IS THERE A PERSONAL DEITY?
God is infinite. He is neither a limited mind nor a 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
fatherliness 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 sensation of divine Love, spiritual man and his
spiritual senses are drinking in the nature and essence of the individual
infinite. A sinful sense is incompetent to understand the realities of
being,--that Life is God, and that man is in His image and likeness. A
sinner can take no cognizance of the noumenon or the phenomena of Spirit;
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 far as he can conceive
of personality. Limitless personality is inconceivable. His person and
perfection are 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 Deity in a manlike mould, while Truth is
moulding a Godlike man.
When the term divine Principle is used to signify Deity 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 that
fully conveys the ideas of God,--one Mind, a perfect man, and divine
Science. As the divine Principle is comprehended, God's omnipotence and
omnipresence will 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.
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-worship. In divine Science, God is recognized as the only
power, presence, and glory.
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