The problem of achieving power and dominion confronts every phase of human existence now as it has done in the past. In an exaggerated and perverted sense, it becomes a craving for dominating others. Within legitimate proportions, it aims at securing for oneself a useful, happy existence by being master over the circumstances confronting one. If this desire for dominion could be gratified without restricting or harming others, and if the nature of the power thus exercised were always constructive and profitable, then indeed ideal conditions would be within reach of humanity.
Christian Science reveals to everyone the practical possibility, here and now, of exercising such beneficial dominion. This dominion is not derived from the exertion of personal human will, but from spiritually understanding God aright and becoming acquainted with the method of utilizing divine power for the welfare of all.
While, theoretically, most religious systems concur in ascribing omnipotence—all power and dominion—to God, Christian Science alone adheres to the conclusion inevitably deduced from this fundamental truth. This Science of Christianity starts out from the truism that since God is the primal and only cause, all true manifestation exists from the standpoint of its effect. Our genuine identity, our ability to think rightly, to exercise discretion and power, are not humanly created, but divinely derived. Thus it is recognized that we owe our true existence to God, understood in the words of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 465), as "incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love."
