If we would step out from the shadows of materialistic belief into the sunlight of spiritual reality, there is much falsity which we must lay aside. God is one, regardless of the many concepts of Him which at present separate His worshipers into various sects and creeds. To worship God aright, we must first have a clearly defined thought of Him, such as is found in Science and Health, where Mrs. Eddy writes, "God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be,—Life, Truth, Love. Spirit is divine Principle, and divine Principle is Love, and Love is Mind, and Mind is not both good and bad, for God is Mind; therefore there is in reality one Mind only, because there is one God" (p. 330). The infinitude of God, good, precludes evil as a positive quantity; it sweeps all discord into the realm of nonentity. All that seems to exist apart from God is a negation, therefore sickness can only assert itself in that false belief, and must give place in divine Science to health. The true worship of God, the realization of His allness, opens the way for divine Mind to enter consciousness, and thus only is discord banished to the region of non-existence, its only sphere.
He who perceives this truth can perceive also that God is a mere name in the thought of many persons because He is given no active part in their lives. When sickness or sin asserts its claim, it is bowed down to and recognized as having power, while help is sought in material means. Where has divine power been relegated? True worship. enthrones God, sees disease or sin for what it is, and knows that the divine Mind uncovers and enforces the destruction of all that is unlike itself; and true worship heals. In the triumphs of oratory or in the achievement of literary or scholastic success, does thought uplift itself in gratitude to God, or does self claim the honor? The true worshiper knows that God is omniscient and that man reflects the divine intelligence. Man possesses no creative faculty, no originating ability in himself, and whether this is admitted or whether men arrogate to themselves the wealth of intelligence, the immutable fact stands—God is Mind, and man is gifted with intelligence through his relationship to God. That which says otherwise is the suggesting voice of evil, which seeks to claim power through seeming to give man a selfhood independent of God.
In Christian Science God and Mind are interchangeable terms. God is one, hence Mind is one, though triple in its manifestation as Life, Truth, and Love. God is good, hence Mind is good, and all which apparently exists that is unlike good is powerless. God, perfect Mind, is forever present and forever active. If mankind did not listen to the so-called mind of material sense, it could not even appear to be. "Resist the devil," says the Scripture, "and he will flee from you."
