Editorial August 24, 1981 Issue

Let's build an altar

BEULAH M. ROEGGE

Paul, as Acts tells us, saw an Athenian altar to the unknown God and began immediately to dispel the ignorance that erected such a monument. He told the Athenians that God was the giver of their very life and breath—not far, but near to every one of them. "For in him we live, and move, and have our being."^{Acts 17:28.} Mrs. Eddy said of this explanation of God, "This statement is in substance identical with my own: 'There is no life, truth, substance, nor intelligence in matter.'"^{Retrospection and Introspection, p. 93.} And in her "scientific statement of being" in the textbook she continues, "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all."^{Science and Health, p. 468.} She makes clear throughout her writings that this Mind, which is God, is the source and substance of all that man—the true selfhood of each one of us—knows. Man cannot fail to know God. Indeed, what God is and knows is all man can really know.

When knowledge of materiality and evil presses in on us, we can always turn to Christ and learn of God. Such turning to man's real consciousness makes us aware of the goodness of God's being and enables us to give up fear or sin. True knowledge of God is never abstract. To know God involves much more than knowing about Him.

Through the centuries all who have struggled out of atheistic and pagan ignorance to learn of God and tell others of His true nature are shining lights and civilization shapers. Jesus presented a still higher type of man, however—one not struggling to gain such Christly knowledge but already endowed with complete understanding. Jesus knew God was his Father, and he said, "The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth."^{John 5:20.}

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