Mary Baker Eddy, through the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and her other published writings on this profound subject, has made available to mankind a knowledge of God, of good, that can be demonstrated in daily life. This demonstration is manifested here and now in health, holiness, abundance, and joy.
Mrs. Eddy has presented the knowledge of God to mankind in many ways, one of which is through synonyms that express His nature and His wholeness. She has contributed to humanity one outstanding name or synonym for God which, until her revelation of Christian Science, was little thought of in terms of Deity. That name is divine Principle. In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" she writes (p. 225), "Christian Science names God as divine Principle, Love, the infinite Person." And she adds, after mentioning Christian Scientists, "In their textbook it is clearly stated that God is divine Principle and that His synonyms are Love, Truth, Life, Spirit, Mind, Soul, which combine as one. The divine Principle includes them all."
The name divine Principle conveys a wonderful sense of God's primal and all-embracing power, and His impartation of excellence and uprightness. A dictionary defines the word principle in part as follows: "A source or origin; primordial substance; ultimate basis or cause." The synonym Principle indicates among other things that God, whose very name means good, is the source or cause of all the goodness man reflects. Christian Science reveals that man is God's spiritual idea, His image and likeness, and that the mortal and material concept of man is an illusion. This likeness of God is seen in countless individual instances, for man is a family name, and its members are now, and eternally have been, individual. No one can ever lose his individuality, but each of us must learn through the understanding of Christian Science that his individuality is not mortal or material, as he has been led by false mortal sense to believe, but that it is now spiritual, eternal, beautiful, and blessed as the expression of eternal Principle. Students of Christian Science are learning that their true individuality includes the goodness of God individually expressed. In proportion to their faithfulness to the teachings of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, they are demonstrating this to be true by healing the sick and solving in God's way the problems of inharmony, sin, and evil, which seem to beset mankind.
