Divine Science Its
Principle and Practice
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Copyright 1957 by Divine
Science Church and College
Denver, Colorado
Made available here
by the ministry of
Rev. Lawrence C. Terry, M.Msc.,
D.Min.
P. O. Box 68324
Indianapolis, IN 46268-0324
www.DivineScience.net
Chapter 3 - Story of
Progress
Long has there been a general belief that
man is a being separated from God, even
the belief that he is a creature
essentially sinful in nature, doomed to
eternal punishment unless redeemed. Man
has considered himself to be an
individual struggling to eke out an
existence; searching for happiness
through the turmoil of earthly life,
while his God sits upon a throne in some
far-distant heaven. God has appeared
quite indifferent to man’s
struggle, for He seems neither to
intervene to prevent disaster nor to
assist any individual, but allows events
to take their due course.
No longer need man accept these old
beliefs, for light is now shed upon the
truth of man. The new thought reveals
that man is one with God. Since God is
All, then logically man is included
within God and is one with Him and with
all creation. Man accepting himself as a
son and heir of God may learn to
appropriate for his own use the
attributes or inherencies of God –
His wisdom, love, knowledge,
understanding, power, life and joy. He
may learn to use God-guidance,
God-protection, and God-peace if he
chooses to avail himself of his
birthright.
This is the revelation that Divine
Science brings to mankind for his joy and
happiness. There are definite steps of
growth and unfoldment necessary before
the realization of this wonderful truth
of oneness can be fully ours.
Be an earnest student; put into thinking
and practice all that you learn as you
proceed, and be expectant of results
which formerly you would have thought
unbelievable.
Chapter
3
God and
Man are One
And God
said, let us make man in our image, after
our likeness. Genesis 1:26
Questions to alert your thinking
1. What is creation as
explained in Divine Science?
2. What new thought is
given you as to the nature of matter or
substance?
3. Are the teachings of
Divine Science supported by modern
scientists?
4. What attributes are
inherent in the nature of God?
5. What must man do to
claim his birthright?
6. What is man’s
greatest need?
In order to understand and accept the
truth concerning the reality of good
and the unreality of evil, it will be
necessary to consider the source or
beginning of all that is. In order to
reason aright we must determine the
first and originating cause.
In the beginning God – God the
Uncreate, the perfect Mind, the only
source, the omnipresent Principle, the
eternal Spirit – created. All is
contained within God, the perfect
Mind, the cause of all that is, the
source of all form. God, the Uncreate,
creates. There is only god. God the
Good, eternal and changeless; God the
Good, the source of all, perfect and
good; God, the beginning out of which
were all things made which were made.
“And God saw everything that he
had made, and , behold, it was very
good.” Genesis 1:31
Creation is the emanation of life and
substance from the one original Source
which can only be the infinite,
omnipresent, eternal and changeless
God. Creator being the Source is
therefore the substance of its
creation, as the fountain is the
substance of its stream; as the tree is
the source and substance of its
branches and fruit; as the bay is one
with the ocean of which it is an
extension.
The emanation of the life and substance
of God into creation must mean that the
life and substance of creation is as
perfect as that of the Creator, God
Himself. The essence of all created
things must, by logical reasoning, be
eternal Spirit-Substance and the idea
of each created form must be held
within God-Mind in order to maintain
existence. All creation is within the
Creator, or Source, before coming into
form, for in the Invisible is the
eternal Idea of all that makes up
creation, while in the visible is the
expression or living form of Idea.
Reason tells us that it is necessarily
true that all living forms are included
within Omnipresence, since Omnipresence
embraces ALL within itself.
Creation is God in Self-manifestation.
Divine Science explains the law and
order of perfect God-Mind involving
itself within creation, revealing
itself in form as nature and mankind.
“I am the beginning and the end,
the first and the last.” Rev.
22:13 The universal Spirit, the only
life and substance is the beginning,
the source. That which emanates from
this One is the end; it too is Spirit,
for there is but one presence, on life,
and one substance. Creation is Spirit.
Everything begins and ends as Spirit.
God is omnipresent Principle. Principle
is thus defined by Webster: “The
source and origin, that from which
anything proceeds; the beginning, the
first.” It is first cause wherein
we find the true nature of all things.
