THE Christian Scientist is constantly affirming to his own thought the fact of God's allness. Christian Science has impressed it upon him as nothing else ever did, has taught him its value in the solution of human problems; therefore, silently it may be, yet with persistence, he holds to the basic truth of the Christian religion, that God is infinite—All. The student of Christian Science knows that there is healing in the realization of God's allness; for he has proved it for himself probably many times. And do not the words of Isaiah substantiate his experience: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else"?
In taking its stand for the allness of God, Christian Science is doing the world a service which only the comparatively few are capable of acknowledging at present. For what do we find there? The thoughts of men, in the great majority of cases, are grossly material: matter is to many of them their god. The things that pertain to the flesh, the things which have to do with material needs, sinful, unspiritual thoughts—these occupy a large portion of the everyday thinking of the world. It is true to say that many pass their days in the midst of this kind of materialistic believing, without giving even a passing thought to the greatest of all truths, the allness of God.
And what results from the constant contemplation of material conditions, material objects, material thoughts? Human unhappiness, in harmony, and suffering—every ill that flesh is heir to. Sorrow, despondency, poverty, disease, sin, fear, death, all are the result of material believing. The belief that matter is real, that so-called material existence is real, is what brings to the children of men every woe they seem to have to bear. It separates them as by a thick cloud from reality,—God, Spirit,—in whom dwells the fullness of perfection, from God the All-in-all, in whom the real man lives, moves, and has his being. And while the seeming separation lasts, just so long will the belief in sin and suffering seem to persist.
