All believers in the teachings of Jesus the Christ are not only devoted to the idea of one God, as contradistinguished from the heathen belief in "gods many," but they unite, in language, at least, in attributing to Him the qualities of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. If some of the Christian sects do not more than formally ascribe to God the possession of these attributes, it is not because of any misunderstanding of the meaning of the words which characterize them, but because of a failure, which up to forty years ago was practically universal, to follow the well-recognized definitions of those words to the points to which they logically and inevitably lead.
The beginning of the period named, speaking roundly, marks the discovery of Christian Science by Mrs. Eddy. As a result of this discovery the world is being awakened from its long slumber to a realization of the fact that, during the period commencing at least as far back as the adoption of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine, who seemed to deteriorate rather than to advance what he touched, Christians have not known what it means to live, and move, and have their being in that God whose very name, in the plethora of meaningless and unpractised terms, we have variously synonymized either as omnipotence, omnipresence, or omniscience, in keeping with the requirements of written or spoken language.
The statement of Christian Science is very largely based upon these three words and Christian Science can be lived and practised only by logically and completely following them to their conclusion. From this statement may be measured, as with plummet and line, the depth and width of the chasm which separates the so-called orthodox belief from Christian Science, a chasm which the latter has been able to cross in obedience to the injunction to "heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils."
