If God is good and is divine Principle, and man is His...

Extracts from an Address on Christian Science delivered by Joseph G. Alden, Committee on Publication for Nebraska, to the students of the University of Nebraska,—January 7, 1937

If God is good and is divine Principle, and man is His image and likeness, as the Scriptures declare him to be, then man cannot be sick, sinful, inharmonious, and mortal.

Jesus declared, "The kingdom of God is within you." Christian Scientists take this statement of the Master literally, and hold that the kingdom of heaven is attained by gaining a right state of consciousness, based upon the premise of perfect God and perfect man, who is the idea, image, or expression of the perfect creator. In the degree that one exchanges the concepts of mortal mind for the verities of the divine Mind, he is entering the kingdom of heaven, with all its grand bestowals of health, harmony, peace, and happiness.

God, as defined in Christian Science, is not a circumscribed being with enlarged human qualities, a sort of superhuman being. The Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," describes God thus (p. 465): "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." These terms are synonymous, and describe the nature and completeness of Deity. None of these refer to a God who is limited, far away, or unapproachable. All of them declare His omnipotence, His omniscience, and His omnipresence. Because He is omnipotent, possessing all power, He has no opposer or equal. The creature called Satan or the devil is therefore a myth. Because God is omniscient, having all intelligence and knowledge, He knows nothing unlike Himself. Therefore, whatever is unlike Him is untrue or unknowable. Because He is omnipresent, nothing unlike Him exists. It only seems to have existence in mistaken human thought. And because God is Life, Truth, and Love, the divine qualities of eternal being, right thinking, and unchanging love belong to all He creates and sustains. Man, then, who is God's expression, is the possessor, by reflection, of all divine qualities, and coexists with his Father, or creator, in a state of eternal perfection and harmony.

Christian Science teaches that sickness, poverty, limitation, fear, discouragement, envy, hatred, all human discord, are effects of wrong concepts held in thought, which may be corrected by our exchanging them for right ideas. Freedom from wrong conditions follows as a natural result of one's knowing the truth about God and man. We are healed of inharmonious conditions when the erroneous belief is dispelled and destroyed by realization of the divine law which holds all that God made to be perfect and eternal.

Christian Science is a religion of inspiration and joy. It teaches its students to seek the eternal verities, and regards as true only what bears the test of reason and logic and spiritual inspiration. It charges them, in every human relationship where injustice seems to rule, to appeal to the higher law of eternal justice. It directs them to accept only divine thoughts, which are always pure; and to replace the unlovely counterfeits of human sense with the beautiful and lovely things of Soul.

The Christian Scientist accepts the wise counsel of Paul to the Philippians, and receives his promise of blessings: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. ... And the God of peace shall be with you."

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