FEW would be disposed to question the proposition that the concept of God is the most important factor of human progress. Paul recognized this in his Mars Hill address, where he said, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." It was asserted by William Morris when he wrote, "The knowledge of God I regard as the key to all other knowledge." It is affirmed by our Leader when she says, "When we realize that Life [God] is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness" (Science and Health, p. 264).
Not only does the logical detail of religious belief invariably take its form and flavor from the concept of God which is entertained, but the whole trend, animus, and result of human conduct may easily be forecast when the thought of God is known, since this can but shape the sense of man and his possibilities and supply the final motive for action, the reason for all that we do and undertake. It can but seem natural and necessary, moreover, that in the progress of Christian civilization—the unfoldment of truth in human consciousness—the concept of God should advance, lose its anthropomorphic limitations, all its imperfections, and steadily grow more spiritual, more ideal. Furthermore, if it be true that the thought of God is the most influential and determinative element in religious belief, it must follow that all real progress comes about as a result of the realization of this advancing sense of Deity, and that every true increment of gain for human knowledge must yield in turn a yet more exalted sense of the all-knowing and all-sustaining source of being; and all this in harmony with that law of action and reaction between concept and achievement which has universal sway in human thought. As Sam Walter Foss has written,—
As wider skies broke on his view,
God greatened in his growing mind;
Each year he dreamed his God anew
And left his older god behind.
He saw the boundless scheme dilate
In star and blossom, sky and cloud,
And as the universe grew great
He dreamed for it a greater God.
