Every individual is experiencing his concept of God. If his concept is correct, his experience will partake of dominion and harmony; if incorrect, it will seem to partake of their opposites. That statement would probably be received with astonishment by a large proportion of mankind. Nevertheless, it is unequivocably true. Moreover, it encompasses the very root reason for everything good which men are aware of and for everything evil which mortal sense in its mesmeric claim to existence seems to itself to be aware of. It supplies a final answer as to why one's correct understanding of God and one's faithful adherence to that understanding constitute the only reliable assurance that one is intelligent.
There may be some who would attempt to refute the above statements by saying that they cannot experience their concept of God because they have none. They may say they are agnostics or atheists or that they are in other states of indifference to the importance of God. But no one can deny the fact concerning himself that he entertains some definite sense of the presence or absence of good, the availability or nonavailability of it, the substantial or insubstantial nature it possesses. Because of this no one can escape some contemplation of God and some formulation for himself of a concept of Him.
For the term God is another form of the Anglo-Saxon word good. It is sublimated from "good" by capitalization of the initial letter and contraction of the vowels to supply a word referring specifically to the infinite, divine, and perfect source of all that is good. Since the source of a thing always bestows its exact nature upon the thing, one is adopting his concept of God whenever he entertains thoughts, as he must, regarding the reality or unreality of good. Disputes over doctrinal definitions of God in their differing and even conflicting terminology are of small importance. The important thing is that everyone is necessarily aware of some degree of good in his experience, if only because he lives. His appraisal of that good constitutes his appraisal of God. And his appraisal of God, be it repeated, controls his experience.
