Is There A Personal Deity?

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         God is infinite. He is neither a limited mind nor a
12    limited body. God is Love; and Love is Principle, not
         person. What the person of the infinite is, we know not;
         but we are gratefully and lovingly conscious of the father-
15    liness of this Supreme Being. God is individual, and man
         is His individualized idea. While material man and the
         physical senses receive no spiritual idea, and feel no sen-
18    sation of divine Love, spiritual man and his spiritual
         senses are drinking in the nature and essence of the indi-
         vidual infinite. A sinful sense is incompetent to understand
21    the realities of being, — that Life is God, and that man
         is in His image and likeness. A sinner can take no cog-
         nizance of the noumenon or the phenomena of Spirit;
24    but leaving sin, sense rises to the fulness of the stature of
         man in Christ.

         Person is formed after the manner of mortal man, so

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1      far as he can conceive of personality. Limitless person-
         ality is inconceivable. His person and perfection are
3      neither self-created, nor discerned through imperfection;
         and of God as a person, human reason, imagination, and
         revelation give us no knowledge. Error would fashion
6      Deity in a manlike mould, while Truth is moulding a
         Godlike man.

         When the term divine Principle is used to signify Deity
9      it may seem distant or cold, until better apprehended.
         This Principle is Mind, substance, Life, Truth, Love.
         When understood, Principle is found to be the only term
12    that fully conveys the ideas of God, — one Mind, a perfect
         man, and divine Science. As the divine Principle is com-
         prehended, God’s omnipotence and omnipresence will
15    dawn on mortals, and the notion of an everywhere-present
         body — or of an infinite Mind starting from a finite body,
         and returning to it — will disappear.

18    Ever-present Love must seem ever absent to ever-present
         selfishness or material sense. Hence this asking amiss
         and receiving not, and the common idolatry of man-
21    worship. In divine Science, God is recognized as the
         only power, presence, and glory.

         Adam’s mistiness and Satan’s reasoning, ever since the
24    flood, — when specimens of every kind emerged from the
         ark, — have run through the veins of all human philoso-
         phy. Human reason is a blind guide, a continued series
27    of mortal hypotheses, antagonistic to Revelation and Sci-
         ence. It is continually straying into forbidden by-paths

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1      of sensualism, contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus
         and Paul, and the vision of the Apocalypse. Human
3      philosophy has ninety-nine parts of error to the one-
         hundredth part of Truth, — an unsafe decoction for the
         race. The Science that Jesus demonstrated, whose views
6      of Truth Confucius and Plato but dimly discerned, Science
         and Health interprets. It was not a search after wisdom;
         it was wisdom, and it grasped in spiritual law the uni-
9      verse, — all time, space, immortality, thought, extension.
         This Science demonstrated the Principle of all phenomena,
         identity, individuality, law; and showed man as reflect-
12    ing God and the divine capacity. Human philosophy
         would dethrone perfection, and substitute matter and evil
         for divine means and ends.

15    Human philosophy has an undeveloped God, who un-
         folds Himself through material modes, wherein the human
         and divine mingle in the same realm and consciousness.
18    This is rank infidelity; because by it we lose God’s ways
         and perpetuate the supposed power and reality of evil ad
         infinitum. Christian Science rends this veil in the pantheon
21    of many gods, and reproduces the teachings of Jesus, whose
         philosophy is incontestable, bears the strain of time, and
         brings in the glories of eternity; “for other foundation
24    can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

         Divine philosophy is demonstrably the true idea of the
         Christ, wherein Principle heals and saves. A philosophy
27    which cannot heal the sick has little resemblance to Sci-
         ence, and is, to say the least, like a cloud without rain,

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1      “driven about by every wind of doctrine.” Such phi-
         losophy has certainly not touched the hem of the Christ
3      garment.

         Leibnitz, Descartes, Fichte, Hegel, Spinoza, Bishop
         Berkeley, were once clothed with a “brief authority;”
6      but Berkeley ended his metaphysical theory with a treatise
         on the healing properties of tar-water, and Hegel was an
         inveterate snuff-taker. The circumlocution and cold cate-
9      gories of Kant fail to improve the conditions of mortals,
         morally, spiritually, or physically. Such miscalled meta-
         physical systems are reeds shaken by the wind. Com-
12    pared with the inspired wisdom and infinite meaning of
         the Word of Truth, they are as moonbeams to the sun, or
         as Stygian night to the kindling dawn.