Editorial June 8, 1963 Issue

Spiritual Completeness

Ralph E. Wagers

Christian Scientists who have a sense of the spiritual completeness of The Mother Church feel secure in its embrace wherever they may be. Those who attend the services of this Church and listen to the reports of the Annual Meeting often mention that they feel the motherhood and fatherhood of God animating each activity, giving tenderness as well as strength to its ministrations. This is quite natural because, as Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 514), "Tenderness accompanies all the might imparted by Spirit."

In the first verse of the seventeenth chapter of Genesis is recorded the Lord's declaration to Abraham, "I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect." Since, according to our Leader, that which is almighty must be tender as well as strong, the Almighty God must include the qualities usually associated with both motherhood and fatherhood.

In general thought, however, the term "mother" is often applied to nature rather than to Deity. As a result, men and women have been inclined to think of themselves more in terms of natural processes than of spiritual laws, or else they imagine some sort of partnership between God and nature, sometimes even deifying nature. In so doing, they lose sight of man's spiritual identity as a child of God.

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