CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS are not in any doubt as to the nature of the God whom they worship. They understand Him to be omnipotent Mind or Spirit, infinite Truth, infinite Love. Thus, while they know God to be possessed of infinite power, they also know that He exercises this power with infinite tenderness. "Tenderness accompanies all the might imparted by Spirit," writes Mrs. Eddy on page 514 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," words which are in accord with those of Zephaniah, "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing."
The knowledge that God is omnipotent Love destroys the lie that He is vindictive, afflictive, cruel. The Christian Scientist never thinks of God as knowing evil or as acting evilly. What a relief it is not to think of the Almighty as punishing, as having made laws of punishment! Instead, he is aware that sin—evil thinking and evil doing—inevitably brings upon the evil thinker and evil doer its own punishment; and, further, that when the sinner repents of sin, ceases to think and act evilly and thinks and acts in a righteous manner, punishment should cease, even to the disappearance of the seeming consequences of the sin.
How many to-day are, in belief, suffering from the sins of the past, sins perhaps committed in ignorance! What they require is an understanding of the might and tenderness of God, the knowledge that in His infinite love He wills only good for man. This implies that His might is ever available for the regeneration, the salvation, of men, who have but to turn from sin, with its afflictive consequences, for punishment to cease, since by doing so they are once more subject to the law of good. Mortals must free themselves from false beliefs about God. They must understand Him as He is, the infinitely tender and mighty One, in order to escape the bondage of ignorance and sin.
God being omnipresent, nothing but Spirit, Truth, Love, good, is present anywhere. It follows that what men call matter or evil can have no reality, no might. What, then, have we to fear? As Christian Science shows, mortals are in bondage to erroneous beliefs. It is these that must be destroyed; and they can be destroyed through the understanding of God which Christian Science gives. The whole human race must come to understand that God possesses all power, that He upholds His entire spiritual creation by His power, and that so-called matter or evil, being unreal, is devoid of power.
When God is known as Mind, His creation is seen to consist of ideas. Hence, man is the idea of God. Moreover, being the idea of God, man must reflect the divine nature. In other words, man is the image of God, and, consequently, the real man expresses the qualities of divine Mind, including power, love, tenderness, intelligence, ability—even to an unlimited extent. Mortals, ignorant of this, continue to be enslaved by material sense. The burden can be thrown off only through spiritual understanding. They must learn the truth concerning God and man, and demonstrate that truth, thus ridding themselves of the false belief of limitation.
In dealing with disease we should remember our ability, God-bestowed, to utilize divine might. Divine Science shows that since God created only that which is like Himself,— good,—disease is unreal. This should be ever in our thought as we seek to overcome the false belief of disease. In healing sickness through spiritual understanding we are not trying to destroy something real, but to overcome what, primarily, is a mental fallacy or illusion. Disease is the result of believing in the reality of matter or evil; and it is destroyed through exercising those qualities which man as the image of God expresses, such as divine intelligence, love, and power.
No one should believe in the incurability of disease. To do so is in belief to limit the power and love of God. We should silence material sense, which argues for the reality of disease, substituting for its fallacies the truths which spiritual sense reveals. What is required is clearer spiritual vision. Many times in Christian Science practice, when thought has become spiritualized and God's creation of perfect ideas is seen to be the only creation, the belief of incurability has vanished, and healing has taken place with extraordinary rapidity. And when the battle is won, how easy it is to see that the struggle was with false material sense!
There is great need to-day for the exercise of the tenderness and might of divine Love in human relationships generally: the spirit of the beloved Master should be far more in evidence than it is. Do not we consider ourselves as being Christianized? What does this mean if it be not that we are endeavoring to follow Christ Jesus in the tenderness he expressed and the spiritual power he manifested over evil? There can be no shutting of the eyes to the situation: the Christian nations of the world are falling short of the Christian ideal in so far as individual Christians do not live up to it. As Christian men and women show forth the tenderness and might of Spirit, that tenderness and might will not fail to become evident between nations.
The same holds true in everyday individual relationships. Men and women allow selfishness, pride, envy, and jealousy to usurp the place of love, humility, and the knowledge that good is universal and equally available for all, and the result is discord and suffering. In her extraordinarily wise chapter on Marriage, Mrs. Eddy says (p. 57), "Both sexes should be loving, pure, tender, and strong." And her words are applicable to all human relationships. If men and women were invariably "loving, pure, tender, and strong," if they constantly demonstrated the tenderness and might of Spirit, the inevitable result would be homes where joy and harmony reigned, communities where peace and prosperity flourished, nations where righteousness was supreme.
Christian Scientists are assured that the time for these things is at hand; for the knowledge of God and His idea, man, is to-day being poured forth as a flood over all the earth. They are certain, as was the Psalmist, that "the Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with peace."