Then with God as our beginning our
nature is decided by His.
Divine Science has taught these truths
from the time of its founding; has
taught that Spirit and Substance are
two aspects of the same reality, God.
Divine Science has always taught that
Spirit expresses by means of substance;
it has always taught that so-called
matter is pure divine energy manifested
as form; it repeatedly points out that
Substance is Spirit.
Divine Science feels a great debt of
gratitude to the present day natural
scientists and physicists for their
discoveries which confirm the Divine
Science position. Eddington, Jeans, and
Millikan are out-spoken in their
declaration that what has been called
“solid matter” is in fact
more space than solid and is very much
alive since it consists of charges of
energy vibrating about a central
charge, like planets around a central
sun. Many scientists state further that
everything they have found points to
the truth that “the universe is a
great thought,” and that the
stuff of which it is made is
Mind-Stuff.
It is with the assurance of confident
knowing that Divine Science teaches the
concept of God as Universal Mind and
man as a thought in that eternal Mind.
It confidently affirms the following
conclusions:
1. All substance is
Spirit, eternal and changeless in
essence. The outward form may seem to
change, but the inner form, which is
God’s thought, remains eternally
the same. “ . . . whatsoever God
doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can
be put to it, nor anything taken from
it . . . “ Eccl. 3:14
2. All substance is
one.
3. All substance is pure,
whole, and perfect.
4. All is God and God in
action.
Man then is eternally one with the
infinite Source and in nature is the
image and likeness of the Eternal as it
expresses in living form. This is the
truth of which Jesus was fully
conscious for he declared, “I and
my Father are one.” John 10:30
There is but one source of all, God.
Man is one with God, hence he is like
God. That which begins in Spirit is
Spirit to the end. Since all that is
has its source in Spirit, we can
confidently say, “All is
Spirit.” God and man cannot be
separated. God is Spirit Universal and
is expressed and manifest as living
soul and body. Spirit contains within
itself all souls and bodies before they
are expressed, just as the vine hold
branches and fruit within itself before
they are expressed or pressed
out.
All of man’s possibilities lie in
the truth that is divine as is his
Creator with whom he is one. He is one
with God whose nature is love, wisdom,
knowledge, understanding, power, life
and joy. These are known as the
inherencies of God, and they are the
attributes which man inherits by nature
of his oneness with God. Man is one
with God who is omnipresent,
omnipotent, and omniscient. Think
deeply of this.
Concentrated thinking upon the
broadness of this thought brings out
some degree of God’s infinitude,
some idea of the fullness that is all
in all. Try as we may, enlarge our
thought of it as much as we possibly
can, we can scarcely comprehend the
fullness and infinitude of God. To
illumine this idea and to start the
stretching of our thinking, let us
place before each of the inherencies of
God the word, infinite, and after the
word, omnipresent, in this way:
Infinite Love, omnipresent
Infinite Wisdom, omnipresent
Infinite Knowledge, omnipresent
Infinite Understanding,
omnipresent
Infinite Power, omnipresent
Infinite Life, omnipresent
Infinite Joy, omnipresent
As words, these may be read off glibly,
but to think deeply on each one opens
man’s consciousness to a new
realization of his Source and of his
own potentialities.
There is only one Mind, one Substance,
one Source, one Presence, one Power,
one Life – All Good. Although
Truth is omnipresent and changeless;
although man lives, moves, and has his
being in God, the All Good; although he
dwells in the kingdom of heaven, if he
is not conscious of it, he may go on
his way lacking many things and losing
the blessedness that IS his.
“Heirs of God, joint-heirs with
Christ,” men may, through
ignorance of the truth, be slaves of
misery, doubt, and poverty. It is
KNOWING the truth that makes man free.
Man gives a sense of reality and power
to evil when he fails to recognize that
his source, his life, his very
existence through time and eternity is
God the Good. Truth must be recognized
in order to be realized and to become a
power in the lives of men.
Ignorance of the truth of his Being
does not alter man’s true nature,
for the REALITY of man never changes.
