Article August 13, 1955 Issue

"MY FAVORITE TEXT"

CONSTANCE MARY BAILEY

"The First Commandment is my favorite text," writes Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 340). And she continues: "It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the triunity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal good, and that all men shall have one Mind. The divine Principle of the First Commandment bases the Science of being, by which man demonstrates health, holiness, and life eternal."

Many of us are familiar with the words of the First Commandment, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Mrs. Eddy had a profound knowledge of both the Old and the New Testaments; and out of all her study and experience she chose this particular verse as her favorite. She uses it four times in Science and Health—in every case accompanied by some strong basic declaration of the truth—and refers to it many times in her other writings.

Let us examine the nature of God and the nature of man. We have learned through our study of Christian Science that God is incorporeal, omnipotent Being—Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle. In the first chapter of Genesis we learn that God made man in His own image and likeness. Therefore man, as God's own image, can be conscious only of that of which God Himself is conscious. Otherwise, he would not be God's image and likeness. Man, made in the image and likeness of Love, can be conscious only of Love. He cannot be conscious of fear or hatred. Man, made in the likeness of Mind, cannot know ignorance. Man, made in the image of Life, can only be conscious of Life. Man cannot be conscious of anything unlike God, his creator; therefore he cannot have another god.

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