It would be difficult to find a more concise, and at the same time comprehensive, statement of the teachings of Christian Science, and the aspirations of Christian Scientists, than is found in these four concluding words of Isaiah, 60:19.
What does it mean that our God should be our Glory? Jesus tells us to glorify God, or to do all to the Glory of God, and the Bible is full of allusions to God's glory. Can we imagine either sin, sickness, or death as in any way contributing to God's glory, or as in any sense a part of it? One of Webster's difinitions of Glory is, "The presence of the Divine Being," and when we think of glory even in our little conception of it, we think of something incomparably beautiful and bright, something to attract and make glad. Can the man who is racked with pain be said to be glorifying God, that God of whom the Bible tells us?
What is our God but that to which we "yield ourselves servants to obey" as Paul says? We cannot glorify the "One God" if we are admitting that there is something else more powerful to which we must, or desire to, yield obedience. Neither the man who is suffering from pain or remorse, nor the conscious sinner can be bright or happy. Joy and evil can no more mingle than can fire and water.
