What could be more important to those who believe in God than an expanding of their understanding of Him? When I was a child, I thought of God simply as God. It did not occur to me that He was Life and Truth or that my limited concept of Him could be expanded. Later on, when Christian Science began to enlighten me on the subject of God's infinitude, many terms which Science attributes to Deity opened glorious views of Him. I learned that each term has a definite relation to man, who is His inseparable expression, His likeness, and that I could prove my true sonship with Him by reflecting His nature, which the many terms imply. With this expanding understanding of spiritual reality came health and the restoration of long-lost vitality. My horizons widened.

Infinitude cannot be grasped through a single term, and each right name for God brings us nearer an understanding of Him as the infinite One. Christian Science reveals seven synonyms for God, names either stated or implied in the Bible: Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Mind, Principle. But Science does not stop there; it gives many terms other than these synonyms, such as intelligence, substance, All-in-all, First Cause, Father-Mother, Infinity, Being.

Many centuries ago Moses received the self-revelation of God as the I am (see Ex. 3:14), and this explains the great fact of God as Ego, or consciousness, as infinite Mind without an equal. What can call itself "I" but consciousness? Even man, God's highest creation, can only reflect Mind, the one I. Otherwise there would be many egos, many gods, and the result would be chaos. But there isn't chaos, and the divine order is becoming more and more apparent as the oneness of Mind is understood.

Moses' expanding understanding of God gave him power to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt and thus to preserve the monotheistic concept of God for the enlightenment of posterity. The truth of God as I am, or consciousness, led Moses to the concept of Him as Life, and this concept also showed that Moses' understanding of God was expanding. What can be conscious or say "I" but that which is alive? To his people Moses said of God, "He is thy life, and the length of thy days."  ^{Deut. 30:20;} Man's life is the outcome of the one Life.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy shows what the understanding of God as Life can do for each of us. She writes, "When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness."  ^{Science and Health, p. 264;}

Jesus explained true worship to a woman of Samaria whom he met at Jacob's well. He said to her, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."  ^{John 4:24;} By these words the Master expanded the woman's understanding of God. This must have, in a degree, lifted her concept of worship above ritualism. No superstitious system or formal rites can supplant true worship, which demands genuine proof of man's unity with God by the expressing of His goodness and integrity, His mercy and justice, His power and perfection. Anyone who understanding reflects God's nature finds his sense of worship deepening.

In true worship one is faced with the need of realizing that anything unlike the divine nature is unreal; and this realization opens vistas of good. Evil is unlike God; hence it must be relegated to the category of myth or unreality. God is infinite good, and there is no place for evil in good. Disease is also unlike God and must be proved to be nothing. In its first century of healing by spiritual means alone, Christian Science has proved the unreality of disease countless times.

It expands human thought and capabilities to see matter as a limited and false way of interpreting substance. It cramps human thought and capabilities to believe that God is the creator of matter, of something that is finite and inevitably subject to discord and deterioration.

To expand one's understanding of God consistently, one must apply the truths of God and man in the healing of sin and sickness. True conceptions of Deity bring salvation from all the plagues of human life. The glory of Christian Science is that power over material falsities accompanies an expanding scientific knowledge of God. Mrs. Eddy says: "As our ideas of Deity advance to truer conceptions, we shall take in the remaining two thirds of God's plan of redemption,—namely, man's salvation from sickness and death. Our blessed Master demonstrated this great truth of healing the sick and raising the dead as God's whole plan, and proved the application of its Principle to human wants." ^{The Peoples Idea of God, p. 12.}

Seeing this "whole plan" in relation to health, we recognize the vast importance of healing as growing evidence of salvation from the mortal sense of life. Improved conceptions of God, not increased material knowledge, make spiritual healing a possibility in the working out of the divine plan. And nothing but an expansion of our understanding of God can give us the power to heal mankind and lead the human race into the kingdom of Spirit, where God's sovereignty is unquestioned and man's unity with Him is perpetual.

Helen Wood Bauman