ON page 233 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy writes: "Do Christian Scientists love God as much as they love mankind? Aye, that's the question. Let us examine it for ourselves. Thinking of person implies that one is not thinking of Principle."
The common tendency to exalt and praise human personality, methods, and accomplishments, thereby losing sight of the entireness of divine Spirit and its ideas or reflections, is altogether contrary to both the teachings and the practice of Christian Science, and should not in the least be countenanced or followed by Christian Scientists. The material sense of personality, first, last, and all the time, is a veritable deception, a power which would be but is not. Unstable and unreliable in its every phase, it never really did anything for anybody, and it never will. Even our Master said: "I can of mine own self do nothing." "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."
Divine Mind, the only intelligence and power in the universe, alone gives all the ability and strength any one has or ever can have, and so it is this intelligence, this power, which is back of every helpful thought, word, and deed. God is the fount of all good, and men and women at best are simply tributaries or channels through which this good flows. But by forgetting this, and by clinging to a material personality, one is not only hindered in making genuine spiritual progress, but is sooner or later brought to see that such a course tends to disrupt even the human relationships which he fancied he was establishing and making secure.
