Produced by Gerard Arthus and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD ITS EFFECT ON HEALTH AND CHRISTIANITY BY MARY BAKER EDDY AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES A SERMON DELIVERED AT BOSTON Published by The Christian Science Publishing Society FOR THE TRUSTEES UNDER THE WILL OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY BOSTON, U.S.A. Authorized Literature of THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST in Boston, Massachusetts _Copyright, 1886, 1908_ BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY _Copyright renewed, 1914_ _All rights reserved_ SERMON SUBJECT THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD TEXT: _One Lord, one faith, one baptism._--EPHESIANS iv. 5. Every step of progress is a step more spiritual. The great element of reform is not born of human wisdom; it draws not its life from human organizations; rather is it the crumbling away of material elements from reason, the translation of law back to its original language,--Mind, and the final unity between man and God. The footsteps of thought, as they pass from the sensual side of existence to the reality and Soul of all things, are slow, portending a long night to the traveller; but the guardians of the gloom are the angels of His presence, that impart grandeur to the intellectual wrestling and collisions with old-time faiths, as we drift into more spiritual latitudes. The beatings of our heart can be heard; but the ceaseless throbbings and throes of thought are unheard, as it changes from material to spiritual standpoints. Even the pangs of death disappear, accordingly as the understanding that we are spiritual beings here reappears, and we learn our capabilities for good, which insures man's continuance and is the true glory of immortality. The improved theory and practice of religion and of medicine are mainly due to the people's improved views of the Supreme Being. As the finite sense of Deity, based on material conceptions of spiritual being, yields its grosser elements, we shall learn what God is, and what God does. The Hebrew term that gives another letter to the word _God_ and makes it _good_, unites Science and Christianity, whereby we learn that God, good, is universal, and the divine Principle,--Life, Truth, Love; and this Principle is learned through goodness, and of Mind instead of matter, of Soul instead of the senses, and by revelation supporting reason. It is the false conceptions of Spirit, based on the evidences gained from the material senses, that make a Christian only in theory, shockingly material in practice, and form its Deity out of the worst human qualities, else of wood or stone.