Mary Baker Eddy writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.275), "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle." Could we ask for clearer instruction with which to start our study and demonstration of divine Science? If we fellow this instruction, we start with the scientific acknowledgment of the allness of God, and this acknowledgment brings us into a fuller understanding of Spirit as the All-in-all.
The Bible tells us that God is Spirit. In Isaiah we read of God's allness and might in these words (42:5–8): "Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein: ... I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another." We know that God created all. And in Jesus' parables we find the simple and profound teaching that God is Love, the Giver of all good.
The simple statement, "God is Love," is illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son, as told in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke. When the younger son made false desires his starting point and turned away from the beautiful provision of loving-kindness and unselfed love which he had known in his father's house, he found nothing but misery, loss, and discouragement. But "he came to himself" and recognized that he would have to start with the love, joy, and abundance which he had always possessed in his father's house. And this acknowledgment of himself as his father's son, who had always had access to all that his father possessed, brought more of good than he had believed he had the right to expect.
