Have you ever seen a light blue diamond? Or a pink, yellow, or green one? Magnificently beautiful, yet very different from each other, diamonds all shine with such intensity that you would never think of one of them as some other gem. They never resist the light. Light is resplendent by itself, and diamonds disperse it in a fiery fashion.
Similarly, when we get to know God better, we let light into our thought. And light comes to our thought through prayer, as we begin to understand what God really is. The more we understand God in a logical and spiritual way, the more harmonious will be our experience.
In a sermon delivered in Boston in 1886, Mary Baker Eddy said that "the improved theory and practice of religion and of medicine are mainly due to the people's improved views of the Supreme Being." Further on, she said: "Proportionately as the people's belief of God, in every age, has been dematerialized and unfinited has their Deity become good; no longer a personal tyrant or a molten image, but the divine Life, Truth, and Love,—Life without beginning or ending, Truth without a lapse or error, and Love universal, infinite, eternal. This more perfect idea, held constantly before the people's mind, must have a benign and elevating influence upon the character of nations as well as individuals, and will lift man ultimately to the understanding that our ideals form our characters, that as a man 'thinketh in his heart, so is he.'" The People's Idea of God, pp. 2-3.
