Article December 11, 1948 Issue

SPIRITUAL INTEGRITY

HENDRIK J. DE LANGE

Man's spiritual integrity stems from the recognition of God's allness. God's allness—the glowing theme pervading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation—is axiomatic. In order to be all, allness must be divine; that is, infinite, eternal, inexhaustible, complete, therefore spiritual. The primal cause of all existence, being basic to all, in expressing itself embraces all. There is no outside to allness.

God's allness also postulates the indivisibility and oneness of divine cause and its effect, God's universe. Simultaneously this allness reveals man's spiritual or real nature as God's infinite manifestation. Man could never be associated or identified with anything apart from allness, that is, with nothingness. Hence Mary Baker Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475), "He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas."

Whatever deviates from the divine, appearing as finite, temporal, exhaustible, incomplete, therefore material, cannot be all and does not really exist. The only way to account for it is as a misstatement or misconception. Without the distinction between that which exists and that which does not exist but seems to, God's allness might be falsely interpreted as pantheistic. The practical value of this distinction stands out when one perceives that pantheism tends to perpetuate the material by assuming that it is within God's orbit.

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