Article February 18, 1939 Issue

Relation with the Divine

CHARLES VAN PELT HARLEY

Harmony is a spiritual fact. Yet all too often in our human affairs, self-will, personal pride, and ambition assert themselves. Envy, hatred, jealousy, and fear seem to prevail, where peace and brotherly love should express the order of true being. Only as human relationships are brought into conformity with the operation of divine law do they become enduring, harmonious, helpful to the individual, and conducive to spiritual growth. Christian Science shows how this can be done.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 151), speaks of God as "man's only real relative on earth and in heaven." From this it is readily seen that the only real relationship is that with God, good. What then, precisely, is man's relationship with God, good?

Christian Science teaches that God is the only cause or creator; that He is Spirit, Mind, Principle, Life, Truth, Love; also that He is good, incapable of inharmony or imperfection. Based on the inspired writings of the Bible, and upon the teachings of the Master, it explains further that man is created in "the image of God;" and that this image, idea, or reflection is not material or of matter, but is spiritual. Man, then, is, as Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 76), "an individual consciousness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter," at one with and inseparable from Mind. Jesus saw this clearly when he made the statement, "I and my Father are one." By this he endeavored to convey to his disciples the fact that his true individuality, expressing infinite intelligence, possessed through reflection every quality of God— intelligence, wisdom, loving-kindness, power, purity, and so forth. Jesus knew his true selfhood so clearly, as the expression of the one infinite Mind, or Principle, that he was able to dispel the mesmeric claims of sin, sickness, death, and inharmonies of all kinds, not only for himself, but for all who sought healing of him. He said that he could of himself do nothing, and that he sought only to do the will of Him that sent him. Jesus' realization of his unity—his eternal oneness—with and inseparability from Mind, gave him dominion over the limiting and false beliefs of the carnal mind.

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