A CONSENSUS of candid thought found among a great majority of Christians today would declare that, so far as convincing experience is concerned, God is the great unknown. The prevailing sense with regard to Him is that of far-removal and of unapproachableness, and if He is addressed at all, it is with mingled feelings of reverence and presumption, of hope and uncertainty, of conscious need and honest doubt.
The most striking thing about all this is found in the tremendous contrast it presents to the sense of divine nearness and availability which is manifest in the Master's references and addresses to God, and his unmistakable teaching that we are to attain to a kindred realization. To him God was a Father indeed, ever near, ever accessible, and ever responsive. Hence his prayer was of the nature of a communion with a true and tried friend, while with the bulk of his professed followers it. is largely an appeal to an august potentate, who is both supreme and silent and of whose will and attitude toward them they are in great uncertainty. If their prayer is answered favorably, they are gladly surprised; if unfavorably, it is not answered at all, and they accept the situation with what grace they may.
All must be agreed that to gain the Master's apprehension of the nature and nearness of God would equip one to solve every problem and bring the peace that passeth understanding. As the technician's acquaintance with a fundamental law gives him command of every relation in which such law is determinative, so the knowledge of God, divine Principle, must give one that authority to which Jesus referred when he said, "I give unto you power . . . over all the power of the enemy." Here the testimony of Christian Scientists as a whole becomes a matter of great interest and significance. They witness with entire unanimity that the study of Christian Science has distinctly illumined and established their thought of Deity; that it has not only brought health, but instituted a feeling of reliance upon God, begotten a habit of looking to Him in every time of need, which has awakened a sense of freedom and capacity, as well as of peace and joy, that is above price. Indeed, one might say that the sum and substance of Christian Science would be well defined as the perception and statement of the way to find God, and thus find the solution of every difficulty, the satisfaction of the heart's great desire, the true interpretation of life.