Ignorance is the seeming great delusion
of the world. It unknowingly takes
things for what they are not;
that is, takes the expression for the
Expresser, the body for the source of
Self, the brain for the source of Mind,
the letter for the Spirit and, in
general, causes a sense of disorder or
disease.
As students of science we start with a
new concept of man, an idea which may
be new to our thought, but which is
eternal in Truth. As man understands
that his true state, his eternal
nature, is perfect since he is one with
his perfect Source, he claims his own
perfection as something innately his,
implanted within him by the divine
Mind, not something which he has earned
or which comes to him from outside
himself.
As his vision enlarges, the perfect
unity between the Divine and all
mankind is revealed to the
consciousness of man. He begins, dimly
at first, to glimpse the truth of his
sonship; gradually he sees the
everlasting nature of all things. The
divine nature can never be lost for it
is an eternal truth, and sooner or
later everyone must awaken to its
presence within him. Eventually each
one will be able to say, “I am
because God is, God is the reason or
cause of my being, the source of my
existence. All that I am must be found
in God, and most truly I cannot be
something that my source is not. My
source decides my nature. The stream is
like the fountain from which it
flows.”
Jesus was quoting from the Old
testament when he gave but two
commandments: “Thou shalt love
the Lord they God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might.” Deut. 6:5, and “ .
. . thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself . . .” Lev. 19:18. These
commandments are fulfilled as man
recognizes the perfect nature in all
creation. When we realize the oneness
and divinity of Life in all things we
sense a universal justice, strength,
and harmony back of all creation which
when understood will be expressed as
love. Understanding that the whole of
Truth must be found in infinite Mind,
we have a standard by which to judge
all things, a basis from which to
reason of Truth. We now turn from
appearances and “judge righteous
judgment”; we decide what is true
from our knowledge of an omnipresent
principle of Truth rather than from a
personal opinion or feeling. Whatever
God is, is Truth.
All Truth is eternal in nature: true
love can never change; true
understanding cannot fail; true life
can never end. This is all true now.
Conscious awareness of the Truth and
the opening of our hearts and minds to
the acceptance of the fullness within
our own nature is our greatest need.
All good, wisdom, strength, life,
health, love are ours now. Let us
accept them.
Begin each day with an acknowledgment
of omnipresent Good. Think of yourself
as a son of God. Think of your
children, your friends, and all
persons, not as they seem by
observation, but as they are in God.
Think of them as that which is, was,
and ever shall be; as that which thinks
and knows; as that which the Expresser
expresses perfectly. Know that what is
true of God is true of you and of them.
From this standpoint you can
intelligently master the problems of
life. From this standpoint it is right
for you to accept for yourself all
thought and feelings of divine love,
truth, knowledge, power, harmony. By
making this your daily practice you
will partake of the free gift of
eternal life; you will be remembering
God the Good. Through this
consciousness the healing of body and
affairs takes place and Good is made
manifest.
Divine
Science Statement of Being
God
is all, both invisible and
visible.
One
Presence, One Mind, One Power is
all.
This
one that is all is perfect life,
perfect love, and perfect
substance.
Man
is the individualized expression of God
and is ever one with this perfect life,
perfect love, and perfect
substance.
Statements of
Truth
God is omnipresent Principle.
“Principle is the source and
origin, that from which anything
proceeds;
the beginning, the
first.”
--Webster
Man is a spiritual Being, the image and
likeness of God.
Man is the perfect manifestation of a
perfect God.
Man’s consciousness is the
activity of God-Mind.
I live now by the life that is
omnipresent and full of power.
In all that I do this day, perfect
Mind, ever active, thinks me, moves me,
lives me as part of itself.
I am immortal Spirit, incorruptible,
changeless, harmonious, strong in
thought and body, living, trusting,
resting in the freedom and fullness of
perfect Life.
Questions for
Review and Discussion
1. How does a broader
understanding change your
viewpoint?
2. What is the standard
for righteous judgment?
3. Is Truth changeable?
Support your answer.
4. New realization means
new thinking and new reactions.
Explain.
5. Can you now accept the
unreality of evil?
Chapter 4
* * * * *
Divine Science - Its
Principle and Practice from the writings
of Nona Brooks and Malinda
Cramer
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