Article October 25, 1947 Issue

"GODWARD GRAVITATION"

ARCHIBALD EDES

"Godward gravitation" is the arresting marginal heading for a paragraph on page 265 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," in which Mary Baker Eddy speaks of mortals' necessity to gain a correct concept of the infinite. And on page 536 of this book she writes: "If man's spiritual gravitation and attraction to one Father, in whom we 'live and move and have our being,' should be lost, and if man should be governed by corporeality instead of divine Principle, by body instead of by Soul, man would be annihilated."

From the material standpoint terrestrial gravitation is the attraction of the greater mass called earth for smaller objects within its sphere of influence. Christian Science shows that no theory of life that is based on matter can explain the universe of God's creating. The only gravitation in God's universe is the gravitation of man towards Spirit, of idea to its Principle; in other words, it is the irresistible attraction by which man is forever bound and united to God in perpetual harmony. Contrary to the material concept, in which two objects are separate and come together by a material force, God and man are forever one, and this truth is a law of oneness for the universe and every idea.

Godward gravitation implies more than a yearning or aspiration Spiritward. It is a drawing that cannot be resisted. God will not be deprived of or separated from His expression, man. He will not allow Himself to be reduced to a nonentity, as He would be by being unexpressed. Deity cannot be deprived of the right to maintain His own individuality and existence, as He would be by being reduced to an expressionless cause. Lifeless materiality cannot interpose its own foundationless nonexistence between Mind and its idea or keep Mind from expressing its own complete perfection.

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