"LIKE priest, like people," says the proverb. It might be better to say, As they are taught to believe their God to be, so are the people. Men believing in a god of war are fighters. They who believed in a tribal deity were intolerant of other nations. Only those who believe in "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," endeavor to be like in character to him who revealed that God.
There was long preparation, however, for "the revelation of Jesus Christ." All down the ages some men who have been blessed by the loving-kindness of God have recognized the benign influence and praised the source, giving to us our enduring literature in the Scriptures. Mrs. Eddy says: "God is universal; confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect. Not more to one than to all, is God demonstrable as divine Life, Truth, and Love; and His people are they that reflect Him—that reflect Love" (Miscellaneous Writings, p.150).
The human search through all the years has been for something satisfying and enduring. Because of the deceitfulness of false beliefs, men go on spending their "money for that which is not bread," and their "labor for that which satisfieth not." But the testimony of the Scriptures is that in every age some men have found the actual truth; not truth relative to the blooming and fading theories of their time, and so as transient as they, but truth that from everlasting to everlasting is the same. This truth has proofs of a certain character, and the most salient proof is healing, whether of sickness for persons, or of plague among the people, or of national fear tending to defeat and disaster. The appearing of the truth causes immediate reversal of the error which has been posing as fact or accepted as reality. The great work of the prophets was to call the attention of men to the real when they were enamored with the unreal, and the idolatrous in consequence. They sought to instil true reverence and true love into the minds of people ever lapsing into the variable devotions and innumerable fears of heathenism. They proclaimed a God of universal goodness, saying, "The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord;" and, "How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings."
