WHEN in Christian Science we first begin to understand God as Principle, we are apt to think that in losing our old sense of God as a superior sort of human being we are losing the warmth and comfort which came to us through such a belief. But when we begin to work by our new knowledge, and prove over and over again that God is omnipotent Life, Truth, Love, we find that a firm hold of this Principle which never varies is more comforting and helpful than any former belief in what we called a personal God.
If we admit, as all Christian Scientists do, that God is Spirit, infinite good, the only cause and creator, it logically follows that God's creation must be a spiritual universe and that good is the only power. Still through all the ages, while pulpits have preached that God, good, is omnipotent, the hearers have gone home confident that they dwelt in a material world where a power called evil seemed to have much more to do with them than did good.
To mortal sense God has not been Principle,—the "Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,"—but instead a concept of deity taken from heathen mythology, of a being revengeful, capricious, undependable. The Bible says, "God is love;" but men have believed in a God who at least permitted loathsome diseases, which were sent to discipline His children; who according to His fancy made one vine harmless and filled another as beautiful with virulent poison which should sting and torment the innocent child that gathered its leaves; who concerned Himself so minutely with mortal laws that He would allow men to go safely with wet hands, but punished them with a cold if by chance they wet their feet; who gave largely to some and took away from others; who did everything, in fact, "out of His mere good pleasure," as the catechism taught, and was in no wise governed by unvarying law.
