Today , in communities traditionally Christian, an influence is at work to drop the worship of God. This influence insists that God is a concept merely imagined and built up in thought by the yearning of humanity for a supreme authority. Perhaps what is really happening is that mankind are rebelling at traditional concepts of Deity and are demanding something more convincing. A personal Deity, tolerant of sin and sorrow, sickness and death, and even incapable of coping with these errors, no longer satisfies thoughtful people.

Actually, the doubting world needs the truth of God and a name for Him which appeals to reason as well as to spiritual intuition.

Christian Science supplies the true concept and a new name— divine Principle. In Science, Principle is not a rule, a code of conduct, a cold essence, or a formula to apply under duress or threat of evil. Divine Principle is universal, all-embracing Mind. It is Love; and when understood, it is demonstrable in every conceivable situation.

According to the teaching of Christian Science, Principle is one infinite Being, a determinate God, individual, changeless, eternal. And the real universe, the immutable creation of God, is made up of the divine ideas, activities, and qualities that express the nature of their origin—their Principle.

Because Principle is good and is infinite, or All, any genuine impulsion of moral or spiritual stability expressed by humanity is evidence of God as Love and shows the inseparability of Principle and the idea which is its expression.

A particular aspect of divine Principle is that it is the origin of law and that it acts through law to create, control, and maintain whatever is good. Principle, being Love, is the source of all that is just, merciful, true, and stable. These important elements of life do not create themselves, nor do they exist apart from Principle. They are the expression of Principle itself.

To the physical senses, God does not exist, for these senses cannot cognize anything but the material. And matter is unlike God, is limited, the basis of sin and materialism and of all that tends to inevitable disintegration. But the effect of invisible Principle upon human thought is plainly evident as individuals and society attain increasingly mild and intelligent aims and associations.

Something unseen is at work in the world, and this something is the Principle of being. Life is active, beauty adorns the earth, fruitful fields and orchards supply nourishment, sin is often forsaken, health is prayerfully restored. An intelligent power transcending nonintelligent material forces is evident.

Principle is tangible to spiritual sense. Those who throughout Bible history and to our day have become conscious of God and His Christ—His ideal—know that Deity is not a figment of human imagination but an omnipotent, wise, loving Father, who is accessible to anyone ready to cognize and obey Love. The new name— Principle—is the outcome of all that has developed the true sense of God throughout time.

To Abram, God named Himself "the Almighty God" (Gen. 17:1), the Jehovah of ancient Israel, and this was the name by which Isaac and Jacob knew the creator. More definitive was God's self-revelation to Moses as the I am—the one self-existent Ego, or Mind. Jesus addressed God as Father, and he said (Matt. 11:27), "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." John defined God as Love.

New names have accompanied new developments in the understanding of God. Certainly these names mentioned referred to the Supreme Being, to one determinate God, whose man is also determinate—fixed and immortal in individuality and character. The more correctly the character of God is defined, the more assuredly do individuals who accept the advanced idea of Him move in moral, political, and economic freedom.

Christian Science demonstrates absolute purity, goodness, integrity, wisdom, and justice as evidence of the real self, man, made in God's likeness. To worship Principle by utilizing these qualities is to express power that overcomes evil now, and in overcoming it we reduce to nothing the claims of mortality that would plague us.

The unseen Principle revealed by Christian Science is urging its presence and its law-governed idea upon humanity. The veil of matter, which hides the glory and infinitude of Love's kingdom, is beginning to disappear.

In "Miscellaneous Writings," answering the question, "Do I believe in a personal God?" Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 96): "I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know not what the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is, or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father and Mother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being to diviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to the apostle who declared it, 'God is Love,'—divine Principle,—which I worship; and 'after the manner of my fathers, so worship I God.'"

Instead of abandoning God as imaginary, mankind must lift its comprehension of the Supreme Being to the one divine Principle of all life and all good.

Helen Wood Bauman