Article May 22, 1937 Issue

If God is good and is divine Principle, and man is His...

Extracts from an Address on Christian Science delivered by Joseph G. Alden, Committee on Publication for Nebraska, to the students of the University of Nebraska,—January 7, 1937

If God is good and is divine Principle, and man is His image and likeness, as the Scriptures declare him to be, then man cannot be sick, sinful, inharmonious, and mortal.

Jesus declared, "The kingdom of God is within you." Christian Scientists take this statement of the Master literally, and hold that the kingdom of heaven is attained by gaining a right state of consciousness, based upon the premise of perfect God and perfect man, who is the idea, image, or expression of the perfect creator. In the degree that one exchanges the concepts of mortal mind for the verities of the divine Mind, he is entering the kingdom of heaven, with all its grand bestowals of health, harmony, peace, and happiness.

God, as defined in Christian Science, is not a circumscribed being with enlarged human qualities, a sort of superhuman being. The Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," describes God thus (p. 465): "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." These terms are synonymous, and describe the nature and completeness of Deity. None of these refer to a God who is limited, far away, or unapproachable. All of them declare His omnipotence, His omniscience, and His omnipresence. Because He is omnipotent, possessing all power, He has no opposer or equal. The creature called Satan or the devil is therefore a myth. Because God is omniscient, having all intelligence and knowledge, He knows nothing unlike Himself. Therefore, whatever is unlike Him is untrue or unknowable. Because He is omnipresent, nothing unlike Him exists. It only seems to have existence in mistaken human thought. And because God is Life, Truth, and Love, the divine qualities of eternal being, right thinking, and unchanging love belong to all He creates and sustains. Man, then, who is God's expression, is the possessor, by reflection, of all divine qualities, and coexists with his Father, or creator, in a state of eternal perfection and harmony.

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