IT has been said that history is but a record of the reign, influence, and death of inadequate concepts of God: and when one remembers the significance which their thought of Deity has to a people, its relation to their moral, intellectual, and social status, their place and power, civilization and success, he begins to realize how apt and suggestive the definition is. The thought of God as the ultimate source and explanation of all things has sprung up intuitively, it would seem, in the mentality of every nation, and when shaped by inspired teachers it has grown as the race has grown: while on the other hand men have grown as their thought of God has enlarged, been ennobled, through the educational leadership of spiritual seers and prophets.
The fact that our own concept of God comes to have a new and larger content does not argue, however, as some would have us think, for the non-existence of any fixed and final fact. On the contrary, this possibility of an ever-enlarging mental grasp points directly to that infinite entity which fills every thought-channel to the full in so far as it is granted access thereto. Some one may say, however, that "the nobler concepts of God have not come as the result of inductive thought from the observations of nature and the study of experience, but through revelation; and, since God is entirely unaffected by the varying thoughts of men respecting His nature, how is it that the revealed sense of Deity should not be constant, the same always and for all?"
This query is answered as soon as we remind ourselves that our concept of truth is always' shaped by our intelligence and our responsiveness to truth; from which it follows that the highest revelations of the divine nature can be apprehended and received by those only who have attained to an exalted spiritual consciousness. Even in this twentieth century, as Mrs. Eddy has said, "how empty are our conceptions of Deity" (Science and Health, p. 3)! All that has entered into the mental environment of a people, its order of government, social relations, etc., as well as its philosophical theories, is quite sure to have had to do with its sense and portrayal of Deity.
