Editorial December 17, 1949 Issue

DEITY'S SELF-CONTAINMENT

Helen Wood Bauman

One who yields to the revelations of Christian Science treasures the true concept of Deity as one infinite, self-contained Being, one all-embracing divine Mind, which is good. He reverences the great truths of Mind's oneness, its self-sufficiency, its all-iuclusiveness, its absolute independence, its universal control. The Christian Scientist comes to know himself and others in a new light, as spiritual formations, rather than physical, and as eternally included in the one Mind as its ideas. And in the measure of his understanding he heals sin and suffering, for spiritual knowing destroys the belief that a carnal mind is present which includes sinful, sick mortals, limitation, destruction, and death. Only that which is in God has reality.

Mary Baker Eddy makes plain Deity's infinitude and self-containment in her book "Unity of Good," where she says (p. 3): "God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and Mind." And she says further. "If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything unlike Himself; because, if He is omnipresent, there can be nothing outside of Himself."

To prove that our real selfhood, or identity, is the embodiment of Life, the very expression of its divine nature and character, is the highest goal we may pursue. Every human endeavor should be subordinated to this aim. It requires discipline to maintain the understanding of oneself as actually spiritual and to remember that the mortal ego is unreal. But it is only as thought changes from the standpoint of material belief to that of Spirit as All and of man as Spirit's mode of self-expression that the truths of real identity appear, bringing healing evidence of their integrity. Man is spiritual now. He is forever included in Love as its loving emanation. His function as God's idea is to unfold the endless glories of his immortal Principle.

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