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.}

When you think about this, it's natural to expect a loving father to show his loyal son everything. And doesn't this offer us the way truly to learn of God? Isn't it to acknowledge Him as our Father and to live loyally as His offspring within His rules and guidance?

Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, was so willing to be obedient to God and to draw closer to Him that in meditation and prayer she sought always to find His will and act in accord with it. She constantly devoted time to studying the Bible, discovering what had been recorded of God. She pored over Christ Jesus' teachings and pondered deeply all accounts of his healing works. Jesus had said, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." ^{14:10 .} She learned of God through those very healings.

These healings told her of God that healed a synagogue ruler's daughter, a nobleman's servant, a woman in a crowd, a man born blind. She saw such incidents as indicating a divine Principle that healed without consideration of person or problem. Christ Jesus' saving of the adulterous woman from stoning showed he was listening, as he stooped and wrote in the sand, to a merciful God, who must be uncondemning, unchanging Love. His feeding of thousands in a desert place pointed to a God that is unlimited Spirit. The circumstances of Jesus' birth and baptism defined God as the one creator and eternal Father, forever conscious of His beloved son.

"Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-stone to faith," Mrs. Eddy insists in the Preface to Science and Health. "The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal." ^{Science and Health, p vii.} And in that part of the textbook where she gives the metaphysical interpretation of Bible terms, Mrs. Eddy writes concerning the word "unknown": "Paganism and agnosticism may define Deity as 'the great unknowable;' but Christian Science brings God much nearer to man, and makes Him better known as the All-in-all, forever near." ^{Ibid., p. 596.}

This intimacy with God is to be cherished, for it really determines how we live—how well we live. Sometimes, that we live! When we really know God as Life, we don't accept as unalterable and legitimate the symptoms of disease, accident, aging. Our understanding of God as All-in-all makes us challenge theories that give any validity to error. When, by turning to God, we overcome a temptation to sin, in some degree we know that He is pure Soul.

What we know of God through daily demonstration can be called our altar to the known God. It becomes a monument to Him. Recently I saw a monument to Henry David Thoreau that was not chiseled or carved. It has grown spontaneously as his admirers over the years toss rocks onto a pile of stones. I thought of our altar to the known God as such a monument in which each stone represents a proven fact regarding God's nature—His presence and power.

Such a monument is a Christ-built altar that can't be torn down but invites others to come and worship. Each time we learn something more of God's nature, through demonstrating the power of His goodness in our lives, we are building an altar to the knowable God whom we and others can intelligently worship.

The kind of altar pictured in Paul's speech, built perhaps from a fear that there might be a god out there who, if ignored, would curse the people, is a monument to superstition. Our monument to the supreme intelligence, divine Mind—built with fruitage from our growing understanding of Mind's infinitude—is an ever-expanding altar that will make of the whole earth a fit place for the worship of the one true God.

BEULAH M. ROEGGE