Many students of Christian Science find ever fresh joy in the daily, prayerful contemplation of the seven synonyms for God, given on page 465 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Her reply to the question, "What is God?" is as follows: "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." These synonymous terms illumine thought with the consciousness of the allness and oneness of divine Being. The quest for the unknowable and unsearchable is ended, and God, the I AM of the Scriptures, shines forth, free from the mists of ignorance that have seemed to shroud an intelligent concept of Deity.
Mrs. Eddy's receptive thought and her single-eyed vision caught and preserved the scientific revelation—God's allness and the consequent unreality of His opposite, evil, matter, mortality. Recording her discovery in her writings, safeguarding it by founding the Christian Science movement, Mrs. Eddy makes it possible for us to find healing truths and to prove that they are demonstrable and good. The divine origin of these truths is proved in the actual experience of anyone willing to subject his thoughts to their regenerating and redemptive power.
Our acceptance and acknowledgment of sonship with God demand that we reflect the qualities inherent in the divine nature, express the holiness that is health and the health that is holiness, and thus separate ourselves entirely from the Adam-dream. This was the way by which our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, triumphed. In him there was no inconsistency of thought, word, or action. He was conscious of his divine origin. Whatever contradicts and opposes God's all-inclusiveness has to be faced and overcome by every one of us until we know ourselves as the likeness of Spirit.
The inquirer may wonder if the understanding of God as One and All can really reveal the presence of the kingdom of God. Christ Jesus proved that it could and did, and he left his example for us. As we know God to be our Father-Mother, our only Mind, our governing Principle, and know ourselves as God's idea, we find that heaven is at hand. This consciousness of heaven's presence enables us to demonstrate salvation and healing. To prove the power of God requires unfaltering consecration to the Christ ideal.
It is the belief of separation from good, or God, that is the cause of our woe—war, grief, sin, sickness, and death. Only in the oneness of Being, the undivided realm of Mind, in which man really lives, is health or wholeness maintained and Spirit's reign unopposed. There are no irreconcilable minds, conditions, or interests in the realm of reality. Each one of us begins at once to prove this by ruling out of thought all beliefs in lawlessness.
Starting with unerring Principle, the source of all spiritual law, we lay a firm basis for right thinking and acting. In "No and Yes" Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 20), "When understood, Principle is found to be the only term that fully conveys the ideas of God, —one Mind, a perfect man, and divine Science."
The new student may be inclined at first to use in his study one or more of the seven synonyms for God to the exclusion of the others. Though no aspect of the nature of God and therefore of His reflection, man, is lacking in any one of these synonymous words, together they radiate in perfect balance the full glory of infinite Principle. The more these terms are studied, the more they shine in new depth and endless meaning, reaching and eradicating known and unknown errors in human consciousness, for God is Truth, living Mind, infinite individuality, imparting and unfolding good to His own ideas.
What release from fear comes to us as we grow in our understanding of Life as Love and Love as Life. "Fear not," was the Master's loving counsel. On one occasion he said (Luke 20:38), "He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him"?
Mortals may shrink from the surrender of the material sense of life and love for the divine sense. But if they turn from matter to Spirit, they will gain the consciousness of the Love of all love, the Life of all life, the Truth of all truth, transcending even their most exalted human ideal. Only Love, which in its very nature is devoid of corruptible elements, can preclude destructive change, death, oblivion. God, divine Love, cannot see or experience corruption, nor can Love lose sight of its beloved idea. This truth of Love's perfection enriches the affections, heals the body, and satisfies the human craving for perfection.
Our identities are safe with Christ, Truth, in Life everlasting, where we are always spiritually housed and known. No lie is recorded in divine reality; there is no misrepresentation or historical distortion possible in God's realm of perfection. The accuser is not in heaven, our true home; our purity has never been assailed there, and there is no false witness to cast us down from the pinnacle of purity.
Christ, Truth, is ever active in human consciousness, awakening us to recognize our true selfhood, restoring what seemed to be lost, destroying disease, sin, and death. It is by degrees, by daily demonstration of Christ, Truth, that we begin to enter into our natural inheritance, the realm and reign of Mind. Progressively we enjoy Mind's supremacy, freedom, omnipresence, and awaken to a recognition of the relationship and unity of all ideas in heavenly harmony.
Science in its application to humanity is Christian, abundantly compassionate, presenting the allness of Mind in ideas applicable to the least and greatest of mankind's needs. The beginner in this Science should constantly remind himself that in learning the nature of God, he is learning about his own true selfhood as God's reflection. There would be little practical effect from our knowing the truth of God unless such knowing established our true relationship with the divine, unless it defined our own nature and obliterated the false.
To demonstrate step by step this all-inclusive inclusive knowledge of the infinite I AM, or God, in the gradual overcoming of all that denies the spirituality of man is to prove the revelation of Christian Science to be practical and divine and our growing understanding to be correct. As we awaken to the truth of being, we become Godlike and manifest the sonship implicit in our relationship to God, our Father-Mother.
