0.0 – Christian Science – 16 Books by Mary Baker Eddy – Bk 5 – Unity of Good – Chpt 3 – The Deep Things of God

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                 THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD 

 1	    Science reverses the evidence of the senses in the-
  	ology, on the same principle that it does in astronomy. 
 3	Popular theology makes God tributary to man, coming at
  	human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men
  	must approach God reverently, doing their own work in
 6	obedience to divine law, if they would fulfil the intended
  	harmony of being. 
  	    The principle of music  knows nothing of discord. God
 9	is harmony's selfhood. His universal laws, His unchange-
  	ableness, are not infringed in ethics any more than in
  	music. To Him there is no moral inharmony; as we shall
12	learn, proportionately as we gain the true understanding
  	of Deity. If God could be conscious of sin, His infinite
  	power would straightway reduce the universe to chaos. 
15	    If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, and
  	death, they must be eternal; since He is, in the very
  	fibre of His being, "without beginning of years or end of
18	days." If God knows that which is not permanent, it
  	follows that He knows something which He must learn
  	to unknow, for the benefit of our race. 
21	    Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological
 
   
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 1	platform, which contains such planks as the divine repent-
  	ance, and the belief that God must one day do His
 3	work over again, because it was not at first done
  	aright. 
  	    Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long after
 6	God made the universe, — earth, man, animals, plants,
  	the sun, the moon, and "the stars also," — He should so
  	gain wisdom and power from past experience that He
 9	could vastly improve upon His own previous work, — as
  	Burgess, the boatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the
  	shortcomings of the Puritan's model? 
12	    Christians are commanded to grow in grace. Was it
  	necessary for God to grow in grace, that He might rectify
  	His spiritual universe? 
15	    The Jehovah of limited Hebrew faith might need
  	repentance, because His created children proved sinful;
  	but the New Testament tells us of "the Father of lights,
18	with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." 
  	God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the
  	corner-stone of living rock, firmer than everlasting hills. 
21	    As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all
  	cannot be good therein. Our infinite model would be
  	taken away. What is in eternal Mind must be reflected
24	in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or
  	hope to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in
  	his creator? 
27	    God never said that man would become better by learn-
  	ing to distinguish evil from good, — but the contrary, that
 
   
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 1	by this knowledge, by man's first disobedience, came
  	"death into the world, and all our woe." 
 3	    "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" asks the
  	poet-patriarch. May men rid themselves of an incubus
  	which God never can throw off? Do mortals know more
 6	than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant
  	of sin? 
  	    God created all things, and pronounced them good. 
 9	Was evil among these good things? Man is God's child
  	and image. If God knows evil, so must man, or the like-
  	ness is incomplete, the image marred. 
12	    If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of evil,
  	then his destruction comes through the very knowledge
  	caught from God, and the creature is punished for his
15	likeness to his creator. 
  	    God is commonly called the sinless, and man the sinful;
  	but if the thought of sin could be possible in Deity, would
18	Deity then be sinless? Would God not of necessity take
  	precedence as the infinite sinner, and human sin become
  	only an echo of the divine? 
21	    Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious his-
  	tory. There are, or have been, devotees who worship not
  	the good Deity, who will not harm them, but the bad
24	deity, who seeks to do them mischief, and whom there-
  	fore they wish to bribe with prayers into quiescence,
  	as a criminal appeases, with a money-bag, the venal
27	officer. 
  	    Surely this is no Christian worship! In Christianity,
 
   
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 1	man bows to the infinite perfection which he is bidden to
  	imitate. In Truth, such terms as divine sin and infinite
 3	sinner are unheard-of contradictions, — absurdities; but
  	would they be sheer nonsense, if God has, or can have,
         a real knowledge of sin?SHOW ALL