CHRISTIAN SCIENCE occupies its distinctive position among the Christian denominations solely because it is reducing to practice the teaching of God's infinitude. While the churches are mainly agreed that this teaching is true, there has been little disposition to apply it literally to the problems of human existence, notwithstanding that only through such application can the kingdom of God be brought to the human consciousness.
If there is anything within the compass of human understanding that is susceptible of practice, it must be the truth about God, since without God man would have no existence. If the truth about God is not practical, it would follow that Deity could never be understood or have tangible existence for mankind. If we are to accept the statement found in the Scriptures and in church creeds, that God is All-in-all, and therefore that good includes all reality, we must naturally conclude that the truth about Him is not only a practical factor in the lives of men, but that it constitutes all that is truly practicable. Inasmuch as human experience daily demonstrates that good alone vanquishes evil, humanity has no choice but to work out its salvation on that basis,—that is, by good thinking and good doing,—and this fact designates a demonstrable knowledge of the allness of God as the one thing needful, and the thing most worthy of human endeavor.
Many earnest thinkers are beginning to question the consistency of teaching in creed or doctrine what they deny in practice. How to accept the evidence of evil that appears to confront one on every hand, without letting go one's belief in the omnipotence of God, gives occasion for serious thought. Many Christians honestly admit the impossibility of reconciling the wickedness and suffering of the human race with an infinitely good God, but scholastic theology ignores this difficulty and asserts the morally inconceivable, namely, that God permits evil to exist and to afflict mankind. Under such teaching one must either lapse into virtual infidelity or blindly worship a concept of Deity that is evil as well as good.
