The Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, "There is one body, and one Spirit, . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Since God is infinite, All, there can be nothing outside Him. There cannot be infinity and something else.
God's creation is spiritual, complete; perfectly co-ordinated under divine law, governed by divine Principle, sustained by divine Love, expressing eternal Life, divine intelligence, and infinite activity.
What stands between us and a clear realization of the presence of God and His perfect spiritual creation here and now? Is it not a belief in a mind in matter, knowing both good and evil? It is the accepting of a good God, and something else: namely, matter and its concomitant sin, disease, and death. It is a false human sense of that which is spiritual and eternal; and it can be annulled only by gaining a clear understanding of God as All.
"In Science, Mind is one, including noumenon and phenomena, God and His thoughts," says our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, on page 114 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Mind, then, is "God and His thoughts." All-inclusive Mind is infinite, eternal, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-loving, filling all space and admitting of no other power or presence. Since God is one, His reflection must be one, and the mortal sense of minds many must be false. Demonstration is the disappearance of the false sense, or mortal mind phenomena, and the replacement of it with the real facts of Spirit, or the divine Mind and its phenomena. In this way we replace the false sense of life in matter with the consciousness of God, Mind, and His infinite reflection, man and the universe.
The one Mind, then, originates all ideas, enforces all laws, and sustains all reality. This Mind is one infinite Being; and man is the expression of Mind. Mind is all substance, for it is infinite, and includes "noumenon and phenomena, God and His thoughts."
Qualities which reflect God, such as gratitude, joy, beauty, love, and truth, are not only real and evident, but tangibly existent. There is nothing else. Ideas are not human concepts; they are divine realities. Since God is infinite, only an infinite manifestation of Mind can express Him. Each idea of God must of necessity be coexistent and coeternal with Him. There can be no separation between cause and effect, between infinite God and infinite expression. Let us turn from the material mirage to the apprehension of spiritual reality, lifting thought out of the suppositional to the real and eternal! God's creation is complete and satisfied. It is our comprehension and realization of this divine fact that brings healing and regeneration.
Are we burdened with material beliefs in war, destruction, suffering, and want? Do we seem impotent to meet and master the many problems which present themselves to our thought? Let us remember that divine Love is ever at hand, calling us to the infinite divine consciousness, or Soul. Are we so mesmerized by the material pictures and suggestions that we are bowing down to their demands, and consequently not hearing His voice bidding us come to Him through the understanding of real being, of Life, of divine perfection? Jesus always maintained the Christ-consciousness, and did not identify himself with matter. In divine Mind there can be no war, no conflicting beliefs, no suffering or destruction, and Christian Science teaches us to affirm one Mind, one presence, and have no other Mind. Can we not rest in the understanding of God's allness, and see that this dream of materiality is only supposition, and in this way lift our own thought into the realm of freedom, protecting ourselves and acknowledging God, and thereby helping all who seem to be in the midst of suffering and destruction?
Our Father is saying to us today, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." All that God has to give is ours to realize, to accept, to express; and thus are we continually employed in expressing the Mind that is good, the Life that is eternal, and the Love that is infinite. Thus God's affluence is made manifest to us, and to God is given the glory. Christ Jesus always taught from the basis of infinity, of omnipresence; he accepted no beginning or ending, but only the ever-presence of Life.
Mrs. Eddy states in "Unity of Good" (p. 46), "The scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual sense and source of being." Our work, then, is to subordinate or to melt away the fleshly beliefs, pictures, and arguments presented by mortal mind, and to accept only the real and spiritual fact of man's perfect being. This realization, gained and retained, would enable us to prove our dominion over all evil beliefs, which produce suffering and distress.
Omnipresence signifies all-presence, including the presence of Mind's spiritual, living, vital ideas. One of the characteristics of infinity is that it cannot be divided, cannot be changed, cannot be deflected. Let no man-made beliefs of imperfection, incompleteness, separation, destruction, or dissolution put asunder our comprehension, gained in Christian Science, of man's perfect being, expressing the qualities of God, and his eternal oneness with God.
If man could cease to be perfect, God's creation would cease to be perfect, complete, eternal. There could not be a fallen man, since man reflects God. This being true, the real man can never experience age, decrepitude, loss of faculties, loss of inspiration, activity, vigor, or perfection. A false claim cannot operate through man, nor as man. It is never a part of the real man's experience or activity. Therefore we recognize it as an impersonal aggressive suggestion, without law, substance, or being. It is our concept of man that has fallen, not man.
Man, as a spiritual idea of God, is infinite, immortal, and necessary to the completeness of God's creation. Since God saw everything that He created, and pronounced it good, and His creation is eternal and unchangeable, it is good today. The presence of God means the presence of Life eternal, the presence of Love divine, the presence of everything that is real; and there is no other presence.
In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 554), "There is no such thing as mortality, nor are there properly any mortal beings, because being is immortal, like Deity,—or, rather, being and Deity are inseparable." How wonderful! There is no mortality, for "being and Deity are inseparable." All real being is inseparable from Deity and immortal now. Our work is to know this and let no man-made beliefs or laws supersede it in our consciousness. We are not, then, to think of ourselves as human persons or fallen men trying to become more spiritual, trying to attain divine perfection, but to know ourselves as God knows us, as the complete and perfect expression of Deity.
The road to durable peace leads through the fields of understanding and good will. It may seem to be a long route, and it is. But the more men stray from it, the more urgent is the need for those of us who believe in service based upon fellow feeling to keep in our hearts that ideal and in our minds the will to follow it in so far as in us lies.—
