To the earnest student of Christian Science, obedience to God, divine Principle, takes on a new and higher meaning. He realizes that without obedience there is no progress possible, and that through it all things may be accomplished. This fact with its accompanying proof was realized by the ancient prophets and was most beautifully illustrated in the life of Christ Jesus. Mrs. Eddy over and over in her writings reiterates the necessity of absolute obedience to Principle, and her discovery of Christian Science was due to her unswerving compliance with the demands of God. She says in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 183): "Divine Mind rightly demands man's entire obedience, affection, and strength. No reservation is made for any lesser loyalty."
To render obedience to God, one must understand God, and Christian Science is interpreting God to man. Many earnest Christians in all times have desired to be obedient to God and to what they supposed to be His will, but lacking the understanding of Him which Christian Science is now giving to the world, they wrongfully supposed God to be the creator of evil as well as of good. Thus obedience to the will of God came to be thought of as merely uncomplaining submission to disease, death, or any other calamity which might befall a mortal. Failing to perceive God as infinite good, who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," those mistaken thinkers imagined Him to be an inscrutable being whom they could not expect to know or understand this side of the grave, but to whose will, nevertheless, obedience was due.
Christian Science with its message of light declares with Paul, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." Mrs. Eddy in the wonderful chapter entitled "Recapitulation," in Science and Health (p. 465), begins with the definition of God. Here we may learn that God is divine Principle and that the real man is the idea of Principle. Just as in mathematics numbers are subservient to the law governing them, so the real man is obedient to God, the divine Principle of Christian Science. Thus obedience becomes not merely a demand to be accepted or rejected at will, but a very necessity of man's being; and since God is infinite good, man's obedience results in goodness and harmony.
