Editorial September 20, 1941 Issue

Inclusiveness

Evelyn F. Heywood

To the human mind, inclusiveness implies limitation. To those instructed in Christian Science, inclusiveness applies solely to Mind, the universe and man, and therefore is a statement of infinity. On page 287 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes: "God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?" Something of this the Psalmist certainly glimpsed when he wrote, "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

The monotheism which later adopted Christianity did not deny that since God is infinite there is no place where He cannot be found. But the belief in another, and for the most part stronger, factor in opposition to Him has robbed Christianity of much practical value. The acceptance of evil as a power vying with good has consistently handicapped the religionist basing his concept of God on blind faith rather than on divine logic. Infinite inclusiveness can never be absent; it can never be here and not there. It knows no compromise and has no competitor. Within itself is everything; outside of it there is nothing. The doctrine of duality, of a mixture of good and evil, is the denial of inclusiveness. It is finiteness claiming to invade infinity; it is the contradiction of omnipresence and omnipotence; it would provide an alternative to allness.

Christ Jesus, accepting no origin, no existence, no self-hood but the divine, revealed for the first time to human consciousness the fact of all-inclusiveness. He repudiated everything that was not included in spiritual creation, declaring it to be a murderer from the beginning. The omnipresence of Mind, the allness of Spirit, was not something which was to be inherited at a future time; acknowledging, accepting, and obeying nothing else, he proclaimed it to be, in fact, all. On page 104 of "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy defines the divine nature as expressed by Christ Jesus: "His unseen individuality, so superior to that which was seen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, to laws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and governed by God, this individuality was safe in the substance of Soul, the substance of Spirit,—yea, the substance of God, the one inclusive good."

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Testimony Meetings