Where is God and of what value is it to ascertain His whereabouts? God is ever present, according to the inspired teachings of the Bible and of Christian Science. In Jeremiah we read (23: 23, 24): "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord."

The supposititious basis for the development of disease or any other inharmony in our experience is the false belief that God is not present. One who understands God's presence must also acknowledge that health and harmony are present, for these are qualities included in God and hence existent wherever He is.

One might abstractly assert that God is indeed necessarily at hand, for He is Spirit, or Mind. But to give this assertion a practical application, one must recognize that since God is all-presence. He is actually present to one's own consciousness. Since God includes harmony and health as necessary attributes of His being, these qualities permeate the entire structure of His creation, including individual man. The fact that God is present with us means, then, that health and harmony are actually with us and with all.

Should one suffer from the belief that he is in some way depleted or that the body is suffering from some weakness, then the recognition that God is present, yes, that strength and substance are present and operative, acts as a law of correction to the erroneous condition. Or if one suffers from the belief of diminishing vision, the clear spiritual understanding that vision, perception, discernment, are faculties of God and hence are ever at hand will act as a law of correction to the belief of defective vision.

The error of considering that faculties are depleted with the passing of years is connected with the belief that God can separate Himself from us or that His infinite brightness can be dimmed. But God cannot fade or separate Himself from His creation, for He is ever-present infinite Spirit and includes His entire creation. Since He necessarily remains always with that which He creates, the belief that some quality or faculty of God can possibly lessen is false.

Vision, being wholly spiritual, is completely present and perfect, and that fact is demonstrable in human experience. We cannot afford to conclude that God is disappearing from our lives or that any true faculty, quality, or idea is departing from us. God being present and understandable, every aspect of His completeness is present, understandable, and demonstrable.

We must acknowledge God's completeness, His constituent qualities, and know that since God is present always everywhere, the spiritual qualities needed in our experience are present and demonstrable. Health is present. So are harmony, strength, substance, love, and wisdom. They are all at hand and cannot depart or decline.

Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 473), "God is everywhere, and nothing apart from Him is present or has power." Defect, sin, disease, limitation, death, are all unreal and only seemingly existent in the realm of false belief. They are then apart from God and cannot exist in Him. They do not really exist at all, for God is All and includes all.

Terror must be seen as not included in reality, for as it is so seen, it begins at once to fade from our experience. Our human lives take on a more harmonious aspect as we realize that evil, or error, is neither a power nor a presence. God is all-power. Therefore evil has only the power that we in belief give it. But as we recognize that the power of God, the Christ, Truth, is ever present, the belief of an opposing power or presence is proportionately destroyed.

How did Christ Jesus heal? How did he restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the weak, life to the dead? Certainly not by falsely assuming that either God or any faculty or quality of God was absent. The presence of God to him included the perfection of God's idea, man, and the necessary presence of every quality of being. The presence of God, or divine Life, includes the presence of continuous existence.

Neither existence, intelligence, nor harmony is separate from God. God's presence includes these attributes which man eternally reflects. Man's oneness, or unity, with God includes oneness, or unity, with each one of God's qualities. One is healed by prayer in Christian Science, because in prayer he recognizes man's inseparability from the wholeness of God—recognizes that each quality of perfection is instantly at hand to demonstrate because God is instantly everywhere. Disease vanishes in the presence of health just as darkness vanishes in the presence of light.

Referring to Christian Science Mrs. Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 364), "It stands on this Scriptural platform: that He made all that was made, and it is good, reflects the divine Mind, is governed by it; and that nothing apart from this Mind, one God, is self-created or evolves the universe."

John J. Selover