ON page 331 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy gives a definition of God which cannot fail to aid in freeing the conscientious student of Christian Science from a finite sense of Deity. She writes: "God is individual, incorporeal. He is divine Principle, Love, the universal cause, the only creator, and there is no other self-existence. He is all-inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else." What a wonderful concept of God! But to understand it more than feebly it must be carefully analyzed and prayerfully pondered.
Our Leader did a great thing when she gave the name "Principle" to Deity. For it takes thought away from the contemplation of the limited or finite, leading it into the realm of the illimitable, the infinite, since one must necessarily think of Principle as that which has universal existence. And when Principle is also understood as universal cause and all-inclusive, self-existent Being, an extraordinarily helpful knowledge of God has been reached. Moreover, whoever comes to know God in the manner just set forth cannot fail to perceive that God's creation must be like its Principle, and forever under divine protection.
Now, mortals often think and act as if there were no governing Principle. Do not evil thinking and evil acting—sin—point to lack of Principle? Does not sickness indicate absence of the governance of Principle? And similarly, sorrow, lack, fear, all denote lack of understanding of Principle. A strange anomaly, that divine Principle should be universal and, still, that absence of the knowledge of Principle should be so apparent in the experiences of mortals!
