Doubt and uncertainty disappear when these words of Mrs. Eddy in Miscellany are understood (p. 129): "Trust God to direct your steps. Accept my counsel and teachings only as they include the spirit and the letter of the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the teachings and example of Christ Jesus."
A wavering trust in an unknown God would certainly not be very practical, but Mrs. Eddy reveals God as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniaction. This revelation resulted from her faithful study of the Scriptures, from her spiritual understanding of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, and from her humble following of the Way-shower.
To trust the eternal God is to trust good, to trust spiritual power on earth as in heaven, and to trust divine Providence here and now. So, to put our whole trust in God implies a spiritual understanding of Him.
To get a better understanding of God that our trust may be complete requires a search of the Bible and of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, which reveals the wholly divine nature of God. As the spiritual lessons of the Beatitudes and the Ten Commandments unfold in our consciousness, we gain step by step that spiritual afflatus that lifts us nearer to God.
Much enlightenment is found through the study of the seven synonyms for God which are given in Science and Health. They are Love, Truth, Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life. How wonderfully our concept of God is enlarged as these synonyms are studied and accepted and how, correspondingly, our trust is strengthened!
The synonym Love conveys to our thought the idea of the motherhood of God, whose qualities are gentleness, tenderness, and compassion. The attributes of mercy and goodness attend the activities of Love, encompassing Love's idea, man, made in God's image. The design of Love is to bless and support its ideas.
No earthly power can oppose divine Love, and as we rely on this fact, utilizing the qualities of Love by loving our neighbor and loving all that is good and pure, rendering good for evil, abandoning revenge for forgiveness, no evil can touch us; no failure, despair, or misery can enter into our affairs. When we trust divine Love's all-power to govern our lives, rather than hate or personal domination, we have glimpsed divine glory.
When Jesus was preaching in the temple to the Jews, he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). Christian Science reveals that God, Truth, is the source of all truth. The comfort of Truth is that its acceptance casts out the untruths of mortal mind— sin, disease, death, lack, and fear—and reveals the nature of man, God's reflection, as spiritual, perfect, and having dominion.
What chaos results from the babel of minds many! Confusion, craftiness, and deceit often accompany this belief. But God is Mind, the only Mind, perfect, wise, the only intelligence, and as God's reflection we reflect this perfect Mind. Infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation is the only reality that exists. To trust through obedience and patient waiting this Mind's guidance is never to be betrayed.
How much greater is our concept of God when we understand what Mrs. Eddy has to say of the synonym Principle! No longer do we find it aloof or cold, for as Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellany, p. 149): "The Principle of Christ is divine Love, resistless Life and Truth. Then the Science of the Principle must be Christlike, or Christian Science. More than regal is the majesty of the meekness of the Christ-principle; and its might is the ever-flowing tides of truth that sweep the universe, create and govern it; and its radiant stores of knowledge are the mysteries of exhaustless being. Seek ye these till you make their treasures yours."
Once he has found them, who would not trust "radiant stores of knowledge" to enhance his well-being and progress? Every facet of God's nature is invaluable to one's growth. Only in this way of seeking can be found the God of whom Paul said at Mars' Hill (Acts 17:28), "In him we live, and move, and have our being."
No synonym is of more value than another, but each has its own characteristics. In divine Science, Soul is God, not an ethereal something encased in matter to be released only at the time of death. Soul protects through spiritual understanding. Because of the innocence and purity of Soul, we are elevated above sin, finding, in the glory of selfless adoration, happiness and success.
After studying the Christly example of Jesus in the many miracles he performed, Mrs. Eddy was convinced that Spirit, not matter, is substance. Because God is Spirit and man is God's image and likeness, man must be and is spiritual, subject to no laws of matter. Spiritual riches shine forth through prayer and consecration, bringing ideas in abundance, substantiating their value in supply. When we cease to seek materially, we find spiritually, and our destination and desires will be satisfactory.
What about the glory of eternal Life? Are we still trusting in organic life as the only life of man? Mortal mind insists that in this life one can be gay or sad, rich or poor, weak or strong, sick or well, loved or neglected. These vagaries of mortal mind, aping the supremacy of immortal Mind to govern us, would make us things of chance and change. God is man's Life, so man, Life's representative, is radiantly active, progressive, capable, resourceful, intelligent.
Jesus sacrificed his earthly sense of life to prove that eternal Life is the Life of man. We must sacrifice worldliness, pride, and idolatry in order to partake of that Life. When we have renounced self-will, self-love, personal ambition, and self-aggrandizement, we can joyfully echo the words of the Psalmist (Ps. 91:2), "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust."
It is impossible for one to accept the all-inclusiveness of God without accepting the spirit and the letter of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. To have no false gods, to love our fellowmen, to cease to covet, never to steal from another or harm him, to refuse to bear false witness, is to live the Ten Commandments. The Psalmist said of the man who delighted in the commandments of God (Ps. 112:2, 3): "His seed shall be mighty upon earth.... Wealth and riches shall be in his house."
In the Beatitudes, Jesus said that the poor, the mourners, the meek, those thirsting for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted are blessed. He knew that these states of thought turn us to God, that they lead us to trust the eternal God in place of fickle mortal mind. Blessed indeed are we when we leave the hollowness of trust in matter for the security of trust in Mind.
I once witnessed an example of innocent trust that I have not forgotten. A man was striding down the center of a busy thoroughfare. In the crook of his arm he carried a stick, and behind him came a large flock of sheep. He did not pause or look behind him, but just strode steadily on, and the sheep stayed close behind him. Suddenly, without a backward glance, he turned down a steep side street, and the whole flock followed. "That was wonderful," my mother said to one who was standing near. "He never once turned round, and the sheep never hesitated."
The reply came: "That was because the man is a true shepherd. He knew the sheep were all right, and the sheep knew it too."
Many times those words have echoed in thought: "He knew the sheep were all right, and the sheep knew it too."
Shall we not, therefore, the beloved sheep of His pasture, trust the great Shepherd to lead us safely?
In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 1), "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds."
When our desires are "moulded and exalted," our trust is rewarded. We might ask ourselves: Do we trust our prayers? Do we trust God to answer them, or are we content to wonder or just hope that God has heard us? To trust is not to question. Trust cannot be adulterated. It does not question, implore, or placate. It accepts.
To trust the eternal God is to trust the angels of His presence to abide with us continually, and the reward of this trust is vital, invigorating, and uplifting joy.
