brief sentence what Christ Jesus said some centuries later when he defined life eternal as the consciousness of the allness of good? "This is life eternal," said the Way-shower, "that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

What does it mean to be still and know God, and how is one to obey this injunction? Does it not mean this, that each one of us is to accept only the good as the real, and that the only place this may be achieved is in individual consciousness? Christian Science, the restatement to this age of Christ's Christianity, foretold in John's Gospel and Revelation, and revealed by Mary Baker Eddy, its Discoverer and Founder, makes this abundantly clear. On page 242 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy says: "There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality—to have no other consciousness of life—than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses."

Clearly, then, each of us should strive earnestly to discern and to accept only the good—the truth about God and His creation—as the real. To the extent that one does this, he enters heaven, harmony. Shakespeare, that "great poet of humanity," as our Leader calls him (ibid., p. 66), may have glimpsed this great truth when he put into the mouth of Hamlet the widely quoted truism: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," which might be paraphrased: All human experience is the expression of thinking. In this way, too, that is, by knowing good or loving God supremely, one may help rightly to solve all the problems of mankind. This becomes apparent when it is realized that the world's problems are the collective false beliefs of mortals, which claim to press continuously on individual human consciousness, and which, if accepted as realities, are manifested as states of sin, disease, and death. This aggregate of false belief, which Paul calls the carnal mind, is apparently weakened or strengthened in its power, according as individual human consciousness accepts or rejects the good as the real. Thus it may be seen that, through Mrs. Eddy's blessed revelation, one may, and indeed must, if he is a faithful Christian Scientist, help to solve the world's problems by knowing God, good, as All-in-all. As John says, "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God."

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